"Retro rig"? Pfft, I still run Windows 7 as my main OS. IMO, it's the last great M$ OS, and I'm going to stick with it until Linux is a viable alternative. I have my fingers crossed that someone will find a hack for it that allows it to receive updates past 2020... though admittedly chances of that happening are probably quite slim given that Micro$oft probably knows about how people tweaked XP to get POSReady2009 updates.

jheronimus wrote:

Honestly, I don't even see the point of building anything newer than Pentium III. I'm not judging at all, and I understand that nostalgia might be the driving force here... But what exactly can you run on a Pentium IV machine that you can't run on a modern box?

Well, since Software side of things is at a standstill for a while now (Win 8 32/64-bit requires a Pentium 4 Prescott with NX/XD-bit or Athlon64 to run natively, and Win 8.1 x64 requires any 65nm CPU from Intel or 90nm AMD one, with rev. F2/F3 core inside).

Main problem is : What makes a PC, "Retro" ?
Is it age (10 Years, 15 Years) ?
Is it capabilities (ie. support for SSE2, NX-bit or "Dual Core") ?
Is it performance (because, let's be honest here, what's the point of having capability to run something, if it's running so slow that U can't do anything useful with it) ?

To me, a "Retro PC" means a PC that can't run some new software (OS'es, games, etc.), or can't run it fast enough.
Retro PC should NOT be nessessary to run certain programs (THAT, is what a Vintage PC does).

Here's a question :
What program may require a Pentium 4 CPU, but cannot be used on modern Core i7 from 2011 ?

I too plan to keep my current game rig as a future retro Win7 rig. I just upgraded the main HDD the other day and installed Windows 10. Its ok for a gaming OS, but I do miss Windows 7 on it. I have to admit that 10 is a fair bit "snappier" though, so its gonna stay on there. At the end of the year, I will build a new rig and this one will become my primary work rig / backup box. I'm just gonna copy paste my Steam profile to list the hardware.

Operating System: Windows 10 Home
Motherboard: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. G1.Sniper 2 (Socket 1155)
CPU: Intel Core i7 2600K @ 3.40GHz
RAM: 8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 802MHz (11-11-11-28)
Audio: Creative X-Fi Audio Processor (WDM)
Optical Drives: ATAPI iHAS124 B
Mouse: Corsair M40
Keyboard: Razer Blackwidow
Monitor: LG 27EA33 IPS LED

Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 3000 (Gigabyte)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4GB (EVGA FTW)

Hard Drives: 1st HDD 3TB Toshiba cached with M4 64GB SSD using Intel Rapid Storage Technology
2nd HDD 1TB Hitachi

The rig is currently housed in a Cooler Master HAF-XB with 200mm top in as an intake and top 120mm rear fan also as an intake. The front is filled with a Corsair H100i with both fans exhausting. There are two 92mm fans acting as exhaust fans in the lower half of the case. Idle temps of both the CPU, Motherboard, and GPU at stock speeds are in the mid to upper 30's. At full tilt the CPU at stock hits the high 40's and lower 50's range, while the GPU hits about mid 60's. The motherboard doesn't change much.

I've OC'ed it to 4GHz with Prime running 24 hours, without issue. I keep it at its default 3.4 and use the included Gigabyte Bay Device with an honest to goodness "Turbo" button set to bump it up to 4.0GHz when I feel I need it. So far, I have only used that button for fun, as it plays everything at 1080p pretty much maxed out and when it cant, its not a CPU bottleneck, its the GPU. I consider it to have the last great oldschool motherboard that was made. None of this UEFI crap. Just old school BIOS with all white text on a beautiful blue background. This board with all of its features came from the time that 99% of all MOBO's had moved onto UEFI and Gigabyte was bound by contract to continue using the older Award BIOS. This is a feature as navigation with arrow keys is faster in a BIOS than with a mouse, IMHO. It also looks awesome with its M4 / AR-15 themed chipset cooling solution. 😄

I won't be building a Windows 7 retro rig any time soon - Windows 8/10 is faster at games than Windows 7, so why run Windows 7? There's a definite case for an XP box, but not for 7.

All my current machines run Windows 7 and will until no longer supported. 😀

PeterLI wrote:

All my current machines run Windows 7 and will until no longer supported. 😀

win 7 support ends in 4 years, but until July you can still do a free upgrade to win10 which gets you support until 2025, also if you play new games, being stuck with 7 during the next 2-3 years is not going to be ideal, with DX12 titles coming out and a new generation of graphics cards.

PeterLI wrote:

All my current machines run Windows 7 and will until no longer supported. 😀

I'd image them, upgrade them to Windows 10 (so you get the free licence), and then revert the image. When it is not supported anymore you can just upgrade to whatever Windows 10 build MS will have released by then - with a clean install even (the machine should activate then just fine).

Oldest computer I've installed Win7 on is a with i850 based socket 423 motherboard. Hade 1 GB ram. Worked fine, allthough I didn't really do anything with it.

Maybe I will build a Win7 socket 1155 based rigg in 10 years or so, who knows 😀

alexanrs wrote:

PeterLI wrote:

All my current machines run Windows 7 and will until no longer supported. 😀

I'd image them, upgrade them to Windows 10 (so you get the free licence), and then revert the image. When it is not supported anymore you can just upgrade to whatever Windows 10 build MS will have released by then - with a clean install even (the machine should activate then just fine).

I think using this method, with a second hard drive for win10 install is easier and achieves the same result (your motherboard tied to a win10 license on the MS server, so whenever you reinstall it and go online it will be activated once this is done once)
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/6477 … l=1#post1133855

I'm just not sure if MS will never deactivate your win7 (key) at some point?

AFAIK you NEED to upgrade an existing (and validated) Windows 7+ install to be able to activate Windows 10 for free. Once you do this the motherboard is tied to the license and you can do a clean install whenever you want, but the first time it needs to be an upgrade and not a "side" install on another HDD.

SPBHM wrote:

I'm just not sure if MS will never deactivate your win7 (key) at some point?

Considering the negative PR that would surely follow such a decision, and considering that AFAIK Microsoft has never deactivated any keys for any of its products (with the possible exception of leaked pirated VLKs), I'd say the answer is "probably not".

alexanrs wrote:

AFAIK you NEED to upgrade an existing (and validated) Windows 7+ install to be able to activate Windows 10 for free. Once you do this the motherboard is tied to the license and you can do a clean install whenever you want, but the first time it needs to be an upgrade and not a "side" install on another HDD.

yes but the method I linked only requires you to copy a small file from your activated windows 7 install, generated with a file from the windows 10 iso, so it's extremely easy to install win 10 on a secondary hard drive, and activate it as an upgrade while keeping your win7 HD intact, I think; I've done the process following the guide (but used the same HD) and it worked 100% fine, same result as doing it the usual way,

dr_st wrote:

SPBHM wrote:

I'm just not sure if MS will never deactivate your win7 (key) at some point?

Considering the negative PR that would surely follow such a decision, and considering that AFAIK Microsoft has never deactivated any keys for any of its products (with the possible exception of leaked pirated VLKs), I'd say the answer is "probably not".

hopefully, but I think it would make sense for them to no longer accept the activation from a win7 copy registered as upgraded to win10, so that's why I'm not sure what to expect.

Oh, yeah. I missed the link for whatever reason, did not know you could do that.

It's funny when you start thinking about it, but even by today's standards, a Core 2 CPU is quite capable of everyday tasks. I wonder in how much time will they become as obsolete as a Pentium MMX?

Already built a high-end Windows XP / 7 machine as it was my main system until last year (when I upgraded to LGA 2011-3)

Almost maxed out LGA775 system consisting of:
Intel Core2 Quad Extreme QX9650
ASUS P5Q Deluxe
8GB PC8500 DDR2 RAM
Geforce GTX295
80GB Intel SSD and 2GB storage
Creative Soundblaster Xi-Fi PCI

Snayperskaya wrote:

It's funny when you start thinking about it, but even by today's standards, a Core 2 CPU is quite capable of everyday tasks. I wonder in how much time will they become as obsolete as a Pentium MMX?

I think this will depend mostly on how practical it is to keep such a system running (the older the hardware is and the harder it gets to keep such a system running, the more uneconomical it may be to do so) and the actual usefulness of such a system. The latter is what made older chips like Pentium 1 MMX obsolete, it simply became too slow quickly mostly due to the Gigahertz race. These days the raw processing power is less relevant, particularly with Intel chips, as the increase of CPU raw computational power is decreasing (CPUs don't get crazymuch faster in no time like they used to). If CPUs start slowing down when it comes to them becoming faster, features like instruction sets will gain in importance. Perhaps a semi-new form of planned obsolescence?

But another important consideration is what any particular system is used for (like playing the most recent games, but even that road to obsolescence can be stalled by graphics card upgrades) and how future programs will grow in bloat and I think the latter issue here is what will kill the usefulness of many systems in the future.

And obviously I can't predict the future, but other views about this subject would be a welcome addition, I think this is actually very fascinating.

I will absolutely build one at some point 😁

By the time I upgrade to Windows 7, I guess it will be retro. 😀

alexanrs wrote:

AFAIK you NEED to upgrade an existing (and validated) Windows 7+ install to be able to activate Windows 10 for free. Once you do this the motherboard is tied to the license and you can do a clean install whenever you want, but the first time it needs to be an upgrade and not a "side" install on another HDD.

The 1511 release for Windows 10 no longer requires this. You can do a clean install of Windows 10 and supply a Windows 7 or 8 product key.

No, because it's stupid.

I meddle in old hardware because I want to intentionally run an older OS which a lot of games from the 80's and 90's are limited to. Sure there's a lot more high performance hardware but what's the point? 3/4 of the games I like don't run on anything past XP, let alone take advantage of any of it should I think running DOS on a P4/Core2 is a good idea. Anything beyond that you can get off Steam and are already patched to work.
Also, it's not "Retro" It's Windows 7. It's cliche to say it's retro. It's kind of disgusting to say it's retro. It's not even remotely retro! It's just a barely 10 years old OS running on otherwise boring hardware with nothing that prevents a game from 2007 running on the latest machines (In comparison with the transition from 9X to 2K/XP back in the day when a lot of applications simply stopped working. I remember when I couldn't run Google Earth because I was still on 98.)