First post, by Tetrium
- Rank
- l33t++
if you only had all your current parts available to you?
It doesn't matter if the parts don't match up too well (like if you happen to have relatively few harddrives compared to the rest of your available parts so you'd have to use much smaller harddrives then you'd like), as long as it's a complete system (so no complete computers on the floor without a case 😜).
But of course it's ok to share any details about how this would work out for you 😁
One more note: You don't have to have a monitor available for every single system because in the end it's your personal collection and I figure most people won't be using all of their rigs at the same time anyway 😁 (unless you feel like sponsoring your local electrical company 🤣 ).
I'll start:
First, I haven't done a complete and comprehensive count (past midnight, need to go to bed, etc) so I'll have to guess for a bit (will do a count later if this thread starts picking up speed), but I'd think I'd be bottlenecked by either a lack of computer cases or a lack of good-enough PSU's.
Harddrives I should have enough, but I might end up with sub-1GB drives for systems with MMX chips and such.
With all my current parts (and provided they still function) I estimate I could build around 50 complete systems (all of them towers). Slightly over 20 would have to be AT tower systems and the remainders I'd use ATX (Got plenty ATX mainboards. No BTX cases here and no proprietary ones either, I tossed all those) of which maybe 10 or 15 would have to utilize a micro-ATX mainboard. Sound cards, graphics cards and especially CPU's and HSF's are well represented here, but I might have to use slower parts (both CPU's and especially graphics cards) as I might end up not having enough powerful enough PSU's to go around. I have few sound cards that were made after the live! cards, but most mainboards made after that time period should have onboard sound anyway and I can live with that. I got plenty ISA sound cards (but nothing very special) so I wouldn't have to worry about that.
Optical drives, floppy drives, HSF's and cables should be plentiful also. For OS I'd use MS products, got everything from DOS, Win 3.something, several 95's, several 98's and SE's, ME, NT's, 2k's and XP's to go around. Memory modules I'm also well stocked, but I'd have to compromise as my stash of larger modules is somewhat limited (plenty SDRAM, but only a few 1GB DDR and not a whole lot of 32MB 72p SIMM modules and my weirdo 64MB 72p SIMM modules came out of some server board that I don't have and won't run stable in the other boards. I do have some 16MB 30p but hardly any boards to put them in 🤣 ).
So in short: Slightly over 20 AT systems and slightly under 30 ATX systems, all towers.
Did I miss anything?
So how many computers could you build? Remember you can only use parts that you have at your disposal right now. Be creative 😁