I've wanted to build a sleeper PC for a while in one of my old cases. I was on checking out part prices the other day (having had a few beers) and ended up ordering a few bits, so I guess this build is now happening...

It's a misleading photo as I've had the graphics card for a few months for various other projects - that isn't brand new! I also got the motherboard second hand (and would have happily got everything second hand) but there was not much availability locally. What you see there is:

• Gigabyte A320M-S2H - the basic of the basic motherboard
• Ryzen 2600X
• 16GB DDR4 3200MHz RAM
• AMD RX 570(X? can't remember)
• 512GB M.2 NVMe drive because I hate cables

It will be going in my one presentable, and small, retro case:

Got the main bits assembled... the wraith spire cooler required a lot of force to mount onto the board. I don't remember having as much of a problem with my 3700X.

Surprisingly roomy case, because I removed the HDD caddy - not needed when your only drive is M.2. The CD drive is not connected up due to a lack of IDE ports. I also added a front fan, as there are no fans at all in the case. and even put spongy things so it doesn't vibrate. I'm using a 500watt SFX PSU which lives up top.

I will say that the Gigabyte fan controller in this case is wonderful. It let me set the sys fan (which was a 3 pin) to whatever temp sensor I like, and has three profiles or I can just make a custom profile. Having recently faffed a lot with rubbish built in fan controllers, this was a nice surprise (on such a budget board too).

Success!

...until it wasn't. I am using Windows 10. I was installing using my normal MS account so I could play / bench Xbox Game Pass for PC so had to be online during the install. When Windows automatically installed AMD drivers during the Windows install, the screen would go black and the fans would spin up to 100%.

I then tried it offline, which worked fine as Windows couldn't install an AMD display driver. When I manually installed a display driver, again, black screen and fans as soon as the driver itself was installed.

Finally I tried another screen and it worked fine. It seems the AMD drivers don't like this old DVI screen and must be setting it to a resolution or refresh that it can't do. If only Windows and AMD both allowed me to disable the automatic screen resolution stuff, and Windows 10 makes it very difficult to launch in safe mode or low-res mode (which didn't work).

So in the end I swapped graphics card with my main PC - a 1070ti. This works fine, and the 570 works fine on my main (display port) screen. Bit of a squeeze though...

Finally, it is ready to go.

I'm already regretting this purchase as it does everything that my normal PC does, but worse, but can't do anything my normal PC can't do (like XP era games) as it doesn't have a DVD drive and is on Windows 10.