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First post, by marinescuiuri

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Gentlemen, windows Xp hold a sweet spot in the history of operating systems and is my favorite for it's simplicity. So, this desktop pc was dedicated to the operating system of my high school years (33 years old). The idea came after a visit to the r/retrobattlestations subbredit. Said, well I must give a try and see what comes out. From all the parts I wanted to put into this pc, I only managed to get two of them. A cpu and a ssd. Here are the specs:

PC- Fujitsu Esprimo E910 desktop (socket 1155 - year of release: 2012) - This is a refurbished desktop that focuses on energy efficiency, thus having a 250 watts psu capable of short bursts up to 280 watts (85+). It has USB 3.0 from intel that does not work on windows Xp, but I dual boot with windows 7 as well, so I can use the usb 3.0 speeds.

I had to choose between Dell, Hp, Lenovo and Fujitsu. My first take was Dell, then I said I'll go the japanese way since it's focused on energy efficiency and I'll see what can be improved from there. As a side note, Fujistu is the second company in the world that produced computers, the first being IBM. It is highly respected in Japan and has joined with Siemens back in 2000's to produce computers, then it bought Siemens's shares and became just Fujitsu. Interesting, this pc is made in Germany.

The mainboard is very simple and lacks many features even a budget modo should have, but that is for power savings sake, I hope. Anyway this office refurbished computers don't usually have overclocking abilities into the bios, but that was not the point when started this build.

I wanted to get the Small Factory Form, but the Desktop Form has more expansion slots, is a bit bigger and thus better cooled. A bit cheaper than the E910 is the E710 that has Intel's Q75 chipset and 5 SATA connections, while this has Intel's Q77 chipset and 6 SATA connection. From what i found, that's about the only difference between them. I think squeezing 5 SSDs in there is no problem.

Also, it has official drivers for windows Xp and all work.

CPU - Intel Core i5 3470T (2 cores 4 threads) 2.9 Ghz with Turbo to 3.6 Ghz- The heart of the computer. It was a great debate in my mind, which CPU should I put and I had to chose from 4 models, all were 3rd generatin Intel Ivy Bridge CPUs, the last generation to fully support windows XP. The model from which to chose were:
- Pentium Gold 2120T (2cores 2 threads, 35 watts TDP)
- i5 3470T (2 cores 4 threads, 35 watts TDP)
- i5 3570T (4cores 4 threads, 45 watts TDP)
- i7 3770T (4 cores 8 threads, 45 watts TDP)
The T model with lower TDP are not as easy to find as the regular models. The decision was made to go for a 35 watts CPU and the i5 3470T was the one. This CPU is the most powerful 35 watts CPU designed for windows Xp and the second most powerful dual core designed for windows Xp (there is an i3 3rd generation that has better passmark score).
With the stock cooler, and after one hour of pc stress test, it did not go beyond 54 degree (room temp 20 degree).
The integrated graphics HD 2500 is the equivalent of nVidia GT 210 or 220.

GPU - For now the integrated graphics. The pc being a desktop only supports low profile cards. In the future I hope to get a Radeon HD 5570, 6570, 6670, 7570, or a nVidia GTX 750Ti. GPU will be underpowered to not go beyond 45 watts. I don't use this pc for games except Red Alert 2 from 2001 and this game goes well with the integrated graphics. But I want to fill all the expansion slots that this desktop has so a GPU will be a must.

RAM - 4 GB DDR3 1600 CL11 Samsung (future will hopefully bring 2x2GB HyperX 1600 CL9). Maximum for Xp, and plenty for 7.

STORAGE - 320 GB SATA HDD Samsung (windows Xp) - 240 GB SSD Kingston (windows 7, this drive is placed where the floppy is)

AUDIO - Conexant HD that is integrated on the motherboard. Soon, hopefully, an asus xonar or a creative card, low profile.

DVD-ROM - unknown brand , will have to get a good one.

Idle temperatures with the case fan on is about 25 degree at the CPU. Case fan off, temp is 28 degree CPU and 30-32 degree HDD. Chipset sits at around 60 degree (has no heat sink).

I managed to install windows in AHCI SATA mod, using easy2boot an a youtube tutorial. After that I installed windows 7 and it asks at every boot which OS to boot from, windows 7 or earlier version of windows ( it doesn't say xp).

I'll have to fill all the pci slots, I have a list of things to put inside (GPU, Sound card, WIFI and Bluetooth card), they will come with time. Also I'm thinking to replace the only case fan, the PSU fan and the CPU fan, with Noctua ones since they have good reviews on the internet. So it will require quite some money to upgrade all this.

The monitor it has now it's an 18 years old LCD from Samsung, 17 inch. Hope to get an 19 inch LED, but all I find is 21 inches LEDs. Looks like I pick another hard to find, the 19 inch LED. I live in Romania, we have a couple of online stores that sell refurbished pc, components and monitors. It will be found.

It also has connected some speakers that have 20 years old, Bose Lifestyle 2.0 30 watts active speakers. Perfect for this.

Running all test with CPU Turbo off, on PassMark 8, gets a score of : PC - 891, CPU - 2969, 2D - 582, 3D - 130, Memory - 1308, HDD - 794
Same test with CPU Turbo on, and we get: PC - 970, CPU - 3341, 2D - 689, 3D - 142, Memory 1425, HDD - 781

To be continued.

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Last edited by marinescuiuri on 2022-02-11, 08:24. Edited 2 times in total.

windows Xp build - code name: the last samurai
Fujitsu E910 / i5 3470T / 4GB DDR3 1600 / Intel Q77 chipset / 250w (85+) PSU / 320GB HDD (Xp) - 240GB SSD (windows 7)

Reply 1 of 18, by pinesal

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Looks like a fun project. I didn't know that XP could run off of a core i5 and newer.

Hang out in the 90s with me on Twitch: The 90s Retro Gaming https://twitch.tv/90snick_pinesal
Retro Battlestation:
FIC VA-503+
AMD K6-2+ @ 600mhz
ATI Rage Fury 16MB
128mb PC100 RAM
137GB SSD
Windows 98

Reply 2 of 18, by retrogamerguy1997

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pinesal wrote on 2022-02-10, 22:01:

Looks like a fun project. I didn't know that XP could run off of a core i5 and newer.

XP can pretty much run on anything up to the Haswell generation Intel CPUs, anything newer and you are guaranteed to not find drivers.

Reply 3 of 18, by dormcat

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pinesal wrote on 2022-02-10, 22:01:

Looks like a fun project. I didn't know that XP could run off of a core i5 and newer.

Ivy Bridge (3rd generation Core iX-3XXX) is the last generation of Intel CPU and chipsets with official support of Windows XP, making them best candidates for XP/7/10 hybrid builds.

There are workarounds for installing XP on Haswell (4th generation) or newer machines, of course: Building Ultimate Windows XP Retro Gaming PC with i7-4790 and GTX 960

Reply 4 of 18, by marinescuiuri

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dormcat wrote on 2022-02-10, 23:10:
Ivy Bridge (3rd generation Core iX-3XXX) is the last generation of Intel CPU and chipsets with official support of Windows XP, m […]
Show full quote
pinesal wrote on 2022-02-10, 22:01:

Looks like a fun project. I didn't know that XP could run off of a core i5 and newer.

Ivy Bridge (3rd generation Core iX-3XXX) is the last generation of Intel CPU and chipsets with official support of Windows XP, making them best candidates for XP/7/10 hybrid builds. it

There are workarounds for installing XP on Haswell (4th generation) or newer machines, of course: Building Ultimate Windows XP Retro Gaming PC with i7-4790 and GTX 960

Haswell to Ivy Bridge, 4th vs 3rd gen CPU

Approximately 8% faster vector processing
Up to 5% higher single-threaded performance
6% higher multi-threaded performance
Desktop variants of Haswell draw between 8% and 23% more power under load than Ivy Bridge.

windows Xp build - code name: the last samurai
Fujitsu E910 / i5 3470T / 4GB DDR3 1600 / Intel Q77 chipset / 250w (85+) PSU / 320GB HDD (Xp) - 240GB SSD (windows 7)

Reply 5 of 18, by marinescuiuri

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pinesal wrote on 2022-02-10, 22:01:

Looks like a fun project. I didn't know that XP could run off of a core i5 and newer.

well I'm glad you found out. It runs faster than the most advanced intel core 2 quad that drew 100 watts+.

windows Xp build - code name: the last samurai
Fujitsu E910 / i5 3470T / 4GB DDR3 1600 / Intel Q77 chipset / 250w (85+) PSU / 320GB HDD (Xp) - 240GB SSD (windows 7)

Reply 6 of 18, by TrashPanda

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marinescuiuri wrote on 2022-02-11, 05:36:
Haswell to Ivy Bridge, 4th vs 3rd gen CPU […]
Show full quote
dormcat wrote on 2022-02-10, 23:10:
Ivy Bridge (3rd generation Core iX-3XXX) is the last generation of Intel CPU and chipsets with official support of Windows XP, m […]
Show full quote
pinesal wrote on 2022-02-10, 22:01:

Looks like a fun project. I didn't know that XP could run off of a core i5 and newer.

Ivy Bridge (3rd generation Core iX-3XXX) is the last generation of Intel CPU and chipsets with official support of Windows XP, making them best candidates for XP/7/10 hybrid builds. it

There are workarounds for installing XP on Haswell (4th generation) or newer machines, of course: Building Ultimate Windows XP Retro Gaming PC with i7-4790 and GTX 960

Haswell to Ivy Bridge, 4th vs 3rd gen CPU

Approximately 8% faster vector processing
Up to 5% higher single-threaded performance
6% higher multi-threaded performance
Desktop variants of Haswell draw between 8% and 23% more power under load than Ivy Bridge.

I loved my Devils Canyon 4790k, chip was rock solid and could overclock like a demon even if it did live up to its name and run hot when doing so. I skipped Ivy Bridge as I still had a rock solid 2600k at the time and still have it today running a file server, been over clocked since day one too, I was thinking of setting back to stock when setting it up as a file server but never got around to it so its still running at 4.8ghz.

Reply 7 of 18, by marinescuiuri

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TrashPanda wrote on 2022-02-11, 06:08:
marinescuiuri wrote on 2022-02-11, 05:36:
Haswell to Ivy Bridge, 4th vs 3rd gen CPU […]
Show full quote
dormcat wrote on 2022-02-10, 23:10:

Ivy Bridge (3rd generation Core iX-3XXX) is the last generation of Intel CPU and chipsets with official support of Windows XP, making them best candidates for XP/7/10 hybrid builds. it

There are workarounds for installing XP on Haswell (4th generation) or newer machines, of course: Building Ultimate Windows XP Retro Gaming PC with i7-4790 and GTX 960

Haswell to Ivy Bridge, 4th vs 3rd gen CPU

Approximately 8% faster vector processing
Up to 5% higher single-threaded performance
6% higher multi-threaded performance
Desktop variants of Haswell draw between 8% and 23% more power under load than Ivy Bridge.

I loved my Devils Canyon 4790k, chip was rock solid and could overclock like a demon even if it did live up to its name and run hot when doing so. I skipped Ivy Bridge as I still had a rock solid 2600k at the time and still have it today running a file server, been over clocked since day one too, I was thinking of setting back to stock when setting it up as a file server but never got around to it so its still running at 4.8ghz.

that is awesome -4.8 Ghz was a dream back in full Xp days and required special gloves and liquid nitrogen to attain that speed.
Was looking into the 4790k just this morning and all the 4th gen CPUs, but since I invested so many hours into researching 3rd gen CPU, at the end of the day I am happy I made a good decision regarding i5 3470T ( and managed to find is at 25$) as being the best 35watts CPU for windows Xp.

with that i7 you can play microsoft flight simulator 2020 for sure.

windows Xp build - code name: the last samurai
Fujitsu E910 / i5 3470T / 4GB DDR3 1600 / Intel Q77 chipset / 250w (85+) PSU / 320GB HDD (Xp) - 240GB SSD (windows 7)

Reply 8 of 18, by TrashPanda

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marinescuiuri wrote on 2022-02-11, 07:49:
that is awesome -4.8 Ghz was a dream back in full Xp days and required special gloves and liquid nitrogen to attain that speed. […]
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TrashPanda wrote on 2022-02-11, 06:08:
marinescuiuri wrote on 2022-02-11, 05:36:
Haswell to Ivy Bridge, 4th vs 3rd gen CPU […]
Show full quote

Haswell to Ivy Bridge, 4th vs 3rd gen CPU

Approximately 8% faster vector processing
Up to 5% higher single-threaded performance
6% higher multi-threaded performance
Desktop variants of Haswell draw between 8% and 23% more power under load than Ivy Bridge.

I loved my Devils Canyon 4790k, chip was rock solid and could overclock like a demon even if it did live up to its name and run hot when doing so. I skipped Ivy Bridge as I still had a rock solid 2600k at the time and still have it today running a file server, been over clocked since day one too, I was thinking of setting back to stock when setting it up as a file server but never got around to it so its still running at 4.8ghz.

that is awesome -4.8 Ghz was a dream back in full Xp days and required special gloves and liquid nitrogen to attain that speed.
Was looking into the 4790k just this morning and all the 4th gen CPUs, but since I invested so many hours into researching 3rd gen CPU, at the end of the day I am happy I made a good decision regarding i5 3470T ( and managed to find is at 25$) as being the best 35watts CPU for windows Xp.

with that i7 you can play microsoft flight simulator 2020 for sure.

That 2600k sure was a special chip no fancy cooling needed for this chip just a 240 AIO (Been replaced twice though), none of the newer CPUs I have had from Intel could hit 4.8 that easy out of the box even the 4790k would throw fits if I pushed it past 4.5 without some serious cooling.

Reply 9 of 18, by H3nrik V!

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Love the Pentium4 IHS on the front panel 😀

Please use the "quote" option if asking questions to what I write - it will really up the chances of me noticing 😀

Reply 11 of 18, by chinny22

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That CPU will be more then plenty for any XP era games. I like the idea of overpowered systems where you are confident you can max out everything , Not that RA2 is that demanding GTA SA is probably my most demanding XP era game.

Graphics, not sure what the best option is in the low profile range, I've a GTX590 in my overkill XP rig and can easliy play everything with AA,AF, and all that maxed out so definitely room to step it back a bit, again especially if RA2 is the only game.

EAX support is why alot of us keep XP around. best/newest card for that would be a X-Fi XtremeGamer which can be had low profile. Other optoins are the closely related X-Fi Xtreme Audio or Audigy SE, althouse these 2 only support software EAX

You can modify boot.ini to change "Previous version of windows" to something nicer like Windows XP, that kind of thing annoys me as well 😉
Looks like a nice build over all though, I've developed a soft spot for XP. Dos, Win9x, NT4/2k all give me more warm happy nostalgic feelings but XP is just a good honest OS tht does what it needs to do an does it well (been the #1 OS for about a decade will do that though) and is the retro rig i use the most.

Reply 12 of 18, by TrashPanda

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I was thinking of throwing a GTX970 in my XP machine, I have the modded drivers for it so I may get around to it eventually, the SLI GTX285 2gb cards I have in there are a lot of fun to use and are overkill for pretty much anything XP era.

Reply 13 of 18, by marinescuiuri

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chinny22 wrote on 2022-02-11, 11:35:
That CPU will be more then plenty for any XP era games. I like the idea of overpowered systems where you are confident you can m […]
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That CPU will be more then plenty for any XP era games. I like the idea of overpowered systems where you are confident you can max out everything , Not that RA2 is that demanding GTA SA is probably my most demanding XP era game.

Graphics, not sure what the best option is in the low profile range, I've a GTX590 in my overkill XP rig and can easliy play everything with AA,AF, and all that maxed out so definitely room to step it back a bit, again especially if RA2 is the only game.

EAX support is why alot of us keep XP around. best/newest card for that would be a X-Fi XtremeGamer which can be had low profile. Other optoins are the closely related X-Fi Xtreme Audio or Audigy SE, althouse these 2 only support software EAX

You can modify boot.ini to change "Previous version of windows" to something nicer like Windows XP, that kind of thing annoys me as well 😉
Looks like a nice build over all though, I've developed a soft spot for XP. Dos, Win9x, NT4/2k all give me more warm happy nostalgic feelings but XP is just a good honest OS tht does what it needs to do an does it well (been the #1 OS for about a decade will do that though) and is the retro rig i use the most.

Thanks man.

I try to modify boot.ini, windows Xp has this file in c:\, and it sais "Microsoft Windows Xp Professional"
Windows 7 does not have such a file.
So I searched the Google and found that one must use EasyBCD (freeware) to edit the boot menu in windows 7. So I installed it on windows 7 and renamed the "earlier version of windows"with "windows XP". I guess because windows 7 is newer, and was the last to be installed, it remained as default, so the renaming had to come from windows 7's boot option. Interesting, while typing msconfig and seaching at the boot options, it only showed windows 7, likewise in windows Xp it only showed windows Xp. EasyBCD cleared everything. All good now.

The GTX590, man that is one powerfull card 365 watts. I'm reading about it and is amazing. Can it heat your room?

Searching on the bottleneck calculator found GTX 750Ti to be very compatible with this i5's power. The i5 is 3 percent stronger for GTX750Ti and this is a good thing for the CPU to be a bit stronger imo. Now, the CPU without turbo mode, and the GPU underpowered with MSI Afterburner should get along very well, and be energy efficient, good for the last samurai.

You are mentioning EAX support and I wonder if this is related to Red Alert 2. I'm only going for an audio card just because I want to get the best out of that game's audio. So I was wondering what technology must the audio card have to match that old game? Then you have mentioned EAX, is this a thing I should aim for when searching am audio card, or a newer model will do the same when it comes to Red Alert 2 and other games from that timeframe. My goal is also to have components from late Xp era that is imo 2009-2014, but i can sacrifice the audio card's time frame without a problem and go with whatever sound card will be best for Red Alert 2.

Xp is a good windows. Thank you again.

windows Xp build - code name: the last samurai
Fujitsu E910 / i5 3470T / 4GB DDR3 1600 / Intel Q77 chipset / 250w (85+) PSU / 320GB HDD (Xp) - 240GB SSD (windows 7)

Reply 14 of 18, by marinescuiuri

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TrashPanda wrote on 2022-02-11, 11:52:

I was thinking of throwing a GTX970 in my XP machine, I have the modded drivers for it so I may get around to it eventually, the SLI GTX285 2gb cards I have in there are a lot of fun to use and are overkill for pretty much anything XP era.

Do you think a GTX 750Ti low profile will have a problem with anything up to 2019?

windows Xp build - code name: the last samurai
Fujitsu E910 / i5 3470T / 4GB DDR3 1600 / Intel Q77 chipset / 250w (85+) PSU / 320GB HDD (Xp) - 240GB SSD (windows 7)

Reply 15 of 18, by marinescuiuri

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this is the startup sound
https://soundcloud.com/iuri-razvan-marinescu/ … =social_sharing

windows Xp build - code name: the last samurai
Fujitsu E910 / i5 3470T / 4GB DDR3 1600 / Intel Q77 chipset / 250w (85+) PSU / 320GB HDD (Xp) - 240GB SSD (windows 7)

Reply 16 of 18, by mothergoose729

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retrogamerguy1997 wrote on 2022-02-10, 23:05:
pinesal wrote on 2022-02-10, 22:01:

Looks like a fun project. I didn't know that XP could run off of a core i5 and newer.

XP can pretty much run on anything up to the Haswell generation Intel CPUs, anything newer and you are guaranteed to not find drivers.

Even then the lack of chipset drivers isn't usually much of a problem. I am not sure about Intel's latest chipset, but up through at least coffee lake you could slipstream an AHCI boot driver into your windows XP and install it on just about any platform AMD or Intel.

Reply 17 of 18, by chinny22

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marinescuiuri wrote on 2022-02-11, 12:23:

The GTX590, man that is one powerfull card 365 watts. I'm reading about it and is amazing. Can it heat your room?

Yeh you an definitely feel the difference, not the smartest choice for a card, but the whole 2 GPU thing (well 4 as mine is in SLI) is why I'm doing it, not for any particle reason.

marinescuiuri wrote on 2022-02-11, 12:23:

Searching on the bottleneck calculator found GTX 750Ti to be very compatible with this i5's power. The i5 is 3 percent stronger for GTX750Ti and this is a good thing for the CPU to be a bit stronger imo. Now, the CPU without turbo mode, and the GPU underpowered with MSI Afterburner should get along very well, and be energy efficient, good for the last samurai.

I played RA2 on a P2 400 with a GF2 MX just fine, so as you already said onboard is already more then enough, but agree that's no fun! and your GTX750 is better in every aspect then my 590
Funny enough I just got a GTX780 for my Win7 build and plays Farming Simulator 19 at 1600x900 maxed out, Not sure what later games your playing but would think the card would be ok

RA2 doesn't support have native EAX support but from memory Creative did make a profile for it.
I do find onboard sound tends to sound worse in XP then say Win7, maybe its placebo, maybe its cause XP era codac's were pretty basic?
X-Fi was released in 2005 and while the gamer was a 2nd generation card it's not a cut down version like the other 2, not that they are bad. rest of your system is capable of doing the software decoding while not effecting XP gaming performance.

Reply 18 of 18, by marinescuiuri

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Had some issues regarding this refurbished PC because I kept reinstalling windows XP and out of a sudden it gave a sensor 3 error, luckily after removing the bios battery and putting it back in, the sensor works again.

I've managed to install windows XP with SATA AHCI drivers only with the help of easy2boot usb. But the install worked after many atemps, so i kept reinstalling windows XP just maybe I could figure out why sometimes it worked sometimes it didn't.

Also, it seems to have a small lag when browsing with computer explorer mostly when going up from one folder, or opening another folder, like the PC has a pentium III. This issue was not there in ATA mode the first time I installed Xp.

windows Xp build - code name: the last samurai
Fujitsu E910 / i5 3470T / 4GB DDR3 1600 / Intel Q77 chipset / 250w (85+) PSU / 320GB HDD (Xp) - 240GB SSD (windows 7)