As I've got the house to myself this weekend, I thought I'd commandeer the dining room table and set up an XP-era home studio build using some parts I still have from the time, along with some more-recently acquired ones. This is the result:

Background
I've always had something of a soft spot for the much-maligned P4 Netburst architecture, especially paired with RDRAM. Yes, it was an inefficient, overpriced dead-end architecture- but having had one as my daily driver for several years, I remember it being a fast and stable platform. When my student house got cleaned out during a burglary in mid-2002, as a responsible computer science student I used my entire insurance payout to build a bleeding-edge top-of-the line PC and didn't really miss the other stuff I'd lost. Based on the i850E chipset, the ASUS P4T533-C was one of only a handful of motherboards which supported the final form of RDRAM- the short-lived PC1066 version. This offered (at least on paper) better memory bandwith than any contemporary DDR configuration, but was soon rendered obsolete by the appearance of dual-channel DDR boards.

By 2004 I'd upgraded the 2.26GHZ CPU to a P4 3.06GHz HT- which I believe was the only Hyperthreading-capable CPU that could run on an RDRAM board. Along with a Creative Audigy and passively-cooled Gigabyte Silent-pipe 6600GT, it made a solid gaming and home studio PC for the next few years.

The ASUS board eventally failed during the late 2000s, almost certainly due to the dreaded capacitor plague, and I moved on to an AM3 system. Unfortunately, I must have thrown away the P4T533-C board as worthless junk, which is a shame because they're pretty much impossible to find these days. I did, however, keep hold of the 3.06GHz CPU and 4x256Mb PC1066 RDRAM modules. As an aside, the blue Chieftec Dragon tower case that I built that system in lives on 23 years later as the home for my daily driver Ryzen 9 system!

The new build
I came across my old RDRAM modules and CPU when my interest in retro computing started to grow a few years ago, and thought it would be fun to find a board for them. Turns out that working PC1066 boards are rather scarce these days! After hunting for a long time, it seemed that the only ones that ever came up for sale were Intel-produced OEM boards for the Dell Dimension 8250 workstation. So, after equivocating for a while about all the proprietary Dell nonsense involved, I eventually purchased one, followed by a suitable case for it to go in.

The case is from a slightly older Dimension 8200 system, but all the mountings are compatible with the 8250 motherboard. There is some damage to the plastic cladding at the rear, but it's not that obvious after being glued. I've paired it with a matching Dell 17" CRT that I saved from being scrapped about 15 years ago. The case included a licence key sticker for Windows XP Home, so I've used that as the OS, along with the SP1a update.

Aside from all the unnecessary proprietary-ness, the Dell case is quite nice to work in. It's hinged vertically at the front and opens up like a clamshell, with the motherboard & PSU mounted on one half and the drive bays on the other. I get why many people don't like the 'plasticky' look of these, but I had a similar model on my desk at work for years so it has a certain familiar corporate charm for me.

This design is certainly from before the era of cable management- after adding the Audigy 2 front bay interface, there are no less than 5 ribbon cables in there!

PC specification

• Dell Dimension 8200 case
• Dell Dimension 8250 motherboard with socket 478, Intel 850E chipset, 1 AGP 4x and 4 PCI slots.
• Northwood P4 3.06 GHz with Hyperthreading Technology
• 1GB (4x256Mb) Samsung PC1066 RDRAM
• 160GB IDE HDD
• ATI Radeon 9200
• Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum PCI sound card
• Turtle Beach Santa Cruz PCI sound card
• IDE CD-RW drive
• 3.5" FDD
• Dell OEM rubber dome USB keyboard
• Labtec USB/PS2 optical mouse
• Windows XP Home SP1a

Home Studio equipment

• EDIROL UR-80 - a multi-function USB audio interface, MIDI interface and control surface. I bought this new, bundled with Cakewalk SONAR 3 Studio in 2004.
• M-Audio Oxygen 8 - a 2-octave MIDI/USB keyboard controller
• Presonus Eris 3.5 powered stereo speakers - the only new part of this build, in fact the only part newer than 20 years old.
• Line 6 POD XT - a guitar amp simulator and effects unit that I've had for over 10 years. It has MIDI and USB audio interface functionality which I'd never used until now.
• Roland JV-1010 MIDI synthesiser module - a shunken-down half-rack version of the legendary JV-1080 rompler.
• Roland MT-32 - because why not? 😀

In use
My memories of this being a capable mid-2000s DAW platform are very accurate. It runs 16-track 48kHz audio in SONAR 3 Studio Edition, including digital effects, at very low latencies without so much as a hitch. Hyperthreading does actually give an impressive performance boost- with HT disabled it struggles to run complex projects without glitching. The low-power fanless GPU and Dell thermal design (one large rear case fan ducted straight to the CPU heatsink, plus a smaller fan on the PSU) makes for a surprisingly quiet and cool-running system. Driven by the Radeon, the Trinitron-based monitor is sharp at 1360x1024, which gives plenty of resolution for the DAW software. The 85Hz refresh rate is easy on the eyes, aside from the small text size!

I've been having lots of fun listening to my old recordings, as well as making some new ones. Shame I'll have to pack it all away again on Monday night. If I ever find the space to make this a permanent set-up, I think the only change I'd make would be to use a 1080p flat panel. With this many devices, the CRT takes up a lot of valuable desktop real-estate. It's also not ideal when recording guitar due to CRT noise being audible through the instrument's magnetic pickups.