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Build Log: Compaq SR5000 into Haswell i7 Quad+ Boot Semi-Sleeper Daily Driver w/ MacOS X, WinXP, Ubuntu, + MORE

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First post, by aroneox

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Documenting my build of a Compaq SR5000 into a Haswell era i7 semi-sleeper using parts I've been collecting over the years. This machine will be capable of running MacOS X 10.9 Mavericks, Windows XP, Ubuntu Linux, Haiku OS, and potentially others from (hot) swappable SATA drives.

Here's the parts list:

  • Compaq SR5000 Mid Sized Tower Case (gutted)
  • MS-7860 v1.2 Motherboard (from HP ProDesk 400 G1)
  • Intel i7 4770 Processor
  • 16Gb PC3-12800 RAM
  • EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 3GB Video Card
  • Crucial MX500 1Tb 2.5" SSD (MacOS X 10.9 Mavericks)
  • Kingston SA400 240Gb 2.5" SSD (swappable Windows XP)
  • Kingston SA400 120Gb 2.5 SSD (swappable Ubuntu Linux)
  • ADATA SU800 120Gb 2.5" SSD (swappable Haiku OS)
  • Kingwin 5-1/4" Bay Mounted Universal 2.5/3.5" Hot Swap SATA Drive Rack
  • 3.5" Floppy Drive
  • 15-In-1 Media Card Reader (Compact Flash, SD, Sony Memory Stick)
  • USB Analog Video Capture Card
  • PCI-E Wireless Network Card
  • 1394 / Firewire PCI-E Card

MacOS X 10.9 Mavericks will be my main computing environment. It has the vibes of what some consider the king of OS X releases – 10.6 Snow Leopard – but with a number of quality of life upgrades that make it a bit more polished. And it is actually quite a capable OS in the modern world, despite being released in 2013. I use it mostly for art projects using Photoshop CS4 and InDesign CS4. The Apple iWorks suite is on tap should I need to do Office style tasks, and that will mostly be in the Numbers spreadsheet. TurboCAD 7 is installed for CAD work. A few other programs and utilities round out the software, leaving pretty much wanting for nothing as far a productivity and design work goes.

I’m treating the remaining OS installs like vintage game carts – putting them on swappable SATA SSDs that I can plug in and out of the SATA drive rack.

Windows XP will be there mostly for gaming. Haswell is the last generation of the i-series processors that XP supports. The GTX 780 is near the top of the pack of XP supported graphics cards. And this rig, with the GTX 780 and i7 processor, will be a monster for gaming from that era. In addition to games, I will be using the XP install to rip CDs with EAC and tag them in FooBar2000 to add to my music library. Plenty of speed on tap for that too.

The upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 Resolute Raccoon is the plan for the Linux install. It *may* be a little heavy for this machine, but I think it’ll be decently usable considering the specs of the machine, and I will be using it mostly for security sensitive things like online banking or government forms, etc.

Haiku OS is in the mix mostly because I have a soft spot for BeOS from back in the Power Computing days, and when they did the pivot to Intel. So I want to be able to showcase the spiritual heir that is Haiku. Also want to tinker a bit with 3D-Mix again.

There are some other OS’s that I’d like to try like TinyOS on floppy.

My modern computing needs are low-key. My current daily driver is a Late-2015 27” iMac w/ an i5 6500, which is actually about 15% SLOWER than the i7 4770 in this build. So this will be a little bit of an upgrade in some respects.

Reply 1 of 1, by aroneox

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This project is the merging of two previous projects of mine that never quite got the traction I wanted.

First is the Compaq SR5000 system. I came into this via a yard sale giveaway. In later era Compaq fashion, there were quite a number of configurations for this machine. Mine is based around an nForce 430 Chipset Socket AM2+ Motherboard. The initial plan for this when I got it years ago was to max it out to as far as it would go. Supposedly, with a firmware update the motherboard would take up to an AMD Phenom II X 4 95 Watt 3.2GHz 955 Quad-Core Processor and 8Gb RAM. I did end up getting the processor and ram upgrades, but I could never find any firmware update that unlocked the ability to use these.

But I loved the design of the case and so I put it in storage for a possible future project.

Before putting it into storage, I did some research on it and happened upon a photo of one of the configuration variations that was geared to video capture and processing. It’s front mounted media input panel reminded me a lot of the SoundBlaster Live! and Audigy drive-bay breakout boxes from the Windows 98/XP days. I always dug those and thought it would be cool to do the same to my model.

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While my SR5000 model does not have video capture and associated ports installed, it does have all the ports holes for them built into the case – they are just obscured a sticker covering them on my model. So the plan with this build it to populate the ports with the correct interfaces. I’m thinking something like an El Gato USB capture box could be hacked a little bit to populate the s-video, composite and RCA inputs. 1394/firewire card will cover that front input. And the motherboard has USB 3 and audio headers, along with the front mounted ports I can take from the ProDesk case.

The other project this build combines with is a Hackintosh that I was going to put together. That was to be based around a Gigabyte GA-Z87X-D3H motherboard and the EVGA GTX 780 card. The motherboard came from eBay, but was DOA. But it did have 32Gb RAM and the i7 4770 processor, both of which are compatible with the HP ProDesk motherboard (we’ll at least 16gb of the memory is anyway).

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It’ll be fun to have that decked out 98/XP era tower vibe with a bunch of superfluous ports beckoning to be used.

The attachment Compaq SR5000.jpeg is no longer available
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