I wish I could recreate a few systems that I had in the early ninety's. Mainly my 286/16 and 486slc/33. I lack almost everything - proper case and motherboards. I might get satisfied with near components. Although case would make it 99% perfect - I know one of the members here has it but he won't let it go 🤣

What I have build (list is not all-inclusive):
s370 440LX Celeron
s3 PCI (no VLB) DX4-100
Tualatin 1400 with GF3
Coppermine (s370, several of various speeds)
Thunderbird 1400 and several other Thunderbirds
Athlon XP (several)
Coppermine Slot 1 with Rambus
Katmai
Celeron 800 s370 with 440BX chipset
s7 K6-2 (Trident Blade3D I think)
ss7 K6-3 non+ (single Voodoo 2)
s754
s939
s478
AM2
AM3
AM3+

What I still want to build when I finally have the time again:
s423 2.0GHz
Another s478
A couple s754/s939 just so I can use my HD3850s/HD4670s 🤣
s370 VIA
i815 s370 rig with some Coppermine (will be a rebuild) because it actually has an ISA slot and I want to give it a try 🤣 (bridge chip)
s370 with DDR and either Tualatin or Coppermine if I can't get my adapter to work or feel like pin-modding (board needs to be repaired first though).
ss7 Cyrix MII @ 300MHz
ss7 Pentium MMX at 250MHz or 300 if one of my chips runs stable at it
mP6
Couple more s3, including at least one VLB (VI15G)
386 with lots of RAM
Something for my Kyro (probably another Tualatin or so)

I'm pretty sure I forgot a few.

I really want to build a 486 VLB system someday - I have the parts for it; I just have to find a good case 😒

Athlon XP
Athlon 64 X2 on AM2
Athlon FX on AM3+ with Radeon 7970
AMD K5 with ATI Rage
AMD K6-2 or K6-III+ on Gigabyte GA-5AX with ATI Rage 128

I'm pretty satisfied with the builds I've done in the past year and half (486, Pentium, P2, P3, K6, AthlonXP, P4) . Being a DOS guy, my two active builds (486/66 and 250MMX) run everything I would want to play. But if I had to pick, I'd like to build something I've never made before--a 386 and a 286.

I'd like to build a s754 machine someday. I have one of these on hand and various other era-correct (~2005) parts - everything needed, actually, except for a suitable motherboard. The board would preferably be something lower-end, like an Asus K8V-X SE or K8U-X, which would reflect the sort of thing I would have bought during that period.

I also want to try one of the early VIA C3-based Mini ITX boards, such as the EPIA-800. These have always fascinated me for whatever reason, even compared to the newer Atom/AMD APU and desktop socket-based ITX designs.

I would like to make a build around the DFI LANPARTY nF4 SLI-DR - 2 motherboard and also a socket 423 build.

Some others I want to do someday:

"Project K6" - Oh what I'd do to have the parts for this kind of build. Unfortunately SS7 motherboards are both rare and pricey so it's probably not happening. Were I to get my hands on one it would likely replace my Pentium build.

"Project Athlon" - I thought about doing this after finding that my school had a Soyo K7VTA Pro motherboard sitting around. I don't know a whole lot about Athlons but it'd be worth a try.

"Project XP" - This would be a long ways from now, as I don't really have any XP-era parts nor do I have the knowledge of what parts would be best for this particular machine. I'm thinking Athlon 64 w/ PCI-E as it was a common combo.

Well, i pretty much built all the systems i wanted.

Since i got my IBM 5160 working i wanted to upgrade my 12MHz V20 XT system to a 10MHz V30. Problem is that the 10MHz Juko NEST board i'm looking for is hard to find although i know 2 VOGONS users that have it.

Then i need to find a good desktop case for my 286-16 system as the desktop pizza box makes me lose 2-3 precious ISA slots.

I also need to find a 220V PSU replacement for my IBM 5160. Needs to be the proper format to fit the case.

I would also like to have a FX-3000 motherboard for my 386 build. Not super important but would be cool.

That's pretty much it, my builds are all working i'm just looking for slight improvements.

Got a few projects in mind, according to intended hostname.

"Hecate": Mostly finished, VLB AMD 5x86, PC DOS and OS/2 (go Big Blue). At this point I need a 2MB graphics card (ET4000/W32i on the way, making do with a fairly good Cirrus GD5428 for now) and I need to do a small hardware mod to the motherboard to enable the x4 multiplier, since the CPU is currently underclocked to 100MHz. Not satisfied with the case, which is currently a modern Fractal Design minitower. I've got the power switch and turbo switch modded in the way Phil did in his 486DX2 Sleeper video, and it works a charm, but I'd rather have a desktop case.

"Metatron": Half-finished Super Socket 7 machine, K6-III+ CPU, Win98 and 2k (and NetBSD for when it needs to pretend to be modern). It's assembled and ready to start testing and configuring. I need another optical drive to fill the open 5.25" bay, or else I need another bay adapter and another floppy emulator. I have a Matrox G400 MAX and a Quadro4 380, not really sure which one to go with. The Quadro is obviously the more skookum card, but there's something about the Matrox that I always liked. I had one way back when, and I know there are some games (FF8 comes to mind) that have some issues with newer GeForce and Radeon cards, but run just fine on the G400. I'd love a Voodoo3, but I can't seem to find one for a price I wanna pay.

"Circe": Socket AM2 XP box. Pretty modern, all told, and almost new enough that I'll start hitting AHCI-related weirdnesses while installing XP, but it should work. I've got a Phenom II CPU, 8GB of RAM and a Radeon 6770 for it, now I need to come up with storage, optical drives, case and PSU.

I have a few other projects in mind for "dream machine of year X" rigs, but those are more pie-in-the-sky, since I don't really have the parts waiting in the wings yet. I do have a 386+486 motherboard that might be worth resurrecting, and three more working 486 chips that are kinda calling out to be used, though. (An SX/25, DX/33 and one that we thought was an AMD DX2/80, but turned out to be another AMD 5x86/133 when we got the heatsink off. Can't complain. The DX2/80 is rarer, but the 133 is a mighty fine Socket 3 CPU.) I'd swear there's an old Slot 2 Xeon floating around in here somewhere too, but I'll be scuppered if I can remember where, so...

Currrently I have my first project finished which is a Pentium II

projects I want to either start on or am already working on are:
- Pentium I (1996)
- SS7 AT (year to be decided yet)
- PIII tualatin (2002)
- AMD Athlon (2002 ish I reckon)

The P3 and AMD are still rough projects with maybe only 1 or 2 parts certain (P3 has the tualatin 1,4 with a MX460 and the Athlon with a R300), the rest is still pretty much blank. The SS7 same really, all i know right now is that it has to be a AT tower build with a K6-2+/K6-3+
the future may hold a 486 DX4.

Just one: A Pentium 4 machine with some needlessly complicated innards (XP + W9x, ATI All in wonder in AGP for XP boot and a Matrox with Rainbow Runner in PCI for W9x boot + a SB Live with all the bells and whistles like 5.25" front panel, etc.).

It's half done, (all the hardware is there but I'm stuck with some driver issues related to ATI (such a bitch when it comes to drivers) so I currently gave up till I find the necessary motivation and time again in the near future. I also need to solve Windows 9x with 4GB problem (reolew's patch most probably).

I generally think that double boot WXP/W9x rigs are somehow pointless bag od problems, but I really want to play with both these display cards.

Good question!

I pretty much have the majority of builds I want (or have the parts available and would just need to swap out in a case). Here's what i have for retro builds currently:

939 build with opteron 180
754 build 3400+
Dual MP with 2800+ CPUs
2 Athlon XP builds, one DDR based and one SDRAM based
P3 1000
K6-3+
K5
Pentium 200 mmx
Rise mp6

I have the parts for a slot A build and I'm looking to replace one of the XP builds with that when I have a chance. What I don't have the parts for that I'd like to add are a Pentium pro or dual Pentium pro setup, and a 486. I would like to find the same 486 I used to have which was a packard bell system rather than building one. But that has been fruitless so far.

I'm trying to get some space back and decided to keep 3 machines for now. I'm hoping to cover 18 years of gaming with these 3 machines.

1993-1998 - 1996 Pentium Pro (built)
1999-2004 - 2002 Pentium 4 (underway)
2005-2010 - 2008 ??? (Still researching)

Modern gaming is taken care with my main machine (i5 4670K), so the goal for this year it to bring the remaining two machines to life.

LGA 1366. I've never owned a machine based on that platform. How would a 4GHz Nehalem look next to my 4GHz C2Q/DDR3 system? Would it compare favourably to my 4.07GHz Phenom X6? How much slower than my 4.5GHz 4930K?

I remember reading reviews that said Penryn was a little faster than Nehalem at certain tasks, mainly because Penryn's 6MB L2 cache was faster than Nehalem's 8MB L3 cache. 1366 is such a mystery to me and I'd love to max out the platform one of these days. Reading old reviews just doesn't cut it. 😀

A 233mhz mmx system with 64mb of ram. An awe64 gold and s3 virge.

But here's the catch.

In a case the size of a small vcr or DVD player.
The s3 card will be onboard along with a onboard nic 1 serial port and lpt, one usb along with ps/2 ports and to top it off, a ls-120 and slim cd drive.

I have a system very close to that now, but it's a 200mhz pent no usb and I'm stuck with a crummy 2d CL card.

I'd like to build a RAMBUS based system one day merely for the sake of it.

I want a NexGen system of some kind to play with.
Setup my dual P1 board.
Maybe a OEM dual 486 system.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

LGA 1366. I've never owned a machine based on that platform. How would a 4GHz Nehalem look next to my 4GHz C2Q/DDR3 system? Would it compare favourably to my 4.07GHz Phenom X6? How much slower than my 4.5GHz 4930K?

I remember reading reviews that said Penryn was a little faster than Nehalem at certain tasks, mainly because Penryn's 6MB L2 cache was faster than Nehalem's 8MB L3 cache. 1366 is such a mystery to me and I'd love to max out the platform one of these days. Reading old reviews just doesn't cut it. 😀

A 4Ghz Nahalem build would walk all over both the 4Ghz C2Q and the Phenom X6 builds. If you were going to invest in the time to build one, I would probably try and build something using one of those Westmere Xeons instead though, you can get them fairly cheap now. You'd have to do a little research beforehand to get a board that is confirmed able to run the 6-core Westmere procs as not all the X58 boards will run these.

As for the thread topic, an L1N64-SLI based Quad-FX build is something I would like to get together, but I've not had luck bidsnipping these boards the last couple times I came across them. Also FX-74 procs are super hard to find, so I'd have to probably go for the WS version of the board and run some 65nm Opterons instead, unfortunately no real overclocking potential with those.

Alternatively I would love to do a build based on the Asus KFN5-D dual Socket-F SLI board, but again the availability of this board is a problem.