First post, by liqmat
- Rank
- l33t
My Toshiba Qosmio X875 gaming laptop died a few months ago after eight years of dedicated service. I could have replaced the motherboard and continued, but Cyberpunk 2077. So this is my journey in building a system with 1998 aesthetics, but of course 2019 internal organs. It has been truly challenging and educational since I have not built a desktop/tower system since 2010. When you are on the road constantly, like I am, laptops are a lot more attractive, but desktops are so much more versatile and I was ready to dive into that world again. Windows 7 compatibility was a must so all hardware had to have driver support for that OS. That was probably the most challenging part of it. Especially creating a proper slipstreamed Windows 7 Professional USB installation image. I can proudly say I have completed my mission after a couple of months of research and testing. I'll try to post all my pitfalls and successes as best as possible here. The bottom line is I had a lot of fun doing it and that's why I do this in the first place.
As many of you know I picked up a bunch of new old stock Pentium Pro hardware in October 2018. In that haul were a handful of new old stock beige ATX cases. They had a fairly nice design where the motherboard tray would pull out from the back so you could easily access the internals. I wanted to use that case for this build so it would have a nice vintage late 1990s look to it rather than all the black alien planet RGB sameness most cases have today. What concerned me most about my vintage 90s case was room for proper cooling. I came up with a fairly innovative front-to-back air cooling system that I'll get into more detail later in this thread. That was easily the second most challenging hurdle, but also fun to put together after some trial and error.
So here is a diagram of the case which was sitting loose in the shipping box. Kind of neat In Win included the diagram. This is the In Win IW-A500-ATX computer case I will be using for this build.
A blank canvas.