# Pentium 4 PC build



## 97pedro (Aug 19, 2015)

Hello everyone, this is actually my first post here in the forum, I just signed up.
As the title says, I want to make a pentium 4 pc, a top of the line for the windows XP era, like the year 2003.
I thought about doing this like 4 months ago, at the time a bought some parts thinking about doing it, but then some other things appear and I had to cancel it, but now I would really like to finish it.

The parts I have right now are:

An Asus P4P800E-deluxe
A Pentium 4 3.0ghz HT (I have it running on 3.4ghz no problem)
2 sticks of 512mb ddr400 ram (I think one is fried, doesnt always work and memtest86+ detecs errors using that stick)
A zalman 2 ball bearing cooler
A 300W Giler power supply from an athlon xp system I had.
A 80gb and a 120gb Seagate barracuda 7200rpm Hard drives
a creative audigy audio card
A power color ati radeon 9200se 128mb video card (from that same athlon xp system, very low end card from what I researched)
And a ATX case (again from the athlon xp system)

So for what I understand the things I have to get are:

1st a better psu
2nd a better video card
3rd another 512mb ram stick since one of mine is fried
4th possibly a better looking case (also this one doesnt have front panel usb)

Alright, so what do you guys think? 

Thanks everyone


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## micropage7 (Aug 19, 2015)

looks nice, i may suggest if you could find try to get old case or just old branded case that support standard form (atx/matx), the steel is good
and the fans, actually zalman is good, i still run generic fans and so far it serves me well, just need oiling it


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## brandonwh64 (Aug 19, 2015)

My first water cooled build was a P4 with HT oced to "If I can remember" 4ghz


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## 97pedro (Aug 19, 2015)

Thanks for the replies.
The case, do you guys sugfest something that was amazing at the time?
Also, the graphics card, what should I go with?


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## stinger608 (Aug 19, 2015)

97pedro said:


> Hello everyone, this is actually my first post here in the forum, I just signed up.
> As the title says, I want to make a pentium 4 pc, a top of the line for the windows XP era, like the year 2003.
> I thought about doing this like 4 months ago, at the time a bought some parts thinking about doing it, but then some other things appear and I had to cancel it, but now I would really like to finish it.
> 
> ...




@97pedro , you should take some pictures of that awesome nostalgic hardware and post it all here:
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/tpus-nostalgic-hardware-club.108251/

We have had the Nostalgic Hardware club forum up for some time now. This would make a great addition to the thread.


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## Frogger (Aug 19, 2015)

I have the same MB & Proc in running XP/Win 7 duel boot. I use a X 850XT agp card runs like a top. For a PSU any 350/400 watt will do. I found that the MB runs best when the ram slots are all populated with a slight increase in voltage.


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## 97pedro (Aug 23, 2015)

Ok, just got a sapphire x1950pro 512mb ddr3, its coming this week i think, also got a 450W LC Power psu and I'm trying to find 2gb of ram.
I'll post pictures when I get it.


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## 97pedro (Aug 23, 2015)

@Frogger you might be able to help me with the ram choice.
Will Corsair CMX512-3200C2PT CL2 work fine in this motherboard?


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## Frogger (Aug 24, 2015)

^ should work fine spec:
Timing 2-3-3-6 Cas Latency 2 Voltage 2.6V
I am running slot A1/A2 ocz5001024ELDCGER-K pc4000
                      slot B1/B2     CMX512-4000PT XMS4000 512MB PC4000
a little reading FYI

nice vid card for that MB


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## 97pedro (Aug 24, 2015)

thanks!!!
everything is coming together, I'll see if I can get the cas 2 corsair ram, if I can't I'm ging with regular cas3 kingston ram.
@Frogger


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## 97pedro (Aug 24, 2015)

@Frogger I'm thinking on buying those Corsair XMS Ram, do you think they are going to work fine in my motherboard?
I lot of poeple say it's better having 2x1gb and noit 4x512mb, the ones I'm buying are 4x512mb.
Thanks


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## Frogger (Aug 24, 2015)

If you can get the 2x 1gig go for it. I only used 4 because that's what I had in the ram bin.


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## 97pedro (Aug 24, 2015)

I can't find CL2 1gb dimms, everything I see is 512mb, but is there a problem on using 4x512mb? @Frogger


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## 97pedro (Aug 24, 2015)

Guys, I ran 3Dmark 03 and the result I get is 1221 for CPU and GPU.
Could be the graphics card that is holding this back?
I mean, I saw here in another topic the retro pentium 4 build, he got like 6000, so you think its the gpu? for cpu i'm getting 532. Also, I'm doing these tests with only 512mb ram.


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## Frogger (Aug 24, 2015)

97pedro said:


> I can't find CL2 1gb dimms, everything I see is 512mb, but is there a problem on using 4x512mb? @Frogger


I have no issues just up the volts a bit for stable oc. You can always set the clocks manually or a just the bus speed.


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## 97pedro (Aug 24, 2015)

okok. what about the 3dmark thing, you know it is like that, because of the gpu?


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## Frogger (Aug 24, 2015)

Most likely a single stix of ram issue the 1950 is a good card for that MB. When you get the ram installed & run up the clocks on it (bid card) you can run the bench again.


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## 97pedro (Aug 25, 2015)

Do you guys recommend a case with top mount psu, with good airflow?


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## jboydgolfer (Aug 25, 2015)

I laughed when i saw this thread on the tpu Mainpage, I JUST found one of my old P4's in My Bathroom vanity, Of all of the places.2004 intel @ its best


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## micropage7 (Aug 26, 2015)

97pedro said:


> Do you guys recommend a case with top mount psu, with good airflow?


most of entry level cases are the same, especially  with top mount psu, i suggest you just look around, or buy your local brands case.
in here  i can get a case with psu for <$30


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## 97pedro (Nov 11, 2015)

Well, been so long since last update, here it goes.














I did end up chaning the case for something more time adequate, it's nothing special, but with some cable managment mods, it looks alright.


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## Frogger (Nov 12, 2015)

Waiting from some bench marks.


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## uuuaaaaaa (Nov 12, 2015)

Oh yes post some benchs, lets fight retro P4 vs retro P4  (system specs on the side)!


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## 97pedro (Nov 12, 2015)

Here is the 3DMark03 benchmark, tell me what other benchmarks you want to see.




@Frogger


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## uuuaaaaaa (Nov 12, 2015)

97pedro said:


> Here is the 3DMark03 benchmark, tell me what other benchmarks you want to see.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Add in some:
3DMark 2001
3DMark 2005
super pi 1M

I am quite curious about the CPU bottleneck and the difference between your Prescott and my Gallatin at similar clocks. My x850xt pe is matching your x1950Pro:
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm03/6524371 (outdated score)

I will post some other of my scores as well!   Maybe we should start a thread on retro Pentium 4 builds or something... I have seen quite a few threads here on P4 478 nostalgia builds!


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## Kursah (Nov 12, 2015)

Nice build! I still have my Pentium 4 630 HT with Zalman 7700AlCu cooler, 2GB DDR 400, Abit AS8-v (volt modded), and Powercolor X1950Pro PCI-e from that era...sadly I only have my 3dfx VooDoo Banshee and a Geforce 5200 AGP that would work with that board. Back when I ran this stuff...I picked up an X850 Pro from an ATI clearance sale, and flash modded it to an X850 XT PE and slapped an AC cooler on it..sadly that card died in a fiery death of component burnout failure.

You tempt me to build it. I also have a Pentium D820 floating around somewhere too.

Nice work BTW. Good to see this old hardware floating around.


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## 97pedro (Nov 12, 2015)

@uuuaaaaaa you should show your system here, put dome photos.

@Kursah It's funny to make build slike this, speacily because a pentium 4 system done rights can still handle browsing the web and all minor tasks you would want to do. If you like this kind of stuff then do it and show here the results.


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## P4-630 (Nov 12, 2015)

I have had one of those ATi X1950 Pro's, great card and great cooler, was running cool.


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## 97pedro (Nov 12, 2015)

Just to show you guys what this thing can still do (I might do a video and upload it to youtube, maybe it's easier to explain).

Well let me start then, this thing turned out to be better than I thought, if you search for Pentium 4 in the internet people will say that it is a world of misery and is the slowest thing you will actually find, of course that if you are using a IDE hard drive and 512mb of ram thats true, but if you use a regular sata 7200 rpm drive and 2gb of ram, things just get so much smoother, I mean, you wouldn't say it's the same computer.
As for the GPU, well, I kinda went overkill here, there's no need for 512mb of video memory and there's no need for a gpu like the X1950pro, it's kinda overkill, for instance, I do notice that there's a bottleneck in almost every game I try, here are some games I tried:

(all these games were running on Steam and were played while connected to the internet):

-CS:GO was the first game I tried, it's one of my favorite games right now and I couldn't go without trying it out on the P4, so the pentium 4 is able to keep fps over 40 most of the time playing 5v5 competitive on Dust 2, it really doesn't get past 60fps, but hey, having a machine like this playing CS:GO at 50fps ost of the time is really not bad, but like I said before, you can tell the you don't get more fps because of the cpu.

-GTA IV well this game I remember me playing it some years ago on my core 2 duo laptop with a nvidia g103m, one of the worst gpu you could have at the time, and the laptop couldn't handle the game, it probabily ran the game at about 12-15fps, but I didn't even care, the game was amazing and me and everyone played it even with these fps, so I was surprised that the pentium 4 actually can keep frames over 20fps, like 22 most of the time, which is really not bad at all (both the laptop and the P4 had the game playing with the lowest settings)

-Left 4 Dead 2 nothing to say here, frame rates preety much always over 30fps, only when a lot is going on it drops to 25fps, but nothing much noticable.

-Counter Strike 1.6 frames rates between 200-300fps on dust 2 with lobby of 30 people

-Counter strike source kinda disapointed me, CS:S runs almost as good as CS:GO which is strange, frames rates over 30, but 40 is the maximum.


Well now for web browsing, I'm using WIndows XP SP3 fully updated with Avast anti-virus and I gotta say that only on the heaviest web sites you notice it slowing down a bit, more other than that it's completly smooth, also youtube plays fine, on 360p/480p processor is at 20% of usage, only when you put it on 720p it strugles, but still plays fine with cpu around 70%.


Before I end, I did change the Pentium 4 I originally have, I had a 3.0ghz northwood pentium 4 overclocked to 3.6ghz but then my uncle gave me some old motherboard he had and one of them had a 3.0ghz prescott pentium 4, so I changed it and overclocked it, the prescott overclocks much better than the northwood, I'm able to have it running at 3.9ghz no problem, but for that the ram as to run at 180mhz, and I rather have the ram running at 200mhz and the cpu at 3.75ghz, some of you will disagree but I did notice a imrpovement using the prescott, it feels smoother over all.

But here I must say, I would only recommend you building a computer like this if it is just for fun, the parts cost me:

-Asus p4p800e deluxe with pentium 4 and zalman cooler: 15€ shipped
-x1950pro: 25€ shipped
-4x512mb ram: 25€ shipped
-PSU: 25€ shipped
-Case: 32€
-HDD: 20€ shipped
 Total: 142€ 

Alright, I did get a good deal on the motherboard cpu and zalman cooler, because on eBay the mobo goes for around 20-30€ if your'e lucky to even find one, the cpu goes for 15€ and cooler probabily another 10€ at least, so that would make the price jump quite a bit.

Why this is not worth it? because you can buy a fully working core 2 duo for around 80€ that simply is 10x faster than this.

So there you go, if you guys want me to upload a video showcasing the Pentium 4 I can do so.


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## uuuaaaaaa (Nov 12, 2015)

97pedro said:


> @uuuaaaaaa you should show your system here, put dome photos.
> 
> @Kursah It's funny to make build slike this, speacily because a pentium 4 system done rights can still handle browsing the web and all minor tasks you would want to do. If you like this kind of stuff then do it and show here the results.



I will put some more detailed pics on saturday! This is just a teaser


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## 97pedro (Nov 12, 2015)

Damn, looks awesome xD
Waiting for those pics.


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## revin (Nov 13, 2015)

97pedro said:


> Here is the 3DMark03 benchmark, tell me what other benchmarks you want to see.
> @Frogger



 I have a 3DMark 06 @ 3.7  if you have 06 to run for comparison

Here's an old screennie with an EE Gallatin and AGP

19k 600/1600


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## uuuaaaaaa (Nov 13, 2015)

revin said:


> I have a 3DMark 06 @ 3.7  if you have 06 to run for comparison
> 
> Here's an old screennie with an EE Gallatin and AGP
> 
> 19k 600/1600





Shall I swap my X850XT PE with the HD3850 to join this party? xD

Edit: Did I spot another Abit board user?


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## uuuaaaaaa (Nov 14, 2015)

@97pedro

Here are some more pics 
The case was modded and spray painted by me. I also had to mod the cpu cooler otherwise it would not fit...

System specs:
Motherboard: Abit IC7-MAX3
CPU: P4 3.4EE Gallatin (SL7CH)
GPU: PowerColor X850XT PE AGP (or Sapphire HD3850)
RAM: Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC4000 (2x1024)
PSU: Corsair HX620W
Soundcard: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Pro + Front panel
HDD: WD Caviar 160
CPU cooler: Modded Scythe Andy Samurai Master
GPU cooler: Modded Ati Silencer 5 rev. 2
Chipset cooler: Thermaltake Extreme Spirit II


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## micropage7 (Nov 14, 2015)

97pedro said:


> Well, been so long since last update, here it goes.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


looks pretty nice reminds me of those years when i was in college,
and since the case aint give you more room, you have limited space to do cable management


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## 97pedro (Nov 14, 2015)

@uuuaaaaaa that looks amazing, and you have an Abit IC7  that motherboard is amazing! I was able to take better pics, but even then, the camera is not too good, so there's not much I can do.

@micropage7 I know, but I think the result wasn't too bad hahaha


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## uuuaaaaaa (Nov 14, 2015)

97pedro said:


> @uuuaaaaaa that looks amazing, and you have an Abit IC7  that motherboard is amazing! I was able to take better pics, but even then, the camera is not too good, so there's not much I can do.
> 
> @micropage7 I know, but I think the result wasn't too bad hahaha




Back in the days I always wanted to have those coolers. Those Zalmans HSF's are a work of beauty!
Your rig looks pretty good, so clean!


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## 97pedro (Nov 14, 2015)

Yep, the cpu cooler makes the 3.75ghz prescott idle at 40ºC and the gpu cooler makes it idle at 32ºC.


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## Gaetano77 (Nov 24, 2015)

I still use a similar PC bougth in April 2004:

- *CPU* Intel Pentium 4 Prescott 3.00 Ghz (SL7PM) overclocked to 3.40 Ghz (227x15)
- *MoBo* Asus P4P800 Deluxe socket 478
- *RAM* 2 Gb (2x1) G.Skill DDR400 F1-3200PHU2-2GBNS running in dual channel mode (2.5-3-3-7)
- *VGA* ATI Radeon 9600 Sapphire 256 Mb
-* HDD* SATA Seagate Barracuda 120 Gb 7200 rpm 

Operating systems: *Windows XP SP3*, *Windows 7 Professional* (32-bit) and *Windows 8.1 Pro* (32-bit)

This machine is perfect for Office works (with MS Office 2003 and Office 2007 Compatibility Pack), web browsing (with Google Chrome) and playing DVD-Video and music (with Media Player Classic); on YouTube it is possible to play all streaming videos at 360/480p resolution and even few ones at 720p, but in this case CPU is almost fully loaded.

Windows 8.1 operating system* doesn't officially support this CPU *because lack of NX-bit feature, but I eventually succeded to install it anyway with *W8CPUFeaturePatch*, a small program that allows to bypass NX check; procedure is explained here:

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/th...e-Patch-(Bypass-Windows-8-CPU-feature-checks)


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## m0nt3 (Nov 24, 2015)

P4-630 said:


> I have had one of those ATi X1950 Pro's, great card and great cooler, was running cool.


That cooler is ugly as sin, lol. Really makes me want to get my Athlon 64 and Athlon XP back up and running.


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## P4-630 (Nov 24, 2015)

m0nt3 said:


> That cooler is ugly as sin, lol. Really makes me want to get my Athlon 64 and Athlon XP back up and running.



Well I liked it  it was a very good and quiet cooler


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## MIRTAZAPINE (Nov 24, 2015)

This old hardware is so beautiful! The trademark Asus north bridge heatsink. It is also on my old Asus P5BE-plus board. I wonder if that board still work it running funny last time.


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## stinger608 (Nov 24, 2015)

MIRTAZAPINE said:


> This old hardware is so beautiful! The trademark Asus north bridge heatsink. It is also on my old Asus P5BE-plus board. I wonder if that board still work it running funny last time.




If ya want to take a gander at some "nostalgic hardware" jump over here: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/tpus-nostalgic-hardware-club.108251/


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## Deleted member 41019 (Nov 27, 2015)

uuuaaaaaa said:


> @97pedro
> 
> Here are some more pics
> The case was modded and spray painted by me. I also had to mod the cpu cooler otherwise it would not fit...
> ...




Another Scythe bro who likes Pentium 4s. Yay!!!


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## 97pedro (Jun 10, 2016)

Hello everyone, it's been a while since I posted here, but I made a video showcasing the computer, you can check it out here:


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