# Project: Retro Pentium 4



## Deleted member 41019 (Dec 30, 2013)

This is how the system looks as of 29/07/2015










Hi all.

I'm somewhat new to the site and have decided to take the plunge and join the forums to share with you my love of all things computer related.

I'm am in the process of building my ideal Pentium 4 (socket 478) for my older games/software and as something I can put away for a few years and bring out the loft to show my two kids what I feel was a really cool stage in the desktop PC's evolution.

So a bit of history before we move on to a few pictures. I brought the system from a lad in Cambridge for the sum of £20 as I buy/sell/repair PC's on my own since both me and my other half lost our jobs in the industry do to the company outsourcing. When I got home I took a good look at the PC and realised there could be some potential to build a really hot little system out of something that when new was a pile of rubbish.

The system in question is a HP D230MT a basic little micro tower that was made back in 2005 and retailed here for about £250 new. I wanted too see just how 'modern' I could make the system and see if the old 478 architecture had any real life left in it. A friend of mine called me crazy as he firmly believes that anything more then 4-5 years old is old and no use and he gave me a little challenge and that was too see how far I could upgrade the system and see if an old HP desktop running a 478 chip could still be used today with any form of speed.

The only thing was I could not change the case or the motherboard but everything else was subject to change. So like some sort of wanna-be superhero I flew to the keyboard and just missed stepping on the cat to jump on old eBay and source some parts.

Now the original specs were:

2.4Ghz Pentium 4 with a 400Mhz FSB
256MB of DDR333
40GB Hard drive of some nature (OEM stickers covered up the brand)
Onboard video (about 16MB of shared *shudders*)
DVD-ROM drive that had packed in
and last of all some cheapo 250w PSU

I purchased the following parts:

3.06Ghz Pentium 4 (0.13m)
2GB of Crucial DDR400
250GB Seagate IDE hard drive with a 7000.3RPM rated speed
and finally a nice ATI HD3650 with 1GB of dedicated GDDR2 memory

After a lot of messing about and tweaking the hell out of the O/S the system ran everything thrown at it like a beast but after a few days of playing around I got bored.

I really wanted a Pentium 4 Prescott core, the EE edition would be lovely but they command high prices online so I thought I would just leave it until I get a call. Someone I knew through a friend was giving away his collection of old systems and asked me if I wanted them, of course I said yes. Little did I know one of them would have a Gigabyte GA-8IG1000MK!

This was great news as I could now think about at least upgrading to a 90nm CPU but I was in for one more shock. While lifting the heatsink and rubbing off the old compound with a lint free cloth I nearly wet myself! There was staring me in the face a Pentium 4 EE!! 3.4Ghz of overheating goodness!

So out with the old HP motherboard and after a bit of refurbishment and a good deep clean the system was built with a lot of new parts and is sat on my desk burring away waiting for me to get back on with playing some old GTA3

The system now stands in the HP case (but not for long) with the following:

3.4Ghz Intel Pentium 4 HT EE with a 800Mhz FSB and 1MB of level2 cache.
3GB of DDR400 memory from Crucial
500W Liteon PSU
The ATI HD3650 and 250GB Seagate HDD

Now though I want to over clock the system and sort out thermals so I will be asking for a little advice a bit later 

One final thing, the front of the system is black and should be silver but I hated the silver and went looking for a fascia from a D220MT as that was black. it took me 4-5 months of hard looking but i finally found one in the U.S and had it shipped over to the UK.


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## Deleted member 41019 (Dec 30, 2013)

Ok so I am looking at some parts and have settled on the following:

New Case: This as I already have the larger of these cases and they are built really well and have sound proofing everywhere 

New Heatsink for the CPU: This or This

I have an issue with the GPU cooler. I want to overclock the video card but the stock heatsink is just so bad. So I am looking at the following but I don't know what one to buy.

There is a choice of two:

This one or This one

I also found this but I am not 100% about it.

These will be the parts that really finish the system off. After this I very much doubt I will put any more money toward this system as there is not much more I could do with it.


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## qubit (Dec 30, 2013)

I'm not surprised that your P4 runs well. I've got a P4 2.8 Northwood with HT which runs Windows 7 just fine. In fact, it's overclocked to 3.5GHz to this day on an Abit (ah, Abit...) AI7 mobo and runs solid as a rock.


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## xBruce88x (Dec 30, 2013)

for the cpu cooler go with the tower design so you can position the airflow to the back of the case and out its exhaust fan. for the gpu, the akasa cooler looks great and actually lists your card as compatible, though any overclock you get on the gpu part will be limited, as far as actual performance gains, by the DDR2 memory. If you can find a model with DDR3 that would help quite a bit. as for that power supply, 500w is enough but what are the specs on the 12v rails? keep in mind using any of those 2 gpu coolers may require you to move that sound card down a slot, don't worry about the LAN card, you can get a USB network adapter if needed. or if the cooler fits with the sound card in its current location, but is starved for airflow, just swap the sound card and LAN card around, the low profile LAN card will allow the fans to get more airflow. You may want to save the money from the gpu cooler and get this instead... http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HIS-ATI-R...698?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item4d16cd531a

yea i remember my 775 days... had a Pentium D 920 overclocked to 3.5ghz on an AsRock 4CoreDual-VSTA. I got a custom bios for it from some german programmer and it allowed official support for 2x2gb ram. though i later found out that a Pentium DualCore e5300 at stock out performed my 3.5ghz Pentium D. either way, it played Crysis just fine with a 9600GT and ran at Med-High settings at 1280*1024 with avg 30fps. I could go on and on about all the things that asrock board has been though, but that'd be quite a wall of text, needless to say its still running after 6 1/2 years. hmm... come to think of it my ram is getting pretty old... 4 yrs now

edit: if you decide to go with that 4670, this may be of interest... http://www.hwcompare.com/3057/geforce-9600-gt-512mb-vs-radeon-hd-4670-512mb/
granted they may have a more powerful cpu, but that EE is still pretty capable


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## Deleted member 41019 (Dec 30, 2013)

xBruce88x said:


> for the cpu cooler go with the tower design so you can position the airflow to the back of the case and out its exhaust fan. for the gpu, the akasa cooler looks great and actually lists your card as compatible, though any overclock you get on the gpu part will be limited, as far as actual performance gains, by the DDR2 memory. If you can find a model with DDR3 that would help quite a bit. as for that power supply, 500w is enough but what are the specs on the 12v rails? keep in mind using any of those 2 gpu coolers may require you to move that sound card down a slot, don't worry about the LAN card, you can get a USB network adapter if needed. or if the cooler fits with the sound card in its current location, but is starved for airflow, just swap the sound card and LAN card around, the low profile LAN card will allow the fans to get more airflow. You may want to save the money from the gpu cooler and get this instead... http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HIS-ATI-R...698?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item4d16cd531a




Must say I have been looking at that video card but money is a bit tight. The system as it is now will do just fine or at least it will have to as the other half is getting ever nearer the knife draw lol

The way the PCI cards are will be changed completely as the network card is not needed (I was testing something out) and the sound card will be booted down to the very bottom of the new case. The PSU is covered up at the moment but I'm very much thinking about replacing it with a nice Corsair semi modular from their builder series as this PSU seems to 'hum' a bit.


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## rainzor (Dec 30, 2013)

Uh, while it is cool, you are starting to pour a lot of money in it lol. I mean ~70 quid just for the coolers is way to much for my taste. You can get c2d based system for that :/ Sure, C2D may not be retro but neither is your hd3650 hehe. How are the ati agp drivers treating you btw? Last time i played with one of those it was a complete nightmare. Try to get some second hand cheaper coolers that would do the job, but if money is no issue hey..the world is yours ^^

I too have got a P4 system running for my parents to browse and play some games from time to time. Its a P4 2.4C northy on Intel 875PBZ mobo with 1.5GB DDR400 and a radeon 9200 card. Had an idea to beef it up a lil bit, but couldnt find adequate parts in my country and if i did, ppl wanted fortune for them so i gave up. My idea was to get 3.2ghz northwood coz its not THAT hot (have a zalman 7700cu) and a 6800GT coz i always wanted one of those but couldnt afford it back then hehe. I also have an AC NV5 silencer to pair it with. ACtually my first idea was to get the gainward 7800gs+ (remember the disguised 7900GT beast?), but had no luck finding one hehe. Thats my advice to you if you want to keep the retro spirit. ATI HD cards are nice (at least on paper), but i can find em in stores today - not retro


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## xBruce88x (Dec 30, 2013)

their builder series is nice, ... i've got a CX500 powering my current setup.


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## Deleted member 41019 (Dec 30, 2013)

rainzor said:


> Uh, while it is cool, you are starting to pour a lot of money in it lol. I mean ~70 quid just for the coolers is way to much for my taste. You can get c2d based system for that :/ Sure, C2D may not be retro but neither is your hd3650 hehe. How are the ati agp drivers treating you btw? Last time i played with one of those it was a complete nightmare. Try to get some second hand cheaper coolers that would do the job, but if money is no issue hey..the world is yours ^^
> 
> I too have got a P4 system running for my parents to browse and play some games from time to time. Its a P4 2.4C northy on Intel 875PBZ mobo with 1.5GB DDR400 and a radeon 9200 card. Had an idea to beef it up a lil bit, but couldnt find adequate parts in my country and if i did, ppl wanted fortune for them so i gave up. My idea was to get 3.2ghz northwood coz its not THAT hot (have a zalman 7700cu) and a 6800GT coz i always wanted one of those but couldnt afford it back then hehe. I also have an AC NV5 silencer to pair it with. ACtually my first idea was to get the gainward 7800gs+ (remember the disguised 7900GT beast?), but had no luck finding one hehe. Thats my advice to you if you want to keep the retro spirit. ATI HD cards are nice (at least on paper), but i can find em in stores today - not retro



Yeah the GPU is a bit OP for the system but the system was built just to give me the best from an era of tech and gaming that I really enjoyed. The drivers for the card work just fine to be honest I have had no issues at all with any games thrown at it and have sat and run the ATItool from here for ages and the card sat running at just over 200fps and gave no errors at all.

I have sat and had a think about it and really all I need (NEED lol) to change is the CPU cooler as this P4 sits at 65-70 degrees C on idle so I think the nice Scythe Mugen will do for now and I'll retro fit a 40/80mm intake fan in the front. At least then the system will be a bit of a 'sleeper' in that it looks stock until you go under the hood


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## Deleted member 41019 (Dec 30, 2013)

xBruce88x said:


> their builder series is nice, ... i've got a CX500 powering my current setup.




750 in my main system  Love Corsair stuff.


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## Vario (Jan 4, 2014)

I got a real nice EVGA 9800GT 1MB PCI-E card for $20 shipped off ebay.  You can find 7800GX2's and ultras for real cheap if you really want to go retro p4.


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## Aquinus (Jan 4, 2014)

Vario said:


> I got a real nice EVGA 9800GT 1MB PCI-E card for $20 shipped off ebay.  You can find 7800GX2's and ultras for real cheap if you really want to go retro p4.



Pretty sure that board has an AGP slot, not a PCI-E slot.


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## Outback Bronze (Jan 4, 2014)

Congrats on the build mate.

I too have a soft spot for that era.

I've currently got an ic7 max3, P4 Prescott HT @ 4.25, ddr500 and 3850 agp all setup waiting for the (ON) button to get pushed.

BTW my cpu is water cooled via an extremely old and probably one of the first socket 478 blocks!!

Good luck with the build mate and enjoy.


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## techtard (Jan 4, 2014)

I've got a couple of old junkers specifically for playing games made during their era, haven't fired them up in a while though.
Nice work, it's fun tinkering around with older hardware.


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## Aquinus (Jan 4, 2014)

techtard said:


> I've got a couple of old junkers specifically for playing games made during their era, haven't fired them up in a while though.
> Nice work, it's fun tinkering around with older hardware.


Absolutely! It almost makes me want to pull out my old 478 Northwood Celeron.


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## techtard (Jan 4, 2014)

This past year I upgraded some family members main PCs. Couple P4s and some socket A AMD setups. 
Was thinking about using the old parts and setting up a beowulf cluster just for kicks.


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## brandonwh64 (Jan 23, 2014)

LOL my router at home is a P4 northwood with 1GB of ram and a PCIX dual gig nic card running IPcop Linux distro


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## TRWOV (Jan 23, 2014)

Nice system sir! You must be in this club: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/tpus-nostalgic-hardware-club.108251/


I'm also in the middle of building a P4 system. I'm currently waiting for some stuff to arrive


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## scoutingwraith (Jan 25, 2014)

This is funny. I recently decided to get my P4 2.4Ghz Northwood as well up and running in a case i had a while ago. Built a P4 2.4Ghz 2x512mb DDR400, and an FX5900XT card. Cant find my cooler though so ill need to look for one.


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## Arjai (Jan 25, 2014)

I have a P4, see specs, that is in storage. I maxed it out for Crunching WCG, on Linux Mint. Can't wait to get that, and my Socket A, back running. Not to mention the Mad Cruncher... One of these days...


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## FreedomEclipse (Jan 25, 2014)

Tempted to find parts to resurrect a skt 939 build


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## scoutingwraith (Jan 25, 2014)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Tempted to find parts to resurrect a skt 939 build


 
I wish i could find a 939 motherboard but they are a bit expensive if you look for a decent one. Still have my x2 3800+ and i cant find a good board to use it.


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## FreedomEclipse (Jan 25, 2014)

scoutingwraith said:


> I wish i could find a 939 motherboard but they are a bit expensive if you look for a decent one. Still have my x2 3800+ and i cant find a good board to use it.



I have the exact same cpu. There are a few boards on ebay floating about. Quite a lot of them are from Australia and collection only - at least for M-ATX boards which is what im looking for


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## rtwjunkie (Jan 25, 2014)

And I was beginning to wonder if I'd be able to sell my two P4 3.2Ghz Northwoods, LOL!  I guess somebody on ebay will want them!


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## TheGuruStud (Jan 25, 2014)

Put a bullet in that worthless chip and find an athlon XP (if you're going for that 2002 era). I have one in the basement LOL. At least it's a respectable piece of hardware.

I'm still using my socket 939 as a test PC.



scoutingwraith said:


> I wish i could find a 939 motherboard but they are a bit expensive if you look for a decent one. Still have my x2 3800+ and i cant find a good board to use it.



Buy a used Lanparty. I miss DFI    I made a gaming rig with a 3800+. Oced to 2.8 GHz. One core would do 3+ stable, but the other crapped out at 2.9.


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## Melvis (Jan 25, 2014)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Tempted to find parts to resurrect a skt 939 build



Do it and ill join you lol as Ive had 3 939 systems in the past and still own 1.5 of them. One I sold the CPU out of to a mate (x2 4600+) the 2nd is on lend to a friend and its a X2 3800+ with a ATI 3850 GPU powering it. The third I still own and its the FX-57 with a 9600GT.  I still have the mobo that the X2 4600+ came out of and its a SLi Gigabyte board and its for sale when I can be bothered to pull it of the case haha.

P4 systems I have a good 3here at the moment also that Ill be stripping and selling soon. If you live in AUS give me a call and I might be able to help you out. (Skt 478s)


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## FreedomEclipse (Jan 25, 2014)

Melvis said:


> Do it and ill join you lol as Ive had 3 939 systems in the past and still own 1.5 of them. One I sold the CPU out of to a mate (x2 4600+) the 2nd is on lend to a friend and its a X2 3800+ with a ATI 3850 GPU powering it. The third I still own and its the FX-57 with a 9600GT.  I still have the mobo that the X2 4600+ came out of and its a SLi Gigabyte board and its for sale when I can be bothered to pull it of the case haha.
> 
> P4 systems I have a good 3here at the moment also that Ill be stripping and selling soon. If you live in AUS give me a call and I might be able to help you out. (Skt 478s)



I may do eventually. You might be able to help me pick up some parts off ebay  im looking to put together a small 939 matx system to go underneath my desk and serve as a folder or something else.


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jan 27, 2014)

TRWOV said:


> Nice system sir! You must be in this club: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/tpus-nostalgic-hardware-club.108251/
> 
> 
> I'm also in the middle of building a P4 system. I'm currently waiting for some stuff to arrive




I might have a look at that although I think the forum needs a retro section of it's own.


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jan 27, 2014)

Arjai said:


> I have a P4, see specs, that is in storage. I maxed it out for Crunching WCG, on Linux Mint. Can't wait to get that, and my Socket A, back running. Not to mention the Mad Cruncher... One of these days...



Socket A was some fun times


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jan 27, 2014)

I'm about to upload a youtube video of the system for you all to watch. It's a bit lacking on the old production quality and it did not help I lost some footage due to my crappy camera but it shows a bit about the system. I'm just upset I lost like 7 mins or so of footage. 

I have decided i will do a final update video of the system when I buy a new CPU cooler and sort out some intake at the front so feel free to sub to my channel as it's mostly about my computer adventures and sometimes some misadventures lol


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jan 27, 2014)

Video is now up!


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## rtwjunkie (Jan 27, 2014)

aven000 said:


> I might have a look at that although I think the forum needs a retro section of it's own.


 
There is kind of, it's the TPU Nostalgic Hardware Club.


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jan 27, 2014)

rtwjunkie said:


> There is kind of, it's the TPU Nostalgic Hardware Club.



I am guessing that is a separate site?


Edit: Ahh found it!


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## rtwjunkie (Jan 27, 2014)

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/tpus-nostalgic-hardware-club.108251/

EDIT: I guess you found it!


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jan 27, 2014)

As of tomorrow I will be purchasing this.

I called the company selling it and they were dead nice and have put the last one on hold for me as I get paid in the morning. This will be a lovely addition to the system and best of all it can be used with loads of socket types so IF I ever changed my mind then I can at least use it on another system.


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jan 28, 2014)

So the new CPU cooler should be here for Friday as well as my new case. You can see pictures of what I have brought here.

It's a budget case but I think you will agree it has a nice layout. Nice big 120mm fan at the front and one at the back as I have some kicking around and I'll be installing a 80mm Zalman fan on the side, as for the 120's I'll be looking at grabbing some Corsair one's soon to bring a little class to the system 

I went with the white because for the past 7-8 years all my systems have been black and while I like black systems I thought it would be nice for a change. I feel this case also has a nod to the past with the colour but retains a modern feel and to be honest the system also does that. Only Issue I found was that any good cases have now at least one USB 3.0 port on them, Now I can't make use of that at all but other cases with 2.0 on them just looked like the sort that you will cut yourself on due to flimsy metal. I also wanted to avoid cases with CD drive covers and ones that look like they are ripping off mobile phones/cars and to an extent transformers... You all know the type of cases I'm talking about.

What do you think about the case? I really want to see what you all have to say about it.


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## scoutingwraith (Jan 28, 2014)

TheGuruStud said:


> Put a bullet in that worthless chip and find an athlon XP (if you're going for that 2002 era). I have one in the basement LOL. At least it's a respectable piece of hardware.
> 
> I'm still using my socket 939 as a test PC.
> 
> ...


The DFI boards are a bit expensive to be honest. I was looking at them and they are bit on the expensive side. I had an Asus A8N-SLi but it died on me. Was really angry because of it.


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jan 29, 2014)

Got all my parts delivered today so the rebuild has been done.  I wont babble on as I know what you all want and that's pictures, well I aim to please


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jan 29, 2014)

Part 2


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## jihadjoe (Jan 29, 2014)

I still have an old P4 Northwood 2.8 HT mounted to an IC7-MAX3 in my closet.
Comes complete with a period-correct Gainward GeForce Ti 4200 "Golden Sample" sitting in the AGP slot.

Served me for the longest time, but I finally retired it around about the time H.264 video became standard. Basically it would stutter playing some files, which my then new Pentium-M laptop would handle just fine. It was then that I realized the old P4 was chugging power like an Irishman goes through stout, while being slower than a mobile chip. Basically it wasn't old enough to be nostalgic, and was far less efficient than anything remotely current.

The old Pentium-100, OTOH might be worth reviving for some DOOM and Hexen fun. 
Even has the S3 "Graphics Decelerator" which was useless for everything except the copy of Descent that it came with.


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## TRWOV (Jan 29, 2014)

OMG, that Scythe is huge!!!


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jan 29, 2014)

TRWOV said:


> OMG, that Scythe is huge!!!



I never expected it to be as big as that. It really fills the case!


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## rtwjunkie (Jan 30, 2014)

That's quite the cooler!!!


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jan 30, 2014)

rtwjunkie said:


> That's quite the cooler!!!



Dead happy with the cooler but I'm not 100% about the case. I have been sitting looking at it and although it has to be better then the HP case it's taken away the stealth look of the system.

I may end up going back....


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## TRWOV (Jan 30, 2014)

I'm getting an Aquiarius II for my build. Should get here soon


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jan 30, 2014)

So I decided to just stick with the new case as I have done too much work to just go back. I'm quite sure the cooler wont fit in the HP case anyway plus there is no point in restricting airflow when I needed more in the first instance.

I did however strip the system and move bits around to better suit the system including moving the hard drive. Now the reason the HDD was moved was because the cooler was blocking access to it and if anything ever happened to it I would have to strip the whole system to get at it. I guess this was an oversight on my part but the case came with HDD mounting holes on the bottom of the chassis. Good news is I can now remove any part I need to without moving the motherboard.

I have taken the time to up the bus speed to 212Mhz thus increasing the clock speed to 3.6Ghz up from 3.4. I know it's only a 200Mhz increase but I wanted to see how stable the system will run with an OC and how much heat she produces. Here is some more good news. The system used to idle at 67-70°C but now idles at 38-42°C even with the overclock.

EDIT: image removed as jihadjoe is right about the product ID.


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## rage (Jan 30, 2014)

i like what you're doing! only downside of reading all this that i regret trowing away all my old stuff recently.


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## jihadjoe (Feb 2, 2014)

^^ Might wanna blur out your name and product ID.


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## Deleted member 41019 (Feb 2, 2014)

jihadjoe said:


> ^^ Might wanna blur out your name and product ID.




Aye you're right. Image is now removed just in case.


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## Deleted member 41019 (Aug 12, 2014)

Ok so it's been a while since I did an update here so here goes. 

The AVP Viper case was total crap and I managed to get hold of a case I have lusted after for years, I had one and sold it before and I always regretted it. So here it is, the Cooler Master ATC-S!

The scythe cooler has been put on my Linux rig as it will not fit in this case, but then it was a beast.


YES! That is a Cooler Master EVO TX3 Socket 775 cooler on a Socket 478!


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## DayKnight (Aug 12, 2014)

I have something much 'retro'. P2 333Mhz, maxed out. Asus DVD drive, USB 2.0 card, etc. More _retro_. 

700GBP _only_. 14 inch CRT free _just for you_.

/trollbait


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## Deleted member 41019 (Aug 12, 2014)

DayKnight said:


> I have something much 'retro'. P2 333Mhz, maxed out. Asus DVD drive, USB 2.0 card, etc. More _retro_.
> 
> 700GBP _only_. 14 inch CRT free _just for you_.
> 
> /trollbait




LOL 

I loved the PII (being a bit of an intel man) but the G3 was so much nicer to use. 

Got a lovely 486DX2 sat on top of my wardrobe, Here is the post: LINK


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## DayKnight (Aug 12, 2014)

aven000 said:


> LOL
> 
> I loved the PII (being a bit of an intel man) but the G3 was so much nicer to use.
> 
> Got a lovely 486DX2 sat on top of my wardrobe, Here is the post: LINK



That is ancient.


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## Deleted member 41019 (Aug 12, 2014)

DayKnight said:


> That is ancient.



But lovely?


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## brandonwh64 (Aug 12, 2014)

We have stacks of P4 combos at work sitting in a closet. May pull one out and see if setfsb still works


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## Deleted member 41019 (Aug 12, 2014)

brandonwh64 said:


> We have stacks of P4 combos at work sitting in a closet. May pull one out and see if setfsb still works



While I love new tech there is a charm to the older stuff and this system kind of captures an era in computing I really had fun with.


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## Aquinus (Aug 13, 2014)

Much like my own skt478 board sitting in the attic, you have some SATA 1.5GB ports which will drive just about any 7200 RPM modern drive at full speed. Even though it's a retro build, SATA did still exist back then and it doesn't hurt to use it if you can because IDE is dead slow. I know from personal experience that those 1.5Gbps ports will run at that speed, which is enough to saturate 1Gbps LAN for a NAS as well. Just saying as it could make a P4 feel a lot more snappy than it used to.


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## Deleted member 41019 (Aug 13, 2014)

Aquinus said:


> Much like my own skt478 board sitting in the attic, you have some SATA 1.5GB ports which will drive just about any 7200 RPM modern drive at full speed. Even though it's a retro build, SATA did still exist back then and it doesn't hurt to use it if you can because IDE is dead slow. I know from personal experience that those 1.5Gbps ports will run at that speed, which is enough to saturate 1Gbps LAN for a NAS as well. Just saying as it could make a P4 feel a lot more snappy than it used to.



I have a 640GB WD Caviar Blue sat here doing nothing. It's only had like 100 days spin time so should be good for a while. 16MB of Cache would be nice.

Not sure what I'll do about it yet but if I decide to go ahead with it I'll break out the old Clonezilla disk. Thinking about it I may do that anyway and compare the speeds. One thing is for sure though, I really need to go back and sort out some services and kill a few unneeded processes as i have really let the maintenance slack.


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## m0nt3 (Aug 13, 2014)

I just completed my Retro Gaming rig. I love it, kudos sir. 

Mine is:
Athlon XP-M @ 2.25Ghz
2*1 GB Crucial DDR400
ATi Radeon X800 Pro
500 and 200 GB IDE HDD's
SB Audigy Gamer

Love playing some old games (currently playing morrowind) on this computer. Amazing what the old single core CPU's could do.


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## suraswami (Aug 13, 2014)

aven000 said:


> Socket A was some fun times



Especially the pencil mod to increase default votage and wire trick to make it multi unlocked!!

Good going there with your build.

I have the modern day P4 - A.K.A FX 8350!!


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## Deleted member 41019 (Aug 13, 2014)

m0nt3 said:


> I just completed my Retro Gaming rig. I love it, kudos sir.
> 
> Mine is:
> Athlon XP-M @ 2.25Ghz
> ...




Oh my goodness. I'm drooling at the thought of the Athlon XP. They were awesome CPUs


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## Deleted member 41019 (Aug 13, 2014)

suraswami said:


> Especially the pencil mod to increase default votage and wire trick to make it multi unlocked!!
> 
> Good going there with your build.
> 
> I have the modern day P4 - A.K.A FX 8350!!



Yep I modded quite a few with some good old graphite


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## m0nt3 (Aug 13, 2014)

Yea, love my athlon xp. It was the first computer i built. The original cpu died which was a 2700+. Still the same Abit NF-7S with the mcp-t south bridge with soundstorm. My original video card was a 9800 non-pro also dead. Same PSU antec truepower 430 watt. Had to replace a few caps and good as new. Those radeon cards were amazing for the time. I think a lot of the comes from dedicated shader hardware as oppoesed to unified shaders.


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## suraswami (Aug 13, 2014)

m0nt3 said:


> Yea, love my athlon xp. It was the first computer i built. The original cpu died which was a 2700+. Still the same Abit NF-7S with the mcp-t south bridge with soundstorm. My original video card was a 9800 non-pro also dead. Same PSU antec truepower 430 watt. Had to replace a few caps and good as new. Those radeon cards were amazing for the time. I think a lot of the comes from dedicated shader hardware as oppoesed to unified shaders.



Not knowing much about power requirements and how hungry the 9800 pro versions, I blew up a whole computer all because of that 9800 pro (cheap psu caught fire).  Everything fried except that sucker, memory and the Duron CPU!!!  All OS and data gone.  Board died too.  Lucky I bought extended warranty on the board from Frys and they replaced it and was up and running with a new hdd.  WD replaced the fried hdd no questions.  Those Durons are fun little bastards!!


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## m0nt3 (Aug 15, 2014)

I was worried about my PSU, which is why I sprung for the 430 watt antec true power, which is still working great 11 years later. I used it all the way up through my dual core cpu finally the lack of SATA power connections and PCI-E power connections made me retire it. 

@OP, have you ran any benchmarks on it? I would be curious to compare results. X800 Pro vs 3650 was it? My CPU isn't quite as fast, but should be interesting.


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## Deleted member 41019 (Aug 19, 2014)

m0nt3 said:


> I was worried about my PSU, which is why I sprung for the 430 watt antec true power, which is still working great 11 years later. I used it all the way up through my dual core cpu finally the lack of SATA power connections and PCI-E power connections made me retire it.
> 
> @OP, have you ran any benchmarks on it? I would be curious to compare results. X800 Pro vs 3650 was it? My CPU isn't quite as fast, but should be interesting.




Just ran the latest Passmark on the system today. Here are the results:


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## m0nt3 (Aug 20, 2014)




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## Deleted member 41019 (Aug 20, 2014)

m0nt3 said:


>




I'm looking at a water cooling solution as it seems the air cooler is slowing me down. Under intensive load I'm getting some serious CUP throttle but with this series of P4 even intel were aware of the issues. 

One thing the Prescott cores did well was produce heat and that is something i need to get sorted out asap. She will idle at around 45 degrees and that's just not healthy. 

I have a big update coming soon for this project and I may be asking for some help tracking down a water cooling system for a socket 478.


Anyway more to come soon.


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## m0nt3 (Aug 20, 2014)

Interesting, My CPU score was higher, 3D was terrible for me, probably due to lack of DX10 support and you stomped me on memory speed. I thought with a 1.2GHz advatage the P4 would have edged out the old Athlon XP lol.


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## Deleted member 41019 (Aug 20, 2014)

m0nt3 said:


> Interesting, My CPU score was higher, 3D was terrible for me, probably due to lack of DX10 support and you stomped me on memory speed. I thought with a 1.2GHz advatage the P4 would have edged out the old Athlon XP lol.



I'm not sure if it is due to the heat problems this CPU currently has. On paper it should have done better but there are factors to consider here and that is that we have, of course heat issues and CPU throttling as well as this CPU has had a great deal of life and has quite a few calculations on it after all these years. I'm going to do some more research on it and try to figure out why she scored so low.


As for the Radeon HD 3670 I'm quite lucky in the fact it has support for DX10.1 but if memory serves the tests were run in OpenGL 2.0 and from my experience OpenGL tests are a lot less intensive.


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## OneMoar (Aug 20, 2014)

the althlon's of the era where always superior to the Pentium's funny because now adays the situation is reversed


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## m0nt3 (Aug 20, 2014)

Clock for clock there were, certainly. I didn't know you were having throttling issues either, that sucks, we called them preshotts for a reason (I am assuming it is a prescott core?) The Athlon XP is no spring chicken either, it is probably older than that Pentium 4 

The current situation is like a direct reversal, kind of ironic.


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## Deleted member 41019 (Aug 20, 2014)

m0nt3 said:


> Clock for clock there were, certainly. I didn't know you were having throttling issues either, that sucks, we called them preshotts for a reason (I am assuming it is a prescott core?) The Athlon XP is no spring chicken either, it is probably older than that Pentium 4
> 
> The current situation is like a direct reversal, kind of ironic.



Yeah this was a 'brown box' special from Intel. Most came with no retail packaging or stock heatsink included, this was one of them.

Intel knew they pushed the 478 too far with this hence they migrated the slightly redesigned Prescotts over to the LGA platform as they had larger surface areas to spread the dye out a bit and most 775's as we know have larger heatsinks than the 478's ever could have.

The Pentium 4 was a good chip but it was built in the era of "moar GHZ plz!" so they pushed to try and get the 4.0GHZ single core barrier but ultimately failed. One of the reasons they went back to the PIII was because of it's stability and reliability as well as the opportunity to expand on the technology there and bring us multi-core CPUs.

Todays 'I series' processors have more in common with their Pentium III Grandfather then they ever do with the Pentium 4. It's not that the Pentium 4 was a failure, it was just pushed too far too fast.

There are many youtube videos that explains why the Pentium 3 was picked up for the Core2 series and not the Pentium 4 although they are looking at the Pentium 4 again for some inspiration for new dyes, that maybe because of the rise in closed-loop water coolers now.


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## kniaugaudiskis (Aug 20, 2014)

I'm currently waiting for some new PC parts to arrive and that's a perfect excuse to play around with my retro nostalgia socket 939 rig which I built a few years ago:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ 2.4GHz 2x1MB 939 (Toledo) cooled by Zalman CNPS7700CU cooler
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe
MSI GeForce 7900GTX 512MB
2,048MB of Kingston HyperX 400MHz CL2.5 RAM
500GB HDD
480W PSU
Windows XP Professional

I've been on this rig for something like a week already and I can say it handles basic tasks really well, even plays Youtube 720P videos without a single stutter. Almost all games from 2005-2006 are also butter smooth, the 7900GTX sporting 24pixel and 8 vertex pipes ticking at 650MHz is not a joke.   The reason this rig feels special to me dates back to when I was 13 years old and had just got into the world of PC hardware. Back then the best chips you could get were Athlon 64 FX-55 2.6GHz and Pentium 4 3.4GHz EE (Gallatin core) from AMD and Intel respectively. I remember I found it really hard to understand how a lower clocked Athlon 64 chip could outperform a higher clocked Pentium 4 chip, so AMD Athlon 64 chips felt somewhat special to me. When the Athlon 64 X2 chips hit the market in 2005 I was under the impression they were sick fast, especially the $1000 X2 4800+. All newer stuff now just comes and goes, however, AMD Athlon 64 series is here to stay with me.


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## m0nt3 (Aug 20, 2014)

I remember getting excited about 3DFX Voodoo's. Back when Babages had voodoo displays and I was drooling over them. I was to young for a job back then. I built me a 4400+ toledo with a X1900XTX and an Abit At832 what ever the ATi R580 crossfire board was called (still being used daily today, although with a different video card). 

The first computer I built was an Athlon XP 2700+, I was kinda nooby then but I was really considering a P4,  after the toms hardware video that showed the tibrd athlon catch fire after the heatsink was removed while the P4 kept going. In trying to under stand the rating system of the Athlon XP's and performance variance between clock speeds and architecture got me reading about the differences between the P6(pentium 3) and netburt (pentium 4) architecture.


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## Deleted member 41019 (Aug 20, 2014)

kniaugaudiskis said:


> I'm currently waiting for some new PC parts to arrive and that's a perfect excuse to play around with my retro nostalgia socket 939 rig which I built a few years ago:
> 
> AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ 2.4GHz 2x1MB 939 (Toledo) cooled by Zalman CNPS7700CU cooler
> ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe
> ...



Would love some pictures of the rig ;D


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## Deleted member 41019 (Aug 20, 2014)

Current stock spec's for your viewing pleasure


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## Deleted member 41019 (Aug 20, 2014)

A video update for you all.


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## m0nt3 (Aug 21, 2014)

Out of curiosity, why not a video card that is more in the same time period?


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## Deleted member 41019 (Aug 21, 2014)

m0nt3 said:


> View attachment 58594 View attachment 58595
> 
> Out of curiosity, why not a video card that is more in the same time period?



Thats a question that has a very long winded answer. The VERY short answer is It all goes back to the original project that was meant to be an old 478 system that would still be useful in todays computing.


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## m0nt3 (Aug 21, 2014)




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## boomstik360 (Aug 29, 2014)

kniaugaudiskis said:


> I'm currently waiting for some new PC parts to arrive and that's a perfect excuse to play around with my retro nostalgia socket 939 rig which I built a few years ago:
> 
> AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ 2.4GHz 2x1MB 939 (Toledo) cooled by Zalman CNPS7700CU cooler
> ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe
> ...



I know exactly how you feel! That was about the exact same time for me and I remember having all of those thoughts lol. Good times back then!


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## kniaugaudiskis (Aug 31, 2014)

aven000 said:


> Would love some pictures of the rig ;D



Sure, here you go a few shots of my socket 939 system:

  

Since I'm still waiting for some stuff to arrive before I start building my main rig, today I checked my drawers and found some interesting old stuff. I knew that stuff sat in my drawers for a long long time, though, I did not expect it to be still operational. So, this is what I've just put together:

Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz HT 800MHz FSB (Northwood core)
ASUS P4P800SE motherboard (I'm still surprised it works)
PowerColor Radeon X800XT Platinum Edition 256MB AGP (520/1120)
Some random 4 sticks of 512MB PC3200 400MHz CL3 Samsung RAM, totaling to 2GB.
Seagate 250GB HDD (IDE)
Plextor CD-RW drive
350W PSU

  



The system booted at first attemp just fine, so I installed Windows XP and downloaded some old benchmarks like 3DMark03 and 3DMark05. The system was 100% stock in all tests.


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jul 22, 2015)

Been a while since this was updated. I just wanted to let everyone know this is still going.

The system has been OC'd to 3.6GHZ but we are having temp issues so I have another maaaaaaad cooler on order and will update you all on that soon. The Video Card also got a little OC by 40MHZ on the memory and the GPU, not much I know but again temp issues that need to be sorted out. 

I took the advice I was given by forum member Aquinus and changed out the IDE hard drive for a SATA drive and it really is a lot quicker.

I would say this project has taken a turn and is now more of a "Ultimate 478" system more than anything else.

Here is a link to my Youtube channel (RetroTalk) and a quick video of my son playing Pinball Arcade on the system @ 1440x900, max settings and of course this was under DirectX 9.C as that's the limit for XP.

I'll keep you all posted on the changes as they happen.


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jul 22, 2015)

Full spec list can be found here: http://s1084.photobucket.com/user/Zaidain/library/Retro PC

Can't be bothered to resize them to upload here


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## FreedomEclipse (Jul 23, 2015)

Not sure if i mentioned it - but my mate had a shitty FX5200 back in the day. I switched the passive heatsink to some activecopper cooler that i think came off my 9700 pro. I overclocked the bollocks off that card - I think i managed to push an extra 125-200mhz on the core. memory wasnt so good though, I think i only managed 50mhz before it started artifacting. I was running BF1942 and farcry 1 on it with no problems.


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## tabascosauz (Jul 23, 2015)

Prescott is the demon itself. The sheer heat output of that satanic 112mm^2 square is a force to be reckoned with. I hope that cooler you're getting is up to the task. Northwood would have made your life that much easier  (not sure about NW's overclockability though)

My LGA775 P4-530 was so slow and the cooler (stock, but a very thick, burly monstrosity that could soak up some real heat) screamed like an animal. I took to delidding it but forgot that early Intel CPUs were mostly epoxied, so it's dead now. Good riddance. Prescott was an abomination that was (I'd say) worse than Bulldozer for AMD.


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jul 23, 2015)

As I say, The cooler will be something special


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jul 23, 2015)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Not sure if i mentioned it - but my mate had a shitty FX5200 back in the day. I switched the passive heatsink to some activecopper cooler that i think came off my 9700 pro. I overclocked the bollocks off that card - I think i managed to push an extra 125-200mhz on the core. memory wasnt so good though, I think i only managed 50mhz before it started artifacting. I was running BF1942 and farcry 1 on it with no problems.



Main issue is the card is using non-standard hole spacing. I could buy an aftermarket cooler but I can't find any that have a 45mm spacing, at least nothing better than what is already on it.


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## tabascosauz (Jul 23, 2015)

aven000 said:


> Main issue is the card is using non-standard hole spacing. I could buy an aftermarket cooler but I can't find any that have a 45mm spacing, at least nothing better than what is already on it.



What kind of mounting hole does the motherboard have? Are they just holes similar to the LGA115x ones or are they the really stupid raised metal pegs?


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jul 23, 2015)

tabascosauz said:


> What kind of mounting hole does the motherboard have? Are they just holes similar to the LGA115x ones or are they the really stupid raised metal pegs?



The motherboard is a standard socket 478 layout. It's the video card that has the 45mm spacing and that's what is casing the problem when it comes to finding an aftermarket cooler for the card.


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## uuuaaaaaa (Jul 23, 2015)

You just reminded me that I have to finish my retro P4 build:
P4 3.4GHz Gallatin core
Abit IC7-MAX3
PowerColor X850XT PE AGP with modded arctic cooling ati silencer 5 rev. 2 / Sapphire HD3850 AGP
2Gb Patriot XBLK CL2
Corsair HX620W
160Gb WD caviar

The case is almost finished but I have to order a new chipset heatsink for the MAX3, since the scythe cpu cooler that I ordered is too big, and hits the chipset heatsink...


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jul 23, 2015)

uuuaaaaaa said:


> You just reminded me that I have to finish my retro P4 build:
> P4 3.4GHz Gallatin core
> Abit IC7-MAX3
> PowerColor X850XT PE AGP with modded arctic cooling ati silencer 5 rev. 2 / Sapphire HD3850 AGP
> ...



Thread for it or piccys when you're done please


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## uuuaaaaaa (Jul 23, 2015)

aven000 said:


> Thread for it or piccys when you're done please



I will post some pics and benchies for sure


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jul 23, 2015)

uuuaaaaaa said:


> I will post some pics and benchies for sure



Looking forward to that


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jul 26, 2015)

New parts on the way and I should have them and installed by Thursday.


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## FireFox (Jul 26, 2015)

i dont mean to be RUDE but 3 posts in a row
why dont you just EDIT your POSTS


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jul 26, 2015)

Knoxx29 said:


> i dont mean to be RUDE but 3 posts in a row
> why dont you just EDIT your POSTS



Three posts in a row? Where?

Last post before today was three days ago and that was in reply to someone else.


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jul 29, 2015)

Well the system is done and what a difference the new CPU and GPU coolers have made!

The CPU alone used to idle at around 48 degrees and is now down to 31! The video card still runs a little warm but at 37 degrees idle I'm happy. The three system fans (two intake and one exhaust) will be replaced with the same fan as the one installed at the top of the system as it is quieter and seems to move more air.

Only issue was the CPU cooler fouled on one of the timing crystals on the video card but a quick trip to my local locksmith and it was sorted by cutting off the unneeded loop. Not happy I had to cut it off but it was a case of needs must.

Apart from replacing the fans this project is now complete and the system will never change spec or be upgraded further as it is everything I wanted out of a 478 P4 system and more.

I'll be keeping the system forever as far as I am concerned but really it is something to hand down to my eldest son who at 8 years old is very into computers so one day it will be his.

Here is the last of the pictures with a few benchmarks thrown in for good measure. I would like to thank everyone who followed this project and thanks those who gave their advice.


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jul 29, 2015)

Last of the images.


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## uuuaaaaaa (Aug 28, 2015)

aven000 said:


> Looking forward to that



Might have some more stuff for you later on 

I am finding the max oc on the cpu and gpu's, then i'm gonna bench this beast! Might use my HD3850AGP as well x)

EDIT: Got 15118 3DM 2003 with my X850XT PE, was not expecting to be that much faster than your HD3650...


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## Deleted member 41019 (Aug 30, 2015)

uuuaaaaaa said:


> Might have some more stuff for you later on
> 
> I am finding the max oc on the cpu and gpu's, then i'm gonna bench this beast! Might use my HD3850AGP as well x)
> 
> ...



That looks a little beast! Also I spy a large cooler there for the CPU....


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## uuuaaaaaa (Aug 30, 2015)

aven000 said:


> That looks a little beast! Also I spy a large cooler there for the CPU....



That is the Scythe Andy Samurai Master it keeps the 3.4GHz (oced to 3.62) extreme edition Gallatin core quite cool under load. I had to mod the brackets with a dremel a a pair of pliers, it would not fit due to interference with the abit otes. Also the chipset cooler (thermalright extreme spirit) has like 1mm gap to both the gpu and the cpu cooler. It was a pain to get everything properly assembled... I think I will do a separate thread.
Btw you retro build turned out to be quite cool  everything so tidy and clean  Mine won't look as clean, also my paint job is kinda messy x)


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## Pentium4dude (Sep 2, 2015)

While some build old P4 systems just for fun, I still use my P4 system that I bought back in 2004 everyday as my main rig because it is faster for gaming than my Core i3 2365M laptop (because of terrible Intel HD graphics and in single thread performance, the P4 still comes very close to an 1.5 Ghz core i3)

Here are the specs:

Pentium 4  2.4C overclocked to 3.2 Ghz with 1066 Mhz FSB (130nm Northwood Hyper threading, stock cooler, no Vcore increase, run overclocked since 2006)
Abit IC7 Motherboard
2x 512 MB Corsair XMS 3200 DDR 400 (1 GB in dual channel 2.5-3-3-7 )
Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT 256 MB AGP
2x 80 GB HDD in RAID 0 (Seagate 7200 RPM SATA-I)
Soundblaster X-Fi XtremeMusic PCI
Windows XP SP3

I still use it for web browsing and development, and even runs some modern games surprisingly well (games like Counter Strike GO, League of Legends, Minecraft, even more heavy ones like Skyrim, Dirt2, Civilization 5 and Tomb Raider are playable on the lowest settings

Here is some advice and interesting stuff i learned over the years:

-Replace that HD 3650 with an Nvidia Geforce 6/7 series GPU (believe it or not, my 7600 GT is a lot faster than your current GPU, going above a 6800/7800 GT is useless because the CPU will bottleneck anything better than it (unless you enable high Anti aliasing) and DX 10 and above GPU´s  have compatibility problems with some old games, avoid ATI/AMD cards for retro games, AGP is preferred and there really is no difference between PCI express and AGP in performance,  avoid using anything above Windows XP, getting a CRT 4:3 monitor would be ideal for this kind of stuff together with a nice EAX sound card like a creative Audigy2 or X-Fi.

- The 90nm cores may have higher clock speeds and bigger L2 caches, but they are actually slower than the 130nm cores (save for some newer software that uses SSE3 and are optimized for hyper threading) due to high cache latency and long pipeline, they also use more power, the 130 nm Extreme edition clocked at 3.4 Ghz has shown to be faster than the 3.73 Ghz 90nm EE, anyways extreme editions are rare and expensive.

- Hyper threading on these CPU´s is pretty much useless, and on the 130nm cores it can actually reduce performance and increase temperatures, on 90nm it got some small improvements and can give a very small performance boost when running multiple different heavy programs, still most threaded programs and games dont get any benefit from it so disable it to increase compatibility with old software, specially so if you overclock.

- P4´s seems to be sensitive to things like overclocking the FSB, getting dual channel memory and reducing memory latency , these improve performance a lot unlike in modern systems where these things only have a tiny impact. Also try to get a motherboard with 875P chipset, these have things like PAT that improve memory latency and impact performance.

- To put P4 cpus performance in perspective, a 3 Ghz P4 gets about the same performance as a Core 2 Duo 1.8/1.9 Ghz CPU with 1 core disabled and  uses more power (The Core 2 was really a huge leap forward, not unlike in modern days where performance and prices do not improve in 6 years.
But surprisingly a 3.2 Ghz Pentium 4 still trounces an Intel Atom 1.8 Ghz dual core in single thread, and gets defeated by a small margin in some multi threaded tests even with 1 core, to think that these pathetic Atom CPUs are still in use for laptops and tablets in 2015 is scary.
Even more scary is that a 3.3 Ghz Pentium 4 has about the same single thread performance as the Playstation 4 CPU (check the cinebench single thread benchmarks if you dont believe me)

-P4 are as low as you can go to run modern software and web browsing, tons of programs refuse to install on AthlonXPs and Pentium 3 CPU´s due to lack of SSE2 (which is extremely widespread unlike SSE3/4 even tough these CPU´s have better clock for clock performance than P4´s) and systems prior to P4s used SDRAM and slow IDE hard drives which make things really slow and unresponsive.
Still Win7 and browsing with few tabs is quite smooth on these old systems as long as you have 800 Mhz FSB and more than 1 GB of RAM, AFAIK you cannot install Windows 8 and 10 on these, due to drivers compatibility and lack of certain CPU features.

- This P4 system costed about 2000$ or more back in 2004, then in 2007 my brother bought a Pentium Dual Core system with 3 GB of RAM and a fast GPU for about 500$ (and that dual core overclocked from 1.8 Ghz to 3 Ghz) that system offered more than 3x the performance and costed 3x less only in 3 years time and used less power,.the performance and the feeling of smoothness was staggering, it points out nicely that purchasing high end parts is always a bad idea.


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## Gaetano77 (Nov 22, 2015)

I also still use a Pentium 4 PC bought in April 2004; here are specs:

- *CPU* Intel Pentium 4 3.00 Ghz (Prescott core - SL7PM) overclocked to 3.40 Ghz (227x15)
- *MoBo* Asus P4P800 Deluxe socket 478
- *RAM* 2 Gb (1x2) G.Skill DDR400 (F1-3200PHU2-2GBNS) running in dual channel mode (2.5-3-3-7)
- *VGA* AGP ATI Radeon Sapphire 9600 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 work (with MS Office 2003 and Office 2007 Compatibility Pack), light 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 middle-resolution (360/480p) and even few at 720p ones without stuttering.

This CPU *doesn't officially support* Windows 8.1 operating system because lack of NX-bit feature, but i succeeded to install it anyway modifying original ISO with *W8CPUFeathure Patch*; the procedure is explained here:

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


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## Deleted member 41019 (Nov 27, 2015)

Well some sad news but also good news!

The motherboard decided it no longer liked electricity and has died but (here is the good news) I am replacing it with a Gigabyte GA-8IPE1000-G Rev 4.0.

I also took the time while the system is having to come apart to replace the old front intake fans with the same ones as the rear. We are now sporting two new Arctic Cooling 'F8' series fans. They really stand out at the front of the system 

Here are some pictures of the replacement (Warning: may not be in order):


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## Deleted member 41019 (Dec 2, 2015)

And the new motherboard is in. 

Here are the specs for those who want to know: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=1863#ov

Also stay tuned for a big update as a major component is going to be replaced very soon!!

Picture time!


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## Deleted member 41019 (Dec 31, 2015)

Well here it is the big update!

I have replaced the ATI HD3650 with a X1950pro. 

The card is much, much better in damn near all ways. My old 3dmark03 score of around 9k (it's in this thread somewhere) was smashed when I took this for a quick spin at stock speeds and got 14.8k. That's a HUGE change right there.

The one thing I am sorry to report is that XP seems to be unstable so I am in the process of repairing the system, I'll then test overclocks and report back with a screenshot of the score and a side-by-side of the specs for the two GPUs.

Last thing: (as I'm typing this at 22:44pm on the 31/12/2015) Happy new year to all!


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## TRWOV (Jan 1, 2016)

The only real upgrades over an X1950PRO are the HD4670 and HD3850.


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## Deleted member 41019 (Jan 1, 2016)

TRWOV said:


> The only real upgrades over an X1950PRO are the HD4670 and HD3850.



Agreed and to be honest it's getting hard to find them. There is also the fact I really dont want to spend £££ for a card only slightly better then this now.

This project got quite out of hand really. It was only ment to be a system to play my old 2000/XP era games on and soon became "let's see how far I can push an AGP system with a 478" as well as "let's see how far I can push my other half when it comes to wasting money on an out of date PC" lol

My other half has been great though and supportive of the project so I thank her a lot


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## uuuaaaaaa (Jan 1, 2016)

I finished my P4 build as well! (specs on the side)


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## TRWOV (Jan 1, 2016)

wow, nice case.... I might cut a window into mine


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## uuuaaaaaa (Jan 1, 2016)

TRWOV said:


> wow, nice case.... I might cut a window into mine



That is exactly what I did!


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## Jesse Ricard (Jan 10, 2016)

Working on my P4 system. Though I'm sure it could use a some better parts, it would be nice if it was worth what my friends dad paid for back in the day


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## Jesse Ricard (Mar 9, 2016)

got my p4 retro tribute rig complete and close to setup how it should have been for its price when my friends dad bought it
specs:
Pentium 4 prescott 3.0 ghz rev C0 S478 1MB l2 800mhzfsb
Gigabyte GA-8IG1000MK rev 2.0
2GB Samsung DDR 400 cl2 (4x512MB)
ASUS v9570 FX5700 ultra 256MB agp 8x 
Soundblaster Audigy2 pci 
Seagate barracuda 7200.9 SATA 160 GB
Coolmax Retail+ 465W  PSU (looks cool)
unknown beige chassis with a couple of led I have added 
color theme is blue beige grey and brass for now but once I got a few bucks for paint and put a window in the case will paint the beige (pentium blue n orange maybe)


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## Deleted member 41019 (Mar 9, 2016)

Jesse Ricard said:


> got my p4 retro tribute rig complete and close to setup how it should have been for its price when my friends dad bought it
> specs:
> Pentium 4 prescott 3.0 ghz rev C0 S478 1MB l2 800mhzfsb
> Gigabyte GA-8IG1000MK rev 2.0
> ...




That's awesome 

Do you want some advice with that board? I had the same one at the start of this project in perfect order but the heat put out by the CPU has cooked the VRM Caps near the CPU socket. Keep a VERY close eye on them and invest in the biggest cooler you can with a copper base.

I may repair my GA-8IG1000MK in the future but for now it stays dead in the loft.
GA-8IG1000MKG
GA-8IG1000MK
GA-8IG1000MK
GA-8IG1000MK


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## Jesse Ricard (Mar 9, 2016)

yes i remember you saying something about that one of the reasons i tie wired on the primecooler hyper cool 4 copper heat sync only have the s462 mounting hardware for it but it really needed to be in this build its a tired old mobo w many hours so i wont have it on often (tribute to late friend)


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## viniraupp (Mar 20, 2016)

Hi Guys, Im from Brazil. Sorry my bad english.

Im glad I found you guys on the internet.

I started my P4 478 project.

The old (and the new too... ) components are hard to find here.  Very hard to find a decent 478 P4. Im still looking...

I already bought the motherboard and memory.

Next week will buy a HD3850.

Do you know if a modern SSD (Kingston 60GB) will work with this motherboard? (Windows XP)


Soyo Dragon 2 P4I875P:


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## uuuaaaaaa (Mar 20, 2016)

viniraupp said:


> Hi Guys, Im from Brazil. Sorry my bad english.
> 
> Im glad I found you guys on the internet.
> 
> ...



It seems that some of us have a thing for the old 478 platform (Nostalgia it is xD)!

Do you have a case and psu already? We need more details!!!


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## viniraupp (Mar 20, 2016)

uuuaaaaaa said:


> It seems that some of us have a thing for the old 478 platform (Nostalgia it is xD)!
> 
> Do you have a case and psu already? We need more details!!!



hahahahahaha
YES, nostalgia is the answer...

I have no idea for a case yet. =[
I want a new one but old school style...
PSU I will use a 500W Corsair.

Now my goal is to find a decent P4 .


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## viniraupp (Mar 20, 2016)

uuuaaaaaa said:


> I finished my P4 build as well! (specs on the side)
> 
> 
> View attachment 70618 View attachment 70619
> ...



haaaaaaa... I want a Abit IC7 Max3 toooooooooo!!!!!! 
I searched everywhere here in Brazil but dont found .


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## uuuaaaaaa (Mar 20, 2016)

viniraupp said:


> haaaaaaa... I want a Abit IC7 Max3 toooooooooo!!!!!!
> I searched everywhere here in Brazil but dont found .




They are incredibly hard to find! This is the one that I have originally bought back in 2004, even in those days it was not easy to get hold off one! I had it paired with P4 3.2E running at 4GHz under water for almost 10 years no problem at all! Don't you envy the P4 3.4 Extreme Edition Gallatin aswell? Those are the best of the best for socket 478!


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## viniraupp (Mar 20, 2016)

uuuaaaaaa said:


> They are incredibly hard to find! This is the one that I have originally bought back in 2004, even in those days it was not easy to get hold off one! I had it paired with P4 3.2E running at 4GHz under water for almost 10 years no problem at all! Don't you envy the P4 3.4 Extreme Edition Gallatin aswell? Those are the best of the best for socket 478!



hahahaha

 I've lost hope to find a P4 Extreme Edition...  I wii be happy to find "normal" P4 3.4GHz (no E.E.) 

Abit, Epox, DFI, Soltek, Soyo, Aopen, Biostar were the best 10 or 15 years ago....


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## uuuaaaaaa (Mar 21, 2016)

viniraupp said:


> hahahaha
> 
> I've lost hope to find a P4 Extreme Edition...  I wii be happy to find "normal" P4 3.4GHz (no E.E.)
> 
> Abit, Epox, DFI, Soltek, Soyo, Aopen, Biostar were the best 10 or 15 years ago....



The Asus P4C800E-Deluxe is also one beast of a motherboard!

You will find those cpu's for cheap on ebay! Will you go Northwood or Prescott?


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## P4-630 (Mar 21, 2016)

I still have a Northwood Celeron 2.0GHz laying around somewhere from my first laptop, but I believe the socket is a little different.


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## R00kie (Mar 21, 2016)

P4-630 said:


> I still have a Northwood Celeron 2.0GHz laying around somewhere from my first laptop, but I believe the socket is a little different.



The socket is electrically different, to be exact, even though it might have the same number of pins.


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## viniraupp (Mar 25, 2016)

My new toys:

I'll try a raid 0... I hope that works with Intel 875P...


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## uuuaaaaaa (Mar 25, 2016)

viniraupp said:


> My new toys:
> 
> I'll try a raid 0... I hope that works with Intel 875P...



I'm curious to see!


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## viniraupp (Mar 25, 2016)

http://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/...8-pentium-4-320eghz-bx80546pg3200esl7pn-o-_JM

P4 3.2 GHz for R$ 10,50 (+/- US$ 3,00)

I think it's Prescott...

Good Deal!

I bought two...

hahahahahahaha


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## Caring1 (Mar 26, 2016)

viniraupp said:


> My new toys:
> 
> I'll try a raid 0... I hope that works with Intel 875P...


Your Motherboard has two raid controllers, I'd try the Intel ICHR5 controller first.
http://www.elhvb.com/supportbios.info/Archives/MANUAL/SOYO/mp4icw2-p10.pdf


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## viniraupp (Mar 27, 2016)

Caring1 said:


> Your Motherboard has two raid controllers, I'd try the Intel ICHR5 controller first.
> http://www.elhvb.com/supportbios.info/Archives/MANUAL/SOYO/mp4icw2-p10.pdf



I'll try ICHR5 first... Thanks

Today I bought the cooler... Brand new... R$ 65,00 (US$ 18,00)

I know Jet4 is more cool than performance... But i love it!


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## t_ski (Mar 27, 2016)

viniraupp said:


> My new toys:
> 
> I'll try a raid 0... I hope that works with Intel 875P...





Caring1 said:


> Your Motherboard has two raid controllers, I'd try the Intel ICHR5 controller first.
> http://www.elhvb.com/supportbios.info/Archives/MANUAL/SOYO/mp4icw2-p10.pdf



If I'm reading the specs right, the board is SATA 1 and the drives are SATA 2, meaning the board will max out and the drives will not.  You would potentially get better performance from one drive and a SATA 2 controller.


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## viniraupp (Mar 27, 2016)

t_ski said:


> If I'm reading the specs right, the board is SATA 1 and the drives are SATA 2, meaning the board will max out and the drives will not.  You would potentially get better performance from one drive and a SATA 2 controller.




Tell me something new now .
It is why I will make a raid

I'll not use a PCI controller


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## uuuaaaaaa (Mar 27, 2016)

viniraupp said:


> I'll try ICHR5 first... Thanks
> 
> Today I bought the cooler... Brand new... R$ 65,00 (US$ 18,00)
> 
> I know Jet4 is more cool than performance... But i love it!


Epic cooling device!

Hey guys, is there any Retro Pentium 4 build club?


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## viniraupp (Mar 31, 2016)

Finally the P4... Brand new, Factory sealed.

Prescott 3.2E
800Mhz / 1MB
SL7PN

I'm sorry to open.


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## dhdude (Apr 10, 2016)

Brand new sealed in box! Awesome! This thread has inspired me to dig through various broken 478 machines and build a nice one!


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## uuuaaaaaa (Apr 10, 2016)

dhdude said:


> Brand new sealed in box! Awesome! This thread has inspired me to dig through various broken 478 machines and build a nice one!



A lot of nostalgic Pentium 4 478 owners!! \/


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## P4-630 (Apr 10, 2016)

viniraupp said:


> Finally the P4... Brand new, Factory sealed.
> 
> Prescott 3.2E
> 800Mhz / 1MB
> ...



P4 3.2E, I know EE was extreme edition, what is the "E"?


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## uuuaaaaaa (Apr 10, 2016)

P4-630 said:


> P4 3.2E, I know EE was extreme edition, what is the "E"?



"E" is for the Prescott!


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## viniraupp (Apr 11, 2016)

I have bad news...

My Soyo MB P4I875P is the first version and don't work with Prescott processors...

And I don't find a decent Northwood here in Brasil...

Now I'm looking for a new MB again...


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## wagana (Apr 11, 2016)

Ayyyy... Me being poor and having to sell my P4s...
You're tempting me even more to keep my SL7PN & GA-8IPE1000-G (which has "funny" SATA problems)& FX 5500 w new caps 


P4-630 said:


> P4 3.2E, I know EE was extreme edition, what is the "E"?


Your nickname... my sister is using one right now 
*
EDIT:*
Look how cute it is... those mighty Rubycons, that devilish stock heatsink XD, gigabyte's blue PCB and the new NB heatsink cause it used to overheat
Did I mention how well it runs Windows 7 ?


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## viniraupp (Apr 11, 2016)

DEcobra11 said:


> Ayyyy... Me being poor and having to sell my P4s...
> You're tempting me even more to keep my SL7PN & GA-8IPE1000-G (which has "funny" SATA problems)& FX 5500 w new caps
> 
> Your nickname... my sister is using one right now
> ...



This Gigabyte looks like brand new...


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## wagana (Apr 11, 2016)

viniraupp said:


> This Gigabyte looks like brand new...


I cleaned it the best I could without access to anti-static brushes
I've another gigabyte MB, the 8S648FXP-RZ + similar CPU but at 3 GHz. Has SATA RAID support but no dual-channel
I'm an Asrock "fanboy" with lots of gigabyte boards...








And I'd mention my brave PSU... that little 300W is too brave


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## Deleted member 41019 (Apr 18, 2016)

viniraupp said:


> I'll try ICHR5 first... Thanks
> 
> Today I bought the cooler... Brand new... R$ 65,00 (US$ 18,00)
> 
> I know Jet4 is more cool than performance... But i love it!



Nice large copper base is ideal or watercooling but I could never find the right pumps/brackets for my 478.


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## Deleted member 41019 (Apr 18, 2016)

If anyone is interested I have created the 'Pentium Owners Club' and you can find it here: http://pentiumownersclub.boards.net/


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## uuuaaaaaa (Apr 18, 2016)

aven000 said:


> If anyone is interested I have created the 'Pentium Owners Club' and you can find it here: http://pentiumownersclub.boards.net/



Lets start uploading stuff!


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## Deleted member 41019 (Apr 20, 2016)

So here is the current 3dmark 03 score for the system.

I did not expect it to be that high...


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## Deleted member 41019 (Apr 21, 2016)

3dmark 05 score


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## Deleted member 41019 (May 3, 2016)

Massive update to the project here guys!!

Water HO!!!!!!!!!!!


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## Deleted member 41019 (May 9, 2016)

Some changes made to the water cooler and hard drive. You can read it all here:  ClIcK mE!


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## Nostalgic Hardware (Dec 25, 2016)

Hey guys

Nice rigs
Im also building a P4 rig

Specs below
CPU: Pentium 4 3.4ghz EE
Mobo: IC7-Max3
GPU: HD3850AGP
Ram: G Skill DDR500
HDD: 2x WD 74GB Raptors

Will get photos soon!


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## uuuaaaaaa (Dec 25, 2016)

LegendofMadness said:


> Hey guys
> 
> Nice rigs
> Im also building a P4 rig
> ...




Epic man! We have almost the same rig!  my raptors are dead tho :/ I also have some Ballistix tracer ram!  I expect some pictures!


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## TRWOV (Dec 25, 2016)

I might get out mine from storage and run some benchmarks


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## Nostalgic Hardware (Dec 29, 2016)

What a score this was
Just need a decent cooler for this rig

Any suggestions?


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## uuuaaaaaa (Dec 29, 2016)

LegendofMadness said:


> What a score this was
> Just need a decent cooler for this rig
> 
> Any suggestions?



What kind of 3850 is that? I don't know any AGP HD3850 with that kind of cooler! Get a decent behemoth of a cooler for that CPU, that is my suggestion! I got a Scythe Andy Samurai Master for my 3.4EE Gallatin, but you will need to change the chipset cooler to use one of those!

Check out my system on pages 4 and 5 of this thread!


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## Nostalgic Hardware (Dec 29, 2016)

It's a HIS 3850AGP with a Direct CU cooler from a Asus HD6870

Had a look, great build.  It inspired me to dig this out 

I've got a Zalman Reserator1 Water-cooling setup I might use, Its big and bulky though!


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## uuuaaaaaa (Dec 29, 2016)

LegendofMadness said:


> It's a HIS 3850AGP with a Direct CU cooler from a Asus HD6870
> 
> Had a look, great build.  It inspired me to dig this out
> 
> I've got a Zalman Reserator1 Water-cooling setup I might use, Its big and bulky though!



You know you gotta use it! hahaha


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