The Larp, or a tour of my new retro computer

i recently finished my retro computer. my reasoning for building a new retro computer was to finally replace the compaq evo d510 sff computer i had since 2011 which could not run anything at all. that computer wasn't able to handle windows xp, 2000, nor even 98 without throttling itself. it couldn't run any game newer than half-life 1 without having very poor framerate, and at the time i couldn't even afford an agp card off ebay. around the end of 2023, i discovered that all of the capacitors in it were leaking, so i ended up letting it go in favor of waiting to be eventually able to build a new computer for xp. that sounds stupid. at the time i could have just bought a cheap used dell dimension/optiplex or hp pavilion or whatever, but i couldn't. i wasn't able to have nor spend money of my own until 2025.

the case was initially bought for my main computer, the shitbox, during the 2 week period of time in which i was considering making it a sleeper build. the original case for that computer was going to be a cooler master n400, but long story short that case sucked so i ended up buying this case off ebay... and then the sleeper build plans fell apart when i realized the cooling wouldn't have been suitable at all. so i was ultimately left with having to find a new use for this case, which ended up being the retro computer.

the era i was aiming for this build was roughly 2005-2006, specifically before the arrival of the intel core line of processors and the release of windows vista, so i went for an athlon 64 (socket 939) and windows xp. i'll admit i hastily picked the motherboard off a list of like 100 on ebay. i wanted something that was in box and seemed unused. i didn't really feel like wanting to deal with the remains of someone's previous build. it's a tyan tomcat k8e motherboard. tyan, which appears to have gone defunct(?), produces server/workstation motherboards. so this doesn't have any gaming-enthusiast grade stuff, but i don't really care. if it works, it's fine.

the only part i actually knew i wanted to get for this build was the ati radeon x1800xt. it does run quite hot under full usage, but it's good enough for the games i want to run on here.

now, the era appropriateness is a bit off. disregarding the case which is from 2002. the hard drive is brand new and was manufactured in 2025. the motherboard supports sata so i figured i would get a brand new drive rather than getting an old one. i admit i do want one of those 10000rpm wd raptor drives, but i feel very uneasy buying an used hard drive online. the cooler is from i think 2009? it was marked as being compatible for AM2.

the monitor i'm using is an acer al1717. it's a 1280x1024 75hz lcd monitor which is era appropriate (i think a little too new?) and small enough to fit my crammed desktop which already has my main computer and macbook pro on it. i acquired this monitor for free around august 2021 as i found it outside about to be thrown away. it has integrated speakers but they don't sound good. i don't know if i'll be able to fit speakers in there. i do already have in my possession a set of logitech 2.1 speakers which i think are from this era(???), but the speakers are partially broken and god knows where i'll be able to fit the subwoofer.

for the benchmarks, i don't have much but here are a few of them:

• 3DMark03 (1024x768): 15942 3DMarks (Results)
• 3DMark05 (1024x768): 8371 3DMarks (Results)
• 3DMark06 (1024x768): 4452 3DMarks (Results)
• 3DMark06 (1280x1024): 3893 3DMarks (Results)
• PCMark05: 3989 PCMarks (Results)
• Counter-Strike Source Video Stress Test: 135.23 FPS

just so i don't have to write another update blogpost, i'm announcing that i have restored the older 2025 design of this website for those on older browsers, specifically those with "Mozilla/4.0" in their user agent. that is very stupid, but i'll try to implement a robust "detection" system eventually. that's all for now.