The Perfect Windows XP PC?
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- čas přidán 1. 03. 2024
- Has the channel been donated the Perfect WindowsXP PC? Let's go over this amazing system from 2008 and discover what goodies are inside. Was this system our dream system back in the day? Let's find out!
#retropc #nostalgia #retro #retrocomputing #intel #nvidia #windows #microsoft #windowsxp #pcgaming #pcgames
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Interesting how at each point in time 5-10 years old hardware is seen as "old junk" and usually goes straight into the trash can... But when it reaches 15+ years of age, it's suddenly "retro", "vintage" and cool and valuable again.
Idk why cause those pc are quite capable and in other countries people would use it like new.
For sure, I see it all of the time.
That's true of lots of other things too, e.g. cars, although with cars it's more like 30+ years before something is really retro/vintage/cool/valuable.
You'd be surprised of what people throw out sometimes, at least here in sweden.
I got a ryzen 7 3700x & gtx 1660 ti from the scrapyard electronics container out of a thrown out hp pavilion gaming pc, had no ram or storage though.
Haven't tested the 3700x yet but might do it later today if im not too busy doing other stuff that needs to be done today.
(I know a small batch of motherboards had a bios version which ends up overvolting the ryzen 3000 series cpu's frying one memory channel eventually which can look like the pc breaking ofc.) but the HP 1660 ti works perfectly fine.
Awesome find! Good luck on the testing.. Interested to hear how it turns out :)
My main XP system is a:
* Core 2 Quad Q9550 processor
* Asus P5K-E Motnerboard
* 4 GB RAM
* 128gb SSD.
* ATI 5850 1GB graphics card.
* SB Audigy 2 PCI sound card
* Intel Wifi-N Pci-e card.
* 2 x DVD burners (Pioneer 218L + Optiarc AD-7200S)
* 22 inch widescreen monitor (1680 x 1050 resolution, as was popular in the day)
It rips pretty hard for the era of games it needs to run, plus lets me burn DVDs for other systems. I don't have a floppy in it, but can plug a USB floppy drive into it easy enough. You can generally set core affinity for any games that don't like quad core.
That's a pretty nice build. I have a core 2 Quad sitting around, I need to check which one it is... However I'm sure this board will support it.
Sounds a lot like mine ... I have 8 gb of ram and 500 SSD only difference hehe
Awesome!
Yeah!!
With just an additional 4 gb of ram,it would greatly run Win7,or even Win10!.
@@TheRetroRecall Yeah, The P5Q supports all the Quads I know about.
@DuneRunnerEnterprises Yes, but then why not use something even newer and more powerful. Additionally, If I want 8gb in my system, I can change that out in about 10 minutes. But I get where you are coming from
For more information on Asus ExpressGate, Cathode Ray Dude did a video on it as part of his Quick Start series.
Thanks! I'll check it out. I know nothing about it lol.
@@TheRetroRecall you're welcome. It's an interesting one.
I had an Asus gaming laptop with ExpressGate. It had Windows 7 instead of Vista. It had a I5 560M cpu and a GTS 360M gpu with 4 gb ram and a 500gb hdd. I later upgraded it to a 256 gb ssd and 8 gb ram and installed Ubuntu (which eliminated the ExpressGate partition). I have been watching CRD on these quick start laptops.
Install a gtx 260😊 has af fast memory bus
I think I may have one!! I'll check.
When I ran XP as a daily (all the way up to about 2012), my last system had an AMD Phenom x4, 4 GB RAM, and a GTX 700 series graphics. That was a beast.
Now, I have rebuilt an XP PC for some 95-XP era gaming, and it's running an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3 GHz, 3 GB RAM, and GTX 950 with 2 GB vRAM.
I've also got an eMachines Monster PC running Windows 98 with an Intel Pentium II (or is it a 3? I don't remember), 64 MB RAM, and some random ATi graphics card that I got before building my recent XP machine that was for 95/98 PC gaming.
I'm actually trying to start a channel around 95-XP era gaming, and Linux gaming. Not this channel, I created another channel. Just need time to focus on it.
It's a fun hobby for sure!! What is your channel, I'll check it out :)
I kept my childhood dell and I got it restored to windows 95 I have another dell that someone loaded xp on and I can't get windows 95 or 98 to load yet but I will figure it out. @@TheRetroRecall
It's fun to tinker with these systems and get them going - much like what we had to do many years ago. Good luck on your build! There are a lot of resources online to help you with it.
I have looked I think someone may have tampored with the bios but im not to sure I put it aside for now as i have one with 95 fully working. Did you ever play with the creative labs text to speech reader it comes with the soudnblaster 64 and 32 models. @@TheRetroRecall
To be honest I never have, however I did see something similar in use one time for accessibility. It was neat to see in action (even though it seemed limited).
Stumbled upon your channel 2 days ago and have been bingeing like a madman lol. Absolutely love these older hardware/retro tech vids as it brings back so many fond memories of PC's I owned in the past especially these core 2 duo and the Pentium 2 vids. Keep up the good work man you have my sub👍🏼👍🏼
Thank you and welcome aboard! I've been offline for a little bit but going to start back up here shortly. Hope you enjoy and thanks for being a part of the journey!
the good old core 2 duo you gotta love those bad boys.
Absolutely
Windows XP Professional 32 Bit SP3 in 2024
It's a beautiful feeling :)
@@TheRetroRecall 100% Facts
The first PC I built was in 2006, I was super on top of hardware in this era.
Awesome! It was definitely a fun time of computing.
Great video as always! just keep it as it is and do some cleaning, cable management and perhaps renew the paste on the coolers!
Thank you! Yes, and change out the PSU as I'm being told these ones tended to explode and damage the 12v rail.
Amazing video tutorial dude, learnt alot about xp on this vid, great indepth tutorial
Thank you and thanks for showcasing this video on your Twitch Stream!! ❤️
I've got an old Medion brand XP Pro laptop running all my ham radio software, never misses a beat
That's awesome! I know quite a few businesses that still run systems win with XP pro and have been since 2004. They do so for legacy software and real mode serial compatibility.
When vista came out, before sp1- many people reverted to xp and xp was still offered as a factory option, until windows 7 was released
Yes 100%. Although I had moved to Vista, other machines I had stayed with XP due to it being so robust.
@TheRetroRecall i did everything i could to strip down start-up programs and unneeded windows features
Built my first PC in mid-2009, which then ran Windows XP for the first 2 years of it's life. After carefully considering performance and price, I went with an ASUS P5Q3 motherboard, 2 X 2GB DDR3 1333, and a Q9550 in a beautiful Thermatake SopranoRS 101 case with a 500W Thermaltake power supply. Topped with a 500GB Western Digital HD, DVD drive, and a Sapphire HD 4850 GPU. Played all the games I was interested in at the highest settings (in 1680 x 1050). Before the lighting struck and ended that wonderful motherboard sometime in 2018, I had maxed the RAM to 4 X 4GB of DDR3 1600, easily overclocked the Q9550 from 2.83Ghz to 3.4Ghz, upgraded the HD to a 1TB SSD, swapped the DVD drive for a Blu-ray, upgraded to the HD 6950 (unlocked to a HD 6970) GPU and Windows 10. A BEAST!
Now that was a system!!! Too bad the lightning got it. Ahhh the Blu ray drives. Short lived - especially for anyone wanting to write 25gbs of data (which I am going to be doing this afternoon 😂)
In my opinion the "perfect" Windows XP PC (if you are only going to have one) is something with a 3rd generation I7 CPU. Something like an OptiPlex 9010. They are technically built for Windows 7, but are the last generation to officially support Windows XP, and all of the drivers exist and are stable.
Good to know. I think era specific is what I was aiming at. Thinking back in 2008 this would have been a beast running XP.
I love those thumb screws as it makes getting in to systems so much easier. Every system I've built, and my retro systems I replaced the normal screws with thumb screws. I've also got some case locks that screw into the case and have a round key lock that covers the screw port. I only install them on my high end systems, and on my Dell PowerEdge server.
Agreed and neat! I never heard of those locks before for screws. The only time I've seen those key locks outside of the older systems is on DELL rackmount servers which lock a metal grate over the controls so no one can do anything unless its removed.
Wow, that's quite an XP machine! And very professionally assembled too. I would add the Soundblaster Live, but I wouldn't change the 9400 video card
Thanks! And yes, we'll built.
I’d look for a single slot 8800 GT or 9800 GT, would be a night and day difference between the 9400 GT in performance.
For sure.
A system like this was a dream for me back in 2009 when i was still using an Athlon XP system. Sometimes i can't believe how fast time went and how such a nice system from back then is pretty much worthless in this day and age
I would say that you could probably put on a decent distro of Linux and bring it online. I mean to be practical you probably wouldn't haha. I know my Core2duo system is still running windows 10 now.
@@TheRetroRecall For sure. If you add an ssd it runs Windows 10 pretty good too. I had an old LGA 775 HP Elitedesk at work till last year and i took it for myself after they replaced it with a newer computer. It had a Pentium E5700 which i replaced with a Xeon E3110 that i found in an old server,put 8GB of DDR3 in it and an HD 8570 and it can still do basic things. Even though my main pc is AM5 based i still like to mess with this old stuff. Picked up a barely used 2008 22 inch Dell Ultrasharp monitor for it and got myself a little XP and Vista box
That's awesome!! I love a lot of those Dell monitors - I found them easy on the eyes. Enjoy the xp and Vista machines!
I had the same Asus mobo. That P5Q was a really good board. I recognized it instantly from the heatsinks, but the back panel and the firewire PCI slot addon made it sus from the beginning. Unfortunately this mobo was made too during the capacitor plague and mine got victim of leaky caps. It served as my first NAS at the end of its lifecycle(8Gb DDR2 1066MHz, Q9550).
That's awesome and yes it's a great board - fully feature packed! Thanks for letting me know about it being from the cap plague area - I'll keep an eye out!
@@TheRetroRecall Yeah pretty much anything from like 2003 to 2008 you have to keep an eye on. I have a 2006'ish dell boring box and its caps have yet to have issues as well so its not always a problem.
@@TheRetroRecall I would suggest more than 'keep an eye out' - just bite the bullet and recap the whole MB and PSU before anything starts to leak.
I really miss the WinXP days, but even moreso I love Win98SE. Even though it was not a 'secure' system and every user was automatically Admin, I loved the interface, and things seemed to Just Work(tm).
Plus, you could still boot to DOS mode and play your older DOS games that didn't suffer from excessive CPU speed.
I still have 3-4 XP machines floating around in my basement. Sometimes I'll pull one out and play with it for nostalgia's sake. I had a 9400 GT card for a while and I loved it. It played all the games that I was playing at the time and it did just fine. I actually built a few computers for some coworkers and used the 9400 GT in them, couldn't beat them for the price at the time.
For sure! I think a slightly better card would open up even more range of gameplay but this one hasn't been bad so far :)
I still have this mobo since 2008, today I use it as an emulation platform. The specs:
CPU: Xeon E5450
Ram: 8GiB DDR2
GPU: HD4870
Storage: 64GiB SSD for the system and a 500GiB for games
O.S: Windows 10 X64
Monitor: CRT TV connected via S-Video (looks like Ati HD 4000 series are the last with good s-video support).
Nice setup!
My retro PC is from 2008 too! It contains:
1. Core 2 Duo E8600 @2.80 GHz (OC to 3.00GHz)
2. Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L
3. 4 GB DDR2 @800 Mhz
4. 1TB Seagate HDD 7200 RPM
5. Nvidia GeForce GT 710 (Was put into it recently in 2023)
It was originally with Windows Vista... Upgraded to Windows 7 in 2013...
its pretty awesome! I always wanted either Core 2 Duo E8500 or E8600 since they came unlocked, realistically speaking was a LOT cheaper than Intel Xeon Processor X3380 (good luck with BIOS upgrading although your Motherboard can support Xeon E5450) or the Extreme 9770 (the power starved). my friend had the Q9650 which cost him his entire salary with 8800GTX!
710 is more efficient than 8600GT with 4X the ram. You just need an SSD with a newer "lite" version operating system(10 or 8.1) then you are good to go for another 5 years.
I haven't tried linux with graphics cards so I don't know about Nvidia compatibility
@@EslamNawito That's Cool to know! Thanks for your suggestion...
Awesome build!
@@TheRetroRecall Thank You!
No problem. I love seeing these systems still in action and seeing the community interact. This is exactly why I do this channel :)
Ahh another great Vid.. AND I noticed you are original/canon Star Wars fan???
Hahaha yes. One of the many series I collect haha!
Very well presented and detailed breakdown of this Asus motherboard computer. One of my computers designed for Windows XP and currently with Windows XP on it of the same vintage (2008-2009) has the Gigabyte ga-ma790x-ud4p motherboard. I like it as I think it's well-built and still runs well. It has an AMD Phenom II X4 940 processor with DDR2 RAM. I wish it had DDR3 RAM and SATA3 rather than DDR2 RAM and SATA2 but for its day it was the norm. It's a fast-running XP-based system and could be much faster if I used an SSD for the system drive. As for operating systems, I think you'll be limited by the device drivers that work on your hardware. My Gigabyte motherboard is supported with drivers for Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 by Gigabyte. I don't know if Windows 10 will run on it (or run well) but I'm skeptical. XP is a good OS and your motherboard was designed for it so it seems a good choice. On the other hand, taking Vista or Windows 7 for a test drive on it may prove to be worthwhile.
I have three XP machines currently. I had my 11 year old daughter build one as a learning experience. We connect them up and have been playing some Command and Conquer Generals on it. She loves that game and we have a great time.
Nice!! Now those are great memories :)
It's nice to see that.
Thanks!
I have a similar motherboard to that in your computer.
I want to upgrade it with a Quad core CPU and something like a GTX 750, that would be about the max gfx not to bottleneck performance between the gpu and cpu.
Overall you have a great system right there. It will plow through most games and software of the era like a charm.
Awesome thanks! I have a Core2 Quad and a GTX 750... So I think that will be nice additions.
Amazing build! I would like to have one of these at home, but atleast I got my Acer Travelmate 240 laptop from 2003 I got for 2 bucks. Even with that old Celeron CPU, I can actually use that for web browsing with Supermium browser and with some ms office suite (2007 for example), its not a bad machine for basic home web browsing and office tasks. Its a great retro gaming machine.
That's awesome that you still have some real hardware going!
Well for an XP machine this damn thing is beast, A BEAST!! the only upgrades I would suggest is looking up/into a wifi/Bluetooth PCI/PCI Express Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card and a 52-1 memory card reader..
Smart - can't have enough PORTS LOL. Thanks for the recommendation!
Ah yes a WiFi/Bluetooth/wifi/Bluetooth card. I need two WiFi an Bluetooths
Give me all the ports, WiFi and Bluetooth!
My first pc build was in the summer of 2007. Great times! Had a Core 2 Duo E6320, 2GB DDR2 667MHz, and an MSI 8600GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI-E. Absolutely massive upgrade from my Pentium 3 1GHz machine I struggled with until then. Went straight from Win 2K to Vista and back to XP because Vista ran like crap 😂 solid mid range pc for only $650 back then. Now it would be like $1800...
Haha that's great and yes the prices have definitely changed! Thanks for watching
Awesome pc and can run any os depending on the use xp for retrogaming, and even w10 or Linux for web browsing
Absolutely - any Linux distro recommendations?
Well there's a lot of good ones. But mostly Linux mint, but you can try any decent distro that not ask much.
Even you can put ones that doesn't take much like mx, q4os and even rasbian. There new ones like locos too. Also if you like retrogaming batocera works too.
What is the interesting thing to be here - is a working "silent" GPU!!
Usually, they are toast now,but you got lucky!!
Yes!
You can activate Win XP and Vista over the internet after installing Legacy Update so no need for telephone activation anymore! Here where i do live, there is something gone wrong with the telephone activation anyway. The audio is somehow corrupted etc so cannot hear the numbers for installation id. just BEEP comes right on some of the numbers :D
I had to use the phone service to activate Windows 7. It was automated And I was asked if I wanted to get it activated through text to my phone. I did it that way and it worked perfect. I activated Windows XP pro and I didn't even need any activation call at all. I think you need to call to activate Windows XP home.
@@MrModaman Well i used XP Home and activated that over internet. Legacy Update does something that it starts working again. And Win 7 does also activate over internet just fine after applying few updates. It is a different story if your machine is not connected to internet which it should't basicly but i always use it just to install updates, activate and installing latest virus definitions. I guess we live in different country so the phone call system might be different too. It was also automated but i had no option for text message, only the automated where you insert your install id and then it gives you the code to write on the activation window.
I didn't know. I'm going to be setting up a segregated network for my retro network to protect the rest of it for when I put any of these machines online. Once that is done I will try the online activation. Cool they still have it going!
That is exactly how I do it, through my cell. It's easy.
@@TheRetroRecallThat's an good idea! I anyway have only like 5 older pcs. One running XP and the rest does run Vista. But someone like you who does alot of this stuff and owns many systems even older than mine, i understand that segregated network will come handy (especially machines from like dumbster etc when the history and possibility of having malware on them is really big risk for your other computers) . I mostly share network via another computer. I dont know if that is any safe but i dont use my machines online after updates etc so i guess it's not that risky.
This one brings back alot of memories. Had a very similar system back in the day, which was my first fairly decent pc. Mine had the Asus P5Q Deluxe with a Q8200, 4gb of 1066 OCZ Ram, a 9400GT, 160G HDD and Windows Xp. That 9400GT wasn't too great so I quickly upgraded to a much faster GTX470 and also upgraded to Windows 7. I used that system until the end of 2012 when I finally replaced it with something newer.
That's sound slike a great machine!
@@TheRetroRecall I did build that one in early 2009, so the then new i7 1366 platform had already been launched, but at that time I was still in school and simply could not afford something that pricey. But still that machine was a huge step forward over the old K7 Athlon I was using before. Honestly that 9400GT wasn't that great and already kinda obsolete in 2010. The Q8200 is pretty much a Q6600 in 45nm and with less cache and started to slightly bottleneck the gpu in newer titles. Back then multi gpu setups were all the rage and I always dreamt about owning one one day. So I upgraded to a much nicer socket 2011 platform which actually ran (with minor upgrades) unitl a couple months ago. That Q8200 still lives on in a slightly newer Dell machine. I still own all the other stuff to, funny enough that Asus currently has a E7300 in it.
Thanks for sharing this. I think I'm going to replace the card with the GTX 750 and do other updates in a future video.
I eventually want to get around to building an unusual XP build on the budget.
My plan is to use a GT 730, C2Q (or possibly a Pentium G2140), and a SD to SATA adapter with a SanDisk 256 GB SD card.
That would be a fun build. The SD adapter is a nice touch for easy access and versatility for OS swaps etc. Nice!
Ok, Top of the line graphics for Nvidia that year was the 9800 GTX+ (or the GX2 if you feel like dealing with a dual GPU card) But you can probably put in a midrange 200 or 300 series card before you run into a bottleneck. The 700 might be pushing it, but it'd be interesting to see.
Appreciate it!
this is fairly close to the stock specs on the work pc my dad brought home when they closed. it even came out around the same time. sure it didn't have a floppy, had 2 gigs of ram, and no surround sound or dedicated video card, but other than that it was pretty close to this. after i made some upgrades to it, it became capable of running crysis at a reasonable fps. even the heaven benchmark runs fairly well all things considered. yes it still works under xp believe it or not although i needed to specifically search for a version that would
Nice!!! It was always fun trying to squeeze as much performance as possible out of these machines.
A nice computer system. You can use Zorin OS. Version 17 is for newer systems and 16 for older systems. It look like Windows but fast and more options then Windows. Probe it. Greetings from Steven from the Netherlands.
Thanks for the recommendation!! I'll check it out!
Core 2 Duo / Quad is perhaps overkill for Windows XP. At the moment I am building a Pentium 4 (Socket 478) I plan on using for retro Win XP applications and can't wait to finish the build. One question though. Is MS-DOS also included in the Windows XP installation or should I configure a dual boot for that?
Dual boot for sure if you want to play any retro games in real DOS mode.
There is no overkill hardware for XP, try run Crysis1 and you will need the absolute maximum VGA that have driver support for it. R9-390X / GTX980TI. Plus CPU.
I have a gigabyte 945-s2c motherboard. I upgraded it to Max core 2 duo cpu and 4gb Ram, with an SSD and a graphic card, Windows 10, and now it's my main pc ❤
That's awesome!! I love hearing the older tech still in use today.
My perfect xp pcs are a phenom II x4 965 at 4.25 ghz on a msi 970 gaming and radeon hd 4870x2 next to a xeon 5470 at 4.4 ghz on a asus striker 2 formula and a geforce 9800 gx2. Express Gate is a linux environment integrated in the motherboard. Maybe cool to take a look. Yes a gtx 700 series introduces too much of a driver overhead. That cpu will do good with 8800 gtx though.
Thanks for this, I definitely will! I love the features of this MB.
@@TheRetroRecall Yeah these asus boards are really decent. Will need some new paste on north and south bridge. North bridge can get a little toasty specially while overclocking. Xp is perfect for early retro gaming.
Ok, that's great to know. I'll make that part of the cleanup process, thanks!
@@TheRetroRecall If the heatsink does not easily come off, do it really slow and not use lots of force. Many of the asus boards have thermal pads on the north and south bridge instead of paste that has turned into concrete. I have seen people ripp the chips right off the board.
Another great tip, thanks. It's funny as I've seen these Thermal pads around and used but I always use the mx4 - I guess I am old school. Thanks again, very much appreciated!
I have that same board, It's pretty nice. I recommend updating to the latest non beta bios, it fixes some memory incompatibilities that cause crashes with some Kingston ram(like the kit was using) I have a Core 2 Quad Q9550 and 8GB of ddr2-800 in it, it can take 16gb though. Another nice thing is that it supports PCI-E 2.0, so you can put better graphics cards into it and not lose as much performance.
Thanks for the info, much appreciated! I'll check the latest BIOS out.
@@TheRetroRecall it appears to already have the version with that fix, but you may as well update anyway. Mine is rock solid stable on the latest, which is 2209.
Thanks again. Glad to hear from someone who tested it out and can report back that it is stable.
What a great machine. This comes from a unique place in time when average PCs were finally fast enough to run Windows and anything else, with a satisfactory experience rather than struggling. Definitely worthy of preserving. The ONLY change I would make is clone both drives to SATA SSDs. Those drives have a lot of years behind them and will probably be the first things to fail. So swap in two SSDs and keep it in RAID for fun.
I was thinking the same thing!!! Thank you!
I'm collecting some ddr2 systems first for xp vista compatibility and seven later because the video card is still cheap and you can do sli.
Yes for sure. It's fun tweaking these older systems.. I'm glad to hear someone else is also indulging in my bad habit 😂
I love systems like these because they will support W10! all it takes it the right processor, enough memory and and a 500 to 1TB hard drive and you're good to go! love the chassis! I just wish these style chassis were still available! too bad the industry went periphial free chassis.... systems don't die anymore, they just get reborn!
Yes agreed! I'm find myself wanting to bring back the ivory / beige cases now :)
Also depending on the cpu you can still use supermium that is a chrome fork for xp and mypal one of the Firefox forks for xp
Thanks!!
Main pale moon doesn’t work last I checked, but there are forks like mypal that do work fine
@@notNajimi yes I confused the name my bad. My pal does require some cpu extensions tho.
Cable management was not a thing back then. Yes I would know, because I was there :-)
Haha true - so I guess when I refer to cable management.. I'm referring to keeping them as tight, clean and out of the way of airflow. In this case, it looks like they did a pretty good job (Imo). Those were the days haha.
I think you should put an ssd in it.
It would be cool to benchmark the system as is.... Then put the SSD, Winxp 64 and a better video card and get the new results. Then, for the final stage, tweak the ram timing / performance and the CPU - then take another benchmark.
Core 2 duo's make really good systems for windows xp. The key thing is they have good drivers and are still available for good prices. I run mine with a Nvidia quadro k620 for graphics. Performance is great it was cheep and the drivers are stable and easy to find.
Exactly. I find if you have the more mainstream well known brands - you are set as there is a wide range of drivers available.
I have a dell workstation laptop that has a core 2 duo that came factory with xp pro...nice machine there
That's perfect! I have a Dell Precision m4600 that is still going today. It's pretty cool how much life you can squeeze out of these machines.
I ran window XP on a first gen core 2 E6300 1.6ghz with an 6600GT graphics card, happy days. IMO, win XP is at the moment the newest O/S which should be considered Retro.
Nice and agreed. Windows Vista for me is almost knocking on that door.
Definitely looks like a well-rounded system for whatever path you take. This could probably run modern Linux & do modern web browsing! 😉
For sure, any Linux recommendations?
@@TheRetroRecall I'd probably start with the latest Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon & see how that handles! 🙂
Thank you!
wow all that hardware for XP.... it's crazy I'd have loved that system back then. I'd keep this system as is.
Agreed, it's a nice system! It hi k the video card may require a change out to be a little bit beefier, but everything else I think is golden. It would be a nice benchmarking machine for a future video.
@@TheRetroRecallyeah that might be appropriate, I had a GTX 770 in my system that was about this era..... (now I've got a 13th gen CPU with a GTX 1080 lol)
Hahah more power!
@@TheRetroRecall yeah time to get a 4070 Super I think, but that's not what this video is about :D
Top of the line motherboard, built many systems with that reliable and stable board. Nice high quality GPU.
Awesome! I've read a lot of great things online about it.
I have a old Core Duo macine with XP Pro, E8500 CPU, Asus dual fan 750Ti, 4GB DDR3 1600MHZ memory, Floppy drive, DVD multi drive, Creative Audigy 2 value PCI sound card, on a AsRock motherbaoard, MATX. System if fast. Have a Smsung 1TB SSD for a boot drive. Should be a nice reliable system for me.
I also have on the other exteme,
Ivy Bridge I7-3770 CPU
16GB Corsair Vengance memory at 1600MHz mainly because I left it in the board.
AMD HD 7970 GPU
Creative RX 5.1 PCIe sound card
This one is a beast for XP.
As for your system,
700 series GPU might work, You can run all the way up to 980Ti on that thing. Drivers are better on AMD HD series GPUs. New Nvidia drivers don't allow for proper aspect ratio on wide screen monitors.
Appreciate this, love your system builds!
I think a dual-boot system makes sense. I'd keep XP, maybe add a Linux distro like Ubuntu. It just depends on how you want to use it.
I was definitely thinking dual boot. It's nice hardware to share :)
...👀 Looks cool.👏👏👏 ... also for the algorithms.
Thank you to both!
Had some nasty tearing in Doom 3 with that card. Probably could set the options to vsync and fix that though.
Yes I noticed after and adjusted it. Either way a better card would make a world of difference
My XP super system is an Intel Xeon E5-2667v2 on an Asus P9X79 with a GTX 650 and multiple SSDs, I know its overkill but it was also destined originally to dual boot W11 for use as a streaming PC until I saw the cpu was still too weak for OBS at a decent quality
Nice build!
Looks like a really nice PC. I would love to see Windows 10 on this because, if it is possible, it would allow a huge amount of possibilities. Like, the ultimate PC. And, put so-called "modern" PC's to shame. Also, it's so clean!
Thanks! Yes, it was quite clean and so much more interesting than modern PC's for sure.
My secondary PC is an Intel Core 2 Quad, GT710, 4gb of DDR2 ram and two 128GB SSD. I have installed Windows XP, Vista and 7 on one SSD and the other one runs Windows 10 LTSC. You could do something similar to what I have and have multiple OS installed, maybe replace Vista with Linux.
Awesome build and great ideas, thank you!
Yeah, I think that I’d take my chances with a SFF Optiplex 745.
Haha for sure - the only challenge I have seen is getting compatible, decent low profile cards that perform well. Not saying its impossible, just it can be challenging.
I would love to see the latest Debian Bookworm with the XFCE desktop running on here with Google Chrome. Or maybe even Kali Linux.
Thanks for the recommendation!! I will check it out. The nice thing about having many HDDs. :)
A fine donation.
100% agreed!
The other thing I would really suggest for this system is a CPU upgrade. Q9650 would be niiiiiiiice... add two more cores and get a modest bump in single-core performance. And the 1333MHz FSB. Probably more cache per core too, I'd have to check the specs.
It's funny, the person who built this PC did the same thing I did back in the day - high-end motherboard (mine was less high-end than this one though), but relatively low-middle-end processor by comparison. Easy to upgrade 15 years later thanks to the miracle of eBay :)
Yes, totally! This board is pretty well rounded and is going to be a lot of fun to tweak! Ebay can be dangerous lol
Also there are modded xeons that work too in this it's a easy mod but they are modded by cheap online. Probably a bios update is required
An X58 system from 2008 would be the ultimate XP PC, because it was pre-7 (most people ditched XP for 7, but most people stayed on XP when Vista was the newest) and the i7-920 was a huge jump from the Core 2 stuff...
Definitely depends on what you liked at the time and what worked best. Of course - perspective is also part of the equation.
Still use a i5 2500 for old Windows XP games and it's really fast for games 1998-2014 lol.
Nice setup!!
My Windows XP PC is a:
Core 2 Duo E6550 2.33GHZ
Gigabyte G31M-ES2L Motherboard
PNY Verto NVIDIA 9600 GT
Sound Blaster X-Fi Extreme PCI
4GB DDR2 800 Ram
250GB Samsung Spinpoint (OS)
320GB Western Digital Cavair Blue (Games)
Sata DVD Burner
Floppy Drive
Thermaltake 430W Power Supply
Fratcal Design Core 1100
Dell E1908 19" 1280:1024 Monitor
Overall, nice system. If anything I would replace the power supply because Codegen power supplies are not very reliable and are built pretty cheap.
Nice system! Yes for sure, I definitely will be replacing that PSU as I've been told they have been known to damage the board.
This machine might be a good candidate for a multi-boot setup. The trick is to install each OS on a separate storage device, install Linux last, it will detect Windows installations on bootloader installation. You could try an older Linux from the time like Ubuntu 8.04 LTS or 10.04 LTS (or the Linux Mint based on those (5 Elyssa; 9 Isadora)) with the proprietary NVidia driver from back then. And a modern one like Fedora 39 with the open source driver (it's pre-installed). Maybe a newer Windows too for good measure, but Linux last so it can detect that. 😉
Thanks for this info and Linus distro recommendations. I wonder how many OS installations we could put on here :) Lots of SATA ports haha!
if you adjust your FSB to 333 and core voltage to 1,3625V you can run your CPU at 3,33Ghz no problem with this board. I actually have one of these motherboards and pretty much have my OC PB with it getting a CPU to run over 150% of it´s stock speed and had a GTX260 and XP on it. However being Asus this specific board can be sooooo temperamental and flaky when it feels like it for no obvious reason but it is worse when you want FSBs above 1600mhz so I don´t think you would notice that many problems with 1333 but mine gives issues out of nowhere every now and then even on lower speeds. I used mine with a Raid 0 configuration and used it for playing music in my old garage before I moved out and it mostly worked. I suggest you try running it overclocked because the gain you get is absolutely insane and it probably even work with the stock cooler too. but I recommend one of the bigger anyway.
Thanks for this! I have had nothing but excellent experiences with ASUS boards which is awesome. I think this board will also support a Core2 Quad cpu which could possibly be a nice addition.
@@TheRetroRecall Yeah it will run pretty much any cpu you put in it. For me I have never owned a completely perfect Asus ever. At one point it was not even compatible with a cpu that was even stated on the box the board came in. In my 4790K system the system randomly freezes during boot and not every time but when it does it freezes for up to 2 minutes and then resumes again and it did this from the first day I got this brand new and still does it today
Good to know about the cpu. As for your experience, that's unfortunate. Did you say for any ASUS board you have owned that you have never had one work correctly?
@@TheRetroRecall yes. That is correct. None ever did work perfectly for me in the 30 years I been a heavy computer enthusiast. There always been either a hardware or software related issue with everything computer part related Asus.
But I got a 27” 144HZ Asus screen I been very happy with so this been good at least and if it breaks now most other brands would too after 10+ years of use.
Great✌
Thanks
@@TheRetroRecall thanks✌
“Heat pipe”
Ok. Thanks.
Motherboard is a n ASUS P5Q I have the exact same board in my Vista machine. Running a Q2Quad CPU
Nice! I have a quad here I'd like to stick in it. Do some benchmarking etc in a future vid!
It's got a floppy drive it's definitely retro.
Agreed.
very nice build, but actually changing the graphics card to the Geforce 700 series, i think will not give to xp a lot more, because already the gt 9400 it's a direct x 10 card :/ and xp can only use up to dx 9, thing will change if go to windows 7 than that card will be i nice upgrade for that cpu, i had a similar system, in my house.
Cpu: intel c2q 9400
M/B: ASUS P5G41T -LX with broken audio integrated chip :( (but working fine without audio)
RAM 4gb ddr 3 1333Mhz,
VIdeo card: AtI radeon HD 5670 1gb (DX 11 Card)
with a little 160gb sata drive recovered from another pc
i had test with windows 10 but after the latest update it was too slow, probably 4gb are not enough for the new win 10 update :(
than i think the best os for that will be windows 7 or some linux distro to get the most updated os, to use on the internet.
NIce to see this old system still up and running after all this year :)
Yes, and thank you! Sounds like you have a nice system yourself - minus the sound card issue.
I have a custom built Windows XP PC with these specs:
MSI P35 Neo Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 2.00 GHz Processor
Transcend 4 GB of DDR2 RAM (2x2 GB)
Western Digital 500 GB SATA HDD
nVidia GeForce 8600 GT 256 MB
Pioneer DWR-111D DVD-RW Drive
Sony Floppy Disk Drive
Chieftec GPS-350EB-101 A PSU
APEX PC-115 (Beige/Blue) Case
Now that's a great build! Thanks for sharing!
What keyboard layout is that?
It's a French Canadian layout. I didn't realize I had used that one VS a standard one when setting up for the video. Great eye!
Swap out that codegen powersupply, they tend to explode & kill anything that's on the 12v rail.
Will do.! I have 2 new PSUs sitting here I can use. I don't want anything to happen to this MB. Thank you!
I need to pull it back out again to finish it, but my XP rig is insane overkill, being a Asus Sabertooth Z77 board, i7-3770K, 16GB DDR3-2133, 512GB SSD, and a EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Classified 6GB for graphics (of which only 4GB of the 6GB vram is seen by windows xp) So yeah, it’s a ridiculous machine. Hoping one day to get it finished, but I’d like a more airflow-focused case for it that still has a DVD drive, I rebuilt it into a different one than what was shown in my prior videos, and thermals are poor, so I’ve held off for now until I make my mind up on what I want to do with it.
Now that sounds like a beast of a system!!
GTX 960 970 980 with supported drivers and Core2 Extreme...best gaming for XP.
Thanks!
its a very good xp machine , however ive found haswell ,ivy and sandybridge i5 xp systems with terrascale cards like a hd 6950 or 6970 radeon card to be the ultimate windows Xp systems , 4 cores does not break compatibility with old games and for some reason i get more older games to run on these systems than even my core 2 duo or quad xp systems . ive found 4 cores is the cutoff though when you try like a i7 2600k etc then several things act up in xp so i found i5s from these eras to be the ultimate sweetspot . i personally would use your system for a time capsule windows xp system for late 90s to mid 2000s games , or even try windows 2000 which it would be a ultimate system for 2000 if the chipset has compatible drivers for it
I would never have thought using and i3 or i5 Gen CPU for a Winxp system. My mind instantly goes to Vista or 7 for that. I feel a bit reluctant about those CPUs mainly due to compatibility, however would consider the Core2Quad cpu for sure boosting the capability of the system. I'm surprised you didn't experience any issues with them. I'll have to look into it for sure, thank you!
@@TheRetroRecall Ivy Bridges are still fully, fully supported for XP. The only tricky part is getting the AHCI driver on there without a floppy disk, so you really need to make a slipstreamed CD.
Haswell is where it gets tricky; I think plenty of enterprising souls have gotten XP to boot on Haswells but it's more challenging.
Great info thanks! I'll keep that in mind when I look into it. I wonder if a modified distro has been created and uploaded to archive.org.
@@TheRetroRecall I don't know if I would trust some random person's upload. It's not hard to make your own using nLite and the F6 floppy drivers available on the motherboard manufacturer's web site.
there was a modified windows 2000 unofficial sp5 iso i found that does indeed install on later 775 chipsets however i found it not to be all that stable especially when i tried a quadro 600 card with the final windows 2000 driver with this version of 2000 @@TheRetroRecall
If you want to game with this machine, then replace the 9400GT. Those were pretty weak even back then. A 9800 GTX is what I would add if you want to keep it more period correct. But a GTX 750ti would make that system perfect for XP gaming.
Yes, the card I showed in the video is a 750 not a 700. Not sure if it is a. Ti however. I will have to check. Is it not too much hardware for this system?
@@TheRetroRecallIt should be fine.
Is the 9800 a good card for games around 2010?
Appreciate it!
Nice machine that's got so much room for activities! As it is, for retro uses it's already very capable, while also being ready to be made even more perfecter with being upgradable to the max thanks to that sweet Asus motherboard as a foundation. With a multiboot configuration alone, the answer to what OSes to install on this system is: Yes!*
Then there's throwing in SSDs & big HDDs, changing up the processor to Core 2 Quad, all sorts of graphics and sound cards like GTX 750 Ti's, ATI HDs, Live!'s, Audigy's & X-Fi's at will. Also more RAM & beefier coolers for overclocking. Also, drive bay options too!
*(Although 10 & 11 isn't so doable anymore since Microsoft moved their codebase for Windows Store apps to SSE 4.2 with the latest updates, which effectively means that essential everyday apps like Windows Photo Viewer, the Calculator or Paint no longer works with Core 2, which maxes out at SSE 4.1, depending on which Core 2's in there. Still XP, Vista, 7, 8.1, Linux, plenty doable still).
8.1 with Open Shell for a proper Start menu makes it much more usable, like 7.
I live everything in this comment. I have a Core2 quad here that is collecting dust. I think if we did a benchmark, then upgraded the HDD to SSD , Ram , Cpu , 64 bit OS, Video Card- then another benchmark it would be neat.
I hated 8. 8.1 was better.... I used to use Start8 which made it bearable.. Never heard of Open Shell, I'll have to take a look - it would make a cool video.
Damn, that's almost my old box, which was my daily driver for about a decade or so... The gfx card will hold you back, that's for sure, had a 9600GS and even that wasn't all that much. If you have anything better, it's worth it. You can get a bit more out of the 7300, 2.9-3.0 should be easy, anything over that might need a non stock cooler. The P5Q was a bit "touchy" as far as RAM goes, if you loaded all slots, but... XP is limited to 4GB so shouldn't be too hard hitting at least 3Ghz on a 2x2GB.
p.s. i still got it in a box (mobo/cpu/ram), even if i don't have a use for it, it just seemed rotten to throw it in the bin...
Thanks for the tips, and dig it out - get it going again haha! :)
@@TheRetroRecall Not much use and even less "real estate". Have 2 i5-2500's "office pcs" that i got for 40 bucks or so, one for XP and the other for W7. Great boxes because they can be BRUTALLY underclocked for testing purposes while having lots of RAM.
My main PC has Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, a Core 2 Quad Q8300, 4GB DDR2 RAM and a 256mb low profile Radeon HD 3470. Need a GPU upgrade, but I guess it's good for the rest.
For sure! Nice build.
Same but a 3ghz core2quad a gt710 and windows 10
Another great build! I love hearing these.
A q9550 cpu would be nice in that system 🙂
For sure! I have a Core2 Quad around here that I can use, I just don't exactly know what one it is. Stay tuned!
I think the ivy bridge processors are the best windows xp machines
I think by that time I was running a later OS.
Mostly a very nice machine, but I think the GPU does disqualify it a bit from being the "perfect" Windows XP box ;-)
A 9400 GT was really more of an Office card when it came out, as also indicated by using DDR2 instead of GDDR3 like all cards from the 9500 GT up to the 9800 GTX.
Nvidia Cards come with Windows XP drivers all the way up to the GTX 780 Ti or GTX 950.
Even getting something like a used GTX 750, which still comes with no need for PCIe power, and outperforms the 9400 GT by roughly 3000% would be an enormous upgrade for this machine, and can probably be done for around 10 to 15 of your favourite currency units.
Edit: Just realized that I randomly stumbled over your Video, and don't actually know if you are focused on Gaming like most Channels I follow. Maybe you are entirely happy with an Office classe GPU for your own needs, in which case kindly ignore my irrelevant ramblings ...
Edit2: Continued to watch the video, and you brought up the question yourself. So yeah: Definitely go for something along the lines of a GTX 750. I'm curious about the card you quickly showed, because a GTX 700 doesn't really exist, according to Nvidia / Wikipedia? Anything from a 710 to a 780 Ti, but no 700 ...
And the 780 Ti marks the absolute top-end of what an XP PC can achieve, but it's probably overkill, and you'll have to check if the PSU will be happy with that many PCIe-Cables being required. It didn't look like it to me at first glance ;-)
A GTX 950 with a single 6-Pin may be a good alternative, or maybe a 760. But honestly, the 750 is generally more than enough for anything that you really want to run on a Windows XP PC and a DVI-connected monitor. Anything that wants more GPU power probably loves a bigger screen as well.
Plus the cost of a used 750 doesn't turn the free PC into a money-sink immediately.
Haha indeed. I guess perfect is quite subjective and has generated quite a bit of discussion (which was the goal). I did mention the video card in the video for that reason being a weaker point. Heck, we could say put an SSD in there and more memory - it doesn't end haha. I do like the idea of a GPU upgrade as it would open the door to a wider range of compatibility without it being 'too much hardware' for the machine.
This is exactly like my brother's desktop PC configuration, and still the best! But my brother uses ABIT IP35P motherboard, not from ASUS.
Nice. I had a few ABIT MB's back in the day and found them quite reliable.
I build a machine with windows xp on it. Core 2 Duo E6600 paired with an GeForce 8800 GTS. I have yet to find a game from the time it doesn't handle. Might upgrade to the GTX and a Core 2 Extreme QX6700 or X6800 eventually. But I wanna keep it in 2006. Ah yeah, and a Asus P5N32-SLI Deluxe of course. For the ultimate 2006 high end experience.
Love this, nice build!
Test video cards and XP games. Power may be a factor for video card choice.
Ah, good call out.... Never thought about that. Thanks!
One comment: if you want to install a nice sound card, you want a SoundBlaster X-Fi or, even better, the PCI-E X-Fis. Those are the period-correct Creative cards; I think the PCI X-Fi came out a few months before the original 65nm C2Ds in summer 2006.
The SoundBlaster Live is... well, almost a decade older than any of the components in this system. You had multiple generations of Audigys in between, too, but for a lateish XP machine like this, X-Fi is the way to go.
I have a few of the XFi cards here - great suggestion (seemly I'm stuck too far in the past lol)
My Windows XP machine is running a Core i5 2400, 16 GBs of RAM (although 32 bit) and an AMD HD 7850 OC.
Nice build!
@@TheRetroRecall I used to have a Core 2 Quad system, but the motherboard doesn't want to work anymore, so I figured I'd go overkill with the parts I had on hand. :)
Haha indeed!
My xp machine runs a Asus ROG G73SW Laptop 2nd gen i7 took off POS 7 and installed xp Mce 2005 gtx 440m with 4tb ssd 16gb ddr3 ram xp Mce 2005 Best System would be a 4th gen i7 Gtx 960. XP and still be Activated online no Telephone required Just activated today. Your System will also support Windows 2000 Which is what I would use on a core 2 duo.
Nice system! I wish 98 would support Dual CPU.
@@TheRetroRecall I wish Me could. I prefer it over 98.
My XP box is based on a AMD Phenom X3 at 2.4 GHz. Should have 2GB of ram and a Nvidia GTS 250. It had a GT9500 previously. All based on a MSI Mainboard that has a beta BIOS on it that does not on the MSI website. Reminds me to dump it for the Retroweb when i have some time.
Yes. Mine boots in AHCI mode! And it is in a silver case.
I keep my Core2 Duo on Windows Vista, thank you very much!
How is the SMP Windows 2000 box doing? I just repaired mine 2000 based laptop. The solder of the power jack was cracked.
And no that RAID is not hardware based. It is all smoke and mirrors in the driver & firmware. Look up "fake raid".
I haven't touched the win2k system lately, been very busy with projects. Happy to hear you got the power working on your laptop - I've had a few crack at the PCB over the years.
I'll check out this fake RAID you speak of :)
What A Sweet XP Computer . . . 🙂
I Will Take XP, XP-Media Center, 7, And 7 Media Center, Over 10 And 11 Every Time . . . :-)
Love this!
Yep . . .@@TheRetroRecall ;-)
Do You Know Why Microsoft, aka Micro-Shit Removed The Media Center Program From Their Later OS's After 8 ?
I did not... other than the tech was changing where people didn't use PC's for home media centres anymore...?
Darn . . .@@TheRetroRecall I Was Hoping That You Did, Because I Have 3 Of The 2005 Sony VAIO 200 Disc Carousel DVD Players, Which I Can Only Use With XP Media Center, Or 7 Media Center, And I Never Had Or Used 8, So I Am A Little Constrained, Regarding Using Them Here . . . ;-0
My dell workstation is now working as it should
Awesome! What are you going to be using it for primarily?
@@TheRetroRecall right now it's a music player and dvd player
Nice! Proper Tv out to a TV or are you using a monitor?
@@TheRetroRecall 22 inch AOC monitor at 1080p (VGA)
Cool!
Leave the system as is, but change the graphics card to the one you showed in the video. By the way cool memories from seeing quake 4 or is it doom 3 ? , they very simular.
For sure and Doom3 :)
I think you should upgrade it to 8GB of RAM and put XP64 or figure out PAE in XP) on an SSD.. Put a sound blaster in it and a better GPU.
There's been lots of great suggestions. I'm definitely going to do a future video on this machine with benchmarking :)
a core 2 duo could handle a 700 series card just fine. heck if that is a 750ti that would be perfect
I just checked and it is a 750 :)
@@TheRetroRecall that would be perfect
I have an Asus p5k-premium with a core 2 quad processor with 2.8 GHz, 8 gb of ram and a GeForce thx 750 with 2 gb. I’m thinking of installing windows xp on it for gaming and other nostalgic xp era things like windows movie maker and some recordings using unregistered hypercam 2 lol 💀 also there are some emulators I want to use, but they don’t work properly on windows 11, so yeah.
I feel like 8gb of ram is too much for windows xp tho. The 32 bit edition has far more support than the 64 bit edition, but 64 bit will be more beneficial for the 8gb ram
That sounds like a great build and yes you are right about the ram. I always found that 3gb was fine for Windows XP.