Build Advice Building a Windows XP gaming PC ?

[thatpcgamer1903]

hello, so im looking to build a windows xp gaming workstation/ gaming pc. looking to have the following specs.

quad core cpu 3.00ghz
4gb to 8gb of ram
1 to 2gb gpu
and a cheap motherboard

now currently i have a Dell Dimension 2400 PC that runs Windows XP, but I'd like to upgrade that to have better graphics. but I'm actually looking at turning it into a sleeper pc. converting the BTX motherboard into ATX. I have a general idea on how to do it. and ive seen videos on how to do it to. but my question is what is the best third-party BTX case I can use ?

 

[hotaru.hino]

There weren't many BTX cases made back in the day. I think Lian-Li made a few BTX compatible cases, but I don't know the model off the top of my head (and it's probably going to cost you an arm and a leg if you can find it).

 

[thatpcgamer1903]

There weren't many BTX cases made back in the day. I think Lian-Li made a few BTX compatible cases, but I don't know the model off the top of my head (and it's probably going to cost you an arm and a leg if you can find it).

what would you recommend then?

 

[hotaru.hino]

what would you recommend then?

What I did was just build from regular parts you could get at the time. I forget the exact specs of my build but it's using a MicroATX board and put it in a cheap case.

 

[Eximo]

You can still find Core 2 Quad and early 1st-3rd gen Intel chips that can run XP just fine. Also the AMD Phenom X4/X6 series on AM2+.

Motherboards are the problem. You really need to start there.

BTX is to be avoided at all costs. You basically can't install large GPUs in them.

Era appropriate GPUs would be like the Nvidia 7000 and 8000 series. 9000 series would also work. From AMD/ATI it would have been the HD 4000 and HD 5000 series cards.

 

[artk2219]

hello, so im looking to build a windows xp gaming workstation/ gaming pc. looking to have the following specs.

quad core cpu 3.00ghz
4gb to 8gb of ram
1 to 2gb gpu
and a cheap motherboard

now currently i have a windows xp dell dimension 2400 pc that runs windows xp, but id like to upgrade that to have better graphics. but im actually looking at Turing it into a sleeper pc. converting the btx motherboard style into atx. i have a general idea on how to do it. and ive seen videos on how to do it to. but my question is what is the best case i can use that is a third party btx case?

I mean you could go with anything from Core 2 Quad or Phenom x4 to Skylake with this one. The cheapest route at this point may be building something with LGA 1155 or 1150. I guess do you want it to be more period appropriate, say between 2006 and 2009, or do you want it to be a bit of a time machine? In which case you can use up to Haswell chips. I mean you could also build a hybrid Windows XP, 7, and 10 box if you use an X79 board.

 

[artk2219]

Something like this may get you started, it has a 4 core and 8 thread Xeon E5 1620, you just need to add your own storage and upgrade the graphics card eventually. Something like a GTX 750 TI would get you great XP performance without being a huge power hog, but you're spoiled for options. Anything from the Radeon 1800 series to the Radeon R9 200 series is available on AMD's side, and anything from the Geforce 6000 series to the GTX 700 series is fair game on Nvidias side.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/395259853981?itmmeta=01HV245GDR8W173ZM8WX6TE2ZF&hash=item5c0752bc9d:g:BI0AAOSwEUJl7fK9&itmprp=enc:AQAJAAAA4BkpVDasYqCEA1JDEtY9Xe2jzUmkXUGAAITXH36Ft1ljUqm5iQGG8+dKJc7g4ndlmxljBDkiTiqJPOulnC2U9iGAtEWT/S09Rpxazwv5fBwBvqttNT26TY4FeTg+pM56o1eBbTX/uhBZHRGxSiCQpGxL/7g35JIZ5u98Vo23HGMCasa2hUqAncqqrAwhfa8Qd6WEe1YisK6XVYwZlvoRLLSkIoBPRFc2oN0zo0B1QavXhWR+s/B5qr6aCo0k+vGGLEegcngOnO7oHDcRoWdOaT5aMqvgz5PunWQrs4XJpO1t|tkp:Bk9SR4CHlsTYYw

https://www.dell.com/support/home/e.../0-ZjNzSmtmNk03eDFmSnlVNjkxZkEwUT090/overview

 

[Satan-IR]

If you can find a working board for it a Core 2 Quad like a Q6600 and a Radeon 4870 would work nicely. I ran Crysis on a Club 3d 4850 OC smoothly. That card had like 1 kilo of round copper heatpipe/heatsink on it. It needed a 6-pin PCIE aux power from PSU.

Some Asus boards even had combo RAM slots. 4 DDR2 and 2 DDR3 slots. Don't know if other manufacturere made them too or not.

You needed to set hard disk to IDE mode in BIOS because XP had no native SATA drivers on installation media or need have drivers on a disk (used floppies back then) and give them when XP installation asks for them during installation if you want to use AHCI.

If memory serves right I think there were some workarounds and people used them to insert SATA drivers on the installation image.

 

[artk2219]

If you can find a working board for it a Core 2 Quad like a Q6600 and a Radeon 4870 would work nicely. I ran Crysis on a Club 3d 4850 OC smoothly. That card had like 1 kilo of round copper heatpipe/heatsink on it. It needed a 6-pin PCIE aux power from PSU.

Some Asus boards even had combo RAM slots. 4 DDR2 and 2 DDR3 slots. Don't know if other manufacturere made them too or not.

You needed to set hard disk to IDE mode in BIOS because XP had no native SATA drivers on installation media or need have drivers on a disk (used floppies back then) and give them when XP installation asks for them during installation if you want to use AHCI.

If memory serves right I think there were some workarounds and people used them to insert SATA drivers on the installation image.

You are correct, you did need to install sata drivers to use a SATA drive with ahci during installation. That said, you can download Windows XP sp3 iso's that already have the driver on there, negating the issue.

 

[Satan-IR]

You are correct, you did need to install sata drivers to use a SATA drive with ahci during installation. That said, you can download Windows XP sp3 iso's that already have the driver on there, negating the issue.

Yes, indeed.

After a few minutes of trying to remember the workaround I remembered SATA drivers were added to Service Pack 3, came back to edit the post and saw your reply. Thanks.

 

[Paperdoc]

Glad several above clarified the SATA device driver issue and the solution - the Service Pack 3 version. Just want to fill in a few details I remember so OP does not go in the wrong direction.

Originally XP did NOT have any drivers for SATA devices, and this was just as SATA HDD's were coming onto the market. Mobo's at that time DID allow for SATA drives to be used properly as AHCI devices, but Windows XP could not deal with that. So the mobo BIOS allowed you to change the operation of any SATA port to mimic an older IDE port. Basically then the SATA controller chip would use only the IDE techniques, and the standard Windows IDE device drivers worked with those drives just fine. The only problem was that at some LATER time if you tried to transplant such a drive to a newer machine and use it as a real AHCI device, it could not be read or used correctly. You had to back up the drive while still treating it as an IDE device, then transfer to the new machine, install as an AHCI device on a SATA port, and Partition and re-Format it, then copy all the backed up files back onto it.

The real solution to all that, of course, is to install Win XP in the Service Pack 3 version and NEVER set the SATA ports in BIOS Setup to use that IDE mimic mode.

I believe that SP3 also handles one other item. The original XP drivers did NOT allow 32-bit addressing for drives, so the max size of a HDD was 128 GB, no matter what real capacity the unit had. Later versions changed to 32-bit addressing to allow drives up to 4 GB. In 2006 that was HUGE! Good thing we now use 64-bit OS's!

OP, be aware also of limits on memory. A 32-bit OS (like most common Win XP versions) can address up to 4 GB of RAM. Don't forget that, when you have 1 or 2 GB of video RAM on the graphics card, that address space is allocated to that RAM, and it can NOT be used for mobo main RAM. So even on a board with 4 GB of main RAM and a video card with 2 GB of its own RAM, the main system could only use 2 GB. The solution to that dilemma is to use a 64-bit version of some OS so that the video RAM can be re-assigned to some space higher than the main board RAM. For the memory size specs you cite, you need to look for a version of 64-bit Win XP. That probably DOES include AHCI device drivers (but CHECK to be sure!) without being called SP3.

 

[artk2219]

Also an often neglected option that someone just reminded me of, FM2(+), the CPU's are plenty fast for XP. The slowest supported quad core, the A8 5500, is as fast as the fastest Core 2 Quad at stock, with the other chips being quite a bit faster. The integrated GPU is supported in Windows XP, and it isn't a slouch, it can get some decent performance depending on the model APU you go with. They were also used in a ton prebuilt PC's, giving you a decent pool to choose from.

 

[Eximo]

That is true. I used to use an AMD E350 embedded chip for old games and dos box. That was HD6310 which is about as slow as they could go.

 

[NedSmelly]

4gb to 8gb of ram
1 to 2gb gpu

I don't recall GPUs having that much VRAM back then. 9800GT had 512MB.

And as @Paperdoc pointed out, 4GB was the maximum addressable RAM for 32-bit XP (and in practice, more like 3.5GB tops). 1-2GB was generally sufficient. There was a 64-bit XP but it really limited your software choices and hardware driver support.

Ultimately it all depends on XP driver support for your chosen motherboard. Things got a bit murky once Vista was released in 2007.

 

[Eximo]

I kept XP on a drive well after Windows 7 was out. Easiest way to run older games at the time.

GTX285 and a GTX580 worked in XP just fine.

Last XP driver supports even a few 900 series cards.

GeForce 900 Series:
GeForce GTX 960, GeForce GTX 950

GeForce 700 Series:
GeForce GTX 780 Ti, GeForce GTX 780, GeForce GTX 770, GeForce GTX 760, GeForce GTX 760 Ti (OEM), GeForce GTX 750 Ti, GeForce GTX 750, GeForce GTX 745, GeForce GT 740, GeForce GT 730, GeForce GT 720, GeForce GT 710, GeForce GT 705

GeForce 600 Series:
GeForce GTX 680, GeForce GTX 670, GeForce GTX 660 Ti, GeForce GTX 660, GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST, GeForce GTX 650 Ti, GeForce GTX 650, GeForce GTX 645, GeForce GT 645, GeForce GT 640, GeForce GT 635, GeForce GT 630, GeForce GT 620, GeForce GT 610, GeForce 605

GeForce 500 Series:
GeForce GTX 590, GeForce GTX 580, GeForce GTX 570, GeForce GTX 560 Ti, GeForce GTX 560 SE, GeForce GTX 560, GeForce GTX 555, GeForce GTX 550 Ti, GeForce GT 545, GeForce GT 530, GeForce GT 520, GeForce 510

GeForce 400 Series:
GeForce GTX 480, GeForce GTX 470, GeForce GTX 465, GeForce GTX 460 SE v2, GeForce GTX 460 SE, GeForce GTX 460, GeForce GTS 450, GeForce GT 440, GeForce GT 430, GeForce GT 420

NVIDIA TITAN Series:
GeForce GTX TITAN, GeForce GTX TITAN Black

 

[Paperdoc]

NedSmelly raised some good points above. Within the 4 GB addressing space, FIRST the system had to reserve the top chunk of that for addressing the RAM on the video card. So that allocated 512 MB or 1024 MB, depending on what card you had installed. This is a big part of why you could find almost no video cards with on-board RAM over 1 GB - it "eats into" what your OS has available for applications. A related factor: more RAM on the video card was only useful for very high performance cards with large display resolutions. There were not many graphics processor card chips a that time that could actually use that much RAM to advantage. Those things existed, but that often meant pushing you into going with a 64-bit Win XP.

Then about 250 MB (plus or minus) in main RAM was filled with Windows itself. So roughly 760 to 1270 MB of addressing space was removed from the "top" of Main RAM, and you could use the rest for normal stuff. If you had RAM modules installed to the 4GB limit, that left you 3240 MB or 2730 MB of usable Main RAM. Many users opted for the 512 MB video card to preserve more Main RAM for major applications.

That post also reminded me of why I never really pursued a 64-bit XP. I recall no details other than the fact that finding reliable device drivers for many add-on devices like video cards, audio cards, a Firewire port card, many printers, etc was difficult or impossible. Such drivers usually are supplied free by the maker of the add-on device, and many of them did NOT bother to develop and debug such a driver for a very small market of users of 64-bit Win XP.

 

[Eximo]

Yep. I ran 2GB of system memory for most of my time using XP so it never came up. Wasn't a need for more while just gaming. I eventually had 6GB, but ran that under Windows 7. However it decided to split up the memory when I dropped back to XP 32bit worked well.

Also a few games and mods that required the /3GB switch to be added to the boot-ini file at the time.

 

[thatpcgamer1903]

so i have concluded my windows xp build. will be ordering parts for it in the next few months.

motherboard : dell dimension 2400
ram : 2gb ddr ram 400mhz
cpu : 3.2 ghz pentium 4
gpu : Nvidia geforce gt 610 (Legacy Pci) 1gb gddr3
power supply : 500watt
500gb wd black 10,000 rpm hdd
dual cd/dvd reader writers
and looking at building a custom case for this pc to go into. if not will be looking for an after market btx case that is compatible with my system.

 

[NedSmelly]

It might also be worth exploring CompactFlash-to-IDE adapters as a substitute for a vintage spinning rust hard drive.

 

[thatpcgamer1903]

It might also be worth exploring CompactFlash-to-IDE adapters as a substitute for a vintage spinning rust hard drive.

I was thinking about that. What compact flash cards do you recommend? I heard you have to get fixed compact flash cards otherwise windows won’t reconize it right?

 

[NedSmelly]

I was thinking about that. What compact flash cards do you recommend? I heard you have to get fixed compact flash cards otherwise windows won’t reconize it right?

The best reference I could find is a Mac-focused page here. Main take home message was making sure it’s a UDMA CF card if it’s to be a boot drive.

 

[Paperdoc]

I'm not sure I understand the reluctance to use a Hard Drive. That is a reliable technology, and most last for MANY years. i have used them for over 30 years and only once had one fail completely. And that was because I mis-treated it by storing it in an unheated garage for a few months during a winter where temperatures got below -35. My use of computers generally was not heavy, so long service life does not surprise me. But one set I can say was used steadily. I built a small system in 2007 with a pair of 160GB Seagate drives in a RAID1 array for a computer used as the Point-0f-Sale device in our family's retail store. Those drives ran 24/7 for 14 years before I wiped them as I disposed of the computer after our store closed.

Now, IF OP is considering buying an OLD and USED HDD, that's different question. But a new high-performance WD Black should be VERY reliable for a long time.

I note also that, with the RAM and Video RAM OP now is planning, the standard 32-bit Win XP would do just fine as long as it is Service Pack 3.

 

[NedSmelly]

OP mentioned a Dell Dimension 2400 motherboard, which is PATA/IDE only.

I also don't think an IDE "WD Black 500GB 10000rpm" exists either. AFAIK it was only SATA Velociraptors that had 10000rpm.

 

[Paperdoc]

Ah! Now I get it! OP is VERY unlikely to find an IDE Hard Drive in that size (500 GB) or similar in NEW condition. One certainly should be able to find a drive like that with a SATA interface. But OP says he plans to get a Dell Dimension 2400 mobo that has only IDE ports.

OP, I really suggest a different mobo choice. When I built my desktop machine in 2006 I used an ASUS mobo that had ports for Floppy, IDE (PATA) and SATA drives. I installed a 3½" floppy, two optical drives, and 2 SATA 320 GB HDD's. I added an external SATA 500 GB HDD in an enclosure that used a Firewire 400 (IEEE 1394 A) interface card I installed for backups. The OS was Win XP, SP2 with 32-bit addressing for HDD's so those drives could be used, but that OS still did NOT have AHCI drivers so I used the BIOS option to set the SATA ports to IDE Emulation mode. Used that system for 15 years or so.

 

[NedSmelly]

I used to have a Gigabyte P55 chipset motherboard that had WinXP drivers. Socket LGA1156, which is first gen Nehalem i5/i7. Would probably blow your socks off running XP. Crazy mobo has every modern and legacy port - IDE, SATA, parallel/serial, USB, PCIE 2.0, PCI, DDR3 RAM… it even has Win2000 drivers…

I’m starting to regret throwing it out. Try and grab one of those!

Edit: and just found out our H67 Sandy Bridge HTPC has WinXP support 😀 No PCI or IDE though.