So I had a rainy afternoon and went digging thru my spares shelf and found all this cool old 775 era copper stuff. I love how it looks. Currently testing up old contemporary GPUs that will add to the look. Question is, what should I case it in (or should it just stay on the bench so I can see it) and what should I install on it? It was going to be for drive testing and data recovery (and with 8 SATA and 1 IDE it'll certainly do for that) but I can do that on XP, 7, 8 or 10 equally easily. Is there any point making an XP gaming build? I see people doing it but I don't know if it actually unlocks access to any older titles you can't just mod or emulate your way into on 10. Also if you have any cool stupid suggestions of other bits of hardware that would make it even more beautiful/offensive, I'll take them under advisement and go ebay hunting.
I would not hide it in a case, it is simply too beautiful. Make something to wall mount it above your monitor for total gratification. This X1900XT with shmexy zalman cooler would go great with it. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/266684908915
that looks awesome i would make a copper or brase plate to cover the rest of the mother board mabe have small vents for led lisght here and there and mount in on the wall
Reminds me of my old Intel 775 with a Zalman Super Flower cooler and copper heat pipes on the mainboard. Loved that era of gaming components! They were built to last.
It does still work well. I'd forgotten how awful BIOS was though. And all its complimentary features and requirements, like manually entering RAM timings and having to switch controller modes and such. It's made me realise how much EFI has spoilt me over the past few years, modern hardware is just so frickin' EASY. I always wanted one of those huge copper flower coolers. Bet they're worth a fortune now. I may buy an 8800 GTX to go in this, simply because it was a card I always wanted and could never afford, and was a mainstay for so many years while we waited for something better. Now they're a few quid on ebay... edit, no they're not! Who tf is paying £70 for an 8800 GTX?
I’ve just checked the Zalman prices across the web!! What was once a £20 lump of copper is now £100!! Jeez!
Also, see this for more free copper goodness if you want to play too! Donation Thread BTW I always loved the Zalman horizontal tunnel one with the blue fan...
My wife very kindly bought me a Zalman 9700 back in 2007 and it wasn't very good, but it looked the part for sure. There's something about PC hardware from that era that is very desirable, and now you've got me wanting to build an XP rig as well. My first 775 was a P35 system, followed by X38, then P45. Loved that stuff.
