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Piece an Old Athlon XP Rig Back Together?

B

BeauCharles

Member
A thread regarding the "good old days" of AMD Barton CPUs got me to wondering if I should put back together my first PC build from ten years ago. It would cost about $125 to get the case, PS, RAM and HD I need. I have the CPU, HSF, motherboard, optical drive and GPU. I don't need it for anything in particular - just thought I'd possible make a Linux box out of it to learn about that OS. Just wondering if it was worth bothering with. Here's what I have so far:

Athlon XP 2500+ Barton
MSI K7N2 Delta2-LSR
7800 GS AGP
DVD drive

What I need:

IDE hard drive
Case with PS
2 GB RAM

With tax and shipping those three things would come to about $125. Possible uses might be an extra PC to install old games on - but with XP support ending in a little over a year I don't know if I should bother. Or I could just use it for a Linux learning tool. Should I even bother with old hardware like this? Having all this old stuff laying around kind of eats at me - I get to thinking I need to do something with it! 😀
 
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XP wont magically stop working when support ends you know.

Its not really a good idea to put money into old hardware, although i have done many many times in the past for fun (building a dual cpu pentium 2 rig ~2006 was fun!) so its really up to you.
 
Since you don't really have any 'use' for it, any money you spend would be wasted.
And I, personally, don't think you will get $125 worth of fun playing with it.

But, there are some things to lower your costs so that it is worth it:
Screw the HDD - just use a usb stick. I don't know if the motherboard has 2.0, but a pci card should be cheaper than the HDD, if necessary.
2GB of RAM! That was a lot back in the day, and I can't imagine it is cheap now. My rig back then needed registered memory past 1 or 2 Gb, so be sure to check the mobo manual.
I guess you will need a PS if you don't have one, but I sometimes consider a case to be optional - especially if you are just playing around.

Just my opinion, of course.
 
If you have to spend $125 then no absolutely dont do it. You can easily buy an entire fully functional Core 2 duo machine on ebay for less than that.
 
sm625 said:
If you have to spend $125 then no absolutely dont do it. You can easily buy an entire fully functional Core 2 duo machine on ebay for less than that.
Click to expand...

Agree. There's nothing wrong with getting a play machine to mess around with, just be smart about how you get one.
 
Probably plenty of old computers that work on E-bay or at yard sales. You know some places that build custom computers may allow people to turn in old parts. People probably have the parts you want sitting in their garage. Or just go to one of those technology turn-in-days where people throw all their old computers away.
 
Meh, surprise your wife with a nice dinner out I say. At least then you'll get something in return for your $125. :awe:
 
Decided to go ahead and do it for the hell of it. I may even see if Windows 7 32 bit can install on it. If its a dud I'll give it to my nephew - at nine years old he's not too picky as long as he can play Minecraft on it.
 
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O.K. guys, do any of you have any experience installing Windows 7 32 bit on an old nForce2 AGP motherboard? Is it possible? I'll be assembling it tomorrow and I was wondering if I should try it or stick to XP.
 
I was able to install Windows 7 on a Pentium 4 Prescott on an ECS PM800-M2 with a VIA chipset. As long as you have enough RAM, it should work.
 
I installed XP on it - less potential problems and it'll be supported for another 14 months. I actually didn't go with an IDE hard drive - I got a cheap refurbished 60GB SATA II SSD and plugged it in motherboard (with its Nvidia RAID). Updated the firmware and it runs fine (although much slower than it would be in a newer system of course). This has been a fun little project!

One question about Athlon XP operating temps. I set the FSB at 400Mhz (so its running as a 3200+) and its getting about 41-43C at idle and 51-52C while playing Torchlight. Does that sound about right? I would consider it a bit high on my current PC, but I have no idea what the expectations of this old chip would be.
 
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BeauCharles said:
One question about Athlon XP operating temps. I set the FSB at 400Mhz (so its running as a 3200+) and its getting about 41-43C at idle and 51-52C while playing Torchlight. Does that sound about right? I would consider it a bit high on my current PC, but I have no idea what the expectations of this old chip would be.
Click to expand...

Nah, that looks right if I remember correctly. I think my old 3000+/333FSB@3200+/400FSB was around 60C when loaded. I could be mistaken though, its been awhile... 😀
 
BeauCharles said:
One question about Athlon XP operating temps. I set the FSB at 400Mhz (so its running as a 3200+) and its getting about 41-43C at idle and 51-52C while playing Torchlight. Does that sound about right? I would consider it a bit high on my current PC, but I have no idea what the expectations of this old chip would be.
Click to expand...

That's actually very cool for an Athlon XP. Those things were scorchers!
 
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