Poor Man's Gamer Computer

After successfully rebuilding the old machine with spare parts and whatever i could find at the right price, I got to the overclocking stage I've been waiting for. Even though the real limiter is my ECS motherboard, I still used it and tried to crank out as much juice from my $80 CPU as i possibly could. And the result was an increase of 700MHz which is not bad but also not impressive since most with decent boards got to 4.0GHz according to other owners.

There were many hurdles that were in the way. On the first day, the motherboard could not recognize the new CPU and i needed to flash the bios to a newer version. This unexpected problem and the rumors about ECS almost made me throw the board out the window, but luckily the flashing of the bios worked and I was relieved. Since I had a quad core, I really wanted something equivalent in performance the the very least so the only option was overclocking.

The initial overclocking went well until I saw temperatures rise due to the cooling performance of the stock CPU fans. The first aftermarket fan i purchased was very promising but it did not fit the case at all and ended up on my quad-core afterwards. Not surprisingly, the quad core fan lowered temperatures by 3-5C and this gave me more incentive to purchase that newer fan.

I think the most interesting thing about my computer is that it is being upgraded from a 10 year old design. Sure it would have been easy to just go outside and spend $50 on a new case and save the trouble - but I wanted something more. After working with an advanced case like the antec P180, which is an amazing case, I could not settle for anything less performance-wise. The case had superior design and showed me what makes a great case. I applied as much of these new innovations into the case I had neglected for years.

As I worked more and more on the case, I realized what a great case I had and how fortunate i was to have this sturdy steel chassis to work on. Most of the interior was steel like most of the better cases and it had even a removable hard disk cage, something that was unique from cases. I saw potential in this old case and began shopping for parts and drawing up ideas in my mind. The case kept me happily working for about a month, mostly time spent after work or during the weekends. I was very proud in the end and I would say my project exceeded my expectations and I really did a great job modernizing a century old case.