I've got some older PC hardware sitting around and would like to put it to good use instead of getting rid of it, especially considering how expensive hardware has gotten.
I've seen people turn old gaming PCs into NAS setups, Plex/Jellyfin servers, game servers, etc. Really curious what you guys have done with yours that turned out to be cool and actually useful long term?
Any ideas and tips appreciated!

It’s spring of 2008. The economic crash is still months away, the weather is warming up, school is almost out for summer, and dad just came home from Best Buy with HP’s top of the line desktop in a stunning new piano black color way, the M8000n Media Center PC.

You’ve been reading all about Intel’s legendary Core 2 Quad CPU’s and Nvidia’s Tesla GPU’s that both came out at the end of 2006 right in time for the release of Windows Vista and DX10 gaming. Every PC gamer is benchmarking Crysis, playing through the Bioshock campaign, and squadding up on CS:S at the basement LAN party on Friday nights.

You want to experience it all for yourself, too. But mom and dad said their next PC purchase is going to be for the whole family. For watching TV, recording videos, browsing the internet, checking emails, and doing homework. So imagine your surprise when dad sets up the new HP at the old, solid oak living room computer desk in the corner and you realize it’s got a Q9450 and a 9800 GT!

/s Okay enough nostalgia; what’s actually going on here? Well, I scored this mint M8000n PC case recently and decided to move some of my legacy hardware into it, representing what would have been a “maxed out” Media Center PC back in the day. All of the functions are still working. The card reader, the hot swap HDD bay, the front panel A/V connections, the lightscribe DVDRW, the original built-in WiFi and TV tuner card. Even the Windows Media Center IR remote control for video playback.

Full specs including my upgrades below:
Asus P5QL-VM EPU motherboard
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 CPU
Zalman CNPS9700 all copper heatsink
4x 2gb Patriot DDR2 800mhz RAM (8gb total)
BFG Nvidia 9800 GT OC 1Gb GDDR3 55nm GPU
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium sound card
Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1650 TV tuner card
Anatel HP B/G PCI WiFi card
HP OEM Lightscribe DVDRW drive
HP OEM BDROM drive
Western Digital Blue 250gb SATA SSD
Western Digital 160gb Velociraptor 10k rpm HDD
Powerman (InWin) 450w OEM PSU
HP OEM wireless peripherals (KB, Mouse, Remote)
HP OEM Personal Media Drive (new 2Tb 3.5” HDD)

System is running Windows Vista Ultimate x64 and using a period-correct monitor and speakers.

Back in the 90s, if your PC had a Sound Blaster (or the legendary Korean 'OKSORI' sound card) and a CD-ROM drive, your PC immediately turned into a living room karaoke machine.

This was Sekwang Karaoke (세광 즐거운 노래방):

• The UI Aesthetic: Chunky wood-grain speaker skins, faux-LED track displays, and volume/tempo sliders built directly into the software interface.
• Visuals: Low-res 256-color dithered video clips playing in a loop while the iconic green/yellow lyrics synced to MIDI tracks.
• Sound: Powered entirely by FM synth / General MIDI via Sound Blaster OPL3, Roland Sound Canvas, or local wavetable cards.

You’d plug a cheap dynamic mic directly into the sound card's mic-in port, gather the family around the heavy CRT monitor, and sing along.

Did any of you have dedicated CD-ROM karaoke/multimedia software like this on your vintage rigs back in the day?

11/08/26 Update found a specific Slot 1 440BX board with AGP and ISA for a Fujitsu Siemens Scenic 500! Will erase almost complete earlier build plans and turn it into a specific DOS machine with PII 266 / 64mb / AGP TNT2 M64 32mb / ESS1868F ISA soundcard.

Reasoning for change is i picked up a PIII for W98se and this was missing an AGP and ISA slot and ran too fast for some DOS games + pci sound is not all too well for DOS.

Just need to assemble all back up and will post pics and updated build when all parts are in.

Picked this up off FB Marketplace and mostly saw a beige case from the early ATX era which I need for another project, which had been upgraded.

That PSU though (a Apevia ATX-AS500W)...straight from 2004. And probably not the best to use in 2026, but so awesome. The 7900 GS is also a treat. Board is a Intel D925XCV (early 775 board).

Small Windows xp pc on the left. I believe Evesham was a British brand.

The Packard Bell is a Windows 98 pc, with a pentium ii, and voodoo 3 inside.

What are some good PSUs for a 2004 build with a Athlon or FX, and a PCIe GeForce 6800?

Enjoying an Atari ST Saturday

Back in the days there was a French website and forum known for PC tuning.
It was known for being sarcastic but also empowering (hence the name that reflects the owner of the PC having a very specific taste...)
But full of genuinely nice people (most of them) and some really good advice (as well as some "homebrew" = HB = "honteux bidouillages" which are awful builds and modifications made to be awful)

here is the gallery of all the PCs : http://jackypc.com/index2.php3?rub=gallerie&gal=pc&page_choisie=1

a real time capsule 💓😍

It was a bit like "hardforum" but specifically for PCtuning.

Do you have other local websites that have such builds and info ? I'd love to see what was live in other countries

I picked up an intel board to have as a spare. I thought the Pentium ii cooler was quirky.

My Atari Mega STE with ATW800/2 Transputer / Graphics card. This Atari can run at up to 1920x1080 resolution with 256 colors, or lower resolutions with even more colors.

Noteable upgrades:

- The "GPU": https://www.geekdot.com/atw800_2/ 2MB card

- Internal ACSI2STM (sidecartridge) "harddrive" storage, GoTek floppy emulation

- Noctua Fan for PSU

- Wifi232Modem Pro (BBS connectivity)

- Internet Connectivity: I am using a SideCartridge Multidevice but also have a NetUSBEE

- Viewsonic Freesync monitor that properly supports 50 hz, 60 hz, and 72 hz standard ST modes without tearing. (via OSSC). Also used for the GPU resolutions (+HDMI switch to go between ST and Video card outputs).

- Mega ST (rather than Mega STE) keyboard as it has the diagonal ST Function keys that I prefer

- TrueMouse

P.S. Yes, that's an Amiga website -- because it doesn't require HTTPS/TLS.. :) - but I plan to set up a special proxy server so I can view more Atari websites in the browser.

At my work 2 laptops were dropped off, a PowerBook G3 'Wallstreet' and a PowerBook G4, for recycling. They're not in amazing shape, but definitely have seen worse.

I've attached photos, these are located in Westchester, NY. They're unfortunately untested, but they should work according to the original owner. Anyone interested let me know and I can schedule a meet.

​I’m not sure if many of you share this same memory, but back in the 2000s when I was still a middle school student, tech magazines and poster cutouts were my absolute treasures. Since I had no income back then, all I could do was read, dream, and imagine what it would be like to build these dream machines.

​Fast forward to today—I now work in the tech industry, but I often feel that the passion and innovation of the market aren't what they used to be. Products have become increasingly homogenous, manufacturers are constantly cutting costs while prices keep climbing, and many younger users today barely use PCs, let alone feel the thrill of DIY. I truly miss that golden era, and I wanted to pay tribute to the classics that started it all for me.

​With this year marking the 20th Anniversary of the Intel Core architecture, it sparked the idea to build a dedicated theme machine.

​While browsing eBay, I stumbled upon a Dell XPS 630i. Its spaceship-like front panel design and integrated lighting system immediately caught my eye. What made it even better was that it already came with a GeForce 8800 GTX installed—so everything fell into place naturally.

​Both the 8800 GTX and the original Core 2 Extreme (X6800 / QX6700) debuted in 2006, almost 20 years ago. The plan came together quickly: a full tear-down, deep clean, restoration, and a build centered around a top-tier Core 2 processor paired with dual 8800 GTXs in SLI.

​Troubleshooting & Restoration Process:

It wasn’t smooth sailing at first. When the system first arrived, it failed to POST and threw a bunch of error codes. Rather than giving up, I completely tore it down, deep-cleaned every component, and tested each key part individually on a bench to diagnose and fix the faulty points one by one before final assembly.

​Chassis & Layout: Dell XPS 630i (Houses standard ATX motherboard and PSU form factors, but uses a unique Inverted-ATX layout that places expansion slots at the top. This naturally flips the top GPU's reference cooler and green PCB upward—showing off those dual 8800 GTXs perfectly!)

​GPUs & Board Restoration: 2x Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB in SLI. Fully cleaned, re-pasted, and replaced all thermal pads across the motherboard heatsinks and GPUs. Cleaned and lubricated the stock nForce northbridge fan to ensure reliable active cooling.

​Power & Cabling: Upgraded to an MSI MPG 750W fully modular PSU for efficiency and safety. Custom-ordered silver-plated cables specifically to match the classic premium aesthetic and achieve a super clean cable management layout.

​Cooling & Thermals: Installed a Noctua rear fan and Arctic P12 Pro PST front intakes to quietly tame the massive thermal output of the G80 cores and nForce chipset.

​Current Status:

After solving all the hardware bugs and assembling everything back together, seeing this spaceship-like rig light up with dual G80 cards feels like fulfilling a dream I had 20 years ago.

​I’ve officially got Windows 7 up and running, and I’m currently in the middle of installing iconic titles from that golden era (Crysis, Half-Life 2, 3DMark06, etc.).

​Hope you all enjoy the build!

I'm aware the keyboard is not retro

I grew up in the US but now live in Japan and am trying to finally put together my childhood dream 98/XP machine. Unfortunately it seems older "full tower" PC cases - which I take to mean any case with more than one 5.25-inch drive bay - are extremely rare in this country. We can get the same flavorless modern "gaming rig" cases from China as anyone else, but if you want to go back more than 5-6 years, there's basically nothing available.

I assume this is partly because most Japanese households have never had desktop PCs (owing to space limitations, and Y2K-era feature phones being very good) and partly because most old electronics end up being ground up and melted down. In any event it seems like I'll just have to look outside Japan.

Do you have any advice on sites I could use to try shopping around elsewhere on this half of the planet, like Australia or China? Or do you think I'll run into this problem everywhere else on this side of the planet?

In case it matters, I'm after something less in the realm of a flashy XBOX-looking case and more in the realm of a beige box.

Thank you!!

To sum this up: I've got the physical (and legit) copy of the game, but I couldn't install it manually on Windows 11.

I tried running it as administrator, installing DirectX 9, changing compatibility modes... nothing worked. However, with Claude I managed to force the installation, which technically worked — but the game crashes as soon as it opens.

Claude's diagnosis was basically that the game uses old 2006-era copy protection (SecuROM) that relies on a system-level driver, and those old drivers no longer load on modern Windows 10/11. So the game just silently closes without giving me any error.

At that point, I decided to try running it in a Windows XP Virtual Machine.

Unfortunately, I'm using VirtualBox 7.2, which doesn't support the Direct3D acceleration the game requires. Apparently VirtualBox 6.0 does, but I couldn't get that version installed properly on Windows 11.

I also tried SoftGPU, but apparently that doesn't apply to XP, and I tried VMware Workstation Pro, but the download was blocked by Broadcom's account restrictions.

So... does anyone know of another way I could get this game running?

It's literally my childhood game and I really don't want to give up on it 😭 But at this point, if even an AI can't figure out what's wrong, I genuinely don't know what else to try

I was finally able to build a working machine out of the parts I got in the junk tower I was given!

The original tower was a rust bucket that was missing both side panels, but I ran out of the house to get it because I saw a dusty 3DFX logo in one of the pictures and all of the crazy drive bay devices.

The biggest issue was that the Asus motherboard was mostly unresponsive and needed a full recap to finally POST.

The intention was to try and keep as many of the original parts as possible from the original tower and to try and recreate the media powerhouse the original owner was going for circa 2000.

Obviously the best piece was finding the voodoo 5 but it was hard to find a motherboard with the right AGP slot to even test the card with so I ended up needing to repair the original motherboard.

Original tower specs

Athlon 900

768mb memory

Asus A7V motherboard

Voodoo 5

Creative DVD encoder card DXR3

Soundblaster Live 4830

Adaptec SCSI card for the Jazdrive

a bunch of drivebay devices

Final specs

Sweet even larger tower case I was given - no rust included

Athlon 900

1024mb memory

Voodoo 5 - fully tested and working great!

Creative Dvd drive and DVD DXR3 encoder card - mostly working but missing a proprietary passthrough VGA cable

Jaz drive - broken tho as nature intended

Zipdrive - all the iomega

Iomega Cd drive - because why not

Colorado T1000 tape drive

Floppy drive

Memory card reader

As a bonus I've also taken pics of all of my older videocards that I've collected over the years - thankfully all for free or very cheap.

Not quite as aesthetic IMO as the gateway P4 rig I posted before, but it plays Crysis at 50 FPS which is what I was going for. AMD phenom 2, 8gb ddr3, 500gb SSD and 500gb HDD, GTX 770, 650w PSU, and a SB audigy RX in a cooler master case. Not exactly period accurate but she's a beast at what she's meant to do. Again cobbled together from e waste I found at work and Facebook marketplace parts.