Some time ago I had the idea to build myself a retro PC. At first it was just a fun thought, but soon I started hunting for good deals on eBay. I ended up with two CRT monitors, six motherboards, RAM, PCI cards, CPUs, and more!
My first attempt was with a Pentium 4 system, but the board had a nasty issue: the onboard audio chip stopped working. So I dropped that one and switched to an AMD Athlon 64 X2 with an Nvidia GT 330.
That machine ran Windows XP and it was pure nostalgia – playing classics like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Morrowind, and catching up on the Half-Life series was awesome. Sadly, the CPU started giving me problems after a while. :(
To get more performance in Oblivion I upgraded the system with new parts. I ended up with an AMD Phenom II X4 965 and an Nvidia GTX 960. Not exactly “retro” anymore – but definitely smoother to play with.
I also set up a dual-boot with Arch Linux and Windows Vista. Luckily, Linux still had working drivers for the GTX 960, so that setup worked out nicely.
Right now the PC mainly runs Linux with WindowMaker.
I use it for programming and the occasional gaming session.
Lately, Monster Hunter Frontier has been a real highlight on this setup!
But I'm also planning on building a Pentium III PC with Windows 98. I already have most of the parts beside the case and IDE drive.