r/sleeperbattlestations

Had one and it broke (not by me) and I want another one to build a sleeper.

Linux Mint 21

GTX 980 4GB

Ryzen 5 5500

16GB DDR4

256GB Inland NVMe SSD

SilverStone FLP02

The RAM was by far the most expensive component 😅

I actually started with a 750 Ti, 8GB DDR4, and a 500GB SATA HDD but now that I'm using it more I decided to give it a little more juice, plus driver support for the 750 Ti was a bit of a pain.

One of the biggest frustrations with this build was the 240mm hampering the airflow coming into the case due to such a dated design and limited intake abilities. Adding two 80mm fans as the intake ticked off that area.

Finally, solving this was such a huge win for me. Whilst I'm running a 5700x3D, I couldn't get away with just running the base AMD Stealth cooler so went for something with a more effective design whilst keeping it as low as possible without thermal throttling which I've achieved. The main reason was to reduce as much turbulence as possible for everything to exhaust out the right.

I've managed that, kept the temps down and it's running a lot quieter than before. Now that it's done, I'm hopefully going to be in a position that it doesn't need opening up for a long time.

Hiya just an update Pic showing my compaq presario 866 up and running before I start working on it

BASE: HP Pavilion M01-F1xxx (16L office case)

BEFORE -> NOW:
CPU: i3-10100 (4C/8T) -> i7-10700 (8C/16T)
GPU: GTX 1660 Super (125W) -> Zotac RTX 2070 Super Mini 8GB (215W)
RAM: 16GB -> 32GB DDR4 Dual Channel
PSU: Stock HP 400W -> HP 500W 80+ Gold

COOLING:
CPU Cooler: Thermalright AXP90-X47 + Printraft velocity stack shroud
VRM: Custom copper heatsinks
Thermal Paste: Arctic MX-7 - X-pattern on GPU die

FAN MODS:
Front ODD Bay: Noctua NF-A4x10 -> Noctua NF-A6x25 PWM (29.2 CFM) INTAKE
Rear: Thermalright TL-P9S 92mm (42.7 CFM) INTAKE
Side Vent: Noctua NF-A8 PWM (32.6 CFM) EXHAUST
Hub: EH10 10-port PWM hub on SATA power for full 12V

AIRFLOW: 71.9 CFM intake / 32.6 CFM exhaust = +39 CFM positive pressure

RESULTS - Space Marine 2, closed panel, 1080p Ultra:
Before: 90-99C hotspot Level 2
Now: 84C hotspot Level 3-4 horde / CPU 72-76C

Kinda a cheater sleeper but love this case. All white build with a new 5070ti I just got this past Friday!

Hello! This is the slowest PC I've ever put together. I started waiting for good deals on parts Mid-2024 and completed this build just before the RAMpocalypse Late-2025. I've been putting off taking photos but this has been reliably my daily driver this year!

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9800x3D
• GPU: ASRock Steel Legend Radeon RX 9070 XT
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance DDR5 6000MHz 96GB
• Motherboard: ASUS Prime B650 Plus
• SSD: Samsung 9100 pro 4tb (Linux Install), Samsung 970 evo 1tb (Windows Install)
• PSU: SeaSonic Focus GX 850W
• BD-Drive: Pioneer BDR-205 (I didn't know they came in beige)
• CASE: I think I picked it up on the side of the road because I don't remember

Most of these parts are either from a Microcenter deal or an eBay special. As for the case all I know about it is that it was an empty ATX case I had laying around, was a bit oxidized so I cleaned it off and put a nice coat of spray paint primer for the interior. Floppy drive also works with a converter connector to USB 2.0. Nearby the USB hub that I took the plate off and spray painted white with the same can from earlier. For case cooling there are two Noctua 120mm fans in the front (one covering 3 5.25 slots and one in the bottom where the hard drives would go), with a 92mm fan in the back. Also added an m.2 card for Wifi/Bluetooth and a Serial port for good measure!

I do regret not researching CPU cooling more before buying a heavily discounted Noctua nh-c14 on eBay because I thought it'll look cool (or the cheapest ATX motherboard at Microcenter for that matter), but thankfully after a small under-clock the CPU runs <65C Idle / <80C full load, at least for now. Hope you enjoy!

is this sleepy enough

I think I kinda ruined the sleeper asthetic of the pc idk what do you think

What you think about this sleeper? More pictures following

RTX4060

ENERMAX Case

X99 2680v4

I’m running out of ideas here.
Everything seems to be working, but gaming performance still feels a little off and I can’t figure out where the bottleneck is coming from.
I’ve checked drivers, thermals, clocks, link state, and nothing obvious is jumping out at me.
At this point I’m wondering if I’m overlooking something really basic.
Any ideas?

Just bought an empty Econel for £10 and spent the morning ticking the back of it with an angle grinder so it can accept its new 1200w PSU. Motherboard bundle is still in the post but should make for a seriously cool sleeper. Amazingly, it’s not the behemoth I thought it would be-it’s only 1” longer than my NZXT case and about 3” shorter! What do you think?

*specs
-13th gen i7 13700
-1x16gb ddr5 5600mhz Samsung
-gigabyte z790 eagle ax mobo
-gtx1070(upgraded in near future)
-250gb Samsung ssd nvme
-2tb hdd

My insta is @Alienlarp if you want to see more
Content

While scrolling Facebook marketplace I came across this fugly "little" machine for only $100. At the time it came with a pretty underpowered xeon (I think e5 2650 can't remember)  & 64 gb of ecc ddr3. It has dual cpu and x16 pcie lanes which i plan to use in the future for toying around with vms 

Even with the ancient mobo chipset I saw some potential. Picked up a Xeon 1650 for around $30 on ebay, found a massive 135 twp aliexpress cooler as the previous cooler was nowhere near good enough. I was kinda surprised a server chip like this required so much cooling. 

Found another good deal on a evga 1080ti black edition which im not too sure (please correct me if I am wrong) is the most powerful gpu for this architecture 

Overall I'm only around $300 in this build and I have many more plans with it. When I acquire the necessary funds I plan to buy more storage to attempt Dual booting linux. I am very aware that windows is most likely choking the performance but I've been hesitant to switch for compatibility reasons. 

Im open to hear any feedback or recommendations!

Got this 1999 DELL Dimension XPS T500 from a thrift store for $15. Friend originally wanted me to make a sleeper build, but assuming the parts still function, it's actually a really nice build. Pentium 3 500MHz, 16MB NVIDIA RIVA TNT, Soundblaster Live! PCI sound card, 13.6GB 7200RPM Hard Drive, DVD-ROM (but no MPEG decoder PCI device?)

Very similar specs to my first PC, a Gateway Essental 450. So I already like the idea of installing Monster Truck Madness, Midtown Madness 1 and 2, Need for Speed 3: Hot Pursuit, Need for Speed 4: High Stakes, Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed.

The only thing missing is the Iomega Zip Drive so I have a missing slot door in front.

Any suggestions? Keep the case original, or should I sand/paint it like Voodoo/Alienware used to do theirs? I've got some 2004 1280x1024 DELL LCD monitors, though a CRT would be better, but I can't afford that.

CPU: Ryzen 7 5700G
Mobo: A520I AC
Ram: Critical DDR4 3200MHZ 64gb
SSD: WD Black NVMe 1TB, i forget the speed but its plenty
Cooling: Thermalright FW SE 120 with some Noctua NF-P12 redux fans

I recently finished putting my shop together and needed a PC in there for various shop related things. I had some spare parts laying around (cpu, ssd, and ram) so i figured it wouldn’t cost much to buy a mobo and some cooling to get what I needed. This tool box was my step dads who passed away last year and it’s always been my favorite one of his because of all of the band stickers so as I was sitting in my shop one day i just decided it’d be perfect to use as a case for my pc. Im not going to be gaming or doing any crazy rendering on it so the onboard graphics on the 5700g are plenty for basically just putting music on, using YouTube for tutorials and sending files to my 3D printer. Im just getting into 3D printing and im assuming that making custom 3D models can be pretty GPU heavy so i am planning on doing all of that work on my gaming PC upstairs and then just sending it down to the 3D printer from there.

When I initially started planning this in my head my biggest worry was insulating and grounding for an all metal case but in hindsight it didnt end up being a huge worry for me. I lined the entire inside of the box with eva foam and the mobo is sitting on nylon standoffs that i epoxied to the floor of the toolbox. As for grounding I just grinded down a small part of the toolbox to bare metal, ran a nut and bolt through a ring terminal connected to some 18AWG wire and tightened it down with a star nut then wired that directly to the PicoPSU’s grounding wire. I have yet to check it with a multimeter because im lazy but i am pretty confident i am good to go, i guess i’ll find out the hard way when i fry everything in there lol.

Mentioning the PicoPSU, I’ve never used one before and i actually wasn’t even familiar those existed. I was researching very small footprint PSU’s because of the limited space and happened upon PicoPSU’s. It was completely plug and play, i just hooked it up to a 12V 12A power supply and it was good to go.

Another major issue i was worried about was cooling. It was now in an all metal, electrically insulated box which in turn makes it thermally insulated because of the foam that is also in my super hot garage. I opted for an all in one liquid cooler because why not and then noctua fans strictly for sound. Ironically the PC is completely silent but the power supply brick kicks on an annoying fan after a little bit of use, its not the worst thing in the world so im not trippin about it. I havent done any major stress tests to see how the heat transfer is but during idle and regular use it stays super cool so i think im all good on that front.

In terms of finishing there is a lot i’d do different but it looks pretty good and it was my most fun/custom pc build yet so im really happy with how it turned out. The only other thing im going to do is print a custom IO shield for it, i cut out the hole a little too low so it couldn’t accommodate the oem IO shield. Also don’t worry I’m going to cable manage all of those cables behind the monitors lol.

The cool thing about it too is that i could easily mount a gpu in it with a pcie extension if i ever wanted to, probably not going to but the option is there!

I love the concept of an old dirty tattered tool box secretly being a desktop pc. I feel like a regular pc case would just stand out too much on my work bench.

Honestly the only thing that could make this cooler would be if my stepdad could see how sick it turned out!!!

Let me know what you guys think and if you have any questions! I’ve also been thinking about commissioning something similar for anyone who is interested, it was such a fun build.

My budget is 800 but its flexible its a compaq edit: its a compaq 866 I have photos of the internals but I can't post images :3 im in the u.s. I wanna make it vr capable and i have a list built but idk if it will fit inside