r/sleeperbattlestations

Just finished this build the other day. My old Dimension 3000 from my childhood. The only thing left is an upgraded CPU cooler. Other than that runs like a champ

I recently came into a free HP Z600 workstation. I have been wanting to build a PC for a few years but time and money have always been in short supply, so I’ve never gotten around to it.

Anyway, I’ve always wanted to do a sleeper type build and the free Z600 seems like a good place to start.

I understand that HP uses a proprietary motherboard and power supply, but I’m not afraid of chopping or modding the case. I would like to use a modern set up inside but I’m not ready to buy all the parts at the moment, as I know I will need to do the case work and that might take me some time.

Which reminds me of a thing that race car builders often do, which is use a broken or fake engine block to build the chassis of the car around instead of using the very expensive real thing in the middle of the fabrication space.

On that note, what would be a good place to find a cheap or junk standard (ATX I would assume) motherboard to be the template for the case work I know will need to be done?

Has anyone else ever used a Z600 case for an atx build? There is scant little information on the google concerning this case.

just wanted to see before i commit to it because im not sure

(This is related to sleeper builds I swear!!!!!!) After hooking up my ide disk drive to my sata motherboard with a converter, it got me curious as to the pheasibility of connecting one of these Sound Blaster IR drives to the HD audio port on my motherboard. I know these require the sound card to run, but I figure since my motherboard already has built in sound, I could probably cheese it and just Install the drivers if I can somehow manage to find a way to hook it up. You guys think this is practical or just a pipe dream?

Scraped together over the course of multiple months, had to cut a hole in the case (hdd tray part) to make the gpu fit.

To get down to the sauce:

• i9 14900k

I've undervolted it and limited its power to 65W PL1 and 117W PL2, to make it equivalent to an i5 12400 in terms of power draw. (And to keep it from cooking itself)

• Rx 5700 xt

No particular reason, except for it costing me just €100 and it being bigger than 2 slots. Undervolted to manage the heat, it uses about 125W now.

• Mismatched 2x 16gb ddr5 4800MT/s

Picked the ram kit up for basically pre ram crisis prices

• 256gb pcie 3 ssd (oem) + 1tb 'kingfast' 2.5" ssd

256gb ssd happened to come with the cheap laptop that I had recently purchased, and the kingfast ssd is the cheapest 1tb drive I could find

• ASRock B760m Steel Legend Wifi

Scavenged from a previous build, has a dented I/O shield

• Delta gps 750fb a

Apparently it's a rather nice 80+ Platinum power supply, won it in an auction for €35. Travelled 4 hours by train to collect it.

• Case

I'm sure it has a name but I forgot, picked it up for free, and it leaves around 3mm of clearance for the cpu cooler. Has 1 120mm fan in the front and 1 120mm fan in the back.

• Noctua nh-d14

My dad found it in a thrift store for €3.50 with the mounting kit missing. It's resting on top of the gpu, because it is a bit bent.

Notes:

• When power limited to 117W, the 14900K still performs equal to a stock i7 13700k
• The fans are limited to 600 rpm, because they get annoyingly loud past that
• Total cost is around €725, apart from the motherboard everything was purchased used
• I accidentally broke the front panel so there's a hole in the front now. (see last pic) I'll be zip tying a 120mm fan there
• pc has an optical drive

So I recently acquired a broken Silicon Graphics IRIS Indigo. These Silicon Graphics boxes were basically small supercomputers in the 90s/ 2000s and were used for their power in fields such as science, engineering, and most famously animation. They were used extensively in the original Toy Story movies, and could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is a very simple mini ITX transplant build with midrange specs to be my main PC that sits on my office desk.

Bonus photo of my old pc

Ignore the mess and zip ties and ugly ass mousepad

Ive had it for almost 2 years already and I've only just put the case fans in today because (I think) it overheated from the horrendous uk heat and I got scared😭😭

I was wondering what peoples thoughts are on making holes for more airflow cause i dont really wanna ruin the case anymore but I also dont want my pc to die from lung damage 😢

And if anyone knows jf theres any way I can check if the floppy disk reader still works

Also if theres any recommendations on how i can make the inside better cause I dont really know what I'm doing,..

The case was already cracked when I bought it

Specs

Cpu: 7900x3d

Gpu: rx 7700xt

Motherboard: Tomahawk b590

Psu: a850gl pcie5

Ram: 2x 16gb 6000mhz ddr5

Storage: 2tb nvme

Idk what else to add

For the button I just took the one from my old pc and placed it behind the one on the case lol

Hello, all!

I've already posted this elsewhere, but I somehow just discovered this subreddit, so I decided to show it off here.

Background:

I obtained this Dell Inspiron 3891 from my partner while cleaning out the last things from her old room to put away or take to our new place. She was planning to either put it away in storage or just get rid of it, as she hadn't used pretty much since we had gotten together 2 years ago. It wasn't a spec to write home about, but I was in need of a replacement for my dying Surface Book 3 and my already-dead Xbox One, both of which had used for freelance graphic design/3D modeling alongside MBA course work and light gaming respectively. I had never even touched PC building before then, so I took this as a challenge to try and make a solid runner out of a frankly cruddy office desktop.

With all this said, here are the specs it had...

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CPU: Intel Core i5-10400

GPU: Intel UHD Graphics 630 (Integrated)

RAM: 12GB DDR4 @ 2666MHz (8GB + 4GB)

Storage: 256GB NVMe 2230 SSD + 1TB SATA HDD

PSU: Dell OEM 260W

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And, here are the specs now...

───────────────────

CPU: Intel Core i7-11700F

GPU: GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5060 OC 8GB (Low-Profile)

RAM: 32GB Micron Crucial Pro DDR4 @ 2933MHz (x2 16GB)

Storage: 2TB WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe 2280 SSD (1TB SATA HDD retained + Dell OEM SD Card Daughterboard)

PSU: Dell OEM 500W Platinum (5K7J8)

Cooling: Noctua NH-D9L CPU Cooler + NF-A8 80mm PWM Fans (Intake & Exhaust) + Be Quiet! MC1 M.2 SSD Heatsink

───────────────────

It took quite a lot of research, trial, and error to get to the point am now with this desktop, but I am quite proud of it. I'm now able to play most everything at 1080p on high/ultra settings without it breaking a sweat. Plus, Adobe programs and Autodesk Fusion haven't lagged or stuttered once since all this, so l'd say that's a victory in my book lol.

Hope you all enjoyed this little glossover! I'm very proud of what I've accomplished on my first go, and hope can do more in the future! Any suggestions you all may have are also welcome. (:

Hello all, I just completed putting together a dual-boot Windows xp/Windows 7 system. I wanted to go for the brushed metal style on the pc and then beige for the rest of the peripherals. Let me know what you think! ...and yes it can run Crysis

Specs:

Motherboard: ASUS P5QL

​Processor (CPU): Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650

​Graphics Cards (GPU): NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+

​Memory (RAM): 8GB DDR2 Corsair XMS2 RAM

​Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2

​Storage (Mixed Deployment):

​Windows XP Drive: 500gb Mechanical SATA Hard Drive

​Windows 7 Drive: 500gb Solid State Drive (SSD)

​Optical Drives: ASUS Blu-ray Drive, ​Sony DVD Drive

​Case / Bench: Fractal Core 1100

​Monitor: Samsung SyncMaster 955df CRT Monitor

​Keyboard: BTC 5100C Keyboard (in the mail)

CASE STICKERS: https://geekenspiel.com/collections

Hi everyone,

I’m currently mock-fitting components for my retro sleeper PC build to determine the best orientation and placement before finalizing everything. I am hitting a bit of a dilemma regarding the power supply orientation and could really use some expert advice.

As you can see in the photos, this is a classic top-mounted PSU chassis. My main concern is whether I should face the PSU intake fan downwards or upwards:

1. Facing Downwards (Current setup in photos): The PSU fan directly faces my massive dual-tower CPU heatsink. My concern here is long-term dust accumulation. In my previous modern chassis[see last image] (where the PSU was bottom-mounted), I noticed a massive amount of dust buildup directly on the surface facing the fan intake. I’m worried that with a top-down configuration, dust and debris might fall down directly onto the massive CPU heatsink and the GPU below it over time.

2. Facing Upwards: If I flip the PSU to face upwards, the intake fan will face the top panel of the case. However, there is only about a 1cm (0.4 inches) clearance between the PSU and the top panel. Furthermore, the top panel is completely solid metal with zero ventilation holes (airflow would have to be drawn from the front/side gaps of the chassis frame).

Additional Context:

• I will be installing 120mm fans at both the front and the rear(possibly smaller for the rear) of the chassis to optimize overall system airflow as much as possible(but I don't like to cut or modifications).

• The motherboard is a Z370 platform, and the GPU(msi gtx 1070ti) will be mounted in the lower slots.

Given the restricted 1cm clearance and solid top panel, would facing the PSU upwards completely suffocate it and cause overheating? Or is the dust risk of a downward-facing PSU a bigger issue for the components below?

Would love to hear your thoughts, experiences.

Thanks in advance!

So I have a nice pc but thought the case was waayy boring, went looking online and found one that felt nostalgic for the mid 2000s, Dell Dimension 4700. Immediately I showed this to my sibling that helped put my PC together and they went yup looks good. So I ordered a case along with a UHD Bluray drive because hey a functional disc drive slot... little did I know I made a mistake that would disappoint my ancestors.

About a week later the case comes in and uh oh... it's tiny. I get my sibling and we inspect and compare sizes and as if the case were a dying relative they looked at me and said "It's not going to make it."

I should've measured the dimensions before I bought it, I should've accounted for this, why did I not see the view from halfway down... I have no honor.

I cannot return the case and I have no idea for alternatives that fit the look I was going for. If anyone has ANY recommendations when it comes to potential ways to orient my pc parts into this case OR alternatives for a different case that would be VERY appreciated.

Current PC parts that are essential to fit.

MSI B550 Gaming Gen3

Corsair CX750

Gigabyte Radeon RX 7700 XT

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

3 Corsair Fans

NZXT H5 Flow 2024

Hello all,

My nephew told me I should share my setup, so here it goes.

At first I wanted a 90s setup. But halfway through the Zillennial age regression hit and I thought “Why don’t I just make this like MY childhood?” I inherited the old family computer and used it until 2013, so that’s what I ended up recreating.

The setup uses a Gateway EV910B CRT, Gateway FPD1520 LCD, Boston Acoustics BA635 speakers, a Telex M40 desk mic($6 and works great with sound suppression turned on), and a matching Gateway keyboard and mouse.

The computer is a sleeper, but not really. It’s a SilverStone FLP02 with a Ryzen 7 5700X, GTX 1660 Super, and Gigabyte B550 inside. Enough power to run my emulators and late-2000s games at max settings which is all I wanted.

I painted the DVD drive bezels heirloom white, and the floppy drive is actually a USB floppy mounted behind a 3D printed carrier that presses the eject button. I redesigned the part to fix some warping, but I’ve been too lazy to swap it in.

And yes, this is Windows 11. I followed a tutorial and a bunch of extra tweaks to make it look and behave like Windows XP. Overall the setup is less “2000s advertisements” and more “the family PC I actually grew up with.”

It's pretty nice and was very interesting to build in , but it's done

Don’t worry, I bought the case with no innards- no Mac was destroyed in the creation!

I was looking to get an old case and the search was fruitless. But i was at my childhood house and there it was. Under my nose the whole time. So i will make a sleeper. Will need rust removal and a respray.

Not sure if this is allowed since I haven't begun any of the work on this yet, just looking to see if anyone has experience with a similar build. I've always loved the look of this old GE SC4200B radio/tape player, and I wanted to convert it into a media/gaming pc for my living room. Obviously the case would require some serious modding to allow for proper airflow, and getting the dials to function would probably involve a pico or another small SOC in addition to the micro itx system inside. I've been exploring ways to use the tape track switcher mechanism as an output switcher for other media sources, which from what I've read is possible but requires a lot of work. Does anyone here have experience with reusing old physical switches with modern internals like this? I'm yet to purchase one because I don't want to gut a working unit since these are fairly uncommon. Any ideas/feedback on the idea are appreciated.