Does RGB Make Any PC Look Cool?

In today's episode of "I just want this crap out of my room so let's build you a computer," we'll be looking at building my friend a gaming computer that would have been an amazing system to have back in 2006. My friend already has a decent laptop that's more than capable of playing modern games, but some games don't really work on newer software frameworks or on backwards-incompatible hardware. As we saw in my very similar build for that incomplete-and-stagnant game console project, sometimes you need older hardware and software to play older games. That's fine, I have parts laying around my room that can make a whole computer and if he wants a computer out of them then by all means, it works for me.

Did I mention it'll also feature RGB LEDs? Not everything has to be 2000-and-late.
The first thing to do was to source the parts from around my room. I decided on the following:

• The motherboard and power supply from the other computer I got from the dumpster a few years ago (finally giving it a home). I was planning for it to be my test bench, but I doubt that would have worked well. It's sporting a 3.00GHz Hyperthreaded Pentium 4, so it should crush any game 2000-and-late era game you throw at it.
• A random 80GB hard drive I had sitting around (I actually have many of these)
• A CD-RW drive from the computer that's now my game console.
• 2GB of DDR2 RAM, 1GB of which came from this computer originally.

The first big issue I ran into was that I didn't have a case for the motherboard. I'm pretty sure that the motherboard (a Dell Connolly model) is MicroBTX. So basically I have to mod something. After convincing my friend to go with a $5 rubbermaid tub, I had him draw out everything to cut out using sharpie.

Luckily, because it's not my computer, I made him cut the access to ports and the CD drive and drill the mounting holes for the motherboard. This is always my least favorite part. Then I placed the motherboard onto the screws. This was complicated by the fact that the tub had rounded edges and the screws never really wanted to be perpendicular to the flexible plastic floor. We probably should have made it a tad more rigid but it was a weekend build, so we didn't dump too much time into it.

After that we mounted the rest of the components with velcro tape. This is kind of my trademark at this point. I hate doing it but it's the best way to keep things modular and in one place.

Another big issue I had was with the heatsink. I had to throw away the one that came with the computer because it was so big. So I put a smaller one and wired it to the 5V rail on the power supply. It worked first try and seemed to do good enough. I applied a generous amount of thermal paste because (to my understanding) Intel stopped pursuing the BTX form factor because their Pentium 4s were space heaters and they decided to focus on that instead (good call). The heatsink stays hot which is a good sign. The P4 doesn't have a thermal sensor on it according to OpenHardwareMonitor, but I trust it to turn off if something gets too hot.

I then installed and cracked Windows XP. It was a little harder than it was the last time I had to do it. I kept getting into an activation loop, but I finally got it by using a combination of a good key that reset the timer, and rewriting the WPAEvent key in the registry and protecting it from modification from the system. You can look up elsewhere how to do that. The "correct key" will depend on the version and release of Windows XP you have and can take some trial and error.

Once I got Windows XP installed, I found a over-used and partially broken LED strip and its controller. I hot glued it to the sides of the container.

It's connected right to the 12V rail on the power supply. Driving these lights, I may be reaching close to the maximum capacity of the 12V rail on the power supply, but the PSU didn't panic on me so I think even at high load we're okay. The light system is totally independent of the computer except for power, and because the controller I'm using came with a remote it's super easy to use (and doesn't require any drivers which is hell in the now-unsupported Windows XP).

You can also put it on an color cycle like so:

See? Linus would be proud.

Another issue I ran into was that the sound driver wasn't installed. I had to track down the correct drivers on the Dell website (which required me backtracking from the motherboard model to the correct computer model: the Dimension 5150x.) I'll probably end up using more drivers from this website, but for now, the audio driver that came from here works really well.

The final step that won't be shown here is the addition of a graphics card. We just need to find one because the integrated graphics set isn't powerful enough for even simple games like Metal Gear Solid which requires 4MB of video accelerated graphics (3D Space Pinball works very well though and brought me back to my elementary school days). I'll find one in a surplus shop eventually, but for now, the computer is running, it's not over heating (we'll probably add another fan to the case in the future), and it's pretty as heck.

And the best part? This computer used a lot of parts that are no longer in my room. That's a win for everybody, right? Right? Okay, maybe just me. But I do have a lot of stuff I need to use in projects just to get rid of. I always try to reuse before recycling electronics. It's a curse, but it's worked really well for me in the past. Like here, the RGB Windows XP gaming build. Basically complete and really good looking!