first published 02 Jul 2024
What a shame this Thunderbird Athlon was. The few days I spent with it left me kinda enamored with the first CPU to crack the legendary 1GHz barrier, and as mentioned previously, I had envisioned a build that would employ this exact chip some time ago, even before I got the original (now also dead) MSI KT3 Ultra board. After wiping the last of my tears, the Athlon XP was hyper-carefully put into the board, along with the old cooler that came with it – it’s not the best with its cut-up wires and general ugliness, but it will do. It posted – which came as a relief.
In between the fails and fiddling, the Celeron D motherboard had already left the Slowbox, as for one, a different case style – a more befitting the latter part of early 2000s, less angular and more silver, will suit the computer; and additionally, through the events experienced with the Socket 462 platform I became kinda commited to building a PC (as in, not having a board and PSU hang around the desk). The mission, for now, is as follows: get it built up to a usable, comfortable enough state ASAP and start using the PC; the rest will come later.
This decision comes as a result of rummaging through the parts in storage and currently used in builds, and realizing that I’m a bit stretched thin – the Slowbox is the only ATX case that fits stylistically and is not used for anything particularly important, and I’m horribly out of PC parts at this moment – not even blanking plates or enough screws! Hence, let’s get it up and running first, and looking good and fancy second. The next parts will focus on adjusting and polishing the build.
After booting, CPU-Z indicated that the new configuration ran into a CPU frequency mismatch (1150MHz instead of the 1533MHz advertised) along with the DDR400 memory running at 266MHz, still. Note that I use CPU-Z as the motherboard POSTs incredibly fast, and the moment you expect the usual CPU ID it only flashes an “Athlon(tm) Processor” without a frequency for a brief second. On a default setting it displays a BIOS splash screen, which is basic compared to what the competitors would show at that time, but I cherish it nonetheless. The wrong frequencies were corrected by adjusting the CPU clock to 133MHz and SDRAM timing to 400MHz; this board is surprisingly very overclockable - you can adjust AGP and DDR voltage and timings, CPU voltage, CPU ratios – it might just make up for some overclocking action ;)
Next up – the makeshift cooling solution for the GPU managed to detach itself and dangled over the PCI ports, doing nothing. Unfortunately, with the housing being cut off completely, this fan is junk and I should have thought this over a bit better. The card originally had a non-standard cooler with 4 “legs” going between the fins of the radiator, so that it fit snuggly. Looks good, but good luck if it breaks – online searches resulted in no available fans. I might change the heatsink altogether, but for the time being, a spare new 40mm fan and a single screw that fit (seriously, I’m that low on screws!) should be more reliable for another while. As for other peripherals, sadly, there won’t be any due to them being already used somewhere and/or not being a part of my possesions. Admittedly, I could ravage a Sound Blaster Live! and a network card, but the motherboard already has built-in sound (which will do for now) that should do the trick. And really, with 6 PCI slots, how many cards can you realistically put there? A sound card, the D-Bracket, a network card, and anything else is whim territory to me at this moment. I do have some ideas, but they’re best left as such – a TV tuner has little use in 2024.
With all that out of the way, all that’s left is to put it into the Slowbox case. That said, hopefully this will be just a transitional case as there is a slew of weird, wrong, or plain dumbfounding design choices. This case makes no sense! Sure, on the surface it might be appealing… to some, and lack of cable management possibilities, which is absolutely not an early 2000s thing but appreciated nowadays, there is soooo much wrong with the case. No room for activities! The PSU is to the left of the case, covering the CPU, making it impossible to install a bigger cooler, and obstructing the airflow – why! The rear plate pops off easily – but screwing it back is a towering task of hassle! The power button is a sleep button! Random support metal that obstructs half the insides! Sharp metal! Bad cooling! Bad deals! Cars that break down! Thieves!
Bar the Packard Bell Designer tower, this case takes your enjoyment out of building a PC in a particularly despicable way. The fact that the PSU cables were stiff and uncooperative – and loose, which meant that after assembling the whole PC I had to take off the rear cover, back plate, swing it out, be careful of the cables, connect the ATX power connector which got loose due to me trying not to make it go over the CPU cooler – and good luck cramming your fingers behind the power supply to connect it! – then fix up the front I/O, struggle with the back plate again… ugh, this case puts a damper on the whole experience. All I’m saying is that this case sucks for the build and is perhaps better suited to a different platform. Ashamedly, after doing all this I forgot to insert the rear I/O shield ;D and had to do it once again. The shield required some percussive action with a screwdriver due to it being bent oddly, where it wouldn’t fit no matter how much you tried to unbend it. But hey, that was (almost) the last of my worries, as all that was left is to tidy it up and place behind the desk!
Endtroducing...
I need to figure out a new name for this build.
The Slowbox has reached a new version – albeit frankly, it’s technically slower than the previous one! For a haphazardly thrown-together build, it looks identical to the Celeron D build except the insides, hehe. Yet, this rough build works and runs good – which is a start - and apart from a quick fix where the PS/2 ports would work intermittently (which was the I/O shield’s fault – some more percussive maintenance was necessary)… ahhh, FINALLY! I could spend the rest of the evening playing Deus Ex. As luck would have it, and as you probably expect, Socket 462 is not a merciful platform – four days in, over the weekend, things began to get wonky. Again! On Saturday, while doing some gaming and 3DMark 2001’ing, being the cautious, knowledgeable nerd I am, I had SpeedFan turned on – y’know, just for checking. The findings were worrisome - the insides were getting quite stuffy – and to add insult to injury, some nondescript fan inside started sounding like a Detroit Diesel.
Womp womp.
Next up - upgrades! Or, should i say, just parts needed to make this a complete build. In addition to more fixes. Here's a list of the stuff to do just off the top of my head: