Refurbing a 2003 Radeon 9700 Pro Gaming PC | Get into Retro PC Gaming

A peak early 2000s gaming PC. Radeon 9700 Pro, SB Live! 5.1. Windows Me. 2002 perfection. Join Matty for (possibly) his last ever retro PC build video, as he rebuilds the PC which was donated by a one-time world highest-ranked Unreal Tournament player!
I've always loved building retro gaming PCs. The cost of these is getting higher each year, so the only way I can continue to do this (and vouch for the hobby) is if we see more generous donations and trading of old PC parts.
Stoked community - who among you enjoys old PC hardware? Who would be willing to trade and donate hardware to the community to encourage more people to join this great hobby?
00:00 Intro
01:01 Diagnosing the PC!
02:33 Disassembly
05: 02 Cleaning and refurbing
08:27 Installing Windows ME
09:20 Playing classic 2000s PC games
15:28 Outro
#oldpcgames #gpujune2 #radeon
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[@NeilCoward]

Hi Matt, Neil here! Great video... Thanks for bringing back some life to this build, that's great to see.. I couldn't stop smiling while watching this! Oh man did it bring back some memories seeing many of them old games on there! I'm really glad you are able to get some enjoyment out of it still and the beast lives on! It was UT Instagib I played, mainly CTF and I went by the name Transparent.

[@MattyStoked]

Glad you enjoyed it Neil. Thanks for the opportunity!

[@matthewtranter2057]

Hey, would you do a sims 2 performance video with this car?

[@phillycheesetake]

7:00 By the way, 9700 and 9500 cards have a massive failure rate due to the cooler contacting the metal shim surrounding the GPU die, rather than the die itself. You might want to take the card out, hold it against a bright background, and just check if you can see daylight between the shim and the heatsink. If you can't, and the heatsink contacts the shim, your card will kill itself with enough use. I've personally bought and returned many broken Hercules 3D models also, so they've got the same problem the reference cards have. The fixes are removing the shim, or getting something like a Zalman VF700, or a heatsink from a 9800-series card, both of which protrude below the shim to make complete contact.

[@connorsteffan8958]

You might get a performane boost with windows xp.

[@BudgetBuildsOfficial]

I really wanna see Oldblivion (I think that’s what it’s called) which made the game run on a Pentium M + X300 Laptop I grew up using. I completely agree about PC part pricing on the retro side. The main cheap way to get into it is just trying to find a prebuilt on Marketplace. The bootfair shave dried up, eBay is full of scalpers (my £50 S423 Board is now £150+) Absolutely fantastic watch, I’d personally love to have a showdown between this and my retro Pentium 4 PC 👀

[@TheSpotify95]

Thanks for linking me over to this :) this was definitely an interesting video to watch. It's a shame I don't have easy access to car boot sales and the like, as I'd still be looking to see if I could find anything of interest/value.

[@the8bitgabe]

This was a cool video thanks budget

[@MattyStoked]

Yeah eBay is a lot of work for buyers now. FB isn't too bad, or the pre-owned apps like Shpock or Craigslist. That showdown is a _great_ idea. We should definitely do that! Oh and also, thanking you for the punt dude. I massively appreciate that.

[@blitzthose]

I have found the best way to get old ram and gpu's is to buy joblots, alot of effort is required to test them though as they are mostly sold untested hence the low prices, I got a couple of lots that worked out at £1 per ramstick/ GPU.

[@kenfreeman8888]

Well done learning to solder. My toughest hardware challenge was figuring out the jumper pins on an old eMachine I found without a manual. It's so satisfying when you solve something like that.

[@MattyStoked]

Definitely! I'd love to continue soldering but I've not had another project since this one. It was hard!

[@matthewarmstrong7069]

I have a P4 that I have owned since 2006. MB is a DFI Lanparty Pro 875. CPU is 3.2 GHz Prescott and AMD Radeon HD3650 AGP, all inside a Cooler Master Mesh case. I have owned a similar Northwood powered PC prior to the DFI, it ran XP flawlessly for some years. That machine got me hooked on playing Diablo 2 and attended so many LANs. Thanks for the reminisce and keep up the good work.

[@MattyStoked]

Thanks mate! What a cool sounding PC

[@curvingfyre6810]

I recently built in this exact case, but with black metal, and no side window case mod. Picked up an old junker PC for the PSU and case in order to flip some spare parts. Really made me realise just how little cases have changed.

[@MattyStoked]

Dude, you're right! ATX mobos and cases have been on sale for nearly 30 years now. Save for a few cables and connectors, building a PC has barely changed since the '80s. I absolutely love it.

[@AllieMeowy]

I was sad to hear this would be the last video in this style, I would binge these forever! I’m sure there are other interesting cheaper/free hobbies that you could share in the future though, excited to see what’s next 👀👀

[@MattyStoked]

Allie! Thanks for this comment. I do have some old computer videos, going way back. I've got SO many hobbies to share with you though, so don't worry!

[@Vyp3Rau]

Actually scored a Radeon 9700 Pro in an ebay auction for $120AUD (about $85USD) with original box! I know I lucked out there. Matched it with a Athlon XP 2800+ with socket A MB for $30 I bought 6 months earlier. Already had a case and RAM, so pieced together a naughties era PC for myself. Even managed an 128GB SSD with adaptor for loading speed and dual boot 98SE / XP. The thing screams compared to what I had back then. It sits pride of place next to my modern Ryzen 9 machine. Both my teenage kids fight over it to play Quake 2, Unreal Tournament 2003, Half-Life 2, Wing Commander 4 and a bunch of other Star Wars games.

[@MattyStoked]

That's so rad, man. Really pleased to hear the next generation are enjoying the old games!

[@supabass4003]

Nice thats an awesome deal.

[@erroneoushyphen]

Great thorough rebuild - really enjoyed watching :) I was a big fan of the Pentium 4 back in the day, despite all the concerns around them running hot, and still am today (my current Windows98 build is running a 3Ghz Pentium 4 and a Radeon 9800 Pro, both with mild overclocks, so in a similar ballpark). For a bit of comparison if you're interested, its 3dMark 2000 score is 16537, 3dMark 2001SE is 16895.

[@MattyStoked]

Glad you enjoyed it! The P4 is a great CPU. It gets a lot of flack probably because it hung around too long. Great sounding build, bud.

[@erroneoushyphen]

@@MattyStoked Thanks! Yeh there's a lot of support for Pentium 3 in the intel camp when it comes to building a Windows 98 PC, or going with an AMD of some description. Id be keen to try them one day.

[@grimmpickins2559]

I'm here because of Budget Builds - despite being an enthusiast for this sort of video, and cobbling stuff together myself, I hadn't bumped into your stuff before. The market has gone nuts, I was fortunate to get into my particular niche (PPC Macs) before Covid nearly tripled the prices of these old beasts of forgotten architectures. Once the GPU prices started to spike with Crypto profitability, it seems everything followed. The modern stuff is dropping in price, but all of the retro goodies are staying very, very high (I chase late AGP cards, early modern era PCI-e flagships). I'm rather sad that this is sort of an epitaph on your retrobuilding - but I will certainly enjoy your back catalog. Thanks

[@MattyStoked]

I made a video a few years back about building budget retro PCs, and my main advice was to avoid flagship cards and really popular brand names. But even now, mid level cards are commanding a price far higher than I could recommend paying. Never say never. I love old PCs so who knows what the future holds. I'll be covering old PC games and PC adjacent stuff forever, I hope you stick around and enjoy that.

[@grimmpickins2559]

@@MattyStoked I totally get 'flying under the radar' with GPUs - which I do with my modern stuff... However I came across a Asus Matrix 5870 for a good price, and the whole build quality and colored lights monitoring load thing really caught my attention... Plus it actually gave a boot screen on a Mac without card BIOS flashing, making me wonder...

[@LuckStat]

I can’t believe that you have a Braincoats sticker on your scanner of all places, Matty. Got a targeted ad for them in like…2013 back when they were doing Gaslight Anthem and Alkaline Trio covers. A very weird blast from the past (also great video, of course!)

[@MattyStoked]

These are the comments I live for, NGL. I'm more impressed that you remember the specific details of a targeted ad from a decade ago. Go you! 😆

[@curvingfyre6810]

Arguably the sata controler would save cables, since sata cables are so much easier to work with than ide ribbons

[@MattyStoked]

That is a really fair observation :)

[@HPRshredder]

I like the red interior lol. Retro PC gaming is definitely something I can see myself getting into eventually. I have never been much of a PC gamer, but the angle of older PCs is oddly more interesting to me. I like the compartmentalization of having machines that are just for gaming, and I feel like it's hard to separate myself and get into it in any modern OS outside of like card games or board game-type games. Retro machines seem like a fun way to have a machine that is literally just for games running a comfy older OS. I understand why you don't fully recommend it; but I still find it interesting. Also, I really enjoyed the way you filmed this one! I missed this when it came out, but I'm glad I checked your channel to check if I missed anything.

[@MattyStoked]

Hey mate! Thanks for stopping by :) I love building old PCs with a specific focus. There are definite eras of PC gaming with appropriate builds and getting it all up and running is exactly as you described it. Cosy. If you're the kind of person who doesn't mind spending money on a hobby, it's super rewarding. Thanks for checking back and thanks for the nice comments. A little upsetting to find out that the videos aren't making their way into subscriber's feeds though :/

[@HPRshredder]

@@MattyStoked Hell yeah, I love your videos. And I just double-checked to make sure and it definitely WAS in my feed. I was just very busy in June and checking back this video was posted the same weekend my AC went out which was an existential crisis for me living in Florida lol

[@MattyStoked]

@@HPRshredder oh God, nightmare!

[@alyxoj1361]

I am currently slowly aquiring the parts to build a late 2000s beast build with a Q6600 and 8800 GTX. It should be able to run anything from the 2000s very well and its limit would probably be Crysis, where it should get roughly 30 to 40 fps at medium. This era of components is actually rather cheap imo. I am reusing some parts that i had lying around like a PSU and a DVD drive. I am able to get ddr3 or ddr2 ram for like 5 quid. And i am probably going to fit it in a newish case and make it micro-atx to save on space. I paid 20 quid for the CPU and GPU combined and I worked out it will be roughly 60-70 for the rest of the components depending on whether i go for am SSD. I can't decide what OS to go with tbh. The 8800 GTX was I believe the first card to support DX10 and Vista is the earliest OS to support DX10. But then I might go for something even later becasue I wouldnt mind access to Steam as i dont have many physical games anymore. I could always dual-boot but idk.

[@BlastProcessing]

I thoroughly enjoyed this one mate, nice to see some old hardware up and running! I had a Geforce FX 5600 back in the day and always coveted the 9700 Pro.

[@MattyStoked]

Glad you enjoyed it bud. It was fun to put this together :D

[@supabass4003]

Hey mate I had a Powercolor 9700PRO AIW back in 2003, it was the bees knees. I had my Xbox hooked up to it and used to play Xbox Live on one monitor and browsed the internets and chat on the other - it so awesome. Mine ended up failing though, R300 was the best! Also regarding Doom 3, I recall playing it at 1024x768 with mediumish settings at 30fps+. I think Morrowind would be a better fit for this PC.

[@TheSpotify95]

This looks like an awesome PC for running older software, such as those late 90s to early 2000s games that you mentioned previously. Very powerful for the era of the PC, I must say - our old Windows 95 era PC (which was later upgraded to ME) was much less powerful than this. Also, even with the 120GB IDE hard drive, I reckon you could dual boot Windows ME with Windows XP, for the best of both worlds - though admittedly, performance in XP would likely be worse, and games made that require XP wouldn't run too well either. Lastly, I loved the fact that it came with multiple DVD/CD drives, a floppy drive, and other I/O expansions - I'd have personally kept those in, even if you would never need to use 3 optical drives at the same time. Maybe with an additional, larger capacity, IDE hard drive (or SATA if the motherboard supports SATA), and upgrading the 10/100 Ethernet card to a Gigabit Ethernet card, you might just have yourself a nice media server PC too. Thanks to Budget Builds Official for kinking me over to this video.

[@MattyStoked]

I only considered dual booting after installing Windows and a bunch of games. If I'd planned ahead, I would have partitioned the drive. But considering I have the HDD and the DVD drive one one IDE cable, everything takes a wee bit longer than usual and I just couldn't be arsed doing it all again 😅 Thank you for the high effort comment. Big love to Budget Builds and his community

[@QuantumCat76]

There's also a D3 "hack", I believe it stores it's main game files in compressed files. Extract these and the game runs fastger as it isn't extracting these files real-time during gameplay

[@Nicolas_Tech]

I think you may have to modify the game to load the extracted files though.

[@QuantumCat76]

@@Nicolas_Tech Doesn't look like it, Couldn't find anything about it in Internet. And it concerns the PS4 files in the "base" folder. Rename the PK4 files if you still want to enjoy the MP

[@johnhudson7055]

I love the northwood p4. I actually bought a dell with 3.06 northwood, the first hyperthreaded CPU and a 9700 pro because I couldn’t get ahold of them from any of my suppliers yet cus they were just released. I built a new machine around those two parts. I’ve recently started buying all the parts to recreate that machine. I’ve bought the motherboard I wanted so bad back then, a socket 478 Soyo Dragon Ultra. I’ve gotta go through all my old parts but I think I still have that dell 9700 pro.

[@MattyStoked]

Sounds absolutely perfect! You'll have a great competitor to The Red Menace here :D

[@adultlunchables]

Came to check this video after you commented about it. Great content! Subbed!

[@PanelstoPixels]

I love these types of videos from you, dude. I understand less than 10% of the tech talk but I love them nonetheless. Also couldn't help but be distracted by the fab shirts and kaijus on display. Top stuff!

[@MattyStoked]

Thank you buddy. I relish letting out my nerdy side with these. My little office at home is tiny so it's impossible not to have something in shot! These are "Super Dinosaur" Ultraman knockoffs from China. My mum bought me a few from a big bucket at a market when I was a kid. The rest I've picked up over the years I absolutely love them 😍

[@NoTySir]

Love this type of video and the final product is so nostalgic. 100% agree on the insane prices of parts these days…went from something fun to tinker with to a significant investment over the course of a year or two. I guess lots of people got nostalgic too during lockdown and everyone wanted to relive their glory days all over again or something making the shortage. 😂

[@MattyStoked]

Thank you so much. I love putting these together. And I'm faaarrrr from an expert - for me this hobby is as much about learning and showing my mistakes as it is about having a working PC at the end. Unfortunately, it's a pretty expensive hobby to learn! I'd be pretty hesitant to jump into learning how to solder, learning to de-shim a graphics card etc if I stand to lose a couple of hundred quid if I get it wrong. It's a pretty intimidating price point to end up with nothing!

[@acid3129]

I miss unreal tournament. My school did a charity week every year just before summer . It was a week of talent shows cake stalls all over the place and no work . One of the events they did was at break time they turned the computer labs into a lan cafe and load unreal tournament and half life multiplayer you pay £2 and you get a 90min of play session against kids in your own school

[@MattyStoked]

UT formed a really big part of my teenage years!

[@middle_pickup]

Sleeving the cabling was the right move. Pentium 4's pack the heat, and it's smart to get some airflow going. Also, ME isn't a bad idea if you're targeting 98 era games, but I think there is an unofficial service pack 3 for 98 that you might want to try too. Cool build. Enjoyed the video.

[@MattyStoked]

Thanks for the very kind comment. NGL, 90% of the reason I sleeve the cables is aesthetics. I hide behind the idea of efficiency but really it's because I don't like looking at the cables lol. I really like ME, I don't get why people continue to dogpile on it. Win98 SP2/3 is also very good, but that doesn't make ME bad!

[@middle_pickup]

@@MattyStoked not kidding. I started typing out my comment suggesting you buy some tech flex sleeve and heatshrink, but then saw you already did it. Haha I'm the exact same way. The ketchup and mustard look was never flattering. As for ME, I think people just don't like change. Windows users always hate updating.

[@nurbsivonsirup1416]

Oh god, I feel so old. "Retro" used to mean a 486 and a Soundblaster16 to run DOS games natively, not a DX9 GPU with fully programmable shaders running on a WindowsNT derivate xD

[@blitzthose]

I had that exact case all the way back then, think it was 25 quid from ebuyer with a PSU. Only had it for a year before upgrading to a Cooler master ATCS 201B.

[@MattyStoked]

It's a really solid case! Just needs some lights :)

[@l337pwnage]

I was about to say I'm surprised not to see more "rounded" cables in retro machines, but there is one @ 8:06, lol. Although back in the day, we often had to "round" our own, and I have yet to see that.

[@MattyStoked]

I made a video about retro PC cabling where I describe how to "round" your own IDE cables! The round ones are so much nicer, I can't believe ribbon cables were even a thing.

[@Mini-z1994]

Had the same 9700 pro in a box for years dunno if it was working still. During a move something fell into the box of stuff in like 2016 so it broke off a vram chip and upon testing it was certainly dead at that point, pretty much decorative as a bare pcb now in my apartment. Hercules 3d prophet 9700 pro i believe it's called. This generation of cards were prone too die due too the shim around the gpu die being slightly higher then it should so you should remove it really together with vram chips running quite hot but they have heatsinks on this model of the card. Too get the shim off, basically use a boxcutter/snap off blade knife (Used a generic cheap one here too remove the shim on the dead 9700 pro i got.) or a sharp thin X-Acto knife & carefully go around the edge of the shim slowly pushing in under it between the gpu & shim & slowly forcing it upwards as you'll be cutting the glue/tape which is like 3 - 4mm wide use a shorter blade if possible & make sure too not push inwards with too much force towards the gpu die like i did with this dead card, i mean it popped off but i also destroyed a small capacitor on here on the gpu die. The corners should be easiest too push in at as the glue/tape isn't around there, careful so you don't destroy one of the capacitors around the gpu die though i pretty much tore one off as the blade pushed straight through the glue suddenly trying it here on the dead 9700 pro i got. Might take a few minutes but it should eventually pop off fine even 20 years later think philscomputerlab did remove the shim on a working 9700 pro a few years ago in the video called " How ATI upset Nvidia with the Radeon 9700 Pro " at 7:30 or at least shows the problem there these cards have. I myself started from the bottom left on the agp slot cutting that length only while forcing it upwards, i can post an image too your twitter of the result here if you need a general look of the glue/tape. *nevermind the twitter as it doesnt seem too exist anymore. I'll post it in the discord instead.*

[@MattyStoked]

I'm really hoping a fat blob of thermal paste will mitigate the shim, as I'm nervous about removing it

[@berserker6832]

I like this video 😉Did graphics cards get outdated that quickly back then? High-end level card from 2002 was already struggling to deliver constant 60fps in 2003 games, leave alone 2004 games like DOOM3, Far Cry or Half-Life 2. Btw, doesn't compatibility mode help with Win98 games on XP?

[@MattyStoked]

Mate, graphics cards moved like lightning in the 2000s. It was entirely unsustainable - you could buy two graphics cards _a year_ if you wanted to stay on the cutting edge.

[@RemoWilliams1227]

Lol my first gaming pc I bought for myself in 2003 was an asus motherboard, Athlon 3000xp, 2 gb ram, and a Radeon 9600 pro. I was so happy to have it!!!

[@MattyStoked]

The scene for PC games is getting really expensive these days, but I wanted to get a video out for #GPUJune2 2022. My question to you is this: who among you would be willing to donate hardware to the community, to encourage more people to join this great hobby?

[@Dropkickgopnik]

to a stranger, nope i don't have the cash to throw parts to anyone. to friends when i got something good enough for rebuiling

[@jimjamz.]

#GPUJune2 deadline is soon approaching, although it has been extended to the first week of July. Make sure you notify PixelPipes of your entry though.

[@assumedspider8419]

grea video but if you want to get into this hoppy for cheap market place is alos very good! got 4 stacker boxes of socket5-lga775 motherboards for 50 quid just got to wait a while for somthing to turn up!

[@linux42069]

It's harder and harder to find old PCs, especially ones that aren't considered vintage. Second hand stores don't take them anymore and that was my number one place to grab old desktops

[@MattyStoked]

I think they're still there, it's just getting harder to find them. Emulation is really coming on though - as my next video will talk about :D

[@blunderingfool]

Pro tip for Oblivion, you'd get more mileage by installing the Oldblivion drivers.

[@MattyStoked]

Oh, cool! I feel like a newer PC would be a better shout, but that's something I'll check out!

[@blunderingfool]

@@MattyStoked It gets the lowest settings of oblivion running a little better whilst adding some measurable improvements to lighting and shaders IIRC.

[@draganraxrax7497]

High end PC of that era.Not many people could afford such components at the time.512 Mb of Ram was also high end in 2002. and early 2003.

[@Jpwinks]

I loved the 9700. Morrowind was amazing!

[@danielberrett2179]

Love Episode I Racer!!

[@MattyStoked]

Oh yeah, one of the all time greatest

[@QuantumCat76]

I obtained the ATI 9700 PRO, just after it was released, for a ludicruous low price. I was offered a 2nd hand, relatively new 9500 for about a 100, maybe a 120 euros. which was a fair price at the time. Lo and behold, when removing it from the anti-static sleeve, it turned out to be the 9700PRO! Which was offered new for €450-500,- Imagine my joy when Far Cry was released and I could actually run this game.

[@MattyStoked]

That's rad!

[@Eleven17Studios]

I had no clue the retro pc market was getting out of hand with prices.

[@lilpullout]

scalpers will ruin anything they can make a dollar off

[@MattyStoked]

I suppose it's a matter of perspective. A retro PC can now cost more than a _good_ modern PC. I'm not really saying that's bad, it's just not for me.

[@Fastwunz]

Such an epic card

[@poorfarmer391]

I actually have that case with my xeon x5475

[@MattyStoked]

Sick

[@redscotsam]

I think more videos where you're on camera would be great, sadly no dancing part in it like the last video but overall this was a good old thirst trap Jar Jar mouse out of ten, the red menace did well too

[@MattyStoked]

Oh damn I forgot to add dancing! I did get some footage of the Jar Jar mouse, but couldn't find the opportunity to show it off more :D

[@624static]

That silver aesthetic is very underrated

[@MattyStoked]

Yeah I really like it! Silver and translucent acrylic. Absolute millennium vibes.

[@624static]

@@MattyStoked makes me miss my Apevia X Dreamer II if I knew how hard it would be to get again I wouldn't have sold it

[@RetroAmateur1989]

Holy shit! He had the original receipt?!

[@MattyStoked]

Yeah, amazing isn't it? It was in the case!

[@jimjamz.]

I still have all my PC build receipts for all the systems I've had as far back as 1997 - also scanned for archive purposes. Same for PC game purchases. The receipt would go in the big box. That system build receipt in the video is almost the same layout as one I have for a system built in 2001. I think a lot of system builders at the time were using the same software.

[@RetroAmateur1989]

@@jimjamz. I wish I had this mindset earlier. In 1997 I would be 8, though. So Not much of a brain for that stuff.

[@jimjamz.]

@@RetroAmateur1989 I was in my very early teens in '97, but still thought to put game manuals in zip-lock bags and wrap PC big boxes in bubble wrap. Weird kid! I'm glad I did though.

[@Checker201lol]

Hey guys, retro gaming on OG hardware can still be cheap. The hint I can give you is :"don't buy what want, but buy what's on the market". In my area slot 1 boards are getting *really* expensive (50 quid and more for reliant, but no-fuzz-boards.) Pentium 4, strangely did the same price-hike. Athlon xp combos went from 10 bucks to 25ish in the last two years, but still better than p4. But what is really really cheap ATM in my area are core2 systems, core2 duo are a little cheaper. Go buy a nice c2d bundle, build a great system and enjoy it. And the other end of this price-wave are Pentium 1 systems, which parts you can get for about 30 bucks (CPU ram Mainboard and sometimes GPU). Even standard 486 and 386 systems are priced better than p4 systems ATM Go and explore more an new old systems you never had, follow your urge of nostalgia in a couple of years.

[@MattyStoked]

GREAT ADVICE! Thank you, friend.

[@DiegoReviews]

You need to put yourself on camera more often, Matty. Because you’re looking like an absolute snack in this video. I’m so jealous of that hair. I love this this so much! The amount of detail you went into in this video is really impressive. It was really fun seeing this beauty come together and how all those games ran on it. Excellent work, my friend!

[@MattyStoked]

You make me giddy like a schoolkid with this love language 😍 I decided that as I may not do another PC build video, I really wanted this one to be higher effort. More thoughtful, more edits, more personal. I'm really glad you liked it ☺️

[@meh78336]

Ah doom 3, i remember the mags back in the day showing early screenshots with Carmack and co saying you would need a GeForce 3 to run it well, boy was he way off. Doom 3, Farcry with its Graphical updates and HL2 were the sign that my similar spec'd PC, albeit with a 9800 Pro, were at the end of their days (not really but not performing as well as I wanted) so it as time for an upgrade and a full switch to XP (was really not a fan of pre SP1 XP, for all the complaints about ME, or even Vista 32bit, pre SP1 XP was much much worse in my opinion with it making ME flakiness seem rock solid). On the plus side, my old 9800 Pro and 1GB CL2 DDR 400 RAM from that PC are now in my Shuttle XPC retro PC, along with a P4 3.2GHZ 1MB and Windows 98SE/ME/Win732Bit (Win7 mainly for transferring stuff as its the latest OS that it supports), so they may have been long since replaced in my main PC but they still pull their weight near 20 years later.

[@MattyStoked]

I love retro Shuttle builds. Thanks for the super high effort comment!

[@nochanceofmyname6615]

Siiiick!

[@ThisOLmaan]

The Red menace 👍🏻👍🏻

[@MattyStoked]

🌶️🖍️🍎❤️

[@kevinhansford3929]

My w98 pc sports an amd athlon 2600xp, 512mb ddr 400, geforce 6600gt, 3dfx voodoo 2 sli, creative labs sound blaster awe64

[@RudolfSikorsky]

Well, I played Oblivion with ATI 9250 and Athlon 64 3200+. Somehow. 🙂

[@MattyStoked]

I have no idea how you managed that hah

[@RudolfSikorsky]

@@MattyStoked It ran about 10-15 frames per second. Probably lower in intense fight. But I wanted to play!

[@CounterStriker013009]

This case can mod as modern spec

[@MattyStoked]

You could run a mega sleeper in this case :)

[@buggerlugz6753]

Retro PC gaming is becoming more viable than current day PC gaming, that is for certain.

[@detmer87]

Why does a hooby NEEDS to be cheap in order to be fun? I bought my first PC in 1997 when I was 10 years old. Just saving up ALL my money for 2 years. It's laughable compared to now, having a well payed full time job...

[@MattyStoked]

A hobby doesn't need to be cheap to be fun. That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that _this_ hobby was fun _for me_ because it used to be cheap. That has changed and I'm not having as much fun. YMMV of course, but that's my experience.

[@angieandretti]

Would Crysis run on WinME with KernelEx? Anyone ever try that? I ask cuz I've run "unsupported" games on Win98SE with Unofficial Service Pack 3 and KernelEx enabled. However none of my retro PC's are nearly powerful enough to try Crysis myself. Regarding the cost of the hobby, yes, I started my first retro PC in 2019 and I spent A LOT of money for the very specific parts I wanted - and those prices have just continued to increase since. I recently met a woman who said they'd purchased a house from a now-deceased hoarder who literally had the place full of computers from the 90's through early 00's. Said he collected, repaired, and sold them back then. She was looking for a way to dump the whole lot into eWaste! I gave her my number and begged her to call me instead. Unfortunately I've yet to hear from her so this is my plea to the universe... please lady, call me!! I'd be happy to share with the community!

[@ibishudrive]

Does anybody know what this case is called?

[@MattyStoked]

They went by a lot of names, it was an OEM case. A common brand was "Lian Li" but I've seen them (or similar) sold under Raidmax, Kingwin and Enermax. This is actually a frankencase, made from two cases from different brands. As they're OEM, they were compatible with each other.

[@ibishudrive]

@@MattyStoked oh I remember my dad had one of these, and i kinda wanted to build a modern pc in it, i guess its not happening

[@johnneijzen]

I would just keep windows 98 se with patches instead of windows me

[@MattyStoked]

Windows ME essentially _is_ Win98 with patches!

[@DrDoge-nt8ov]

Would have loved to see half life 2 on this pc

[@MattyStoked]

It's a bit of faff because you need to set up Steam. I think you need an archived version of Steam, and you'd need to make sure you install an earlier version of the game as it's been patched out for modern Windows now (again, I think)

[@DrDoge-nt8ov]

@@MattyStoked i can send you a zip file with the 1.0 version, I have it for preservation puropses

[@SomeAngryGuy1997]

Keep your eyes peeled and you might find something cheap

[@MattyStoked]

That's the spirit

[@MarshalerOfficial]

i died when you said that this PC runs Windows ME.

[@MattyStoked]

RIP

[@ScottsGameAsylum]

Look at that pile of early 2000s trash! i love it and had the same case for my first gaming pc build. I bought it specifically to play Half Life 2

[@MattyStoked]

Hell yeah! It's a solid case. Quite literally. I think you could drop this out of a moving car and it would barely dent it. Early 2000s peak PC era

[@dan167]

I actually have a laptop like this, has a desktop pentium 4 and 9700 mobility with 128mb of vram. I have two funny enough.

[@MattyStoked]

Oooh, awesome!

[@DynamioPL]

Why Windows Me, when Windows XP was already perfect for such PCs?

[@MattyStoked]

I thought I covered it in the video. But ME gives me more Win9x compatibility and most of my games are Win9x or DOS. Also, for the japes.

[@newbleppmore7855]

I bet it runs redfaction 1

[@bigdeagle1331]

If you would have used a AMD athlon 3000+ series, you would have got higher frams!

[@MattyStoked]

No doubt, but I used what I had in the machine!

[@iSamYTBackup]

kernelex

[@MattyStoked]

I edited out a very brief bit where I spoke about Kernelex. Even with a compatibility layer, XP era games are unlikely to run buttery on this hardware. I'm happy playing my DX7 games at a million FPS ☺️

[@Omabatfartsbruh]

can it run half life 2?

[@MattyStoked]

Easily!

[@exvsion1]

Why do you paint your nails ? FFS, nice video toughe.

[@MattyStoked]

I like to feel pretty

[@maxwellbruce4747]

XP FAR BETTER ALL GAMES WOULD WORK

[@MattyStoked]

Untrue. I lost a lot of compatibility with my Win9x games when I upgraded to XP in the early 2000s.

[@Txm_Dxr_Bxss]

That P4 CPU is just insulting to the mighty 9700pro. It deserves just the best that was available in 2002, which is the Pentium 4 HT 3.06 GHz.

[@buggerlugz6753]

Stop any hate? Windows ME is a good operating system!............ Sorry, can't help myself....ME was utter garbage dude! You want to try "Rollcage" on it btw.... :)

[@d34dbolt20]

Are you really playing some of those shooters with a controller??

[@MattyStoked]

No? Whatever gave you that idea? 😅

[@novacat415]

That cpu really holds back that Radeon card.

[@jeffrylarson5363]

ᎮᏒᎧᎷᎧᏕᎷ 🎊

[@KevinSills]

Painted fingernails???

[@MattyStoked]

Yeah, Kev! Is that alright with you? 😆

[@mrowa46]

painted nails wtf

[@MattyStoked]

hahaha top comment

[@Wayne55231]

I bet the case came form Maplins

[@MattyStoked]

RIP

[@Wayne55231]

@@MattyStoked I lived in that shop : (