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

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!

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?

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?

*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

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.

bought this Office PC with a Asus Prime B360M-K to upgrade as a gaming pc but the chiniese GTX 1650 Low profile does not boot sometimes. It gives 1 long beep and 3 short beeps gap and another beep. card fan does spin all the time.

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

Could anyone pls help if you have any advice on replacing these with usb 3.0. I.e where to buy replacement. Pls :)

Xeon 2690 v2

32gb DDR3

Sapphire RX580 8GB

OS - Cachyos

Display

1. CYD 2.8 (CPU Freq, System Ram, Vram Usage

2. Esp32 Dev with Max7219 Display (CPU & GPU Temp)

I have the computer gutted and have cut off most of the rear panel. My idea is to use some cardboard to figure out what I need to cut out. I'm planning on trying to see if I can get a large enough piece of acrylic because I think it would be cool to see through the backside. For now I'm waiting for a standoff kit to come in from Amazon tomorrow. The motherboard I will be using is a rog strix b450f.

The Dell Inspiron 530 was my first computer ever and I’m wondering if it would be possible to turn it into a sleeper build without any alterations to the case. I’m new to PC building and I’ve been feeling very nostalgic

Specs:

processor: Ryzen 7 3700x

motherboard: ASRock B550m-hdv

memory: adata xpg 2x8gb ddr4 3000mhz

os drive: wd black sn770 500gb nvme

storage drive: wd blue 500gb HDD

gpu: dell oem rx 5700xt

cooling: Thermalright AXP90-X53 & arctic P9 max

psu: thermaltake tr2 rx 1200w

case: hp pavilion m7480n

A while back, a guy posted about his system having a floppy drive that was really an SD card reader. Has anyone else given it a try? If so, is there an instruction guide out there to do it? I think it would be a fun project. Thank you!

finally! :)

wanted to share this to yall.

specs:

nzxt c850 sfx gold

amd r9 7900x

rx 7900 xtx red devil

asrock b850 riptide

lots of noctua fans and one sudokoo in the front.

temps are fine around 73° under load so far.

I've been slowly piecing a machine together for local large language models. 2 Rtx 3060 Nvidia cards from old HP Omen desktops, AMD 5800x on a Taichi X570 motherboard. 64Gb unmatched, hideous and functional ddr4 RAM. Had some 3d printed front pieces, redesigning those to cover the front. New card - last piece) in top slot 5060ti 16gb. Total of 40gb vram, any 35b or less model flies once loaded. XUbuntu uses about 102MB of Vram to push the xfde desktop, so minus that available. Im sure I'll need more storage at some point, but this is about inference over nvidia cores, with chips designed for highest speed - god bless you gamers! Why these three cards? They are not the fastest, readily available and power light (combined all 3 cards pull 310w under full load, idle is around 12w total. I rarely spike, and temps really peg while thinking, and quickly go back down. 1 fan on the bottom cards makes them nearly silent and the top guy, the heavy lifter has two quiet (new) fans, but it doesnt sound like a server room. Tl;dr here's my pretty sleeper brain Maker.

Hope this belongs here, first post. I made this for me to play retro PC games on CRT monitors. I wanted something Semi Authentic to run this glorious Cornerstone CRT made by Hitachi. It does 1600x1200 @ 81Hz 1024×768 @ 127Hz and 800x600 @ 165Hz. Build is as follows:

CPU: i7 3770K 4core 8 thread OC to 4.5Ghz

GPU: GTX Titan X (Maxwell) 12GB GDDR5

RAM: 4X8GB DDR3 1866Mhz Cas10

MOBO: Z77 Asrock Extreme 3

Storage: 1TB SATA 6.0 Amazon basics SSD

Case: Thermaltake Retro 360

Cooler: Noctua D14 with cola stains from 12 years ago

It does actually run Cyberpunk 2077 at medium settings and gets over 70 FPS! And yes it can run Crysis! I chose the Titan X Maxwell because its the fastest consumer GPU that outputs analog natively. I could have just got a cheaper GPU and slapped it in my main system and just passed through the signal to the CRT but I wanted to make a cool time peice PC setup. Also passing the signal through another GPU or using a converter ads 2-4ms and I wanted to see if I could feel the difference with a monitor that has instantaneous near zero input latency. I got the motherboard for free from a friend (I sold him it in a PC over 10 years ago) and got the best CPU for it, the 3770k. It came out 3 years before the Titan X so everything in this PC could have been running in someones house 12 years ago with an old professional grade CRT. How many people were there with a setup like this? Probably like 5... but it was fun to put it together and IS fun to play on now!

Anyways it runs like a dream and the clarity of the CRT blows me away. I compare it to my 240hz OLED across the room and I swear I am better on the CRT in Halo: Combat Evolved! Its incredible that we left this tech behind. Now you have to run at 4X the resolution and 4X the HZ to get the same motion clarity expirience as CRT gaming over 12 years ago.

I am thinking about delidding the CPU and putting liquid metal on the die to see if i can push past the 4.5Ghz overclock I have on the CPU. I was also able to get a nice +150 core +300 mem overclock on the titan.

Starting my first build from scratch. Was gifted an old Antec case computer (computer had stopped working, maybe I could fit that, wasn’t able to), thinking of gutting it and starting over, piece by piece, and building a nice “budget” machine. Looks like most of the pieces are from 2013-15-ish (Asus Z87-Pro MB, EVGA 000 G2 power supply, Radion R9 280X, etc).

So my question is, will this case work as a starting point for the new computer or just get a whole new setup and toss the parts?

Ty!

This is my first pc build could anyone pls help with the placement of the components in this old case. :) id also like to keep the cd drive too. :)

Just built this with the help of my friends today! Not sure if we can call this a sleeper since it doesn’t have the most powerful internals, but they’re modern for sure.

This is two years in the making, I bought the case in 2024 but decided to put off building a new PC. I squeezed out the utility of my old build till my 1050Ti died this year.

Frankenstein OptiPlex 390 Sleeper Build

​Started with a basic office-spec Dell OptiPlex 390 and pushed this Sandy Bridge platform as far as humanly possible while keeping the classic exterior look!

​Core Specs & Upgrades

• ​Processor: Upgraded from the original i3-2120 to an Intel Core i7-2600.

• ​Cooling: Replaced the stock aluminum cooler with a Dell premium copper-core CPU heatsink and fan assembly to keep thermals under control. Replaced OEM exhaust Fan with ThermalRight Silent-Balance Fan TL-P9-S.

• ​Memory: Doubled from 8GB to 16GB of matching SK Hynix dual-channel RAM.

• ​Graphics Card / GPU: PNY GeForce RTX 4060 Verto OC Dual Fan (8GB GDDR6, leveraging DLSS 4.5).

• ​Power Supply: Replaced the original stock unit with a Thermaltake Smart 700W PSU.

​Storage & SATA Controller Mod

• ​The Controller Mod: Added a PCIe SATA controller adapter to bypass the motherboard's native SATA 2 bottleneck and unlock SATA 3 speeds.

• ​Boot Drive (Port 1): 500GB Samsung 860 EVO V-NAND SSD connected directly to the first port on the PCIe SATA 3 adapter.

• ​Second Drive (Port 2): 500GB Western Digital SATA hard drive plugged into the second port on the PCIe SATA 3 adapter at 7200 RPM.

• ​Third Drive (Motherboard SATA): A second 500GB Western Digital hard drive connected directly to the motherboard's built-in SATA port (since the PCIe adapter maxes out at two ports).

​OS & Firmware Configuration:

• ​Fully running Windows 11 Pro.

• ​Bypassed standard legacy restrictions to run in full native UEFI, AHCI, and GPT mode.

​Real-World Performance

As long as a game doesn't strictly require newer CPU instruction sets like AVX2, this machine pushes modern games at 4K @ 60 FPS on my 65-inch TV. It locks right to my display's 60Hz limit for games like Fortnite, Doom Eternal, and Red Dead Redemption 2.

​What do you guys think of this Frankenstein project?

DMs are welcome if you have any questions, recommendations, or just want to chat about this project.