Custom PC - Project Azurewrath

It might be blue but it staves off depression. Click for more photos!

If old mate Project Chompy is 2003 personified... Project Azurewrath is 2004, and like what would happen if we took another timeline. Intel power, clocked high. Premium Intel chipset. Sturdy NVIDIA graphics. Solid audio. A ridiculous chassis in a ridiculous colour with silly nonsense like standalone fan management and a window in the power supply. Memory that's literally gold.

Project Azurewrath was built as something of a workaround for a limitation Project Chompy poses... the AthlonXP does NOT support SSE2. Which means no final stage XP browsers and no WinUAE... which was one of the reasons I built the silly thing. Azurewrath solves that and also gives us a glimpse into what the other half were doing.

Specifications

Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz HT Northwood @ 3.5GHz

2GB OCZ Gold EL DDR500 memory

Gigabyte GA-8KNXP i875P mainboard with DPS2 VRM card

40GB Maxtor hard disk drive

Iomega Zip100 ATAPI

LG DVD writer

ASUS V9999GE NVIDIA GeForce 6800, 16 shader 5 vertex @ 433/1180

Creative SoundBlaster Audigy2 sound card

Scythe Kamaboko-Z heatpipe CPU cooler

Thermaltake Xaser V Wingo chassis

Thermaltake PurePower 480W Butterfly power supply

Thermaltake Harcano 13 fan controller and card reader

Windows XP Professional SP2

Unique features

That ridiculous blue case!

It's striking and has plenty of absurdities - a Thermaltake RAM cooler, a window in the power supply, lights everywhere, UV capable sleeve... it's very much a thing of its time.

Personal history

It started with the case. The Thermaltake Xaser V Wingo was a Facebook acquisition for the princely sum of... $5. I didn't need it, but I knew it was a bit too uncommon to let go to scrap. So it lived quietly on a shelf for several years waiting for the day I gathered suitable parts to turn it into a real fighter.

That day came a year or so back when a good friend turned up and handed me some stuff out of the back of his car... a random old P4 powered PC, and a bag of cameras - one is the very Mavica I use for taking the photos on this page! The PC looked rough, but pulling the side revealed some true nonsense in the form of the Gigabyte GA-8KNXP. Hell of a stout board for an office PC, and with a weird looking Thermaltake power supply and extra fans included. The power supply wasn't working and the board had some bad caps, but did run. It got set aside until I could get the final piece of the puzzle...

Which was the ASUS V9999GE. I wasn't looking specifically for that model, just a working GeForce 6800 in AGP. This card turns out to be an absolute menace... it's the base 6800 core (so cut down to 12 shader pipes and 5 vertex units) with the core turned well down too. But the PCB? The PCB is lifted straight from the V9999 Deluxe, the 6800 Ultra. So it has the beefed up power stages and dual power inputs as well as the significantly more stout VRAM.

Some extra little bits were gathered to make it truly able to be built including the Scythe cooler imported from Japan. When the time arrived I replaced the bad caps on the board, fitted up the cooler and some generic RAM, popped in the 6800 and let it eat... gorgeous! Performance was good, very stable, very happy. I then looked at the PSU it came with and figured worth taking a peek... two blown caps. Changed them and it came back to life too so got inserted. I had noticed some random lumps that looked awfully like LEDs while disassembling it and yeah... turns out the silver X on the side was a cover panel, pull it off and behold, a window with rainbow LEDs inside shining through. Wild!

Since assembly I've started messing with turning it up. The basic DDR400 got replaced by the much more stout OCZ DDR500 modules it now wears proudly and we started sending it to the moon... it's currently stable at 3.5GHz with the GPU turned all the way up to past 6800 Ultra numbers with its disabled shader pipes turned back on - the sixth vertex unit was indeed faulty.

The last thing it needed was a name. It's gorgeous blue, from an era we thrashed during LAN parties... there was only really one choice. Azurewrath, my late best friend's gamertag.

Future plans

There's several to bring it to fully capable.

Cooling. Right now it has some old Thermaltake fans but they're a spaghetti of cable noise inside and can't connect to the Hardcano 13. Finding suitable clear 92mm fans with blue LEDs in the modern era is extremely hard since those jerks in Austria have made everyone want BROWN fans but I've got a lead on some new old stock Enermax Twister 92mms.
More cooling. The 6800 runs quite hot with the stock single slot cooler. I've got an OEM variant Arctic Cooling NV5 Silencer Rev2 coming from Lithuania to help, it's going to get a few visual mods then get fitted to the V9999GE to ease its suffering at high speed.
Sound. The Audigy2 belongs in another system, there's an Audigy2ZS specifically for this system hanging on the wall awaiting some new voltage regulators.
Drives. There's also a pair of WD Raptor 74GBs earmarked for the old girl lined up.
Lighting. I want to give it some classic CCFL lighting... maybe UV, maybe just blue... haven't decided.
Cable management. Hard on a case of this vintage, but might modify the cabling on the Butterfly to properly reach everything without excess.
More cable management. Grey cables? In this thing? No way... we need some period correct UV blue cables or something of that nature.