Custom PC - Project T

You know, we used to modify our own cases. Click for more images!

In the mid 2000s, AMD's Athlon64 architecture was reigning supreme. Intel's NetBurst architecture was clocking ever faster, but gains were rapidly decaying and things were looking grim over at Team Blue HQ. But they knew something we didn't and had been working on it... the media almost sniffed them out too!

In 2005 ASUS released the CT479 - an adapter to fit the Pentium M Dothan mobile CPU into a Socket 478 Pentium 4 system. This sounds like an odd choice initially... it was marketed as for 'quiet computing' due to Pentium M's lower power consumption. Then Tom's Hardware Guide tested it and discovered that the Pentium M completely thrashed everything in its wake - Pentium 4s and Athlon 64 FXs alike.

Imagine everyone's total lack of surprise when the true replacement for NetBurst (which went out in a hot running dual cored gasp in the form of the Cedar Mill Pentium D) arrives, named the Core architecture... in Duo form, essentially two Pentium Ms strapped together! Initially found in Macs but not long thereafter turning up as the Core 2 Duo for desktop PCs, it proceeded to dominate the next several years in a way I doubt we'll ever see again.

Specifications

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz dualcore CPU

Corsair XMS2 Pro 2x1GB DDR2-800 RAM

ASUS P5B Deluxe mainboard

Dual 500GB WD VelociRaptor 15kRPM hard disks in RAID0

LG DVD writer

Palit GeForce 9800GTX+ 1GB video card

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro sound card

Custom Macase chassis

Zalman CNPS9500AT cooling

Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit

Unique features

The chassis was hand fabricated over a few weeks back in 2006 from a Macase mid-tower... coincidentally, the exact same model of Macase chassis our very own LoWang is installed inside! It has custom fabricated fan bracketry in both the front and rear TIG welded into place with a custom fabricated mesh front panel, integrated fan controller and custom side panels that hinge vertically... totally impractical but it seemed like a sharp idea at the time!

The whole chassis was painted in a matte primer black and the outer bodywork in several coats of a metallic black flake. A friend who was a fairly capable artist masked and sprayed out the side mesh such that there's a lovely silver Intel logo visible through the black flake on the mesh. Period accurate!

It was also crammed plum full of ACRyan Blackfire4 Chameleon UV reactive fans and UV CCFLs, though the CCFLs have long since failed.

The hardware saw multiple revisions before the machine was stored, it has been restored to its form circa 2007 with the launch of Windows Vista with the exception of the 9800GTX+... that's a placeholder until we can get the correct card, which is about to come over from Japan.

Personal history

This whole build started with reading news articles about the upcoming Intel Conroe platform. I just read on with lust, I couldn't afford one. Not by a long shot.

I went on a trip to Sydney with my partner at the time, primarily for some family business and to go to a Placebo gig (which was fantastic). We tooled around, did the sightseeing thing, made friends, spent altogether too much money on silly things but while we were there, we discovered Sydney's thriving asian computer markets and it just so happened to coincide with the Core 2 release and my lovely lady bought me the CPU, board, RAM and power supply to make the dream a reality. It wasn't all I came home with though, I also came home with a fiancee XD

When we got home, I had to figure out what to put it in. I didn't have any fancy ATX cases spare, certainly nothing fitting. But I did have an old Macase chassis (I think it's a Macase anyway? Not enough of it left to tell!) that was big enough so I did the right thing and... cut the hell out of it. The front got a big chop to take bigger intake fans, the rear got chopped and welded to take an 80mm exhaust. The design was cool, the whole motherboard tray slides right out the back cards and all! I cut in my own window then since it was a single piece top got all experimental and cut it into a three piece like a modern system. But since the top edges lacked flanges, I hinged them - highly impractical, but it looked cool!

The whole thing got blown over in matte black primer, then the outer body got shot in a high gloss metallic black flake. To fill the hole in the side and replace the dull front panel, I used ACRyan MeshX to fabricate a window from silver mesh that we'd later stencil and paint black, and black mesh for the front, hand formed.

Goddamn, it looked glorious!

I didn't have a GPU at the time, so ended up borrowing a 7800GT from a friend for a while before eventually managing to get my hands on a real card... a brand new Inno3D 8800GTS 320MB, courtesy of course related costs. Finally, the thing ran the way I always wanted.

As time rolled on and LAN parties flowed, continued upgrades occurred. I cut out the original front fan mount and fabricated a dual 120mm mount for the front, followed by opening up the back panel to fit dual 80mms instead of the single.

The biggest change came when one of the local vendors was selling off some open box hardware and amongst it was an ASUS Striker Extreme - a first wave ROG board, with the NVIDIA nForce 680i chipset. For those that didn't know, SLI was limited only to their chipsets in that time with few exceptions! Around the same time one of my best friends got married and as a wedding present we gave him a 9800GTX+, so he gave me his old 8800GTS 320MB... a perfect match to my existing one!

A pair of Zalman VF1000CU-LEDs with RHS88 memory coolers were fitted to the cards and the whole thing got slammed together in a beautiful mess of copper fins and heatpipes.

Another year or so later the 8800GTSes were starting to show their age so leveraging that SLI superpower, I opted for a pair of gorgeous Gigabyte GTS250s with factory Zalman VF1050s which looked downright superb too. I swapped the 9500AT for a 9500AM2 body with the AT fan (to preserve PWM fan control) and the whole thing went very nickel.

Finally, we hit a sticking point though... I'd taken on a support gig for Zalman and they'd periodically send out some new hardware to check out. One lot included a new Zalman ZM1000HP+ power supply which is when we rapidly learned... the Macase was too short to fit it.

At that time the machine was transplanted into another case (it'll make an appearance again another day) and the shell sat dormant for years.

Much like the Power Macintosh, it followed me through divorce and multiple house moves, just waiting for the day.

Eventually while cleaning my garage I couldn't help but keep looking at it and decided enough is enough, let's put it back together. I fished out the P5B as the Striker Extreme had long since perished, found the mounting brackets for the 9500AT, pulled out the E6600, dusted off the XMS2 Pro... dead. No life. The P5B had succumbed to poor storage through that time too.

In 2025, I finally found one. Another P5B Deluxe. Not the WiFi/AP like I had, but I didn't really need the USB-based WiFi any more either. So, I built one out of two (the new one's heatpipes were mangled) and... life! The old girl sprang back from the grave like nothing had happened.

I proceeded to try all the 8800GTSes in my collection just to find every single one is dead. The card that saved it was the 9800GTX+, the same one I gave as a wedding gift all those years ago! And bugger me it's still good!

It's now about 90% complete. The power supply is wrong (but fits better anyway), the drives are bigger and faster than original, the SSD is gone. The soundcard is correct, fans are original... still need new UV CCFLs though and need to sort out the fan controller (though it never actually controlled the fans, the motherboard manages that just fine!)

It's back to its finest form - running Windows Vista. It serves nicely as the DX10 example system and I still adore it, 19 years later.