The Tiniest Pentium Gaming PC 

This takes me back. Growing up poor, all of my first computers were made from old POS micro ATX parts that I scavenged at the e-waste dropoff. I never had much luck keeping everything inside the case, so it all looked like a prop from a bad SciFi. Those computers, and fixing all that junk is what eventually led to a degree and career in Electrical Engineering. I can look back with pride where once there was just shame.

Point of sale computers have extra cache built-in.

Thought this was LGR when I saw the thumbnail and that's fine by my book.

Ah, the jumper settings for voltage. That takes me back! When I was 17 years old in early 1999, my dad’s coworker bought a 300 MHz AMD K6 in combination with a weird motherboard that only SLIGHTLY undervolted the CPU. He gave them to me and I built a very stable Windows 98/DOS machine from it. Almost never crashed on me. I still have the 16MB Voodoo3 3000 AGP graphics card I bought for that build. That also included 64 MB RAM, a SoundBlasrer AWE64 plus a DVD decoder card. I also bought a 17-inch CTX monitor to go with it. With the money I saved from my part-time job and my high school graduation money, I had a decently tricked-out machine for the time. I’ve been thinking lately about rebuilding something close to that system (without the motherboard and CPU mismatch). I think the case is still in my dad’s shed, too. Time to start gathering parts!

"Heat may be an issue" *puts all the cables in front of the only exhaust fan*

When you were talking about how hard it was to find small speakers, I literally thought to myself, "hey those old Cambridge Soundworks speakers I have would be perfect!" Imagine my surprise when you pulled out the exact same set!

My Dad was a huge fan of the Socket 370 "Book PC" machines. We had one connected to each TV. My dad would sit on the couch and download movies and music from Kazaa on it.

31:47 >[SD card access sounds] This is a fantastic little build. Masochistic, but it's got everything anyone would want from that era. I dig it.

Hi dude! I've only just discovered your channel. It's really great to see these old computers being set up again. I started doing this sort of thing for a living in 1995, and in 1997 I landed a job at Acclaim in the UK. A lot of my work involved trying out the latest PC hardware and testing our current games on it. We got sent things like the first 3d graphics cards to try out, including the first 3DFX cards. So seeing you doing what I was doing 25 years ago is a really nice trip down memory lane. Also, it's cool to see you running ReVolt and Turok - both Acclaim games. I worked at the studio that made ReVolt - some of my ideas are in that game. I got to play test some of the Turok games too. If you want a suggestion, if you've got an original copy of Forsaken give that a go - at the time it was the best looking 3D accelerated game available. It was developed as a multiplayer though, the single player game was an afterthought and isn't the best, but it does at least look really nice. Best wishes from the UK. James.

Label: DO NOT OPEN, NO OPERATOR SERVICEABLE PARTS INSIDE. Me: laughs in computer geek

"And Maybe two expansion slots" Those are RAM slots for SDR DIMMS....

Laughed out loud when you called it a "PoS."

39:53 If you run Quake directly from DOS, it will offer you resolutions up to 1280x1024. Because VBE 3.0 or something like that. On Windows, that doesn‘t work. Great system, fantastic video, subscribed! :D

You need to get a matching cash drawer to hide upgrades (like more storage or relocate a hidden optical drive so you can move your cards around)!

Much respect sir! I would be swearing that whole time while putting it together. The last thing I would want is an audience or to worry about filming. Makes me regret I had no place to store the 15 to 25 POS systems that ended up getting scrapped when I helped close my local Sears. They were all wiped but nobody bought 'em in the liquidation sale. Great build! Thanks for sharing this one.

All those cards and drives fitting perfectly into the tiny case is so satisfying to watch. Talk about the elaborate work to get it all connected!

This was a cool project. Thanks for filming it and sharing it with us. I like that you told us about the all the problems you had. I'm sure behind the scenes most of these retro projects have a slew of issues. But all we ever see is the shiny finished product with everything working great.

It obviously came with 3D integrated graphics so you can have the 3D Maze screensaver running when you're not using it lol.

Just discovered your channel and I'm basically hooked. I started taking apart/rebuilding PCs as a young child during the late 90's and early 2000's, so these videos are a total blast of nostalgia. You've really rekindled my interest in retro builds. Keep on doing what you do!

13:35 there's actually a notch cut in the side of the fan housing directing air sideways toward the heatsink. There's arent any holes in the bottom so it won't be cooling anything beneath the fan.

Late Socket 7 with MMX is my favourite era for retro builds. You should follow through on some of those changes you thought of. A few additional tips: MMX is a middling Win98 platform, but is an absolute beast DOS rig. And ever since Phil showed MMX chips are very unique using setmul in DOS, that should be the target. The Voodoo 3 can be found in a short-board formfactor, leaving the space for an ISA soundcard. But they run super hot, so intake fans are called for, and maybe even dremel mod case venting holes. Test the CPU heasink fan flipped from Push to Pull. It may not matter. A replacement fan in the PSU too. LS120 SuperDrive runs on IDE, letting you lose the floppy ribbon cable in addition to the floppy drive istelf. It would limit you to one hard disk, but the LS120 storage (and USB) mitigates that. A CompactFlash instead of SD adapter may allow it to recognize and format larger HDD space. Check some drive tool software too.

5:57 Those are PC100 SDRAM slots on your PCCHIPS MB-M550-512K motherboard.

I swear! 5 hours before you posted, i checked your channel to see if there is something new! Glad to see you back 😁

I come back to this video every few months and. Honestly? My appreciation for what you've managed only grows over time. You took essentially a cash register, and turned it into a dos era gaming monster.

2:50 Wait until you see the Pentium-based Toshiba Librettos. They're slightly bigger than a VHS tape. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_Libretto

On the fan, if you look closely, you'll see it has an intake opening on the side with the fins, and it's solid underneath. So it will draw some amount of air through the fins and exhaust them on to your soundblaster. The S3 is completely out of the airflow. Edit: after seeing the final build...well, I was assuming there was a way to get air into the fan to begin with :D

I would still place a couple of tiny fans pointing to the voodoo card and to the cpu, just to prevent problems. Nice build.

When I first started in IT we sold a lot of systems like this (486s at the start then later pentium), basically, if you went somewhere in the 90's/early 2000s and encountered a touch screen, something very similar to this was powering it. Fast food places in particular. The "3d capable" integrated graphics was to facilitate the touch screen PoS software which was actually pretty demanding on 2d, especially when you consider places like McD's used custom icons, logos and menu images to help make the transaction process more smooth and efficient. This was the dawn of the modern GUI and the ease of use movement. The CPUs were often high end because the last thing any company wanted was the disruption of upgrades and down time every 3 - 6 months (tech moved fast back then) so you got the best and hoped it would stay relevant for at least a year or 2. These things were also expensive, the custom PCB and proprietary connectors alone added a bundle to the cost. Modularity in the PC space was well under way in the main stream by then but in the niche markets we still saw a lot of proprietary hardware. Looking at this thing brings back nightmares of spending weeks trying to get a whole chain networked and updating/reading from the central database at the chain's HQ, a disgusting hodge podge of LAN, 24.4 modems and coaxial that all had to play nice together, respond to wake signals and be updated and ready to use at 7am when the staff came in to work. Networking is a bit of a chore even today but back then you needed to be a programmer, tech and experimental physicist just to get everything working right. Being a tech back then people thought you were some kind of magician and honestly, there were not far wrong. Most people today have no idea how far we have come and how easy tech is to set up an use by comparison.

I remember in 2004-08, I would get a lot of old, junk point of sale and kiosk computers. They were mostly designed in the mid to late 90s, but as time advanced, the companies would slap whatever parts they could find in there. In 2008, I can remember finding this weird, low profile case. It had a date stamp of 1994 on the back. Inside was an underclocked Pentium 3 650Mhz, in a gigabyte 440BX baby AT motherboard, with an ATI Rage Fury Pro AGP card crammed into a weird, crooked, right angle AGP adapter, a single 64MB stick of RAM, a generic IDE CD drive with no face plate, that couldn't be accessed unless you opened the case, and a 200ish MB flash drive that plugged directly into the primary IDE header on the board. Here's the kicker. The system was manufactured by some company to run some kind of big screen display to show static images, and this particular one was made in 2004. It was less than 5 years old at the time.

I've been into computers since I was a kid, but it was this era of PCs when I started building computers. This takes me back, so thank you.

When I saw the title I immediately thought about the UNISYS CWD Model 5001, but this one is awesome too! Now to watch the whole video!

I thought the system wasn't that small because you found all the other small components. Im Seriously impressed. Great video.

Finally I really missed your content, great video tho

you started showing up in my recommended - this is like everything else I watch already - how have I not seen this channel before? subbed

I love this build. It's small, it has a MMX233, 3D accelerated graphics and functions great.

I have never seen a computer with less airflow, including laptops and tablets and even smartphones. Well done.

Not all Win98SE CD-ROM discs were actually bootable - in fact, I don’t think any of mine ever were. There was this El Torito standard allowing PC BIOSes to boot from CD-ROM, but the CD disc had to have the filesystem laid out properly supporting it. Windows 2000 was the first Windows install CD I owned that booted, and was very neat! Maybe the Windows ME disc is a bootable CD?

Love this build! Was a joy to watch you assemble it and play games.

Wow! I certainly see the love/hate relationship with this thing! I was so happy when you said Voodoo2 - I was thinking it and you did it!! If this rig was mine, I would choose to remove the mechanical HDD because of the thermals. I could also see adding a 2nd SD card device to replace the missing storage space due to the BIOS drive size limitation... that and I like having my games installed onto a separate drive from the OS. FYI you can swap 3dfx splash screen by migrating some files: 3dfxspl*.dll I believe. I say this because I've seen the FastVoodoo2 4.6 driver vastly outperform the reference one, albeit on a Pentium III system. 3dfx Glide is said to have a much lower CPU overhead than Direct3D so I would expect the "3dfx custom driver" to run better than Direct3D on socket 7 machines. There's so much I'd like to ramble on and ask about with this really neat PC but I'll cut myself off and just say I WANT ONE!

A time ago I found a P4 slim machine and made a whole process to clean and bring back to life. Although it's small, yours is way more than mine, and a perfect Console PC to put on a collection.

Years ago I had a "Book PC II" which appears to be the successor to this design: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-b8VnW5Po7A4.html It uses the weirdo VIA C3 "1 Giga Pro" processor, which despite its name, does not actually run at 1 GHz.

I watched this video when it first came out and set up an Ebay alert for PDA 2000. After years of waiting, (and lots of motherboard-only and unrelated Personal Data Assistant alerts later) I finally found one for a very reasonable price and purchased it moments ago. I just had to pop back here, re-watch the video, and celebrate the end of my quest! I am planning on building a Win 3.1 box and replaying some of my old cd-roms that resist emulation on modern hardware. I am certain I wouldn't have a chance of getting this in working condition if it were not for your hard work and resulting video. Thanks for igniting my obsession with this little PC!

You mention the jumpers being wrong and it was picking up as a 166, I wonder if that was on purpose to underclock the cpu and cut down on heat....

30:18 those speakers caught me totally off guard. Those are the same speakers my dad has for his PC to this day, so when I was thinking tiny speakers, I immediately thought of them. It was almost like you read my damn mind. Bravo, good sir.

Did you call two SDRAM slots "expansion slots"?

Those "expansion slots" on the "normal" socket-7 motherboard are PC-66 or PC-100 RAM slots. I've had a few that had both 72-pin EDO and PC-100 RAM slots. You can't use both sets at once, but these super-7 motherboards were really nice for upgrading.

Cambridge SoundWorks! Maaaan, my dad had a quadraphonic pair of those exact speakers, that brings back memories. They were absolutely incredible for their size! Unfortunately ours started having connection issues and in the end, we got a whole new computer setup which included new speakers. They were a pair of Dell 5.1 speakers that my dad still uses today, though the rear wireless dual-speaker...thing sucks. You have to turn it up until you go deaf for it to connect properly.

When he was complaining about the Sound Blaster speakers being too big I literally thought "man he should just use the Cambridge Soundworks speakers I got", and then he does just that! Been using those speakers for all eternity and still am! They sound amazing! Great video!

Damnit the cooling compulsive person in me had a difficult time watching this system being put together. I really love your idea but I would modify the crap out of that case, use a different CPU cooler with a blower, install heatsinks on the voodoo, remove the HDD and use dual SD cards, increase the airflow of the PSU or replace it with a PICO one. Thanks for the video I will keep an eye for one of these!

this is where i started :D Im 33 now but i remember being around 10 years old and my grandma would take me to good will and other thrift stores weekly and id pick up 486 and pentium computers every week! i didnt know much about computers back then but it was a blast taking computers apart and piecing them together, it was a simple time and felt great joy in doing the most simple tasks on a computer! i really miss that time!! now i have an i9 gtx1070ti, 32gb ram 2 m2 ssd drives in raid 0 and the feeling i get from it is like nothing that i got from those old 486 and pentium computers running dos games and early windows apps!! we were poor and got free dial up internet from kaymart.. i was only a kid but back then i knew enough to use a dedicated server to dial up to that connection then route it through the network to my main pc to avoid all the ads that came along with that free internet software on the host pc,, waiting 3 mins to load a pic of a naked girl lol im stoned and rambling GREAT VIDEO!

I hope you know on that smaller board you can only run 4 30 pin simms or 2 72/168 pin dimms. Those 2 you thought were expansion slots are actually ram slots. That cpu fan is absolutely redundant. It needs a blower type low profile fan. It's not gonna move any air along that sink. Goofiest desktop I've ever seen. This company didn't think the design through very well. Of course components got hot back then but not quite as hot as they started getting in the early 2000's. I'd find a way to modify that case and try to add in 2 80 mm fans.

Most HDDs of that era had an extra jumper location, near the slave/master jumpers, which would enable a 32GB limit mode.

5:56 It's not expansion slots, it's slots for DIMM SDRAM memory.

You got me with that PSOne comparison , I thought it wasn't that small until you put the actual PSOne on top ...WOW

Haha i use a 4.1 set of those speakers on my TV, they do sound pretty sweet for their size. Equally do not have the stands for them, so they're just sat flat on the tv bench with the rears on top of the front speakers

basically a small form factor in the mid 90's, I`m in love with this computer

Very nice! Would love to see it after a retro bright treatment though. Also curious if it could get a Silverstone FPS01 integrated for ease of future use.

This video has warranted a subscribe from me! I love old PC’s but hate old cases, this looked to be a huge pain in the a** and I’m incredibly impressed at the results 👏

This guy is so funny, the way he tries things and just say "Yeah, that just happend"

I have wonderful memories of those years, I feel much more connected to computer graphics from the 70s/80s than today where everyone is chasing FPS and getting lost in a glass of water, at the same time this reminds me that I'm getting old. ...

8:02 So you really 3D-printed a holder especially to show extension cards on camera?

Great find! Shuttle used to make super small cases and motherboards for small builds. They were focusing on the multimedia pc in your entertainment center market, but that never really took off like the industry seemed to think it would.

yes, please give that poor Voodoo2 some airflow ;u;

It makes me disproportionately happy that you found a tiny monitor, keyboard, and speakers for it.

I did not know IDE cables could work that way.

Great video! Just find your channel and subscribed. I was 14 in 1998, so this is right in the middle of my PC gaming playground chats... HL, Quake, Red Alert, Kingpin, MDK, System Shock 2, Age Of Empires 1+2... Good Times.

24:48 That fan in the PSU serves no purpose now ...

No-one would have objected to video twice as long filled with gameplay, I'm sure.

one of the best parts of the video it is his happiness playing the games, just like a child!

Absolutely one of the coolest computers I've ever seen on the internet, incredible stuff.

That POD box in the background made me cry 😢 youth memories!

I haven’t seen a lot of your content, but for me, this video solidified your place right alongside our boy at LGR in the RU-vid Tech Channels royal court. Great work on the machine, and just as importantly, excellent work with the production.

Back in the day, that'd be quite a LAN Party beast, I think! As for the soundcard situation, I'd suggest looking into a YMF744 based PCI soundcard. PhilsComputerLab has a video about it, but to keep it short, it has real OPL3 FM sound and good DOS compatibility, next to being a decent pick for this era of Windows gaming. Plus, it has Yamaha XG MIDI capabilities. Knowing you're into that sort of stuff (the Roland MIDI mountain in the back says enough!), that might sweeten the deal even more.

I love it, absolutely awesome build. Big computers are great but these little machines are just special to me. Reminds me of my own Olivetti 386 and HM Systems 286 in terms of size all be it yours is even smaller and of course multiple times faster. That wee monitor just sits to well also. A true period correct sleeper as you said. Its amazing just how many games run fine on this system. So many people are building pentium 4 windows 98 machines. I think some have forgotten just how well all these old games play on the period correct hardware. Tempted to head to ebay now and start looking for POS systems

I used to play Pod when i was 6 on my families first PC in 1998 and had forgotten the name till I saw it in your video. Thanks for the memories

I like the video, the content is cool - but I really just want to compliment you on the sound quality. I don't know if you just have an amazing lapel mic or earpiece - or if you do voiceover that just matches your hand movements perfectly - but either way, your sound quality is on point!

OMG. Those speakers were my pride and joy. It made the games really come alive. That brings me way back.

It's really clear how much you love this machine, and what you can play on it.

What a brilliant design and you were able to cram so much into it too. The CPU cooler was very clever and quite adequate for a Pentium 1 chip. I have a thing for SFF desktops. Cheers

I love SFF PCs and it's amazing to see what they used to look like before I was born!

The compact, no wasted space compression of parts of this build gives me flashbacks to my "Tacky" build... It was an Apple Color Classic (the CC and CCII were the only of the original compact all-in-one form factor Macs with a color screen) modified to have a DVD/CDRW drive, the Apple TV/Video/FM system, a PCI DVD decoder, a Power PC 603e motherboard, ethernet, and a connector for an external floppy drive... All packed into the heavily modified analog+motherboard chassis. I've been itchin' for a retro Mac again, something to run Mac OS 9 on, and I feel like I should dig that thing out of mothballs and restore it. It could use some nice upgrades, like flash storage. I used an IDE controller so I could support larger hard drives and the DVD/CDRW drive, but maybe a USB card would be better suited. I could drop a thumb drive on the inside of the computer as a storage drive, and use a small CompactFlash IDE adapter on the built in IDE port and boot from that. That, or I could try finding one of those USB/IDE combo cards, but I have no clue if any were ever compatible with macs that old.

really nice machine. i like how every components fit tight in there. great to watch , greetings from argentina!

Working on that machine reminds me of my Packard Bell 486 PC I first got in 1992. It was in a fairly compact desktop case which was roomy enough with only stock components. It too had a riser card for 4 ISA slots with the CPU socket nearly centered right below the ISA cards. Over the course of its life I replaced the 5 1/4 floppy with a CD-ROM drive. Added a small SCSI card for an external SCSI ZIP drive, a NE2000 BNC 10 mbit NIC card, a USR 28.8 bps modem & a sound card w/ CD-ROM interface to the ISA slots (IDE CD-ROM drives were not a thing yet.) Added more RAM, added 128 KB of L2 directly onto the motherboard, added a 2nd 1.2 GB HDD which had to be double sided taped to the top of the PSU and there was no-where else for it to fit in the case! I also had to use disk management software for the 2nd HDD as the BIOS would only see up to a 528 MB HDD properly. And I also replaced the 486 DX2 66 mhz CPU with a AMD 5x86 133 mhz chip which also required a 5 volt to 3.3 volt adapter be sandwiched in the CPU socket. I had to place a small piece of rubber between the top of the heatsink & fan and the modem in order to keep the modem from grounding out onto the heatsink! Cable management was an absolute nightmare too. Amazingly that machine lasted until around the time the PC in this video was probably made as the Pentium MMX chips were just about to be released when I finally scraped together enough money to build a new PC with at first a super cheap AMD K5 chip and later an AMD K6 233 mhz CPU.

This video is so cool! I really love computers from that era, so I'm glad you gave this machine another lease on life.

Quake was the reason I got my first graphics card. Up to that point, I was satisfied with what I had. Ignorance is bliss after all. But when I ran Quake the performance was usable, but not great. It was time to kick it up a notch. When I installed the graphics card (forget which one), I was blown away by how smooth the motion was, how better the colors looked. After binge-playing Quake for god-knows how many hours, I tried my other games and again was delighted by how better they looked and performed. Good times.

My God! This build was insane. I was actually very anxious as you was going along and trying to get that computer back together. I bet Compact would be proud (Get it? Compact? As in the machine is compact? I'll see myself out).

thats fun this is your first time! yeah things have come a LONG way, i don't really miss having to spend a whole day loading drivers, but you can't really match the true excitement of your downloads finally finishing. like we actually used to have stuff download over night.

The two expansion slots you mentioned are 168 pin SDRAM DIMM Slots :) Many Socket 7 boards were in the transition stage from EDO SIMM slots to SDRAM DIMM slots so you could choose between EDO or SDRAM. Really cool time in computing.

Nice trick with that small PS classic :D You've got me!

that size jump when you put the playstation on top tripped me out 😮😂😂 i thought it had a 5.25 drive at first

It's funny I see this build right after I finish building my won Socket 7 system using some old parts I found while cleaning up. Love your build. For me, I now have a -Pentium 166-S, -64MB Fast Page RAM (Yeah, not the best, but it's what I have), -S3 Virge GX video card, -Orchid Righteous 3D VooDoo1, -Orchid SoundWave 32+SCSI, -Adaptec SCSI card, -4x Toshiba 50-pin SCSI CD-ROM Drive (uses Caddies; love them for some reason), -my old 6 GB Western Digital HD that still works (old Maxtor had the click of death which was a norm for those drives at the time), -Canon Dual Floppy drive (only 5-1/4" works for now), -Sony 3-1/2" floppy, -Ultra Mid-Tower ATX Case, and -Aopen ATX Socket 7 motherboard. It's running DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11. Debating whether to install Win95 OSR2.1. I recall Windows 95 essentially installs Dos 7 and loses some compatibility to old DOS games. Maybe some of you know if that's true or not; haven't researched yet. Anyways, it's been a blast to play some old games I stored away like Mortal Kombat 1 on floppy, The 7th Guest, Whiplash 3DFX, and more.

This video takes me back to my first PC. including all the issues and games you've demoed.

For me, it took seeing it next to a 24" LCD monitor to really understand just how small this system is. Very impressive considering the use of standard sized components. And oh, by the way, the CPU fan blows sideways, not down. Look at the casing of the fan itself.

I love that little runt... What might be even cooler is an ITX build in that kind of case...

I own those cambridge soundworks speakers! They do sound great. Glad you're enjoying them too.

Wow, I used to install these models (and similar) when I worked for a POS retailer/installer. Brings back MANY memories! Thanks for sharing!

The VooDoo 2 was the first piece of PC hardware I ever bought / Got my parents to buy me for Christmas. Good Times.

"It's a POS" "Yes, a Point-of-Sale" Oh God do I love word play.

Great build, man that is so tight in there but looks great and packs a punch for such a small PC! Just built a SLI Voodoo 2 system in a modern case and re-enjoying the games from this era. Great times!

This is like a wet dream for me. I dream of one day having a whole stack of tiny vintage computers. Just get old thin clients and pos systems, and itx systems or similar if available and or new enough. Clean it up, upgrade the cpus as high as you can, max out the ram (when needed) and replace the storage with flash. By doing this you could cover every single era of hardware needed to play every computer game ever made natively, all in one small corner of the house. Hook everything up to a few different monitors from different eras to cover all the resolutions and colors combos, and use display switches to instantly choose what system and monitor you want to use. It would be a beautiful thing.