Emachines T3104 "Sleeper"/random parts build.

[dmill89]

I decided to see what kind of "sleeper" build I could do on the Emachines T3104 from cheep/free thread with the "random junk" I had laying around (with the exception of a SATA to IDE adaptor I bought to make the original Emachines optical drive to work).


Before:

Specs:
Motherboard: FIC K8M-800M
CPU: AMD Sempron 3100+
RAM: 512MB DDR-400 (2x256MB)
GPU: Integrated VIA Unichrome Pro
PSU: HiPro HP-P3527F3 300W
HDD: None/removed (case sticker indicates it originally had a 100GB IDE HDD)
ODD: Lite-On DVD-ROM/CD-RW Combo
OS: none (no HDD), Windows XP Home Key




After:
Specs:
Motherboard: ASUS H81M-C
CPU: Intel I5-4690
RAM: 8GB DDR3-1600 (2X4GB)
GPU: AMD Radeon RX470
PSU: SeaSonic M12-II 520W
SDD: Timetec 256GB SSD
HDD: 1TB Western Digital Green
ODD: Lite-On DVD-ROM/CD-RW Combo
OS: Windows 10 Pro






At least from the front and sides it could still easily pass for an old Emachines, though the back has some giveaways with the PSU and dual-bay GPU:







Benchmarks:











Overall, it is about on par with a modern mid-range laptop, but that is still a big improvement from the basically unusable (unless you want a low-end XP system for some reason) to relatively competent.

[Topcat]

Re: Emachines T3104 "Sleeper"/random parts build.

Very nice!! I definitely approve!!

[momaka]

Re: Emachines T3104 "Sleeper"/random parts build.

Pretty cool build, dmill!

There's nothing "Sempron" about this system anymore, lol.
With the RX470, it will even handle a few modern "e-sports" games too. Not maxed out, but probably 1080p with medium details, I'm guessing. Seems the benchmarks agree with that.

The old hardware was indeed on the lower end for XP. Well, the Sempron CPU was probably quite alright for back then (2004-2005) and decent enough up until maybe 2008-2009. The original RAM amount (256 MB) was definitely a downer, though. Back when I build my 1st own PC in early 2004 (AMD Duron Applebred -based), it also had 256 MB of RAM... and it was a struggle with most games. I remember trying utilities like "RAM Booster" and similar so I could get faster load times and maybe an extra frame or three (literally that many! ) in Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike Source when they came out in 2004. Once I upped that to 640 MB (128 + 512) in late 2005, I was flying!

But yeah, for anyone doing XP builds, the old s754 hardware would definitely not be a first choice. Besides, XP can handle much better with newer PCI-E video cards. For Windows 98, though, it will do very nicely, especially since that K8 mobo has an AGP slot, and many of the PCI-E cards don't play well with Win98. I see people on Vogons regularly use this kind of hardware for Win98 builds. While s754 is a little on the newer side for it, drivers can still be found. And with 256-512 MB of RAM, Win98 is pretty much maxed out.

I decided to see what kind of "sleeper" build I could do on the Emachines T3104 from cheep/free thread with the "random junk" I had laying around (with the exception of a SATA to IDE adaptor I bought to make the original Emachines optical drive to work).

Very nice!
I like the fact that you kept the original optical drive with the case. Those silver-colored curved drives are getting harder to find now and the case would definitely not looked as genuine with a newer drive. So I think this was a really nice touch that you left it there *and* make use of it too. I've seen way too many sleeper builds where people just left the original FDD and optical drives in the case just for looks, but disconnected.

PSU: HiPro HP-P3527F3 300W

Those are good PSUs, even for new hardware - particularly for lower-end OEM builds. They just need a recap, though. The Teapo and Ltec caps in most of these are already on their way out. I find they are easy units to work on, though. No cruddy tan glue to remove and there is plenty of space around the output caps to remove them easily. Not to mention that many of the output cap spots can take 12.5 mm caps. Thus, no looking for unobtainium high-capacity caps in 10 mm (or worse, 8 mm in some PSUs nowadays.) Oh, and no APFC, either!

Overall, it is about on par with a modern mid-range laptop, but that is still a big improvement from the basically unusable (unless you want a low-end XP system for some reason) to relatively competent.

2nd gen i5's and onward are still pretty viable for regular everyday use today. Would probably be a while before they get to the point where they are totally useless. More likely, their obsolescence will be forced by software rather than the hardware itself being too slow. We're already seeing that with M$ (and some browsers) attempting this BS on even much newer and perfectly useful hardware. But just like with XP, I think we will see 3rd party unofficial support extend the life of this hardware much past what MS and other "big players" tell us.