Remember when AMD was on top??

- 15 years ago, 2005, I had just graduated from high school, a little site called YouTube was born and AMD was at the top. Yes, my friends, although some of you young brats may not

remember

, Ryzen is not the first time AMD has stolen the performance crown from Intel and fed it to itself. You do not believe me? Well, all I'm going to need is my time machine, some flux capacitors, and three taps of my sandals, and I'll take you with me on a little trip to what it was like back then. At that time. Hello, it's me, young Linus, and today we're going to build my dream gaming PC at my favorite store, ncix.com, using the magical power of the machine back.

Poor young Linus. He still doesn't know that magic isn't real. Just like no one has told you about our sponsor for today's video, Seasonic. Thank you Seasonic, you are amazing. And you've been building great quality power supplies, not just today, but for many years, and we're going to use one of yours from 15 years ago and, looking like a fool, it's going to be a little awkward if you don't. , if it still works. (upbeat music) Let's start with how we chose all these parts. Obviously ncix.com no longer exists. And even if it were your website, as horrible as it was, it still wouldn't contain products and prices from 15 years ago.

It's actually a funny story, I wasn't even able to do that because none of it was recorded. So as a product manager,

when

I adjusted the price of something, I was actually interacting directly with the database, overwriting any previous data, which is safe anyway. We chose December 1, 2005, the prime holiday shopping season, and used the Wayback Machine to scour the decade-and-a-half version of the NCIX website to create our own comeback machine based on what was the hottest thing of the day. So why don't we start with the case? The SLK 2600 AMB, and it's actually very similar to the Antec Land boy, which turns out to be exactly the case I used for my first gaming PCs.

Oh, it's brand new. Look, that's great. How much did I pay for this? - I think you paid $80, which is pretty much on par with what it really costs. - That's like a rating on what you would expect it to cost. One small thing we'll have to do is ignore the Antec power supply that comes with this case, or go ahead and swap it out for a Seasonic. This is a nice little improvement. Let's go 430 watts, my friends. Hey, look, look, but back then the 430 watt power supply was pretty good, okay? Now, one of the things you little kids might be enjoying is that, for some reason, why put the power supply on top of the case?

It has gone mad? This is because in those days, the case's airflow was designed to go from the bottom front up through the CPU. I mean,

remember

, this design predates powerful graphics cards that put out a ton of heat and then it comes out the rear exhaust or In many cases, you wouldn't even bother having a rear exhaust. So we'll just get sucked into the power supply and deplete it there. Nowadays, to keep the power supply running as cool as possible, we try to isolate it, bring in fresh air, and exhaust it completely separately from the rest of the system.

Oh, and check out our motherboard. This is the A8N32-SLI Deluxe. What made this one really special was that it ran an Nvidia chipset which at the time, if I remember correctly, was actually the first to have support for two PCI Express 1.0 16x slots running at full speed. Those were the bee's knees. Unfortunately, this Bee's Knees became more of a kneecap. It was dead on arrival so we had to settle for the A8N32-SLI. Looking at the pins here, it looks like they are both wired for 16 and this premium moniker is one that a Seuss doesn't actually even use in every generation.

I remember they told you the story of this. So this could have been even a higher end board than the A8N32. For the price of this board, I'll say $280. Now motherboards have become expensive, hey. On the other hand, the fries. AMD Ryzen actually seems pretty reasonable compared to the CPU we'll be using for this monster. This is the Athlon 64 4400 Plus, and it's not the first dual-core processor, but what was special about the 4400 Plus was that it was the least expensive of the full-featured dual-cores and I think it had a mega of cache per core. . The price of this puppy at the time of release, just under 800 Canadian rubles.

That's right my friends, it's not even an Extreme Edition or anything, it's just a CPU. And I bought this right at the launch, I prepared to receive it. The installation method is basically the same as the current one. You lift that little arm, put that ZIF plug together. Something like that, put that arm down and scream. Remember OCZ? Yes. - Because I remember OCZ, this is still my favorite heatsink design for any memory. You want to know why? Because this is thick. And

when

you shine these puppies, oh, long story short, OCZ was selling memorabilia that was kind of shit.

And then at the expense of longevity, they were telling people, "Well, go ahead, just increase the voltage on these chips," and they'll hit really great speeds. "And if they die, well, 'whatever, we have a lifetime warranty.' So that's great, because we'll be here forever, right? How much would a gig of memory cost back then? I'll say $250. - 242. - 242, yes. Believe it or not, there was a time when heat pipes and well water cooling were out of reach for the average enthusiast. Introducing the Zalman CNPS 7000 flower-type CPU cooler. Yes, my friends, it used the power of metal to conduct heat away from the CPU to this thin, gigantic circle arrangement.

In fact, they placed all the fins this way, squashed them, look at these big, heavy screws. ​on the edges that hold everything together, then they machined it You flatten it out and extend the fins, so you're moving the heat away from the surface of the CPU and then distributing it throughout the periphery where it's taken care of by this fan which, by the way, gives you a good amount of RAM and VRM cooling at the same time. time. Do you think this thermal grease is still good? - It will be OK. - Ah, hum (beeps) Now that AMD was the platform of choice for enthusiasts, check this out.

Cooler support was AMD by default and you would then have to adapt it if you wanted to install it in an Intel socket. That means installation on AMD was super simple. All you had to do was take the built-in hook, hook it over the side of the socket, something like that. Then on the other hand, Zalman actually included this handy dandy thumb press tool. I'm jiggy here, but some coolers actually expected you to use a screwdriver to push it down, which led to a lot of screwdrivers digging into the motherboard and PCB. . Oh, I love this.

This motherboard is also from NCIX. This label is still white. These were heat sensitive labels so NCIX could tell if you tried to use a heat gun to remove them and place them on something else. That means this CPU lived a great life. If you're into this kind of retro enthusiast stuff, we've got our hands on the Ostendo monitor which, as far as we know, is the first consumer ultrawide monitor of 2008. So make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss out. It was quite common for the five and a quarter inch bays in the area behind them to basically have all the extra cables stuck in them.

That was what was considered cable management. You can see that there is literally no space behind the motherboard tray. Poor Seasonic have to brag as if their innovations from 15 years ago are what happened to them. This is pre-PCI Express power. We may have made a mistake, or as I call it, a mistaker. These graphics cards have six-pin PCI Express connectors and I believe the 6000 series was the first to have them. Therefore, this power supply must be slightly older than these graphics cards. Unfortunately, we are not going to use SLI, one of these is a 6800 GS and the other is a 6800 GT.

This card was all the rage back then. It was almost as fast as a 6800 Ultra, especially if you overclocked it, and this was the first generation of Nvidia cards to support SLI. So two 6800 GTs versus a 6800 Ultra in games that scale well with SLI would absolutely wipe the floor with the 6800 Ultra from a price and performance standpoint. I removed two PCI slot covers automatically, even though it is a single slot card, that's very funny. It was quite common to have to use these adapters, and in fact, graphics cards usually came with them. A fairly common place for people to change their main rig or upgrade a graphics card and maintain a working power supply.

Fan panel, audio. There it is, I couldn't see it because it has bridges, I forgot. So depending on your motherboard, sometimes you'll want to connect as AC 97 front panel audio and other times you'll use HD audio. This happened right in the transition period. You know I'm not going to bother plugging it in. Graphics card, I mean $380. It was $238, 90 cents. - Wow, you can barely get an entry level GTX card here in Canada these days. Look at this. This is a stylish floppy disk cable. It is rounded for better cable management. You take your round cables for granted, kids, you know what else you take for granted.

Cost of monitors. We decided to, you know, make a brilliant PC here. We went to LCD and I guess this was about $450. - Yes, you are a little out of place. It costs $324. - 324, that's $300 more than I would pay for it. As for plugging it in, I knew I had all these DVI to VGA adapters for a reason. That's something I don't miss about single-slot graphics cards. This just shoots like this. Wow. This was when Logitech was at the top of its gaming peripheral game. This is the first generation G15 MX518. Man, this thing is a fucking legend.

It's actually Terrance's keyboard that he uses here at work. That's why he has all these stickers and junk. There are even stickers on all of these keys because he actually removed them only from Terrance's stuff. If I remember correctly, this guy was about $120. And I'm guessing this puppy was around $45.55. That's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Welcome Windows XP. Let's start with what would have been the first game I reviewed after an update in 2005. Ah yes, Far Cry, the first one. It really doesn't look as good as I remember. Oh, those divine rays, though, would have blown my mind back in 2005 when you walked into this hole like a bent rebar here and saw those reflections in the water and that beautiful skybox, all this foliage, man, that was a moment.

It didn't used to be that these bars were heaven. I don't know what's up with that, but... Look at that meat. Bend over, take that meat, you've got that physics there, oh wow, you need to die now. Thank you. That? Am I out of ammo? I'm out of damn ammo. I forgot how difficult this game was. That's not to say that Far Cry was the only demanding game of that era. Fear was one of my favorites. First Encounter Assault Recon. We are setting our graphics card to maximum. Let's see how we do here. Why am I in a dumpster?

Did I fall into the dumpster? I think I'm like, stuck, I'm stuck in the dumpster. That? - Dumpster simulator 2005. - Oh, you killed him (beep). UT 2004 then. Double kill. Oh Terrance's A key is falling off my ring finger and now it's all sticky. Oops, oops, oops, oops, oh no. Wow, actually a lot of his keys are falling off. Ah yes, winner. That's what chicken dinner was like back then. So that's it, ladies and gentlemen, that's what passed for a sick AMD gaming platform, the last time they were on top. And that was what was considered good graphics back then.

So we have made a lot of progress in both aspects. Good job AMD, good job game developers. And good job Seasonic for sponsoring this video, whether it was 15 years ago, today or 15 years from now, you can count on Seasonic to provide you with the power you need for your gaming rig or workstation or whatever else you need. They have a wide variety of products with titanium efficiency modular interfaces up to 80 plus. They even have something like Seasonic Connect where you have the main power supply and then it plugs into this thing and you run short cables to all your stuff.

We made a video about it, it's cool and you can watch them at the link in the video description. If you're looking for another video to watch that's more or less like this one, you can check out an even more retro build where I rebuilt my first gaming PC with pretty much the same parts I used, including a Soltec motherboard. Soltec, what is that? Soul of technology obviously.