We're back at it again!
For those who witnessed our first sleeper PC blog, our second sleeper PC blog, and finally putting a stupid fan into said sleeper PC.. Thank you. Hardware hacking articles are super fun to write. This opens up opportunities again to hack modern technology into ancient gear. This time around, a Gigabyte Strix H370F into an IBM X205 E-Server.
Care to read more? Enter the diatribe!
We're not the only ones who believe retro is cool.
At first, kinda surprised that Linus was still doing reviews. But Silverstone released this case called the FLP-02 (FLP-01 is the desktop equivalent version), but the whole concept of this case is that retro is in. Complete with a keylock, power switch, and turbo buttons, which don't do as much as they used to back in the 386 days, where you can set your clock speed for old programs to new, but instead, the turbo button simply adjusts fan speed. We suppose it's a healthy compromise to that end.
Now, they have done a lot of things in this case to accommodate modern technology. But we're still taking away points from you, Silverstone. Because we grew up/lived building PCs, with my very first machine being a 386sx16Mhz with a 16-color EGA card. There's one retro experience you guys seriously forgot, as we were watching Linus install the motherboard. We have to call you out on this.
Where's your motherboard mounts, Silverstone?!?
Now, motherboards and how they mount really have not changed much over the years. These plastic mounts were still being used on some ATX cases as well. When modding retro cases, having a case of these bad boys is gold because you could clip the bottoms off and use them as spacer stands for motherboards, which may be too large for the case.
Finally, the thing that will prevent a lot of people from getting a case like this is that the MSRP for something like this will cost around $220(USD) for just the case alone. The high cost could be considered due to the limited run of the case being made.
Why make your Sleeper PC?
The Silverstone calls back to the late 80s and early 90s computer technology. Whereas a lot of the cases I like to work with (IBM E-Servers) were mid-2000s tech. I didn't have to pay $220 for the case because these were dumpster PCs. My cost was about $20 in cleaners to strip the case outside and sanitize it before it even came into my home.
Because IBM is one of those brands that businesses rely heavily upon (and some still do even in the year 2025), one could easily part out these older E-server cases and sell the components individually. The picture we have above is the X205 motherboards that we managed to sell a few of. The most common thing that blows up on these boards is the 3300uf capacitors that regulate power to the CPU and bus back in the day. There was a lot of capacitor death going about, thanks to low-quality capacitors during Y2K.
Sold a motherboard like this for $50 (regular eBay price was close to $125, so buyers who needed this motherboard to keep businesses going snapped it up quickly!). SO.. Instead of spending $220 for a brand-new retro case. We're going into this project with a surplus of $50. Nice!
We will admit that seeing a motherboard like this getting tossed is a little rare. These guys are still going for $150-300 on eBay. However, the company that was throwing this out wanted to standardize around Dell. Which key, if they want to embrace the lowest bidder of hardware companies, while at the same time throwing away a perfectly good system because they can't be wasting time hand-loading the OS. We will gracefully accept their recycled donation to our cause!
The system came with 16GB of Kingston DDR4 RAM and an Intel i7-8700 SR3QS chip at 3.20 GHz. Fairly solid chip.
Now we could see why the company was having problems with this board, which is that they never ever updated the BIOS on this thing. Still rocking 0503, which is crazy. After going through the ASUS bios update utility, we got it to the latest bios, which means Resizable BAR is now a thing, even though it's an 8th-generation processor. This will make a fine living room/media motherboard.
Perils of making a sleeper PC.
One of the things that you almost expect when building a sleeper PC is that you WILL have to modify something. That means ripping off processor mounting posts like we did with our X3200 case. Or in the case of the X205 we have here. Use a carbide grinding wheel to remove excess metal. Now, if my motherboard did not have its faceplate mounted directly like ASUS likes to do, we could simply go without the faceplate mount and go. But nope, some chopping is in order!
Also note that in most custom cases like this, the connectors for power, reset, and LEDs are also custom. This is where ripping out the cables from a shitter PC case that has severe warp is ideal so you can re-wire the cabling control harness into the rigid X205 case.
Everything that sticks out past the initial face has to go. Also, we need to widen slightly as the IBM X205 motherboard plate was 5mm shorter than a traditional ATX-Clone faceplate.
After almost an hour of grinding and sanding, the ASUS board locked right in without issue. We switched over to Phillips screws because the black screws from IBM were a little annoying as they were non-magnetic. Also, note that the Intel A380 from our previous blog is in there. Finally, because Cases of this vintage didn't get all luxurious with their USB ports. We added a USB 3.0 connector to the back as well as a USB 2.0. Finally, we added a USB PCI-1x card for even more USB devices!
Now, for the little bit of Aliexpress magic. We shall introduce a USB<-> floppy controller into this case. Why? Because in the mid-2000s, the floppy drive was still "A thing" when it came to rolling out BIOS updates to motherboards. And the one inside this X205 case is still good. I didn't need to use the power plug on this controller as the case's power supply still had a FHD port. So it was a matter of just plugging it into a USB port and the other end into the floppy drive, and done!
Much to our amazement. The Floppy controller clicks on BIOS bootup just like the X205 motherboard did. That authentic sound of seeking a disc is almost the chef's kiss to this kind of sleeper PC.
I didn't see you throw in a gigantic fan like you always do! What the hell!
We sure as fuck tried!
But sadly. Because of the placement of the processor. As well as the nature of the X205 case being slimmer than most, it was designed to be placed into a 4U network rack as well as stood up like a tower. Having our bad-ass coolermaster heatsink on this motherboard would result in some drastic measures.
- Remove the support bracket that locks the side of the case door.
- Removing the latch for the case door and cutting out a hole to make it a true 2000s gamer case, where it looks like a blower is coming out of the side of our case.
Neither option was great, so we skipped using this heatsink. Which we might have to circle back to later because the stock heatsink it came with is a bit of a loud boy when it gets ramped up to full speed.
Who said 5 1/4 bays are useless?
We removed the classic CD-ROM drive from the front of this and replaced it with a Blu-ray reader. Since this is going to be our living room media PC, it's somewhat important that it can read those discs that we legitimately purchased and cannot have taken away from our library. Like "Final Space" getting removed from Netflix. Not that we ever had a Netflix account. But fuck you Netflix regardless for showing the world that anything in your digital locker can be erased.
In the future, we could get one of those front panels similar to what we did on our X3200 where we can have USB and fan control in the front for a whopping $25. But for now, that upper bay will serve as cable management for our power supply.
Final thoughts.
You may be asking yourself why we are going back to having a big, bulky PC hooked to our living room TV instead of using something like the Nvidia Shield. When the Nvidia Shield first started, the Google TV frontend that Nvidia was using wasn't obnoxious when it came to ads. Sure, it showed you movies, and that was about it. But for our long-term readers Google ends up being Google and starts to make the Google TV interface Shittier as time moves along. We did publish a workaround for this however on some smart TVs if you used a third party front-end to bypass the advertisement certain companies like Sony would cripple your smart TV by shutting down the HDMI ports on it.
However, by having a device already hooked to HDMI 1. Most Smart TVs know not to launch whatever OS menu is built inside and instead go immediately to HDMI 1. With a PC (espechally if you choose a Linux kernel as Windows 11 decided to also engage in shitty app warfare) You have complete control over what you see on your TV. Now your hatred for Wicked or How to Train Your Dragon should diminish. Or not and you become an artistic terrorist rule 34ing the fuck out of both of them as your middle finger to the Disney empire! Seriously fuck those guys.
Either way, it goes. This Sleeper 2YK retro PC cost us nothing because it's all throw-away gear. It's made out of steel so it'll last and won't warp like some shit case Newegg will sell you. Of course, there are precautions you have to take with anything used, such as stripping and sterilization, which results in time spent on your PC case. Since the cases are also made of steel, the chances of a thief coming in and stealing it will be minimal, as it'll probably wreck their back picking it up (Hint: Make it worse by throwing steel bars on the bottom of your case!).
We guess if you're obsessively rich and don't have the time to put on your safety glasses and use power tools. Get the Silverstone case. We don't care. But for cheap-asses like ourselves. Recycling a perfectly good case for another 10-20-30 years of service is A-O-K with us!
Critics of sleeper PC people.
I've seen some of the posts out there criticizing us for gutting/destroying old machines like this. That we should purchase the Silverstone and suck on that hopeless tit of consumerisim to attain feelings of nostalgia because those retro machines could be saved.
Saved by who exactly? We're doing a lot more saving of the machine than some companies were doing. These were going right into the trash bin. Not to a computer recycler, which would separate the boards from the metal and then sell/strip everything for its base materials. No Preservation happening there either. Just straight-up trash, where it goes off to some landfill. At least someone purchased a motherboard and could revive their old server somewhere out in the world. We also sold the riser card system for the hard drive for like $21. There was even someone who purchased the 300-watt PSU for $10(by the time shipping, eBay and Paypal fees kicked in we made somthing like $1.25USD) .
At the end of the day. Everyone else wanted the electronics. I wanted the case. It's a win-win.
The X205 and X206 were the thinner cousins of the X3200. But we still love that IBM E-server vibe. Although the company is long gone may it reign forever.
That's what server said.
+++END OF LINE>