CACHE IN THE ATTIC

The dos and don'ts of RESTORING OLD MACHINES back to operational glory

- Phil Iwaniuk  

There’s an inevitable metamorphosis that takes place inside every PC gamer. We spend the first few years of our RGBinfused passion chasing the new, and then… well, we continue doing that for as long as the likes of Nvidia, AMD and Intel tell us to. But we also start to chase the old, too.

We hoard our old gear without a clear plan, and start to fetishise old beige wonders from bygone eras. And we’re absolutely right to: old gaming PCs are incredible.

Getting these old rigs operational again isn’t as easy as plugging them in and covering your nose while the exhaust fans disperse 17 years of dead skin across the room. Depending on the Windows version that’s installed on that creaking HDD, the panel and peripherals you’ll be hooking it up to, and the format of games you want to play, you’ve got a few separate workflows ahead of you.

BEIGE-ING GRACEFULLY

For the oldest machines – Windows XP era and older – it’s crucial to give everything inside the case a deep clean. And not just for the aforementioned scattering of dead cells – finding NOS [new old stock] parts for these PCs is really tough, and finding NOS parts that are actually compatible with your machine is roughly as complex as just soldering a new motherboard by hand. In other words: you’re going to want every fan and capacitor to last as long as possible.