Counter-Strike: Source’s iconic PC just got brought to life

YouTuber Bringus Studios has reconstructed the PC found in 2004’s Counter-Strike: Source. Found in the cs_office map, the Beefy PC is now real.

Bringus is best known for restoring the original Xbox devkits and tinkering with odd computers from around the world.

The video picks through Valve’s old assets to decipher exactly what’s inside the Counter-Strike PC. All this with the aim of gaming on it himself.

Bringus quickly points out that the in-game Beefy PC is based on the Dell Dimension 8400. However, the surprisingly well-detailed innards aren’t that of the classic Dell PC. The motherboard is pulled from another device altogether.

Despite knowing the parts, Bringus opts to skirt around accuracy for simply gaming on the Dell itself. 

The Dimension 8400 came with an Nvidia GT3 Ti 200 card, 2GHz processing power, and 786 MB of RAM.

While an extremely cool project in itself, the video is a testament to those still making sure old hardware stays updated. An open-source project, Snappy Driver, saves the PC’s graphics driver. 

Even if it could connect to the internet, it uses Windows XP which runs the risk when just plugging an Ethernet cable into it.

After assembling the PC – complete with generic peripherals – Bringus manages to get a slate of early 2000s gaming highlights running. These include Half-Life 2, Doom 3, and even Team Fortress 2.

The performance seemed to be all over the place. In Counter-Strike: Source, it would dip below 30FPS in some spots, a far cry from the super high refresh rates we have today.

Bringus does have Portal 2 installed on the machine, but he taps out with Quake 4.

The YouTuber has been on a tear recently. Last month he managed to get Minecraft running on the failed Rabbit R1.  His bizarre videos often feature old tech being pushed into unintended uses – like gaming on a Google conference box.