Pulled the trigger on the Base Mini 10v Package w/Ubuntu..

As usual negotiation with the Dell site was frustrating. For example, going through Dell Small Business gave me a different set of hardware options than through Dell Home. I also got a lower base price at Small Biz for the same options offered on Home. I eventually threw-up my hands looking for coupons for free shipping or any other discount. It was a combination of the discount coupon sites AND Dell over which caused me to give-up.

Oddly, my delivery date keeps sliding backwards. It sarted at 2 November and has slid back to 4 November in 24-hours.

I went with a few extras, the faster CPU, the larger battery, Bluetooth, and the 802.11n card. I'm hoping I can get the 'n' WiFi to work in OS X.

I'm going to swap out the RAM for a Mushkin 2GB DDR2 667 CAS-4 stick. I'll replace the HD with an OCZ Vertex 60GB SSD I already have.

I've spoken to a mate about imaging the netbook's drive on his Mac Pro. That should make for a straight-forward brain transplant, and save some time.

This is going to be fun.

Anyone know of any decent IPS (S-, H- or E- types) LCD panels? I'm not looking to blow my bank account, or Steve Jobs, and need proper 8-bit depth.

CRT's finally going tits up. I wish you could still buy 'em.

quote:

Originally posted by lithos:
Anyone know of any decent IPS (S-, H- or E- types) LCD panels? I'm not looking to blow my bank account, or Steve Jobs, and need proper 8-bit depth.

CRT's finally going tits up. I wish you could still buy 'em.

Size matters.

I don't recommend less than 23".

I/F may be important. HDMI & DVDI-D w/ HDCP are going to be needed going forward. Display Port is not required.

Look at the SAMSUNG F2380 23" CPVA. Inexpensive w/o HDCP.
Look at the HP HP LP2475w 24".
Look at the Dell UltraSharp 2408WFP 24".
Dell UltraSharp U2410 24"

Then there is always the US$1000 30" panels.

Dell UltraSharp 3007WFP-HC 30".
HP LP3065 30".

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Black Jacque,

Dell Mini 10v Hackintosh

I previously posted about building myself a new MacBook. I gifted my last Hackintosh
and I was missing having a Mac around the house. (Chicks dig it when you've got a Mac.)

For US$300 I can build a lappy with the very khul Mac OS X Snow Leapord, from a very
inexpensive Dell laptop with a dual core Intel Atom CPU running at 1.66 GHz, a 10" screen,
1 GB RAM and 180 GB hard drive. Not the same kit as a MacBook (2.26 Intel Core 2 DUo, 13"
screen, 2 GB RAM and 250 GB hard drive), but good enough.

However, with a little work and a few extra parts this sow's ear can be turned into a
digerati's silk purse. (Almost.) From Dell I got Bluetooth, and WiFi 'n'. I then bumped-up
the RAM to 2GB and added a 60 GB SSD through in a bit of sweat equity. The Semiconductor-based
hard drives while smaller and expensive, make your hard drive blistering fast, like your files are already in memory.

In addition, I picked-up a 16 GB Class 6 SDHD. This is fast storage to use for music, video, etc.



That's a 10-pence piece on the keyboard. The Dell Mini 10v has a 92% standard keyboard. This is a lot more usable than the Dell Mini 9's. I had no difficulty writing this post with the new, larger keyboard.

Not shown is the pic is my legal Snow Lepard distro, bought from Apple for US$30. I have a receipt.

I followed the instructions found at: Mac Users' View on Hackintoshing a Mini 10v-Upgrade Ram, Update BIOS, Install OS X

However, I went to a mate's and imaged the drive from his Mac onto the SSD. That way all I had to do was boot right into Snow Leapord.

To start with I had to re-blow the Dell's BIOS back to A004 from A006. I had to do this twice because I first tried to go to A005. Dell's BIOs for that is a Window's only installation. (I bought the less expensive Ubuntu version not Windows.) I had to drop back to A004 which is DOS-based and can be easily be blown from a bootable USB.

BTW, the bootable USB tech is very slick. The USB drive in the pic on the Palm plate is a DOS bootable 4 GB USB drive. It boots the lappy into DOS so fast, I can't see it happen.

The instructions were good. Diassembling something that is built for quick and easy manufactuoring means stressing parts and yourself. The instructions underestimate how tricky peeling-back the tension clips for the Palm Rest and the Palm Rest Bracket really is. I broke two fingernails. Disassembly took me twice what the directions mentioned, about an hour.

Reassembly took 15-minutes. The re-assembly instructions were not as detailed as the assembly instructions. Reassemblying I used Lock-tite to keep the screws from falling out. This is especially important for the bottom screws, and is not metioned in the instructions.

There was no joy on the first boot. However, from my Dell Mini 9 Hackintoshing experience I recognized the 'beep-code' as a memory error. I have yet to insert a SODIMM correctly the first time. Unfortunately, the RAM is the last step at the very bottom of the disassembly. I had to take everything apart, again.

Disassembly took less time. Knowing the position of the tension clips took a lot of uncertainty out of the process. 'Courage is having done it before.' Using Lock-tite in the first re-assembly was not prudent.

Second boot was the money shot. Everything worked, except sound. Following the instructions fixed that too.



Don't attempt this at home. You need tools. You can't do this with a Wurstoff 10" Chef's Knife out of the kitchen Knife Block. You also need some experience as a builder. I thought I knew what I was doing, and I still had to do the job twice.

So now, I've got somthing pretty close to a MacBook in performance for half the price, and its got a smaller footprint too. Its unfortunate that you have to 'roll your own' to get something like this. Apple should offer an inexpensive netbook for the masses so everyone can share in the Mac goodness.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Black Jacque,

Congratulations! I'm still too scared to hack/wreck my Eee, since it's running fine on UNR.

That's what you have a husband for. You have to marry a man thats good with his hands, right?

Thanks Jack, cool write up as usual. I'll be reading it very closely if my Dad decides to go this route.

Drop me a line, if you want to ask any questions.

If I were doing it again, I'd drop one of those new Kingston re-badged 40GB Intel X-25M G2s into the netbook. Those drives are less than US$100. I think 40GB is plenty for a light-weight netbook.


Also, I notice my RAM is running at 533GHz. I bought 667GHz, and a 667GHz 1GB stick came installed. However, I can't see how (BIOS or otherwise) I can bump RAM speed up. Its kinda annoying, because I paid extra for the faster CPU and the faster RAM, and I can't use it.

quote:

Originally posted by Black Jacque:
That's what you have a husband for. You have to marry a man thats good with his hands, right?

Um, not to get all feminista on you, but I'm the one who opens up the boxes myself and adds the RAM or whatever. It's not rocket science, and I have the technology. My husband would probably decline to do so on grounds of preventing marital discord if something were to go awry.

I married him for his considerable brains, really, not that there's anything wrong with his hands, and I do ask him for help with the command line stuff, cause he knows it

My latest project.

INTRODUCTION

The following is the Build Log of my latest Server Refurbishment.

Black Jacque’s Server is again too small capacity-wise. It has about two years since the previous upgrade, and capacity requirements have increased since the last Server Re-furbishment.This rebuild has the following major objectives:

• Increase capacity to >8TB
• Increase energy efficiency
• Increase maintainability
• Decrease noise


Following the path I took with the last Server Refurb, I’m continuing to increase the storage capacity while decreasing everything else. In particular I'm trying to make this box which stays up 7x24 more electricity stingy. While doing this I want to make the server easier to work on, particularly when replacing failed drives or expanding storage. I’m also trying to quiet down the system a bit. Finally, I’m also trying to contain cost of the re-furb. I’m going to try to re-use my best parts from the old server, and parts I already own from my Parts Closet.


PARTS LISTS

I use my Server mainly for referential file storage, and ftp. The new requirement was for a minimally powerful, electrically efficient, quiet, least-cost box supporting at least 12 TB (unformatted) storage. My Server needs are also mainly driven by capacity, not performance. I also intend to leverage as many of the existing Server’s hardware RAID card, and use parts from my Parts Closet to keep the cost down.

The following is the parts list of the Old Server (the old server build log is found here) :

• CPU: AMD Semperon LE-1150 Sparta 2.0GHz Socket AM2 45W CPU

• CPU HEATSINK: THERMALRIGHT Ultra-90A CPU Heatsink

• CPU HEATSINK FAN: SCYTHE DFS922512M PWM 90mm Case Fan

• MOTHERBOARD: ASUS M2A-VM AMD 690G uATX Motherboard

• MEMORY: CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 800 C4 (2GB total)

• VIDEO: On-board

• NIC: Intel PWLA8490MTBLK 10/100/1000Mbps PCI-X PRO/1000 MT Server Adapter 1 x RJ45

• H/W RAID: ARECA ARC-1220 PCIe x8 SATA II Controller Card

• O/S HARD DRIVE: SEAGATE Momentus 7200.1 80GB SATA Hard Drive

• RAID HARD DRIVES: WESTERN DIGITAL Caviar GP WD10EACAS 1TB SATA Hard Drive x6 (6.0 TB unformatted)

• OPTICAL STORAGE: NEC 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Silver PATA Model ND-4571A

• CASE: LIAN LI PC-6077A Aluminum ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

• CASE RAID DRIVE BAYS: LIAN LI EX-23A Internal HD Kit x2 (6 HD bays)

• CASE FAN: ARCTIC COOLING Arctic Fan 8 80mm Case Fan x3 (exhaust)

• CASE FAN: ARCTIC COOLING AF8025 80mm Case Fan x3 (ventilation)

• POWER SUPPLY: SEASONIC S12 Energy Plus SS-650HT ATX12V 650W Power Supply

• FAN CONTROLLER: ZALMAN ZM-MFC1 6-fan External Controller

• O/S: MICROSOFT Windows XP Pro SP2

Below is a pic of the Old Server.



I thought about what was good about the Old Server, rummaged through my Part’s Closet, and then came up with a list of parts that I didn’t have, and wanted to try-out.

The following is the parts list for the New Server:

• CPU: Intel Atom 330 Dual Core 1.6GHz 533 MHz FSB (w/ Motherboard as ‘barebones’)

• CHIPSET HEATSINK: SilenX IXN-40C 40mm Copper Blue LED Chipset
Heatsink

• MOTHERBOARD: SuperMicro X7SLA-H, Intel 945GC Flex ATX Motherboard

• MEMORY: Mushkin 996527 Enhanced Silverline 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 800 (2GB total)

• VIDEO: N/A (On-board)

• HW RAID: ARECA ARC-1220 PCIe x8 SATA II Controller Card

• O/S HARD DRIVE: OCZ 1VTX60G Vertex Series 2.5" 60GB SATA II SSD

• O/S HARD DRIVE CONVERTER: Icy Dock MB882SP-1S-2B 2.5” SSD & 3.5” SATA Hard Drive Converter

• RAID HARD DRIVES: Seagate Barracuda LP ST32000542AS 2TB SATA Hard Drives x7 (14 TB unformatted)

• OPTICAL STORAGE: N/A

• CASE: Lian Li PC-A17B Black Aluminum ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

• CASE FAN: Thermalright TR-X Silent 120mm Case Fan (35CFM/20dBA) x2

• CASE FAN: Thermalright TR-X Silent 140mm Case Fan (60CFM/20dBA)

• CASE DRIVE ENCLOSURE: Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B 5-Bay SATA HDD Enclosure x2

• CASE DRIVE ENCLOSURE FAN: Nexus Real Silent 92mm PWM Case Fan x2

• CASE HANDLES: McMaster-Corr 1897A24 Black Oval 4” Aluminum Handle x2

• POWER SUPPLY: Silverstone Nightjar SST-ST40NF 400W Power Supply

• O/S: Microsoft Windows Server Standard 2008 R2 64-bit

Parts total about US$1500.

DISCUSSION

The new server leverages changes in tech since the last Re-furb, and my recent positive experience with my Black Jacque Intel Atom-based WHS Backup Server.

CPU
My server is a file server. For a file server, you do not require 3GHz quad cores, high-Mhz FSBs, or many gigabytes of RAM. You just need a CPU that can shuffle bytes between the NIC and the Hard Drives and the drives and the NIC fast enough. Minimizing the CPU is a cost and energy saving decision.

I’ve been very impressed with the performance of my WHS Build . It was easy to assemble, has a high energy efficiency, does its job, and had a low total cost. This combination of ‘Pros’ led me back to the Intel Atom 330 dual core for the re-furb.

I likely did not need a dual core. The old server is a 2GHz single core, and works very well at its task. However, I splurged on a dual core Atom. It might be that a lower frequency single core would have been enough. The second core adds a few extra watts, but I believe the headroom of an extra CPU is worth having with such a modest clockspeed. Note the CPU came with the motherboard in a ‘barebones’ package.

CPU HEATSINK
The CPU Heatsink on the motherboard is very basic. I looked for an aftermarket heatsink for an Intel Atom. There are none. I decided to leave well enough alone, and stay with the motherboard’s passive heatsink.

CHIPSET HEATSINK
The stock motherboard chipset heatsink is free, a decent cooler, and noisy. It came with a 40mm high speed ‘pancake’ fan on the CPU heatsink. I decided I could spend a little of the budget on a better Chipset heatsink. Ideally, this better heatsink can be run passively making this an energy efficiency and noise reduction decision.

The one wrinkle was the Chipset heatsink used the ‘hook and loop’ fastener. Finding a large Northbridge cooler like this limited my choices. I eventually landed on the SilenX IXN-40C chipset heatsink. This is a copper heatsink with a quiet 40mm fan. Unfortunately, it’s a LED fan. I plan to test the heatsink using both active and passive (fanless) cooling.

MOTHERBOARD
Deciding on the CPU first, drove the motherboard selection. Ideally, I wanted a passively cooled motherboard with a PCIe 8x slot (for the H/W RAID card). I also wanted a few extra slots PCI and PCIe. The motherboard was an energy efficiency, noise, and cost decision.

My first thought was to use the same Pegatron Intel Atom/Nvidia ION motherboard I used with my WHS. The big IF with this Build was ‘would the Areca ARC-1220 RAID card work in that motherboard’s PCIe x16 slot'? Many times, non-video PCIe cards do not work in the PCIe 16x slots of motherboards. Only video cards work in these slots.
This led me to look for uATX format Atom motherboards. There are not a lot of them. The mini-ITX format seems to be favored for Atoms. And, the few there are come from vendors I consider third-tier. Looking for larger format Atom motherboards led me to Supermicro.

Supermicro makes a lightweight Atom server motherboard in the FlexATX format. FlexATX is a form factor in-between mini-ITX and microATX. The motherboard met my requirements. It came with a PCIe x8 slot. If I had a reservation, it was with its Intel 945GC chipset. However, I’d done a couple of builds with Supermicro 1U servers using the same motherboard, and knew it to be stable and give no problems. I went with the SuperMicro X7SLA-H.



Picture is the stock motherboard bolted onto the removable motherboard tray. Note the CPU is passively cooled (rectangular aluminium heatsink). The Chipset is actively cooled (square heatsink with fan.)

MEMORY
The current Server has 2 GB of RAM. Overtime, I’ve found that 2GB of RAM for my Server is more than enough. It also just happens that the Supermicro motherboard only supports 2 GB of RAM. The memory selection was a cost based decision.

I usually buy Corsair memory. It is reliable, supported by every major motherboard vendor, its inexpensive when on sale, and its got a lifetime warranty that has worked successfully several times for me in the past. However, I had 2x 1GB sticks of Mushkin DDR2 800 in the Parts Closet. Mushkin is a premium memory vendor, probably better than Corsair. I chose the Mushkin Enhanced Silverline 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 800 CAS-5 from the closet.

VIDEO
On-board video is all you need in a Server. The Intel GMA950 video on the motherboard is frankly overkill on a box that I intend to leave ‘headless’.

Something I don't like about the motherboard's on-board video is that its analog, and not DVI. Again, not terribly important with a headless server, but assembley and debug of the build means using an old-skool LCD with an analog connector. Fortunately, I had one in the back of the Parts Closet.

NIC
The old server had a Server-grade NIC. However, over time I realized my workload was never great enough to leverage that card. For the refurb, I decided to go with the dual on-board motherboard 1000 Mbps NICs. It will save power and heat with the case.

HW RAID
For a Server you need a quality hardware-based RAID. It is only with the hardware RAID that you get both performance and availability. The premium hardware RAID vendors are Adaptec, Areca, and LSI (ex-3Ware).

The number of SATA ports is an important feature with the H/W RAID card. A server needs a minimum of eight, more if you can afford them. Another feature is the RAID levels supported. As my capacity storage has expanded, I’ve become increasingly aware of the effect of a double drive failure. My old Server uses RAID 5 with 5TB of user space. On the new Server, I’m going to use RAID 6. RAID 6 performs write I/O slower than RAID5. However, read I/O has the same performance. Since the access type for my Server’s storage is primarily reads, I don’t expect there to be a performance downside to this choice.

Hardware RAID cards are also expensive. Fortunately, my RAID card from the old server is has aged-well and is still sold and supported by its vendor. To keep costs down, I reused my Areca ARC-1220 PCIe x8 SATA II Controller Card. I’ve gotten a lot of use out of this card, with very few problems despite its age. There are faster cards out there, but none as inexpensive as the one I already own.

O/S HARD DRIVE
SSDs are fast and energy efficient. When I rebuilt the server the last time, low-wattage SATA SSDs were not available. Without any moving parts, SSDs are also highly reliable. I’m probably never going to need the bandwidth of an SSD, but the low wattage will be appreciated.

I knew I needed a minimum of 32GB, to get my O/S installed. Fortunately, small capacity SSDs are cheap right now. Unfortunately, a 32GB O/S install requirement bumped me out of the really inexpensive 30GB SSD category.

I was initially going to go with an Intel X25-M G2 80GB drive. They are the ‘Gold Standard’ of SSDs. My second choice was an OCZ Agility 60GB SSD. This is a less expensive, and more than good enough alternative to the Intel SSD. Just before I was about to buy the drive, I caught a sale and rebate combination on the OCZ Vertex 60GB SSD. The deal dropped the Vertex’s price below the Agility’s. The Vertex is marketed by OCZ as being the better drive. I went with the OCZ Vertex Series 2.5" 60GB.

Along with the SSD, I bought a converter to mount the 2.5” SSD into a 3.5” drive mount. I went with the Icy Dock MB882SP-1S-2B, it’s the least expensive mount I could find that would fit into the Hot Swap bays I was going to use. Oddly, I noticed that ICY Dock has two converters. The US$25 MB882SP-1S-1B, and the US$17 ICY DOCK MB882SP-1S-2B. I bought one of each from the usual source to see the difference. They are identical. With free shipping, you know what to do.

RAID HARD DRIVES
I was dismayed at how quickly the 1TB drives of the current Server filled-up. When I started this rebuild, I was already down to my last 100GB. Despite the cost and effort of re-tooling the Server’s hard drives I have to try and get as far ahead of my capacity consumption curve as possible.

The high-capacity drive alternatives were the 1.5TB and the 2TB hard drives. Despite the cost, I decided on 2TB drives. I wanted to get as far ahead on the capacity power-curve as I could.

All the major drive vendors have 2 TB drives now. Initially, I wanted the Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB drives. I had had a good experience with them on the old server’s 1TB Caviar Green drives. That had convinced me I don’t need high wattage, high performance 7200 rpm drives. Which left Seagate and Western Digital who are the only vendors having the lower wattage ‘Green’ drives.

However, I missed the sweetest deals of the season on 2TB Western Digital Caviar Green drives. These drives now have a premium price. Since my Server needs are driven by cost and capacity, I had to re-think the choice. Seagate Barracuda LPs’ were on sale. They are low-cost, “Energy Efficient” drive like the Western Digital Greens. I read a bunch of reviews, and determined was a hard choice between the two. The Western Digital may have the edge, but the cost per TB was what decided the issue. I bought seven 2TB Seagate LPs. That will give me 10 TB unformatted in RAID 6.

OPTICAL STORAGE
I’ve been using optical drives less and less. As distro moves on line, and flash memory media products become cheaper, the optical drive is going the way of the floppy. I’ve been getting by with a USB DVD/RW, for old-skool media distro very successfully. I omitted an optical from the build.

CASE
The old server used 80mm ventilation fans with an 80mm blowhole fan. Even though I used quiet fans, its hard to move air quietly with an 80mm fan. Newer cases use 90mm and greater fans. These larger slow moving fans move more air with less noise. The case was mainly a noise decision.

I really like cases. Sometimes I just buy them to look them over and judge their potential. Premium case manufactures that I find to be particularly good are: Antec, Lian Li, and Silverstone.

For this build, decided I wanted my drives to be externally accessible. This lead me toward cases that were Hot Swap Bay friendly. In fact, I had to decide on a Hot Swap Bay, ahead of a case, because the options for the Bays is more limited.

The basic requirement shaped-up to a mid-tower case with at least seven 5.25” usable bays. Overtime, I’ve become a Lian Li fanboi. The old server is a Lian Li, I like their cases, despite their price. I think it’s the pseudo- aircraft parts finish that attracts me.

In the end, I went with the modern equivalent of the old server case and got a Lian Li PC-A17B. The front of the case is open for sliding in drive/fan modules. Besides being black, the only major difference is the new case uses 120mm ventilation fans with a 140mm blowhole fan.



Picture is of the partially disassembled case with case handles attached. Replacement fans at right.

CASE FAN (ventilation)
I am a fan fanatic. It is hard to find quiet, fans that move a lot of air.

I’ve never liked Lian Li’s case fans. I’ve always thought they were too high speed and noisy. The only stock case fans I’ve ever liked that came bundled with a case were Silverstones.

I have this unproven idea that you should avoid mixing the fans from different vendors. I think the blade design of different fans can lead to strange harmonics that only I can hear. To avoid this, I try to buy all a case’s fans from a single vendor. I needed to find a family of quiet fans, because the Lian Li case has both 120mm and 140mm fans,

In the past, when I’ve had to match 120mm and 140mm fans, I’ve used Yate Loon. The Yate Loons are OK. Searching around, I found that Thermalright, the heatsink vendor now makes a premium series of fans. I decided to give them a try. I bought 2x Thermalright TR-X Silent 120mm and a single 140mm to replace the stock case fans. Unfortunately, I could not find PWM replacement fans. The SuperMicro motherboard's fan headers are PWM throughout. It would have been really nice to use the quieter temperature controlled fans to squeeze out a few dB of noise.

CASE DRIVE ENCLOSURE
On the old server, nothing was more annoying than the disassembly, replacement, and re-assembly needed when a drive failed. One of the usability enhancements of this new build was to do away with a hardware tear-down when a drive failed. This led me to look at hotswap bays.

With an 8-port H/W RAID card I needed an 8-port hotswap module for a mid-tower ATX case. I looked at a bunch from vendors like Chenbro, Lian Li, and Supermicro. The bays come in either three, four, or five drive modules. I was going to have to buy two modules. Unfortunately, hot swap bays are expensive. I had to do some long hard thinking about these bays. Two four or five bay hotswap bays would be more expensive than most ATX cases I was considering. Going with hotswap or not caused me to go back and forth with making a case decision.

I know, it looks like I’m turning into a SuperMicro fanboi. However, I used a SuperMicro 2.5” 4-drive hotswap bay in my Atom WHS Backup Server build, and was impressed by the product. I decided on the SuperMicro CSE-M35T-1B 5-Bay. I did this knowing from reviews and my own experience that the fans on SuperMicro products are noisy and push a lot of air.

CASE DRIVE ENCLOSURE FAN
I needed low noise, high CFM replacement fans for the SuperMicro hot swap bay’s ventilation fans. Unfortunately, Thermalright does not make a 92mm PWM fan in their TR-X Silent series. Following the published SuperMicro spec’s I bought x2 Nexus Real Silent 92mm PWM Case Fan. I used this fan before in my Phenom Quad Build.

POWER SUPPLY
I always pay a lot of attention to my power supplies. In particular with a box that is going to be running 7x24 having the right power supply could in the long-run save me a lot of money and problems.

I wanted as low wattage, low noise, highly efficient, low-cost PSU as possible. For this build, I have a back of the envelope power budget of about 100W load. Because power supplies are most efficient at 50-percent of their rated wattage, I should be able to use a 200W power supply.

That would be really hard to find.

I think the best large Power Supplies are made by Seasonic. I would really have liked a Seasonic S12D ‘80+ Silver’ 300W power supply. They’re not going to make one just for me. The PSUs that came closest to that was the Seasonic S12II 80 Plus Bronze line, where I could use a 330W unit.

However, the Parts Closet intervened. I happen to have a Silverstone Nightjar ST45NF 450W, left over from my WHS Backup Server Build. This is an fanless 80 Plus Bronze power supply. It is dead quiet, and it is paid for. I went with the
Silverstone.

CASE HANDLES
Moving my server occurs more often than I would like. To make this chore a little easier, I’ve taken to installing ‘LAN Party’ style handles on the top of the case. I now install handles on any machine I think I’m going to be using for any length of time, especially heavy machines.

Over time, I’ve experimented with a number of case handles. The best handle I have ever found and used is the ‘Hematite/Metallic Color Anodized Aluminum Case Handle’ from Directron. These are the handles found on the old server. They no longer stock it, and I can’t find it despite a hard search. I have found a decent less expensive alternative that is more than suitable. The only thing wrong that I can say is it does not come the washers that the Hematite handle had.

I went with the McMaster-Corr 1897A24.

O/S
The last two generations of the old server have been Microsoft Windows XP Professional. I hardened the load as best I could to reduce the ‘attack surface’, but its still Windows XP. The new server moves up to Windows 7 64-bit. Through some training I took, I have a licensed copy of Microsoft Windows 2008 Server R2 64-bit in the Parts Closet. R2 is the Windows 7 version of MS 2K8 Server.

Using MS 2K8 Server on a build like this is overkill, but I have it, and it is free.



Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit plays nice with the Atom. O/S install and configuration was more complicated than a Windows 7 install.

THE BUILD

The build actually went smoothly and quickly. Like with most everything-on-board Build’s using barebones motherboards, there is nothing really to do, except screw in the motherboard, plug in the cables, slot the RAM, and boot.

“Measure twice; cut once.” I bought a spring loaded punch to dimple the case lid. This worked well in keeping the drill bit from slipping. In addition, I installed large washers around the handle screws to distribute the stress better. The handles went on with no problems.

Like most Lian Li cases the A19 was easy to work with. I took advantage of the removable motherboard tray to bolt the motherboard to the case. I also used the cable management to secure cables neatly behind the motherboard.

One of the extra’s I performed was to use braided sleeving on wire bundles. This makes the octopus of wires inside a case have a few less tentacles to chase down and secure. Most of the fans I chose had already been sleeved. However I did have to sleeve the hotswap bay hard drive LED wires, the case header (Power ON, Reste, etc.) wires, and the hotswap bay replacement fan wires.

Assembly was quick. There is not much to assemble, because the motherboard already is ready to go except for the RAM.

I loaded the O/S and drivers without any problems onto the stock motherboard using a Cavaiar Green 2TB drive from the Parts Closet.

I next went through a step-wise build and rebuild investigation of the effect of some of the after market parts I used. Primarily I used a Kill-A-Watt meter, Orthos, Speedfan, and my ears to determine the changes the different parts I used had on they system’s noise and energy efficiency.

Things I found:

• The Lian Li stock fans were quieter than I assumed. However, the aftermarket Thermalright fans decreased the wattage used by the box.
  
  
• The SilenX Chipset Heatsink produced exactly the same thermal measurements as the SuperMico motherboard chipset heatsink. However, the SilenX Chipset fan was quieter and used less wattage. I eventually removed the SilenX fan and went with passive chipset cooling when I saw the fan’s cooling effect was slight even under load testing.
  
  
• The stock cooling fans on the Hot swap bays were LOUD. This was expected. However, the replacement fans were not much quieter. This is because; the hot swap bays are not 4-pin PWM as listed in the SuperMicro documentation. (They’re 3-pin.) The replacement Nexus fans run at full speed, which is not a lot quieter than the stock fans. However, they do draw less wattage.
  
  
• The 2.5” SSD uses less wattage than a 3.5” Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB drive initially used as a C:\. It also boots and shuts down much faster. However, once booted, I can detect no difference in performance.
  
  
• I did not need the 120mm fan from the stock case drive cage for cooling. I omitted it to reduce noise.
  

O/S Drive has a Red SATA cable, RAID drives have Yellow cables (bottom hot swap module) and Black cables (top hot swap module). The circular copper heatsink is the Silex on the motherboard chipset. Notice I've got another chipset heatsink on the Areca RAID for passive cooling. (I used this in the previous server for two years without incident.) This blocks the motherboard's PCI slot. Ventilation air passing thorough the hot swap modules cools the motherboard and RAID controller. The 140mm blowhole fan and 120mm rear case fan exhaust the case.

I loaded the O/S and drivers without any problems. I did not have install problems with this motherboard. However, an Acronis mirror from the WD Caviar green drive to the SSD, was not completely successful. I believe it was some security feature of Windows Server 2008. I was forced to do a new install with the SSD.

When I bound the 6 TB LUN at RAID level-6, it took about eighteen hours into the bind. There were no failures during the bind. I then started a Robocopy transfer of my data onto the LUN. Next day, I found the data transfer had completed, but the RAID group had all drives failed. The logs showed the drives failing one after another sometime after the transfer completed. No clue for the failure was included in the logs.

This caused me more than a little consternation. I pulled the drives and tested them individually with Seagate tools. All the drives passed the extended diagnostics. I put the RAID group back together and started a rebuild. Another eighteen hours went by. While I was waiting I built a second RAID level-0 group with a single Seagate and two WD Caviar Green 2TBs I had in the Parts Closet. (Contrary to popular opinion, my Parts Closet is much smaller than Fry's Computer Department.) Then I went to bed.

Next day, the newly built RAID group was again failed. In addition, the Seagate drive in the second RAID group was failed. The WD drives were fine. This lead me to suspect an incompatibility between the Seagate drive firmware and the RAID controller. This type of problem is not uncommon, and if you know anything about RAID setup’s it’s the kiss of death. I was thinking I had made a very wrong decision with using Seagate drives. I went back and forth about RMA-ing all the Seagates.

By cycling power a couple of times the RAID level-6 group came back with only two failed drives. Not sweet, but better. (Double drive failure is survivable with RAID 6.) I started another rebuild. While I was waiting I installed a lone new Seagate 2TB drive as a Hot Spare. An hour later it failed. However, unlike the previous failures, the Areca RAID controller log identified Advance Power Management (APM) as the cause of failure. This I could work with. The drive has spun-down to save power, and been marked as failed by the RAID controller. I tested the drive with Seagate tools extended diagnostics; it passed. Going back and reviewing the previous failure logs, I noted the failed drives all occured at about the time of scheduled spindown.

Figuring the there was an incompatibility between the APM on the drives and the RAID controller, I disabled APM. That worked, and the LUN has been OK since then. (I have more than 100 hours on the RAID group at this writing.) The drives no longer spin-down to save power, but that’s a small concern compared to staying-up. I assume there will be a future RAID controller firmware update that will fix the problem.

I eventually have 8x 2TB drives in RAID 6 with a hot spare and the SSD as C:\. That gives me 8 TB usable. I have one spare slots on the RAID controller for expansion, two if I give-up the hot spare. In addition I have an empty hot swap bay slot I can connect to the motherboard drive controller.

I did a bit-by-bit verification of my data with the RAID array to verify there was no corruption. Fortunately, the data was OK despite the APM-inspired failures.



The New Server is up and running. Its very empty inside that case

PERFORMANCE

If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. Its always good to profile your box. This way, you can tell when 'improvements' really are not.

It was a little surprising how quick this box is. Its ONLY a 1.6 GHz dual core. Even with onboard video, there was more then enough performance for what I need.

POWER AND TEMPS

Recently, I’ve been spending a lot of time on energy efficient builds. (My part to save the planet. ;-)) Right-sizing the PSU and getting energy efficient performance parts requires a lot more thought and research. This makes parts selection harder.

Tools used to measure Power and Temps include: Kill-A-Watt meter, CPU-Z (latest rev.), and SpeedFan (latest rev.), and Orthos.

These measurements were taken without all the disks installed and powered-up. Only the SSD (C:\) was installed. Ambient was 11-deg C.

Idle Load
Power (Idle): 36W
Temp (Idle): 15-deg C

Full Load (Orthos ‘Core Cooking’)
Power (Full): 41W
Temp (Full): 19 deg C

Otherwise, the New Server runs cooler at Idle and uses less electricity than the old server. (The old server idle is 120W.) Transferring the data to the new Server, which had the entire six-drive RAID 6 going, I recorded 87W power utilization.

VIDEO

Since I’m operating the server ‘headless’, I did no video tests.

NOISE

I don’t have the tools to objectively measure this. However, the two 92mm exhaust fans for the drive modules are the loudest part in the box. I have these PWM fans wired over to the motherboard, instead of wired into the hot swap modules. This holds down their RPM.

SUMMARY

I’m happy with the results. The box meets all the requirements. Although, it’s been a PITA to do.



In general I’m very pleased with the hard drives (SSD and RAID), the motherboard, and CPU. The drives are more than quick enough. That I can’t use the APM to spin them down is my greatest disappointment with this build. However, I've got the storage I need, plus RAID 6 and a Hot Spare to guareentee data integrity. The motherboard is all passively cooled. The power suppy is likewise passively cooled. The box uses 20W less than the previous server at idle. (This is without APM.) It is also quiet. The only sound I'm hearing are the case fans, and they are quieter than the older server's 80mm fans.

quote:

“The street has its own uses for technology.” – Neuromancer, 1984, William Gibson.

RAID used to mean "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, its since been redefined to mean Redundant Array of Independent Disks. Drive vendors now want you to use expensive disks like the WD RE4-GP and not the WD Caviar Green for RAID arrays. It may be anecdotal, however this build (and the two years with the previous server) show me that desktop drives can be used by a savvy Enthusiast to create large storage solutions at a much lower cost than with using RAID-rated drives.

A list of Pro’s and Cons for this build includes:

Cons:
Rebuilding and restoring the array from backup.
APM incompatibly between drive firmware and RAID controller firmware.
Security features of O/S.
More expensive than anticipated.

Pros:
Cool-running.
Energy efficient with modest performance.
Large storage capacity.
Front-loading drive replacement, and very kuhl-light drive light-show.

copyright © 2010 Black Jacque Labs LTD.

INTRODUCTION

On occasion, I get requested to do a build a for somebody. I’ve converged on a set of parts that works well together and delivers the right price/performance across several different uses.

I don't like to rack and stack your typical phat walleted fanboi’s steroidal collection of mis-matched parts. That is my Build's don’t have: case windows, Blue LED fans, 1000W PSUs, SLI/Crossfire video, a RAID 0 C:\, and a distressed paint job with fake rust. I try to build boxen that are small, quiet, cool-running, well-behaved, functional, and economical. I also believe that tech has a Half-Life of about 9-months. After that, any Enthusiast's box should then become somebody’s Mom Box .

The dude who asked me to build him a box was a laptopper and an XBoxer. In which case, he never had a need for desktop. He got his intarWeb fix off his lappy, gamed and watched video off his Xbox. Then, he decided to rip his video collection. After loosing the use of his laptop for four days at a time trying to rip DVDs ala USB, I was asked to build him a ‘Rip Box’. A Rip Box is used for ripping DVDs and Blu-Rays to files. The Rip-box had secondary mission as a HTPC, and a tertiary mission as a spare intarWeb surfer. The dude’s initial budget was US$500. I told him to buy a Dell. He whined, and moaned, and bayed about wanting 'A Custom Black Jacque Box'. We eventually agreed to US$600. This current box is an attempt to build a low-cost box with ripping capability that has some legs. That is, it can be upgraded at least once.

PARTS LIST

• CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition Callisto 3.1GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 80W Dual-Core Processor US$91
• CPU HEATSINK: Stock.
• MAINBOARD: ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO AM3 AMD 785G HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail US$85
• MEMORY (RAM): G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL - Retail US$85
• VIDEO: Onboard.
• AUDIO: Onboard.
• CASE: Antec Solo Black/Silver Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail US$90
• FANS: Scythe S-FLEX SFF21D 120mm Case Fan - Retail US$20
• FANS: Scythe SY1025SLN12M 100mm Case Fan - Retail US$8
• POWER SUPPLY (PSU): CORSAIR CMPSU-400CX 400W ATX12V V2.2 80 PLUS Certified Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply - Retail US$45
• SOUNDPROOFING: Vantec Power Supply Vibration Dampener Kit
• SOUNDPROOFING: Vantec 120mm Fan Vibration Dampener Kit
• OPTICAL: LG Black 8X BD-ROM 16X DVD-ROM 40X CD-ROM SATA Internal Combo LG Blu-ray Reader & 16X LightScribe DVD±R DVD Burner - Retail US$90
• HARD DRIVE: SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive US$90
• O/S SOFTWARE: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders - OEM US$105

This box costs about US$700 to build.



CPU

Ripping is a particularly multi-threaded application. That means it likes cores. That forces the Build out of the inexpensive ‘dualie’ price bracket and into a quad, that is if you don’t want to spend hours ripping a Blu-ray.

The very low cost of this box immediately meant it had to be an AMD build. As nice as doing an Intel build would be, AMD still has the cheapest quads. They also have less expensive motherboards, and better low-cost Integrated Graphics Processors (IGP).

The two quads to consider were the AMD Athlon II X4 and the AMD Phenom II X4. Roughly aligning the CPUs, it works out that the Phenom II’s are about US$50 more expensive for about 20-percent better ripping performance than the Athlon II X4. That settled me on an AMD Athlon II X4 630 Propus 2.8GHz, a US$100 part.

That is until I read this article (AnandTech: Unlock your Phenom II x2's Cores). Buying a Phenom II x2 and successfully unlocking it would get at least a 20-percent faster rip at US$10 less than the Athlon II X4.

I talked to the Dude about it, and he was OK with an unlock. I told him, if it didn’t work, I’d eat the AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition Callisto 3.1GHz, and get an Athlon II X4 in to replace it. I figured I’d eventually find a home for the tightly locked Phenom dualie, which isn’t a bad chip at all.

CPU HEATSINK

On a budget, go with the stock heat sink. It may not be as quiet as an aftermarket heatsink. It may not let you O.C. up to 4GHz like an aftermarket heatsink. However, the price, she is right.

MAINBOARD

CPU selection determined the mobo and socket type. To lose the expense of a discreet video card a IGP motherboard was needed. This meant in order of preference either an AMD 785G, AMD 790GX, AMD 780G, or an AMD 760G.

Good video is important. Its in front of your face every moment you’re logged on. That this box was going to do double duty as an HTPC led me to toward the AMD 785G which has the best of the AMD IGPs. The newer AMD 785G was more likely to come with an HDMI connector, which would do away with the need for an DVI to HDMI adapter.

As it happened, I caught a sale. The sale offered an Asus M4A785TD-V EVO. I like Asus motherboards, simply for their reliability, and the good customer service I have received from Asus in the past. That Asus motherboards are expensive, is why I don’t buy them more often. However, in this case, the price was right. An advantage of this mob is that it comes with its own on-board graphic RAM, called side-port. That meant avoiding the parasitic effect of using system RAM for the video.

RAM

The mobo was DDR3. Right now the ‘Sweet Spot’ for DDR3 is 4GB (2x 2GB sticks). Surprisingly, I found that DDR3 1600 to be either the same price or less expensive than DDR3 1333.

I’m not too adventurous when it comes to RAM. I have always found Corsair XMS memory to be reliable, with good timings, and with MIRs to be modestly priced for the value. I’ve followed Corsair XMS from DDR to DDR2, now to DDR3 memory standards. However, the MIRs did not break my way for this build. In fact, I looked like I was attempting a Build during one of the momentary ‘spikes’ in RAM prices.

I had to find an alternate. The least expensive ‘name’ brand I could find were G.Skill ‘Ripjaws’. This RAM did not have the best timings (9-9-9-24 instead of 8-8-8-24), but is was inexpensive. I’d used G.Skill RAM in the past, in a pinch, so I went with it. I went with the DDR3 1600 4GB (2x2GB) Ripjaw sticks.

I note that Asus lists DDR3 1600 as 'O.C.' for the M4A785TD-V EVO. There is no mention of what O.C. means, although I assume its Overclock. These particular sticks are also not found in the mobo's 'Recommended RAM' list either. Sometimes, you have to live dangerously.

VIDEO

On-board the motherboard (ATI Radeon HD 4200 equivalent).

AUDIO

On-board the motherboard (VIA VT1708S).

CASE

I prefer sturdy, quiet, easy to work with, ATX mini-towers. The Antec Solo is a highly regarded example of this breed. I have been using the Antec Solo in Builds for years. There are many other cases out there that cost less, are larger or smaller, are made of steel or aluminum. However, the Solo is quiet and always of high quality. In the past, it has been the Ars Technica Hot Rod case-of-choice for many years. Only recently has it fallen from favor as Antec has stopped paying Continuum's rent, buying him drinks, limo rides, and 'hostesses'.

If this case has two faults, it is that: it can’t fit the recent trend toward very long video cards, and it doesn’t use 120mm fans throughout. Of the two, no being able to house a long card like the ATI Radeon HD 5870 is the most serious. (It can handle the shorter ATI Radeon HD 5850.)

With regard to fans, I always replace the Solo’s stock exhaust fan. The Antec Tri-Cool is loud, and doesn’t’ push a lot of air when you make them quiet.

I’ve been using Scythe S-FLEX fans for awhile now. In terms of price/performance, I still have not found anything better than the S-FLEX. The Scythe S-FLEX ‘D’ makes for a quiet exhaust fan that pushes a lot of air. The Scythe 100mm "KAZE-JYU" (unfortunately, not an S-FLEX) is an ideal front ventilation fan for the Solo. I use the ‘M’ KAZE-JYU.

In addition to the fans, I mounted a ‘Jumpy Plate’ into the door to block the grate and promote a positively pressured plenum. This innovation was recommended by F16JumperPilot aka "Jumpy", years ago in lengthy discussions on positive plenum pressuring of the Solo.
Jumpy Plate technology is discussed here. Note the Jumpy Plate is a spin-off of American Aerospace technology.



POWER SUPPLY

I like high-quality, ‘right-sized’ low wattage power supplies with 120mm thermally controlled fans. I also like modular power supplies when I can find them.

Nobody beats Seasonic PSUs in quality and silent operation, except the Corsair. For this build, I found an on-sale, 400W Corsair PSU. Note, this size power supply is overkill for the Rip-Box. Properly right-sizing the PSU for this box would only require a about a 350W. However, the smallest wattage, least expensive, high quality PSU I get at the moment was the Corsair 400W.

SOUND PROOFING

Soundproofing is icing on the cake. With large, slow moving fans and silenced cases, not a lot of vibration occurs. Probably out of habit from the bad old days of the ‘roaring 80’s’ (80mm fans) do I include fan vibration and power supply dampeners.
I actually have boxes of these that I bought at a Fire Sale, and have to use them for something.

OPTICAL

To do Blu-ray rips, the Rip-Box required a Blu-Ray drive. Recently, the price of Blu-Ray drives has gone down. However, they are still expensive. To keep costs low, a Blu-Ray ROM was used, instead of the more expensive burner. Right now 8x is the fastest Blu-Ray drive. Money could be saved by going with a 4x, but the point of this box was to rip--fast.

HARD DRIVE

The stock hard drive I’ve been using is the Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB. This hard drive gives near-Raptor performance, with a lot more capacity at approximately half the price as the Raptor. Its not an SSD, but its more than fast enough for anything you’re doing on the desktop.

In this build, I decided to experiment by using a different 1TB, fast hard drive. This is the Samsung F3 1TB. It benches-out about as fast as the Caviar Black 1TB in many benchmarks. It is also less expensive.

THE BUILD



The assembly portion of the build when very quickly. I do so many builds with the Solo, I can rack and stack them in my sleep. In addition, with IGP and stock cooling , you just ‘stuff’ the board, bolt it in, hook-up the power, hook-up the data, and turn on the power.

So I did. And I turned-on the power. And there was no video. Mobo LEDs lit, fans turned, no ‘splash screen’. I turned everything off, and checked the connections to the monitor, and in general just ‘shook the wires’, and turned it on again. No joy.

Its at this point, as experienced a Builder that I am, that I started cursing: AMD, Antec, Asus, Corsair, G.Skill, Lucky Goldstar, Samsung, and Scythe. Did I forget any vendor? Oh, Newegg! Visions of RMA-ing every piece of this steaming turd back to Newegg danced in my head.

Then I set to seriously ‘shaking the wires’. Awhile later, not a short time, but not a long time either I found the problem. The 4-pin motherboard power connector was not ‘locked’ into its socket. It was inserted, but not far enough to latch. Which, was also not far enough to make a connection supplying power to the CPU.

Once the 4-pin was securely latched, the Rip Boxed booted clean. I made a few minor adjustments, (AHCI, etc.) and loaded Windows 7 in dual-core mode. I also loaded latest drivers from the Asus site, the latest Catylst driver, Speedfan, and CPU-Z.

I went back in to try the core unlock. My first two attempts failed. The first one flat out did not work, and the second left the box unstable. The third time around worked. This involved in the Advanced BIOS page:

Advanced Clock Calibration: [All Cores]
Unleashing Mode: [Enabled]
Active CPU Cores: [4 Core Operation]
Value (All Cores): [-2%]

I tested stability with both SuperPi (maximum digits all cores) and Prime95 (4-hour stress, aall cores) and then with use over several days. I found there was some random instability. However, when I de-rated my RAM to 1333 (down from 1600) this went away. I have not been able to tell if this instability is because 1600 is “O.C.” for that motherboard, or its because of the Ripjaw sticks by themselves.

PERFORMANCE



“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

Its always good to benchmark your box, just so that when a fanboi insists they need a 750W.PSU for a build like this, you can tell them to go back to skateboarding.

Tools used include:

CPU-Z ver. 1.53.1
Speedfan ver. 4.40
Prime95 ver. 0.41.110.18
FurMark ver. 1.7.0
Kill-O-Watt Meter

Power

I used four test points for wattage testing: Off, Idle, Prime 95 Stress, and FurMark. Off is obvious enough. Surprisingly, boxen draw power in this state. The Idle test was with the system sitting at the W7 desktop. Wattage for Idle was measured ‘Headless’ with no keyboard, mouse or monitor attached. Prime95 stess is self-explanatory. I took measurements after one hour of execution. FurMark is a video test, and not really appropriate for a Rip Box, but I ran it anyway. I ran the FurMark Stability Test and took measurements after one hour.

Off: 1W
Idle: 54W
Prime95 Stress: 156W
Prime95 Stress and FurMark: 157W

Oddly there is very little difference between the ‘core burning’ and ‘core burning with video’ tests. My guess is that with IGP, the CPUs are handling the video processing anyway. In which case, ‘a 10% greater workload than maximum is still 100%’. I also noticed that Prime95 causes the system to draw more wattage than SuperPi.

CPU Core Temperature (Ambient is 16-deg C)

Idle: 30-deg C.
Prime95 Stress: 54-deg C.
Prime95 Stress and FurMark: 56-deg C.

I was actually surprised the stock CPU heatsink did so well. Its designed for dual core, but holds its own with a quad.

CONCLUSION



This system as built is about US$700. That the unlock worked, and I got a US$700 quad was a big bonus. As it is, the system works well. It would really be nice to have better video, but that’s just not in the budget. As it is, the video drives my 19" LCD fine. It also looks good on my 30" LCD. Hulu (720p) likewise looks good in full screen. The AMD 785 is a capable chip. The Sammy hard drive is certainly fast. Is it faster than a more expensive Western Digital Caviar Black? I don’t know. However, it is less expensive.

PROs
In-expensive Quad Core
Cool running

CONs
Power Supply Unit too large for actual usage
Video could be better

copyright © 2010 Black Jacque Labs LTD.

Black Jacque Game Box Mk. XI: A Build Log

INTRODUCTION

It is time to update the Black Jacque Game Box, again. (Actually, it is my ‘Everything Box’.) My current game box, the Black Jacque Phenom Quad despite periodic upgrades is getting long-of-tooth. While still usable, its not going to dazzle me with Direct X 11 eye-candy, its not as fast, and its not as ‘Green’ as the current-gen parts. Time for an upgrade.

I try for a value position with a game box, with all my budgetary punch saved for the hardware. When I build a game box, I don't rack and stack a fanboi’s multi-GigaHertz, steroidal collection of mis-matched, and poisonously priced parts. That is my game box does not have: a case window, Blue or Pink LED fans, a PSU with mega-wattage, quadruple SLI/Crossfire video, four 7200 rpm 1TB drives in a RAID 0 for C:\, and a gargantuan case made from titanium, painted in desert camo and big enough to park my car in. I try to build functional boxen, that just happen to be ’big enough’, quiet at Idle, cool-running (all of the time), energy efficient, well-behaved, and economical.

That doesn’t mean my game box does not kick some ass. It just kicks as much ass as it has to, plus 10-percent.

Budget for the latest revision of the Black Jacque Game box was US$1000. This is enough for the ‘Better’ of the ‘Good, Better, Best’ in game boxen. However, I am an Enthusiast. At the final trigger-pulling moment, I re-authorized myself to US$1300. I decided I must eat my own SSD Fetish dogfood. (I'm not an Armchair Builder that likes to post recommending parts they don't have experience with. )

As I was wrapping-up this Build Log, the TechReport's March 2010 System Builders Guide was published. I think TR's Guides are the best around, now that the Ars Technica Guides have gone out of publication. The Black Jacque Game Box February 2010, looks like a steroidal riff on the Utility Player.

All parts below are from The Usual Source unless otherwise noted.

PARTS LIST

• CPU: Intel Core i5-750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor - Retail US$180 (MicroCenter)
• CPU HEATSINK: Xigmatek HDT-S1283 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler – Retail US$30 w/MIR
• CPU HEATSINK SOCKET ADAPTER: Xigmatek ACK-I5361 Intel Core i7/Core i5 compatible Bracket Set – Retail US$9
• MAINBOARD: Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail US$120 w/MIR (MicroCenter)
• MEMORY (RAM): OCZ 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) XMP-Ready Rev.2 Desktop Memory Model OCZ3X1600R2LV4GK - Retail US$96 w/MIR and Combo pricing
• VIDEO: Powercolor AX5850 1GBD5-MDHG Radeon HD 5850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card – Retail US$284 w/Combo pricing
• AUDIO: Onboard.
• CASE: Antec Solo Black/Silver Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail US$90
• FANS: Scythe S-FLEX SFF21D 120mm Case Fan - Retail US$20
• FANS: Scythe SY1025SLN12M 100mm Case Fan - Retail US$8
• POWER SUPPLY (PSU): Corsair CMPSU-400CX 400W ATX12V V2.2 80 PLUS Certified Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply - Retail US$40 w/MIR
• PSU CABLE ADAPTER: 12v Molex to 12V 6Pin Adapter – Retail US$2 (MicroCenter)
• SOUNDPROOFING: Vantec Power Supply Vibration Dampener Kit
• SOUNDPROOFING: Vantec 120mm Fan Vibration Dampener Kit
• OPTICAL: LG Black 22X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 22X DVD-R 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA DVD Burner - OEM US$23
• HARD DRIVE: OCZ Agility Series OCZSSD2-1AGT120G 2.5" 120GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - Retail US$309 w/MIR
O/S HARD DRIVE CONVERTER: Icy Dock MB882SP-1S-2B 2.5” SSD & 3.5” SATA Hard Drive Converter US$19
• O/S SOFTWARE: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders - OEM US$105

This box costs about US$1335 to build.



Parts Pr0n. (That's an Intel i7 860 on the right that I bought at Micro Center on speculation. I'll sell it in a build to a fanboi who must have hyperthreading. )

CPU

In the core-wars swamp of ‘How many cores should a game box have, fewer faster (the dualie argument) or more slower (the quad argument)?’ The correct answer is always ‘More faster’. A game box with any legs has to be a quad. However, it has to be a fast quad.

The AMD Phenom II x4 quads are good. The unlocked Phenom II x2 unlocked quads are good and cheap. However they are not as good as the Intel Lynnfield quads.

The question becomes, which Lynnfield quad, the US$180 Core i5-750 or the US$200 Core i7-860? I looked at the specs, and I looked at the benchmarks, and I thought of what that extra US$20 could buy in this Build. I decided to keep that US$20 by going with the Core i5-750. The slight performance difference between the two CPUs was not worth US$20 to me.

CPU HEATSINK

A fast quad is going to have to be overclocked. A minimum of 3.0 GHz and as much as you can get and stay stable is the rule. Fortunately, the Lynnfields are good overclockers. The stock heatsink on the Intel quads is good. You can get a decent overclock with it, and it won’t be too noisy as its trying to dissipate the extra heat. However, my requirement for overclocked and quiet is extra. In which case an aftermarket heatsink

I think its foolish to spend US$70 to cool a 2.66GHz stock US$180 CPU to get 4GHz, when I can pay US$35 and get a ‘better than good-enough’ 3.5GHz. For a good CPU heatsink, I went to SPCR’s list of Recommended Heatsinks and picked the least expensive of their best rated heatsinks. That was the Xigmatek HDT-S1283 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler.

If I have two reservations about this heatsink, its that its bundled fan is not as good as it could be, and that I had to pay an extra US$9 to get a Socket 1156 mounting bracket. I really think that mounting bracket should have come bundled. If I really don’t like the bundled fan, well my Parts Closet is full of 120mm fans that might qualify.

MAINBOARD

ATX format, Intel P55A, Socket 1156 mobos is another swamp.

To make my life easier, I either buy Asus or Gigabyte motherboards simply for their reliability. In lots of builds, I’ve found them to be comparable in quality and features. That Asus motherboards are more expensive, is why I don’t buy them as often as Gigabyte motherboards. However, I have found that Asus customer service is better than Gigabytes, in the rare case of a problem.

Next, comes the bewildering array of motherboard models. Gigabyte’s nomenclature of UD3 through UD7 (with additional ‘Ps’, ‘Ls’, etc.) where a UD7 is the ‘best’ and most expensive is a little more understandable than Asus’s. In the past, I’ve purchased both the most expensive and the least expensive motherboards from both vendors. My requirements are modest. I don’t use e-SATA (I go over my network). I only use one NIC. I have a tin ear, and can’t tell the difference between two adjacent audio chip models. I don’t build Crossfire boxen. I don’t own any SATAIII mass storage devices. I don’t (yet) own and USB 3 devices. Frankly, for the things I do, I can’t tell the difference between the top-of-the-line and the bottom, except for how much I’ve paid-out. So, I usually buy the lowest end model. Sometimes, I buy microATX motherboards, because they’re less expensive. (I have yet to fill-up the slots of a microATX mobo.)

As it happened, I caught a sale. The sale offered an Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 LGA, which happens to be the lowest model Gigabyte P55 for a very reasonable price. If the Asus P7P55 or even the Asus P7P55D Deluxe had been the least expensive choice, I would have bought that.


CPU, Motherboard, and Heatsink mounting.

RAM

Right now the ‘Sweet Spot’ for DDR3 is 4GB (2x 2GB sticks). I’ve found that DDR3 1600 to be either the same price or less expensive than DDR3 1333, so I’ve been buying DDR3 1600.

I typically buy Corsair XMS. I’ve found it to be reliable, with good timings, and with MIRs to be modestly priced for the value. I’ve been buying Corsair XMS from DDR to DDR2, now to DDR3 memory standards.

Right now is one of those periodic spikes in RAM prices. Three months ago, I was buying 2x2GB sticks of DDR3 1600 for US$85 without a MIR. Now, the same sticks are US$105.

Corsair XMS3 was in the US$105 range with no MIRs in sight. I had to find an alternate. In my previous Black Jacque Build Log I used G.Skill ‘Ripjaws’. That RAM did not have the best timings (9-9-9-24 instead of 8-8-8-24), but is was inexpensive and I’d used G.Skill RAM in a pinch before. However even the Ripjaw sticks were expensive now.

As it happened, I found I could leverage a Combination (Combo) pricing deal with RAM and another part I intended to buy. Purely to get a low price, I what I think may be quality 2x2GB DDR3 1600 sticks, I took the combo and bought the OCZ Intel Extreme DDR3. These sticks to have the better 8-8-8-24 timings. I can’t remember the last time I bought OCZ RAM.

VIDEO

Right not a choice of Nvidia or ATI when comes down which video card to buy, its which ATI Radeon HD 5000-series card to buy. ATI dominates this parts category. Unfortunately, the new Nvidia cards (GF100) don’t appear to be shaping-up to the challenge.

In my game boxes price range, the three single GPU Radeon HD choices are 5770, 5850, and 5870. These three models span the range of US$160 to US$400. The 5770 is the cheap seats. From the benchmarks, depending on the resolution, there is only about a 10-15 percent difference in performance between the other two. The 5870 is the fastest card, and the 5850 is the value alternative.

And then there is the size. The 5870 is member of that new generation of longer cards. The 5850 is about an inch shorter. As if ‘size matters’? Well it does. The 5870 won’t fit into my case of choice. Which left me with either the 5770 or the 5850, and the 5850 is so much better.

I went with the Powercolor AX5850, because it came with combo pricing and free shipping which gave it the lowest cost.

AUDIO

On-board the motherboard (Realtek ALC888). Its been a long time since you’ve needed a separate sound card on a game box.

CASE

I am an Antec Solo fanboi.

I have been using the Antec Solo in Builds for years. It’s a very versatile case. The Solo is quiet, compact, and always of high quality small mid-tower case. It can be used from a Mom Box to a WHS. At US$90, without a power supply, it is a little expensive for Budget builds. However, occasionally there are MIRs and Free Shipping. (In which case, if you are a builder, buy two!)

In the past, the Solo was the Ars Technica Hot Rod case-of-choice. Only recently with the move to larger video cards has the Solo lost its following.

As mentioned above, this case has two faults: it can’t fit the recent trend toward very long (10-inch) video cards, and it doesn’t use 120mm fans throughout. Of the two, not being able to house a long card like the ATI Radeon HD 5870 is the most serious. (It can handle the shorter ATI Radeon HD 5850 I’m using for this build.)

I always replace the Solo’s stock exhaust fan. The Antec Tri-Cool is loud, and doesn’t’ push a lot of air when you make them quiet.

I’ve been using Scythe S-FLEX fans for awhile now. In terms of price/performance, I still have not found anything better than the S-FLEX. The Scythe S-FLEX ‘D’ makes for a quiet exhaust fan that pushes a lot of air. The Scythe 100mm "KAZE-JYU" (unfortunately, not an S-FLEX) is an ideal front ventilation fan for the Solo. I use the ‘M’ KAZE-JYU.

In addition to the fans, I mount a ‘Jumpy Plate’ into the drive cage door to block the grate and promote a positively pressured plenum. F16JumperPilot aka "Jumpy", recommended this change years ago to aid in positively pressuring the plenum of the Solo. Jumpy Plate technology is discussed here.

POWER SUPPLY

I like high-quality, ‘right-sized’ low wattage power supplies with 120mm thermally controlled fans. I also like modular power supplies when I can find them.

Nobody beats Seasonic PSUs in quality and silent operation, except the Corsair. For this build, I went with an on-sale, 400W Corsair PSU. Note, this size power supply is overkill for an energy stingy Lynnfield and Radeon 5000 build. Properly right-sizing the PSU for this box would only require a about a 350W. However, the smallest wattage, least expensive, high quality PSU I get at the moment was the Corsair 400W.

Note this PSU only has one native PCIe 6-pin connector. My video card of choice requires two. The video card I purchased does not include an adapter from Molex to 6-pin PCie. (Some video cards do, YMMV.) I had to buy a Molex to PCIe adapter to get a second PCIe 6-pin.

SOUND PROOFING

Soundproofing is icing on the cake. With large, slow moving fans and silenced cases, not a lot of vibration occurs. Probably out of habit from the bad old days of the ‘roaring 80’s’ (80mm fans) do I include fan vibration and power supply dampeners. I actually have boxes of these that I bought at a Fire Sale, and have to use them for something.

OPTICAL

Optical drives are a commodity product. Even though I find I’m using them less and less (opticals are going the way of the floppy drive), they’re still handy to have around. In this case, I just selected the fastest, black, DVD burner with free shipping. At the moment I pulled that trigger that was a Lucky Goldstar 22X DVD.

HARD DRIVE

The stock hard drive I’ve been using is the Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB. In a previous build I used the Samsung F3 1TB. These 1TB, 7200rpm drives with big caches have near-Raptor performance. They’re quiet too. They also have more capacity then most people need. Either the Caviar Black or the Sammy F3 would be fast enough for anything I’d be doing on this gamebox.

However, I wanted to build this Game Box with an SSD. And, I didn’t want to build it with a small one either.

I set the budget to be about US$300. That would include either Intel or Indilinx greater than 100GB based SSDs. My thought is that 60GB or 80GB, even with a LAN in support is too small for a gamebox. Intel SSDs have the best random performance, while Indilinx SSDs have better sequential write speed and cost.

I decided on an Indilinx based on price, and my thought that 120-128GB was ‘good enough’ over the 160GB Intel SSD. I eventually went with the OCZ Agility Series 120GB SSD. I own two smaller OCZ Vertex’s and I’ve been impressed with OCZ. My most recent build with a Vertex SSD was my 'Home Server ReFurb II'. The performance and price difference between the OCZ Vertex and the Agility is small. However, I caught a sale on the Agility which made it the winner.

An Icy Dock MB882SP 3.5” to 2.5” drive converter is needed to easily fit the 2.5” SSD into one of the case’s 3.5” drive bay.

THE BUILD


Partial assembly.

The assembly portion of the build when quickly. I do so many builds with the Solo, I can almost rack and stack one in my sleep.

I did not like the CPU heatsink fan mounting system on the Xigmatech. It uses rubber toggles that slide into grooves in the heatsink’s vanes. Pushing and pulling the rubber pegs through the fan’s screwholes was tedious. I was always afraid the rubber might snap.

The video card was a tight fit. I lose the use of a drive bay, because the PCIe connectors lap over into the drive cage. Note I had to use a Molex to 6-pin PCIe adapter to get the 2x 6-pin PCIe connectors from the Corsair 400W needed by the Radeon HD 5850.

I turned-on the power, and the system booted right into its BIOS. I had remembered to turn the Power Supply ON, I’d gotten the polarity of the case lights and switches correct, and all the cables were securely attached. I hate it when that happens.

I made the few changes needed to get the desired drivers to load, setting AHCI, the correct time, boot order, etc..

Windows 7 O/S is always a breeze. Back in the day, an O/S load was like a test your manhood, involving as much preparation as an amphibious invasion. Now, you drop the distro into the DVD drive, and kickback through a few clicks until its time to fat-finger your way through the Activation Code. I even got the Activation Code correct on the first try.

System load, completed without an issue. The SSD formatted out to 119GB. When the O/S was loaded (minus the lame Windows games, etc.) I had 110GB ‘free’ capacity.

There were several modifications I had to perform to Windows 7 to support the SSD. Windows assumes a mechanical hard drive. The SSD is a random access device. Features in the O/S that make hard drive usage faster, actually degrade an SSD’s performance. To examples are drive indexing and defragmentation. Drive indexing causes a lot of small writes, and takes-up a lot of space on the already small SSD. AND, you don’t defragment SSDs. I followed the OCZ Windows 7 Tweaks Guide.

I almost felt let-down by not having any problems. That meant I had go right into Testing and Overclocking.


Stock box scores.

OVERCLOCKING

Frankly, I hate overclocking. The tweak BIOS values, boot, freeze or BSOD, tweak BIOS values is almost painful for me. However, what Enthusiast owns a Lynnfield and does not overclock?

I set really modest goals for myself. I wanted a minimum of 3.0GHz. However, I closely follow the tech sites and blogs. I know for certain that every n00b and every n00b’s mother gets 4.0GHz on stock power with a Lynnfield. And they can do this using motherboards assembled from used parts in the basement of Chinese brothels by whores to old to ply their trade and thier crippled children. Also, that they achieve this feat with RAM assembled in Burmese jungle prison camps by malarial internees from RAM chips fished out of Indonesian memory manufacturers dumpsters.

If they can do it, I can get 4GHz. (You see where this is going?)

Overclocking did not start out well. I could not get a stable boot with a Base Clock of 143 MHz. There was much gnashing of teeth, pulling of hair, and tearing of garments. That was before I up-graded the BIOS from its original F2 to the current F5 revision. (If you are going to overclock, use the latest and greatest BIOS.)

With the latest BIOS I could easily get 3GHz (20x150) operation with stock power. Coincidentally, the 3GHz overclock is reported to be the last stability point for leaving Turbo enabled. In Turbo that gives me almost 3.2GHz. The 3 GHz overclock is stable with 24-hours of Prime 95 loading.

The new BIOS did not give me 4GHz. I stroved mightily, but could only push it just shy of 3.5GHz (20x175) and be but not on it. I fell back exhausted. Some things are just not meant to be. I now think that 4GHz overclocks are only possible in the UK and Canada where all those tech blogs and articles are written. Either that, or I suck at O.C.-ing.

The following are the settings I used to get 3.0GHz with the Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3’s F5 BIOS. Settings start from loading the optimized defaults. (Along with setting AHCI, HPET Mode, etc.) Only the changed values are listed.

Advanced Frequency Settings:
Base Clock (BCLK) Control: [Enabled]
Base Clock Frequency (Mhz): [150]
System Memory Multiplier (SPD): [8.0]
CPU Clock Drive: [900mV]

Advanced CPU Core Features:
No Change.

Advanced Memory Settings:
System Memory Multiplier (SPD): [8.0]
Performance Enhance: [Standard]
DRAM Timing Selectable: [Quick]

Advanced Voltage Settings:
Load Line Calibration: [Level 2]

PERFORMANCE


Scores after O.C. attempt.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

Its always good to benchmark your box. This way you know how it used work, before you changed it, or it decides to change itself.


Tools used include:

CPU-Z ver. 1.53.1
Speedfan ver. 4.40
Prime95 ver. 0.41.110.18
FurMark ver. 1.8.0
Kill-O-Watt Meter
Mk.1 Black Jacque Ear

I used four test points for Power Usage and System Temperature Testing: Idle, Prime 95 Stress, FurMark Stress, and FurMark plus Prime95. The Temps, Wattages, and Frames per Second are the highest value I observed for about 5-minutes after the warm-up period. The Idle test was with the system sitting at the Windows 7 desktop. Wattage for Idle was measured ‘Headless’ with no keyboard, mouse or monitor attached. Prime95 stress is a 4-core CPU test. I took measurements after one hour of execution. FurMark is a video test. I ran the Stability Test. I took measurements after 30 minutes. I also ran the FurMark Stability Test with Prime95 together to simultaneously stress the CPU and video. I took measurements after 30 minutes.

Values are shown for both the 2.66 GHz ‘Stock’ configuration using the F2 BIOS, and the 3.00 GHz ‘O.C.’ configuration using the F5 BIOS.

Noise

I don’t have any tools to measure this, but the system seems very quiet all closed-up under load.

Power Usage

Note the Kill-a-Watt measures wattage at the wall.

As a calibration point, I ran the parts list of the Build through the 'Usual Source Power Supply Calculator'. The result was a 455W PSU being recommended.

TEST STOCK (W) O.C. (W)
Idle 60 67
Prime95 Stress 140 151
FurMark Stability 248 249
Prime95 and FurMark 290 290

Note the higher wattage usage in the FurMark only test over the Prime95 test. GPUs are the biggest consumer of power with a gaming box. In the combined Prime95 and FurMark test, it appears that FurMark is being throttled by the CPU utilization.

It looks to me that a 350W PSU would be ‘right-sized’ for this build. That I installed a 400W PSU, was an economic decision. That PSU was the lowest wattage, high-quality power supply that fit my about 300W estimate of what my power consumption might be.

I must note that the Usual Source PSU Calculator was more than 150W higher in its estimate of the wattage than was actually consumed. What is wrong with encouraging customers to buy a PSU one-third larger than is needed?

Video

TEST (Frames/sec. MIN AVG MAX
FurMark Stability Stock 66 78 110
FurMark Stability O.C. 64 77 110
Prime95 and FurMark Stock 52 63 81
Prime95 and FurMark O.C. 51 63 82

Temperature

Ambient was a cool 16-deg C. The System temperature is the T2 value from SysFan. I believe this is a motherboard sensor. I have averaged the four Intel i5 750 core temperatures together here for simplicity. I never observed more than a four degree difference in their values.

TEST STOCK O.C.
Measurement Point: System (C) Cores (C) System (C) Cores (C)
Idle 27 18 30 18
Prime95 Stress 27 42 28 45
FurMark Stability 44 27 42 24
Prime95 and FurMark 43 44 41 48

It appears that the fans and the CPU heatsink are doing their job. Considering my mild overclock, I probably could have used the stock CPU heatsink and saved some money on the build at the expense of some extra noise.

Qualitative Gaming Performance

Jeez is this bitch fast. My eyeballs have blistered from how fast the level loads go.

CONCLUSION



This system as built is about US$1300. In general, I’m pleased with it.

The most impressive part of the system is the SSD. I knew it would speed things up, but viscerally I didn’t believe it. Boots, application loads, game level loads, and shutdowns are there when I click the mouse. Don’t turn your head, or you’ll miss the load. Once, up and running there does not appear to be any difference. I assume that’s because everything is in memory.

The SSD has 110GB of ‘user’ space, with most of my utility applications installed (Mozilla, etc.). While not a lot by today’s standards, its enough given that I have the support of my WHS shares. However, as a standalone box, that may not be enough. An additional mechanical hard drive might be advisable as a Media drive.

The video card is fast enough. Unfortunately, I don’t have any Direct X 11 games to test with.

The system is quiet enough. The ‘boiler plate’ Solo configuration always is.

As per usual, the Power Supply is too large for the observed loads. I’m also pretty sure that with only the mild O.C. I have, the Xigmatek heatsink is probably overkill. In addition, the Xigmatech heatsink’s 120mm fan is not as good as the S-FLEX fan I used to replace the Solo’s case fan. It has a thrumming sound not found in the S-FLEX.

If I have a disappointment, its with the inability to OC to 4GHz. I’m ‘making do’ with only a 10-percent overclock, and the use of Turbo Mode. A pal of mine told me not to sweat it. He said, "Its winter. You tuned that pig at 60-degees F, right? Suppose you got 4GHz now. What do you think is going to happen with your crib hits 95-degees F this summer?" (Still, I'd like to have gotten 4GHz.)

PROs
Fast
Cool running
Quiet.

CONs
Power Supply Unit too large for actual usage.
SSD may be too small by itself, if media is stored.
No overclock to 4GHz.

APPENDIX

The Black Jacque Game Box misses the ‘Sweet Spot’, price point of US$1000 that many Enthusiast gamers seem to set for their rig. I’ve included an ‘alternate’ parts list that hits that mark without sacrificing too much performance. Or, you can just build a TR Utility Player. All prices are from The Usual Source unless otherwise noted.

Alternate Game Box Parts List

• CPU: Intel Core i5-750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor - Retail US$180 (MicroCenter)
• MAINBOARD: Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3L LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail US$100
• MEMORY (RAM): OCZ Gold 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model OCZ3G1333LV4GK - Retail US$90 w/MIR and Combo pricing
• VIDEO Asus EAH5850/2DIS/1GD5 Radeon HD 5850 1GB 256-bit DDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card - Retail US$300
• AUDIO: Onboard.
• CASE: Antec Solo Black/Silver Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail US$90
• FANS: Scythe SY1025SLN12M 100mm Case Fan - Retail US$8
• POWER SUPPLY (PSU): Corsair CMPSU-400CX 400W ATX12V V2.2 80 PLUS Certified Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply - Retail US$40 w/MIR
• PSU CABLE ADAPTER: 12v Molex to 12V 6Pin Adapter – Retail US$2 (MicroCenter)
• OPTICAL: LG Black 22X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 22X DVD-R 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA DVD Burner - OEM US$23
• HARD DRIVE: Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive US$90
• O/S SOFTWARE: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders - OEM US$105

This box costs about US$988 to build.

Holo-dec gets a step closer: US$1500

ugly....

I really don't think I could deal with the black bands. It's cool to have a resolution that high, but to be perfectly honest, my 720p project w/ 100" screen looks plenty good for my gaming tastes and for almost the same price.

We've been gaming on the projector this morning, which is a heap of fun.

Wonder whether manufacturers might start working on almost bezel-free displays for this stuff, though, if it catches on.

quote:

Originally posted by Bravus:
Wonder whether manufacturers might start working on almost bezel-free displays for this stuff, though, if it catches on.

Samsung 460UTn-UD

Just got my Clear RF modem from FedEx this morning, got it hooked up ASAP but getting odd speeds. Talked to tier 1&2 tech guys for the last 3 hours, nice folks, intelligent, helpful. They are going to run a ticket on my local tower to see if that is the problem. We seem to have eliminated my rigs as the source of the problem. I'm on a 6Mb/s download/ 1Mb/s upload connection but getting avg. scores off speedtest.net after 20+ tests on two separate rigs in the range of 0.50 Mb/s download and 0.80Mb/s upload.
E.g.

Here is some other data that might help you, help me figure out what the fuck is going on...

quote:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Purplebhat>netstat -b

Active Connections

Proto Local Address Foreign Address State
TCP 127.0.0.1:49159 Purplebhat-PC:49160 ESTABLISHED
[firefox.exe]
TCP 127.0.0.1:49160 Purplebhat-PC:49159 ESTABLISHED
[firefox.exe]
TCP 127.0.0.1:49161 Purplebhat-PC:49162 ESTABLISHED
[firefox.exe]
TCP 127.0.0.1:49162 Purplebhat-PC:49161 ESTABLISHED
[firefox.exe]
TCP 192.168.15.2:49166 www:http ESTABLISHED
[firefox.exe]
TCP 192.168.15.2:49179 s:http TIME_WAIT
TCP 192.168.15.2:49180 s:http TIME_WAIT
TCP 192.168.15.2:49194 s:http TIME_WAIT
TCP 192.168.15.2:49195 s:http TIME_WAIT
TCP 192.168.15.2:49209 i:http TIME_WAIT
TCP 192.168.15.2:49210 i:http TIME_WAIT
TCP 192.168.15.2:49211 i:http TIME_WAIT
TCP 192.168.15.2:49212 i:http TIME_WAIT
TCP 192.168.15.2:49213 contact:http TIME_WAIT
TCP 192.168.15.2:49214 iy-in-f83:https FIN_WAIT_1
[firefox.exe]
TCP 192.168.15.2:49215 iy-in-f83:https FIN_WAIT_1
[firefox.exe]
TCP 192.168.15.2:49216 iy-in-f83:https FIN_WAIT_1
[firefox.exe]
TCP 192.168.15.2:49217 iy-in-f104:https FIN_WAIT_1
[firefox.exe]
TCP 192.168.15.2:49221 iy-in-f83:https FIN_WAIT_1
[firefox.exe]
TCP 192.168.15.2:49222 ad:http FIN_WAIT_1
[firefox.exe]
TCP 192.168.15.2:49226 ad:http TIME_WAIT
TCP 192.168.15.2:49230 www:http TIME_WAIT
TCP 192.168.15.2:49231 ssl:https TIME_WAIT
TCP 192.168.15.2:49236 ajax:https FIN_WAIT_1
[firefox.exe]
TCP 192.168.15.2:49238 www:http ESTABLISHED
[firefox.exe]
TCP 192.168.15.2:49244 safebrowsing:http ESTABLISHED
[firefox.exe]
TCP 192.168.15.2:49246 safebrowsing-cache:http ESTABLISHED
[firefox.exe]

C:\Users\Purplebhat>

quote:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Subek>tracert yahoo.com

Tracing route to yahoo.com [72.30.2.43]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 118 ms 1 ms 1 ms mywimax [192.xxx.1x.x]
2 112 ms 68 ms * 71-23-128-2.chi.clearwire-wmx.net [71.23.128.2]

3 136 ms 129 ms 224 ms 66-233-235-161.chi.clearwire-wmx.net [66.233.235
.161]
4 300 ms 143 ms 89 ms te-8-3.car2.Chicago1.Level3.net [4.71.183.241]
5 261 ms 556 ms 292 ms ae-31-51.ebr1.Chicago1.Level3.net [4.68.101.30]

6 314 ms 174 ms 104 ms ae-6-6.ebr1.Chicago2.Level3.net [4.69.140.190]
7 237 ms 627 ms 178 ms ae-3-3.ebr2.Denver1.Level3.net [4.69.132.61]
8 418 ms 234 ms * ae-1-100.ebr1.Denver1.Level3.net [4.69.132.37]
9 477 ms 289 ms 374 ms ae-3-3.ebr2.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.132.57]
10 475 ms 569 ms 214 ms ae-82-82.csw3.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.69.134.218]

11 156 ms 239 ms 394 ms ae-33-89.car3.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.68.18.133]

12 170 ms 260 ms 463 ms 4.71.112.14
13 283 ms 310 ms 248 ms ae0-p231.msr2.sk1.yahoo.com [216.115.106.143]
14 445 ms 293 ms 359 ms te-9-1.bas-k2.sk1.yahoo.com [68.180.160.15]
15 165 ms 313 ms 154 ms yahoo.com [72.30.2.43]

Trace complete.

C:\Users\Subek>

Can anybody help me figure this one out? How the fuck am I getting near normal upload speeds that are twice as fast as my download speeds?

At first, we thought it might be spyware related but have since ruled that option out...

A mate had a similar problem. Turned-out there was a metal mesh in the wall that was in direct line between his box and the tower.

When he moved the box to another room with a very large window, signal strength soared upward.

So, have you tried moving the box to another location?

You might also want to try an external antenna with greater sensitivity. The stock antennas on those units are universally crap.