Wednesday, July 20, 2011

now that PDXLAN is over...

and I have caught up on some sleep, I will be getting some "final" photos out of the finished case.

Weighing the choice between White sheet backdrop with the silver case, or black sheet backdrop against the silver case.

Leaning towards black, any input?

White sheet pro: black radiators will stand out against it
White sheet con: silver case won't be as contrastY

Black sheet pro: silver case will be very constrastY, and will look sharp IMO
Black sheet con: black radiators will kind of blend in depending on angle and flash

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

cementing on the final trim for the PSU

after that cures (probably overnight, there are 6 pieces and I don't want them shifting) I will finalize my transport locking pins to keep the Radiators in place.

I needed a way to keep the from sliding back out when I have it by the handle, so a little 4-40 threaded bolt, drill, and tap and I should have a pretty compact, simple, and stealthed locking method.

See that soon!

Monday, July 11, 2011

nearly time for PDXLAN 18

got some finishing touches to get done before Friday:

1. finish PSU trim, have to recut one piece and then time for adhesive to set up.
2. brushed over the corner/side aluminum with gritty abrasive pads (first Maroon, then White): still looks a bit "used" but "abused"
3. softened the look of the metallic paint on my exhaust fan grill with abrasive pads (White only)
4. flashlight check for any leaks, loose barbs, zip ties, etc.

Ran Age of Conan on High settings last night, played up to level 14, no real issues since the BSOD and installing that internal fan.

Finish pics will come when I get those PSU trip pieces on.

Thanks for reading!

Thursday, July 7, 2011

first BSOD

not unexpected, but it did occur.

Reasons:
1. small-ish Heatsink on NB/SB/Vreg area, stock on the Gigabyte, but very few builds would have such limited case ventilation
2. my case was closed up, see item #1
3. my one exhaust fan only moves about 24cfm (80mm, moderate rpm, low noise like this: JabTech Anodized Sunbeam fan) refer to item #1 for specifics
4. I had been playing DDO at Max DX11 settings with 4XAA and 16XAF, max particles, etc. for about 4 hours.
5. since the big radiator fans are OUTSIDE the case, there is very little "system" cooling. Item #1 should be referred to.

;) 4 hours is certainly enough time for a low ventilated case with vregs, NB/SB, SSD, HDD, and passive gains to add up and push past stable temps.

Overall, minor issue to open the lid during extended gaming sessions

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Furmark temps

the first run the GPU topped out at 68C.

I tried to log speedfan, but it's not writing a log file even after I selected all my CPU, SYS, and GPU tick boxes for logging.

So here is the screeny of my SECOND Furmark run, it actually hit 70C:


You can see in the settings block I chose my native resolution, no AA, standard Benchmark run (no preset), and to the right hand block my score was 1904.

The GPU-Z file for the run has no pagination, so I have to sift through and get the columns aligned for it to make sense.

some benchmarks to start

for those looking to go ITX, and wonder about comparable performance in such a small package, I wanted to show how the H67 chipset does with no OC (so far, I can multiplier OC, but that is coming later).

Remember, this is a stock 2500K, 2X2Gig DDR3 at 1333, and my Intel 160Gig X-25 G2 SSD.
The motherboard can do SATA6Gps, and I might go to 2X4Gig DDR3 later.
I also offers USB3 with two ports on the back.

Here are the first group of Benchies:
WEI


ATTO before I ran TRIM manually

You can see a pretty dramatic WRITE dip at 4K, and an odd READ drop at 4G.

ATTO after TRIM is run manually

That 4K dip is pretty much gone, and the 4G dip is reduced.  My write speeds are pretty consistent at 110-112MB/s.  About what I think to see with 51% SSD used by OS and a couple Games.

HDTach, running in XP mode and Admin mode, after Trim

For a SATA-3 product, it might not max out the channel, but it runs pretty consistently across fill states until I approach 75% full (I haven't recently, but I did briefly when I had LOTRO installed).

I will get to some other of the common benches, however I don't yet have a SATA6 or a native USB3 device to really push those limits, yet.  ;)

Saturday, July 2, 2011

reinstall after all

"no more rhyming, and I mean it!"

"anybody want a Peanut?"

even though I got desktop, and my WEI scores looks fine, the new system just behaved...oddly at time.

So I drug out my Win7 install, and got back to a fresh install.

My lacking Center channel audio seems to be due to a problem with my Psyko headset, since my Zalman 5.1s operate fine.

My video/audio hitching seems to be due to some driver/codec issue from the motherboard change...all fine now after fresh OS, fresh MPC-64-HC, and fresh K-Lite pack installs.

My lackluster NIC performance seems to be due to some driver/hardware issue from the motherboard change.  All fine now.

Scores look the same, but USE is normal as expected going from 12 threads down to 4 cores.  ;)

My RAM is currently my lowest WEI score at 7.5 since it's getting downclocked to 1333 (highest the motherboard can do) instead of the 1600 Tri-Channel settings of the X58 board.

Small, portable, quiet, nice temps, all a good changeover except for Thread count: CPU not linens.  :P