Supergeekblog

I have a new review up on OCIA.net. Today we are taking a look at the Vantec NexStar SATA to USB3.0 adapter.

Adapters are always interesting to test – sometimes they work as advertised – and sometimes not.

Stop on over to take a look at our conclusions!

While reviewing the SilverStone PS05B case, I also got a chance to review SilverStone’s SST-AP121 “Air Penetrator” fans.  Check out the review over at OCIA.net.

I had actually been contemplating picking up a couple of these anyways as a possible airflow management solution.  So since the case had 4 intake slots for 120mm fans, it worked out well to test those at the same time.  If you are doing a new build or looking to make some changes to an existing case, this review is worth taking a look at.

In case you missed it, please check out the other parts in this series.  Why to Build a PC; Part 1 (Intro); Part 2 (Part Selection); and Part 3 (The build).

All told the bill for the build came in around $700.  So I missed the mark a little bit.  I cheated a little bit by using an old monitor, DVD burner, and a SATA drive that I had on hand.  This probably saved $100-$200 by not having to purchase those components immediately.

By using the Black Edition CPU and the Gigabyte board, I was able to achieve a mild Overclock from 3.2ghz to 3.72 running on the stock cooler.  Normally I wouldn’t recommend doing this on the stock cooler, but I did for 2 reasons.  I waiting 3 weeks reviewing baseline temps on “auto” settings at stock speeds and I tweaked the fan settings.  Also, I only tweaked the unlocked multiplier, which was quick and simple to do, but with minimal heat increase.  By setting my own fan speed control settings, I was able to bump the idle fan speed just enough to actually slightly reduce the temp (from an average of 41c, to an idle average of 39c while) Overlocked.  The volume of the CPU fan is acceptable at 80%, it is only when the fan kicks in at 90%+ that it develops an annoying pitch.  I probably won’t leave it overclocked since I just don’t need it.

I recently reviewed a Noctua CPU cooler and have left that in the machine.  Saved about $60 and reduced the annoying pitch.  After a month I was really disappointed in the performance of the video card, so caved and replaced with a mid-range Radeon 5770.  This brought my Windows 7 Experience Factor from a 4.1 (limited by the vid card) to a 7.0 (Max is 7.9)  So it was well worth the additional cost.

Any way you look at it, the machine cost did miss the mark a little bit at $850, but was well under $1000.  Some sites had machines at a cost close to this, but I felt I was able to do it for a fair amount cheaper and exactly the components I wanted.  A further plus is that it is a powerful rig that is on the modern upgrade path.  For example, when the prices of the AMD 6-core CPU’s come down, it would be easy to drop one in since the board is of the newest AMD slot type.  For minimal cost I will be able to now keep this machine as up to date as I require for far less cost.

The next and most critical item is replacing the monitor with a decent 20”+ LCD, possibly since the Radeon 5770 supports it a dual 20” LCD setup would be most cost effective.  Lastly, upgrading the IDE DVD-Burner to a BluRay SATA drive and adding additional hard drive space would be nice.  All told if purchased immediately would be about $400-$500 in upgrades.  Watching the various sites should allow me to pick these up piecemeal when specific items I am looking for are on sale or snag them on ebay – further reducing costs and allowing for an even higher end machine.

In case you missed it, please check out the other parts in this series.  Why to Build a PC; Part 1 (Intro); and Part 2 (Part Selection).

The build itself was the smoothest I have ever had.  Components have come a long way in the last decade and they are much more user friendly.  Remembering back to a few of my first builds, cutting my hands on the case or ripping knuckles across ISA  and PCI cards, the lack of blood was a pleasant change.  (I have scars from PC builds.) Manufacturers have really gone towards what is now called the “enthusiast market” and treat the parts how people are actually going to use them.  I find it far easier to work with equipment now than I did even 3-4 years ago.

Once everything was plugged in and ready to go, I hit the power button.  I honestly can’t remember ever having everything boot and start loading the OS on the first try before.  The cables and hookups are much more clearly labeled than they used to be.  One issue I noted is the DDR3 1600 RAM is clocking at 1333, so I believe I will need to manually correct the timings on that, though didn’t prove too difficult to track down the correct settings.  Using CPUZ it pulled the timings chart from the RAM itself and I then went into the bios to fix.  Comparing the new machine to the dual core I have been using it is smoking fast.  The double cores and double the ram make a huge difference, but the solid-state drive takes the cake.

The low end video card and an old CRT monitor do detract from the system, so will need to be upgraded sometime, but it was one way to keep costs down and still get raw power into the machine.

In case you missed it, please check out the other parts in this series.  Why to Build a PC and Part 1 (Intro).

Primary PC (Olorin)

A little note on naming convention, my primary PC has always gone by my online name of Olorin.  My oldest and personal blog, Olorinpc.com, is derived from this as well.  Naming a PC should be fun and something you want to see for a while, so be creative.

Specs:

MB: Gigabyte GA-770TA-UD3 770 R (Onboard sound, LAN, USB 2.0/3.0, eSATA, SATA 3.0/6.0)

CPU: AMD PH II X4 955BE 3.2 AM3 Quad

The board and CPU came as a combo unit.  I looked for something lower cost, yet still had the newer revisions of USB and SATA, along with being Overclocking friendly.  The AMD Black Edition means it has unlocked multiplier, so easier to OC.  Warning: I did *not* order an aftermarket cooling system.  I will be using the OEM heatsink and fan in this build – I will not be doing much in the way of OC’ing till I get a better cooling setup.  It looks like with decent cooling, most people are getting the 3.2 overclocked to around a stable 3.8.

RAM: G.Skill 4gb (2x2gb) DDR3 1600

To keep the cost down slightly, I stuck with 4gb, but at a higher clock speed.  Reviews indicate that a lot of boards load this incorrectly at DDR3 1333, but correcting the timings will bump it up to the full DDR3 1600.  With 2 free slots on the board, it will be easy to bump this to 8gb later.

Case: Raidmax Smilodon ATX-612WBP ATX Mid Tower Foldout MB with 500w PC

Budget case with power supply that still looks good and has easy access to the components.  The 500w PSU should be sufficient for most things, though you might want to upgrade at a later date.  Warning:  didn’t discover this till the day after when I was triple checking my order, but the PSU has a 4-pin mainboard connector.  The newer i7 and AMD3 boards (like the one above) use an 8-pin connector.  I had to rush order an adapter so it would arrive with all the other components.  Also, there are only 2 SATA power connectors.  If you have more than that, you will need to get some splitters.

Vid*: Sparkle GeForce 8400 GS 256mb 64-bit DDR2 PCIe 2.0

The vidcard is where I cut back the most on this build.  It was the cheapest PCIe card I could find.  It will work just fine, but for gaming this will prevent this from being a “high-end” setup.

HDD0: OCZ Solid 2 Solid State Drive 60gb

Prices on this have continued to drop.  I saved a few bucks getting one from a friend, so it didn’t count against the budget.  So it would raise your price a bit, but certainly worth it for your primary OS drive. The difference is amazing.

HDD1: Seagate 750gb 7200rpm SATA

I had this drive on hand, pulled it from its external Accomodata enclosure and plugged it in as an internal storage drive.  I wanted the higher spin rate when compared to my other external drive.

HDD2: 500gb 5400rpm – USB2.0 External

Also had this drive on hand – will be attaching it for secondary storage and backups. This drive was pulled from my old desktop and placed into an external enclosure.

NIC: ASUS PCE-N13 802.11b/g/n PCIe Wireless Adapter

This wasn’t strictly needed, however I moved to a pure wireless network a couple of years ago.  So despite the mainboard having a build in nic, I added a wireless card so I didn’t have to redo my network setup.  (That and I didn’t want to rerun cables in my house, though I am still debating the merits of returning to a wired setup.)

DVD: LiteOn DVD drive

Old IDE DVD-RW burner.  Saved a few bucks here by not getting a newer one with SATA on it.

Monitor: LG 17” CRT

Old CRT VGA monitor.  Works great and has for years.  I plan on upgrading this to a 22” widescreen LCD later, but once again to keep the build cost down went with what I had.

Host OS: Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium

I also had to purchase Windows for this build.  For starters I was finally moving to a 64-bit setup, my existing versions of Windows wouldn’t run anyways.  Since there was that minor issue, it worked out well to upgrade to Windows 7 at the same time.  I also like to run Virtual Machines for testing, so will be running those inside of Windows.

So as you can see with my component selection, I did stick with some old hardware, but it is fairly minimal.  The burner will be sufficient, but the monitor will be a pain.  After being used to laptop screens and a 22” widescreen LCD at the office, an old 17” monitor that only has a 1024×768 resolution at 75hz will be a bit difficult to work and write on.  However, it will work and will shave at least a hundred off the cost of the build.

Here on SGB I am going to do a small series on my new computer.  If you reference the post on “Why to build a PC,” that will elaborate some more on why I went with a desktop computer.  Or went back to a desktop computer I should say.  The intent on this particular build is twofold.  One, I wanted to try to keep within a budget of $600, yet still come up with a modern mid to high-end system.  Second, build a system that was pretty decent stock, but would be fairly convenient and simple to overclock.  (Why?  The biggest reason being because I can and want to see what I can do.  Though eeking a little extra performance past design is fun and a good cost saving measure.)

I have building PC’s since ’98 when I put together my first machine.  An AMD K6-2 266mhz with 256mb ram and a 6gb hard drive was a pretty decent midrange PC then.  Irrision, who has written here in the past, actually helped me select the original components and do that first build and I have been a PC convert since.  Typically I don’t do full builds.  I usually just upgrade a few parts here and there, so that original PC that I had upgraded every single components many times over.  I let that go by the wayside a bit for various reasons and ended up with a burnt out system that was for the most part too outdated to move parts over.  (It literally burnt out.  The CPU fan bearings died and the Athlon CPU cooked overnight.)

Since I have a home and work laptop, replacing it hasn’t been the highest thing on the expenditure list.  After I wrote my first review for OCIA.net, I took a look at my setup.  In order to keep reviewing and testing, some upgrades were needed.  After taking a look at what I had on hand to rebuild, I decided it was going to just be easier and more cost effective to do a full build.  So here we are.

In the next few days I will be doing a 4 part series on my build of a budget PC.  Before doing that though, I wanted to go a little more in depth on why I built my own as opposed to buying a name brand machine.

Lifehacker has a great piece called “The First-Timer’s Guid to Building a Computer from Scratch.”

The cost point these days is a hard one to pin down.  In some cases, getting a Dell or HP might end up being cheaper once software is accounted for, but you have limited to no control over what parts are used to build.  Though I still feel that when getting a mid to high range machine, self building is far cheaper.  Yes, desktops are far less portable then a laptop, but you get way more bang for your buck.  Plus with smartphones etc – I have found less and less need for a laptop and have gone back to preferring the raw power of a desktop.

Plus – this point from the article sums up my opinion”

It gives me a deep sense of satisfaction every single day when I press the power button on my tower, watch it light up, and know that I plugged in the wire that goes from that light to the motherboard. Building your PC takes the mystery out of what’s going on inside that black box you spend hours on per day.

Now I have been tinkering/building/fixing/supporting/etc computers for well over a decade so it is safe to say I am over any trepidation on cracking open a case or installing parts.  Still, there is that sense of accomplishment when hitting that power button after a build and the computer booting up.  Now that I am also doing Hardware reviews, the constant thought is, ok how would this make this machine better for a reasonable cost?  Is the cost worth that benefit?  Balance that against what an equivalent machine from a name brand would be, along with the lost experience of not doing it yourself – and decide what the best route to go is.

Really, with a little research and grabbing parts at the right time, I feel I was able to build a better machine for cheaper, than I would have been able to purchase.  Plus, I was able to have exact control (within budget limitations) of what brands/parts I installed.  I was able to go through reviews for each of the parts I was selecting, debate them, and come out with my own preference and build with that.

Myself, being the editor of SuperGeekBlog, it probably was a given before this article what route I went.  In the process though I have discovered that it is really easier than ever for even a novice to build their own machine.  Part vendors have really gone in the last few years to making parts far easier to work with and install.

As always, please feel free to leave thoughts or comments!

Here are a few links from around the web today that I found interesting:

SSD vs Hard Drives Comparison via Slashdot

I actually found the Slashdot discussion more interesting than the post or linked article itself.  Personally, I am sold on the SSD drive for a primary OS drive.  The performance increase is will worth the money.  (For reference, I am running a 60gb SSD as my OS drive with a 7200rpm drive as my data storage drive.  That is working very well for me.)

Finding the best WiFi Broadcast Channel  via Lifehacker

Tweaking your wireless router settings may increase the reliability of your setup.  Typically I change the broadcast channel from the default as a precaution against any interference, though the number of AP points in range of my house is fairly limited.  It is just good practice though since you should be going into the tools and changing the default password along with throwing at least a basic encryption setting on there.

Win a BlackBerry Bold 9650 via BerryScoop

The contest may well be over by the time I get this posted, but worth checking out.  BerryScoop has plenty of interesting posts on all sorts of BlackBerry related topic.  (As an advid user of my crackberry I enjoy the site.)

Business Casual Comic for 7.7.2010

I love this comic strip though also amused at the hype factor in folks electronics selection.  If you haven’t checked out the strip before – make sure to do so!

Well that is all for now!  Might have a follow up if I see some more good links.

Over on OCIA.net we have a new review today.  It is on the new budget model case from SilverStone.  The PS05B.  This is a budget model case that was actually quite fun to review.

Cases have come a long way in the last few years.  Not slicing my hands up when working with cases and the hardware in them is still somewhat odd to me, but goes to show how far case manufactures have gone to accommodate enthusiast builds.  Check it out and let us know what you think.  I have been pretty impressed with SilverStone products and this one certainly didn’t disappoint.

My home desktop is several years old.  I don’t game much, so keeping up with the latest and greatest isn’t really on my list of things to do.  If you’re a gamer, you want the latest and greatest because it gives you a richer experience.  And it gives you an edge over the competition; if you’re playing multiplayer. But, I don’t, so it makes little difference to me what my frame rate is.

But, all of that is really not what were here for.  Which is a tale of an upgrade gone wrong.

About a month ago, I got one of those nasty bugs that it seems a computer will get occasionally.  I thought I got it cleaned off.  Maybe I did and what was left was something else, or maybe it was just a tougher bug than I thought.  Either way, my system was compromised.  I spent about 7 hours (over several days) trying to clean the thing off.  I even pulled the hard drive and brought it to work to scan it as a secondary drive (this is useful because most viruses load into memory on start up, but only if they are on the primary/boot drive), but to no avail.  So, rather than waste even more time trying to clean the thing up, I made sure everything was backed up and started fresh with a format and reinstall.

Once I got the reinstall of Windows Vista done, I went straight to Windows 7 using the upgrade that I had bought for it late last year.  The install/upgrade went incredibly smooth.  In previous versions of Windows, it was always preferable to install the full version of the new OS.  Something about the upgrade process just didn’t work well and you would get some nasty errors.  Windows 7s upgrade process is a bit different.  When you do the upgrade, it gives you the option of doing a format and full install.  Pretty awesome.  Except for the part where I reinstalled Vista first…  oops.

One full install later, and I had a brand new install of Windows 7.  My first impressions were very good.  A lot of the feel of Vista that I had gotten used to, but minus some of the clunky-ness.  Alas, it wasn’t to last.  About a week later, I awoke to a login prompt.  That was weird because I don’t normally log out my home pc.  So, it only gets a login when it restarts.  My first thought, of course, was to think that it was Windows Update that had caused the restart.  Until I came home at lunch and found it at a login prompt again.  [Cut through a couple days worth of technical tinkering]

The machine was set to restart on error.  So, everytime it got a system error, it would reboot.  And, after watching the machine for a while, I discovered that it would get a BSOD after about 20 minutes of idle time.  To shorten the story again, I did diagnostics on everything I could think of to figure out what the BSOD was being caused by.  I gave up after about a week and a half of that.  My assumption is that a update from either Windows or from a hardware related driver replaced a system file of some sort or was causing the problem.  A repair install was no help and I couldn’t do a system restore because it would cause a BSOD if you went into the system restore console.  Once again, I was faced with a format and reinstall.

Luckily, Jake was around to talk some sense into me.  I did the reinstall/restore, but I only went as far as Vista this time.  Perhaps at a later date, I’ll try the upgrade again, but until then, I’m sticking with Vista.  After all, it was pretty stable up until I got whatever I got and had to restore it the first time.  And, maybe, just maybe, Microsoft will fix it with the first Windows 7 service pack.

Either way, I think I’ll likely stick with Vista until the machine needs replacing.  Some of the machines hardware wasn’t just barely good enough for Windows 7, so it might be better to just wait until I need a new machine and get Windows 7 on that.

Authors note: Jake suggested that I should write a post here (somewhat jokingly, I believe) as I’ve largely moved on to other things and Jake has taken full control of this site.  So, I thought I’d call him on his joke and surprise him with a post!  Surprise!  Also, if you like, my blog is over at Thatedeguy.