Random stuff

I finally figured out how to get the computer running. There was this wonderful led-screen that should show me information of the motherboard status. It wasn’t showing anything so I removed it. The computer started working after that. =D

After all I was originally just fixing the cooling problem of my chipset. It did get down to 65-70 degrees celsius from the 82 when I added some silver and an additional small fan. But I still think that is kind of high. Even though the computer has not crashed after that so I suppose the change was enough. If there will be more I’ll add new cooling unit or get the board swapped. Perfect example of a very small mistake in manufacturing that can affect everything in such a critical way. Switching the motherboard in the first place would be the easiest choice I suppose but I’m too stubborn to do it after all the assembling and fixing. =D

Oh.. It wasn’t that easy… The new build started to have random crashes and then I found that the board IOH temperature was around 82 degrees celsius all the time.

Then I found some info, found that I have that purple stone hard whatever in there and did fix it:

http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=126885.0

After that everything seems to run well, all the motherboard info tells me everything is right inside the computer but I do not get anything on the screen. No post, no signal, nothing. So I think the graphics card got fried by static or there has been something wrong with the assembly. Didn’t feel like testing anything today as I was having a flu and slept practically the whole day. Maybe tomorrow I’ll test with some other card if it is really a problem with the card or is the motherboard PCI-E’s fried.

From the last post you can notice that which kind of motherboard I have. If you’re thinking of buying it, be sure it is not one of those foul assembled ones that I have. The chipset cooling is very easy to get off and back on especially if you do it first before assembling the computer but I think fixing manufacturers mistakes is really not something you should do by default. Sorry for MSI but I suppose it is just good to know, tell and underline this kind of information. =D

Even though I like projects with a hint of a challenge a lot – if I ever get this done I am quite sure that I will outsource my building next time. =D

I’ve had some problem in editing photos lately. My 5DM2 is to blame for that because of the insane amount of data it generates (20Mp.) In any case I would have had to upgrade my computer at some stage but being practically not able to edit my photos in Photoshop anymore was probably the point where there was no options left. I had to wait after every brush-stroke, open only one photo at time and take a cup of tea when flattening my image. No joke! =D.

So now I’m in the progress of installing and building and whatnot but quite in the verge of moving to fully use my new computer. I do hate hardware and am not in anyway attracted to computers as a matter in general. The reason I think sharing this is mostly because last time I assembled my computer from scratch was over 4 years a go and I really had to read manuals and the assembling turned out to be very painful process in the end.

The Setup in short:
Motherboard: MSI Eclipse SLI Intel X58
Processor: Intel Core i7 920 2,66GHz
Memory: OCZ 12Gb (6*2Gb pack) DDR3
Graphics card: Asus NVIDIA GeForce GTX275 896MB
Chassis: NZXT Whisper ATX
Power: Nexus RX-1K 1000W
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit UK
Bootdrive: Western Digital VelociRaptor 150 GB
RAID1: 2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB
Cooler: Noctua NH-U12P SE2

Motherboard mostly because it has 6 normal SATA-ports and 2 x 2 (4 ports) SATA ports with Hardware RAID-support. Also it has enough of other features too. Although I found that I’d be running out of card-slots after having two Graphics cards. Not a problem yet as I do not have.

Processor was a selection between other i7’s (and i5’s) but as I did found the motherboard of my dreams I couldn’t go back searching boards for other sockets. =D I bought 920 because the faster ones had a bit of headspace in the prices in comparison to the processing power given. (at least judging by charts found from the Internet)

For the Chassis… that was my big mistake. I wanted a silent chassis and yes, it is very silent. But the inner design of the chassis is very bad in my opinion. The power and the hard-drives are located in the bottom of the thing separated from the upper part of the machine with a metal plate that has some holes for wiring. It was manageable as long as I didn’t need to plug the CPU power. The cord had to run from bottom through a hole over all cards to the upmost part of the mainboard and it didn’t reach the CPU-power at all. Only way to wire that was to wire the cable going outside the chassis straightly sidestepping the metalplate in-between. This was actually the way I took in the end and I had to cut part of the plate away myself. O_o Never had to do this with my new computers before.

Part two of the tight and painful chassis-problem comes here: Installing cooler for the processor. I installed the couple of times because I wasn’t sure how it should be aligned. After I sticked the motherboard in to the case I noticed that a) I had to remove the whole cooler to be able to attach the mainboard to chassis b) the cooler was touching the ceiling and could not have had any airflow for sure. Luckily it could be turned 90-degrees with re-assembly of the cooler again. Even after that I used more than a hour to be able to attach all the parts of the cooler to it because the case was so cramped. Ended up bending metal parts to be able to do it more easily etc.

The problems with the chassis, cooler and such put me to think that as this time I wanted to have quiet setup. Next time my list says big case, big motherboard and quiet-option might come after them. There was no other problems with the installation than the physical size of the things versus my hand size, wirings problems etc. Everything worked straight out of the box after they got installed in.

So if I feel that I am obligated to say what I should have went for if I would have been wiser:

* some big full sized gamer case with mostly tool-less installation, a lot more interior space and removable motherboard tray
* XL-ATX-board
* Probably just stayed content with the Intel cooler

And to conclude shortly I’d add that Windows 7 (64bit pro) was brief and easy to install, drivers for it took some time and recovery and chkdsk’n though. The latter might be lack of my skills but my impression got from Windows 7 itself is quite good so far. Also the Velociraptor seems to work well as a boot-drive and RAID1 didn’t need much setup. For the practical effect of the quad-core and 12Gb memory I can’t say much about yet. Need to get in to the photo editing more heavily soon.

If I have more frustration to come – you can trust that I’ll purge it out too…