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bert's blog v1.21 Powered by glolg Programmed with Perl 5.6.1 on Apache/1.3.27 (Red Hat Linux) best viewed at 1024 x 768 resolution on Internet Explorer 6.0+ or Mozilla Firefox 1.5+ entry views: 44 today's page views: 656 (30 mobile) all-time page views: 3247876 most viewed entry: 18739 views most commented entry: 14 comments number of entries: 1214 page created Sat Apr 19, 2025 22:38:32 |
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Me: Yes, it has to be done. Mr. Robo: *nods vigorously* I don't even know how people get by on anything less than ten terabytes of hard drive space, and 16GB of RAM; memory and storage capacity are fundamental hamster rights - humans too, certainly. *Mr. Ham saunters in* Mr. Ham: Ho, what's going on? Mr. Robo: Oh, we're just discussing the human's plans for upgrading his home computer. Mr. Ham: Huh? It was going strong, last I checked. If you've got any spare cash lying around, by the way, have I got a hot tip for you... Me: *ignores Mr. Ham* My, it happens to be an opportune time to trade up - Intel has just launched their latest Skylake architecture a couple of months back, and I like the cut of its jib. All the more as they're introducing a whole new socket, it's a swell opportunity to move over to DDR4 at one go. Mr. Ham: If I may play advice animal here - do you really need it? I mean, you spend most of your time browsing the web, from what I can see. Here, let me have a look at those promotional leaflets. Me: ...so let's add that Asrock Z170 Extreme 7+ motherboard to the i7-6700K. And heck, grab the full 32GB of RAM at one go, no sense delaying that. Mr. Ham: What? You don't even edit videos, and there're almost no games that recommend even 16GB. In my opinion, that's far more than you'll ever use. Look, you can get a fully-functional system for that alone... Me: Mr. Robo, would you be as kind as to place this burlap sack over Mr. Ham's head? Mr. Robo: With pleasure. Mr. Ham: Mmpfhhh mpfm mrmfmh. Me: I'm gratified that at least one hamster is agreeable. We'll have to get a watercooling solution to go with that chip, of course. More hard drives... eh, might as well grab three of 'em. And a new case, definitely. Nothing but the best. Mr. Robo: *pupils dilating* Yes, yes, yes! Me: One more thing, I've always wanted to get a proper dedicated sound card too. Mr. Ham: *finally manages to pull burlap sack off* Hey, we all know that you're completely tone deaf. Me: As I said, I've always wanted a sound card. After considering the options, I think I'll have the Creative Zx. From the reviews, there's not too much between it and the Xonar, and well, there aren't too many domestic tech companies around. Their audio control module will help alleviate headphone accessibility too. They're mostly recommending external DACs nowadays, but... Mr. Ham: You could just go get a S$5 extension cable... Me: SILENCE! *flattens hamster* We deserve to pretend to discern audio quality! Any further objections? Well, if not, I suppose we're done. Time to go hunt down those components! FOR THE GLORIOUS PC MASTER RACE!  Ts is hy ir! Wt uh br! The Checklist My first instinct was to head online, given my previous experiences with hard drives, and initial scrounging supported that decision:
Newegg had made something of a splash last year by shipping to Singapore (alongside taking our favourite cryptocurrency), and as the prices indicated, they were mouth-wateringly cheaper on some items. However, as past reviewers found, taxes and shipping takes a large chunk out of those savings. Amazon's savings were more modest, but their prices were largely what-you-see-is-what-you-get (even if the reference exchange rate was like US$1=S$1.49). Certain parts were fulfilled by external retailers, however, which did not ship directly here - of course, one could always fall back on vPost and the like, but that would then incur additional costs. Everything considered, there remained savings to be had by ordering everything from the cheapest source, but to my surprise, it turned out to be barely over a hundred bucks, out of a near-S$3000 total. Given the additional wait involved, as well as potential warranty issues, I figured that local retailers deserved support, given the potential for bulk discounts. The Buying So, Sim Lim Square. I'm getting to be an old hand at this. Shopping list in hand, I requested a quote, and wound up having to make adjustments. To begin with, they had neither the motherboard nor the CPU, the former which was slightly understandable, and the latter rather less so since it was Intel's current flagship. I supposed that I could take the i5-6600K instead. As for the motherboard, finding one with ten SATA ports proved problematic, but then they hauled out the GA-Z170X-Gaming G1 and I figured, hell, you only live once. They didn't have the Soundblaster Zx either, only the lower-end Z and the higher-end ZxR, but the motherboard happened to have integrated the ZxR - but then, for S$939, I'd almost expect it to brew tea too. Interestingly, their pricelist places a S$20 premium on the CPU when bundling with the most expensive motherboards, as compared to the cheapest, while not listing the CPU by itself. Not exactly a very admirable practice, but perhaps they have their reasons. It turns out that they didn't have the Seidon 240M either, instead offering the newer Nepton 240M at the same price (S$20 under list), which I was of course happy to accept. Still, I was beginning to wonder if they actually had any of my selections in stock, and had my faith restored when they procured the case, RAM and hard drives as listed. When all was said and done, I managed about S$50 off the total, which came down to S$2908. My NETS debit card, exhibiting more financial prudence than its owner, refused to cough up more than S$2000. I was about to give my credit card its first ever airing, when my father generously stepped in and covered the difference, amounting to a 30% rebate. Thanks, dad! There was still the hot swap drive caddy, for which we had to visit a more specialized store... and guess what, they had to phone for more stock. Figured that I might as well pick up some SATA Y-splitter cables just in case, as well as an 180mm fan - for which I was initially quoted S$12, which I figured was fair for an OEM one (branded ones tend to start about S$25+). This somehow became S$7 at the counter. Huh. By the way, it's probably best not to think about what electronics actually cost to produce, or you'd never buy anything. The Assembly Without further ado, the loot (click on following images to display at original size):  Booty Back At Base Case prep first. I had settled on the Silencio 652s on a combination of its ten hard drive bays (nine of them 3.5"), promise of silencing properties, and overall aesthetics, and I wasn't disappointed. It definitely had a more solid feel than my previous Elite 431 Plus (by the way, I've gotten tired of side windows). As can be seen, the headphone, USB and SD card (a nice touch) ports are on the top... which I thought was a great idea at the time. But later.
The case comes equipped with three Silencio FP 120 fans, in keeping with the whole no-noise theme. Two in the front right before the hard drives, and one at the back. As seems to be standard nowadays, cooler air is designed to enter from the front and bottom, and escape from the top and back after being heated. The fan filters are held in place by easily-removable panels, which makes cleaning easy. The new case examined, it was time to dismantle the old one, which dates from January 2012. As can be seen, it's become kinda cramped, with the motherboard SATA ports all but obscured. Note also the removal of two of the four sticks of RAM, which was the latest sacrifice I had to make to get it to boot. Before that, the last fix was to wedge a wad of paper between two of the cables (indicated by yellow arrow in main photo), as discovered by painstaking trial-and-error. Yes, it was a very temperamental system.
Most of its parts - other than the motherboard, CPU and RAM - would be inherited by the new setup. The 960 GTX graphics card, definitely, given that it was bought only early this year. The Coolermaster 850W power supply too, which was gotten partly with just such future upgrades in mind. And, obviously, the hard drives, which are like the whole point. Beginning with something easy, the hot swap drive, old DVD combo drive, and the USB 3.1 bay (from the new motherboard) were installed. I never fail to recall the old days when DVD drive speeds were a huge selling point whenever I handle them; those were the days when you could feel the difference between 8x and 32x drives, and the jump from 166 MHz to 1000+MHz CPUs in several short years. Hardware improvements are meh nowadays, in comparison.
After laying the case wiring to one side, it was time to commence unboxing of the single dearest component - the motherboard. I must confess that I had paid very little attention to it in previous builds, but working with GPUs and hard drives in recent years has made me somewhat more demanding. Honestly, it's not gonna get too much better than this here beast of a board. Well, to work. First realisation was that the board was something of a tight fit, at which I became aware that it was of extended ATX dimensions. This meant that the cable openings along the side were all obscured, but I supposed I could live with that. After getting the six screws in, I found that I had neglected to affix the I/O backplate - no biggie, out and in again.  All nice and seated This brought me to perhaps the toughest bit of the installation, in the sense that I had never done this part myself - my previous D.I.Y builds had all begun with the CPU fixed on the motherboard. Given that they compose the heart of the system, and that cooling mistakes can cook both in seconds, I resolved to be extra careful.
The i5-6600k, like the rest of its ilk, is not particularly prepossessing. Following the manual, I transported it to the socket without touching its main surface, lest finger oils contaminate and affect thermal transfer between the CPU and its heatsink. The orientation is foolproof, guaranteed by slight protrusions on the sides. I then assembled the Nepton cooling system, which also happens to be my first (beginner) foray into watercooling. While a means to an end - keeping chip temperatures down, possibly to support aggressive overclocking - one has to suspect that at least some enthusiasts are in it for its own sake. Certainly, a traditional fan would work just fine for most users... but we're hoping to ascend here. A warning for would-be Nepton buyers - there are two near-identical sets of long screws to attach the fans to the radiator, one set of which is two millimetres too long, as I belatedly discovered. The basic logic is pretty simple: water conducts heat a lot better than air, and so we pump it to and from the heatsink to a radiator, which itself is fanned, in this case right out of the casing. So, not only does heat quickly leave the immediate vicinity of the chip, it's spread over a far larger surface area, which is itself vented by a potentially far larger volume of air. One obvious worry is that the tubes may leak distilled water (which turns out to be perhaps the best solution on thermal properties), but this does not appear too common. There are more exotic approaches, such as mounting in open air in addition to watercooling, or submersion in mineral oil (which one of my NS mates had dabbled in, if I remember right), but let us not get too ambitious here. Anyway, to mount the heatsink, some brackets had to be affixed to the back of the motherboard. Just as well that the nice case designers had provided an opening, eh? Well, turns out that it's not quite large enough for this particular eATX board. I had to loosen the top three motherboard screws to gain sufficient access to shove the bracket in from the back. The nuts on the front were comparatively easy. Coming to the final preparations to inter the CPU into its permanent sarcophagus, the application of thermal paste, to provide a consistent bond between the CPU and heatsink surfaces. I was actually debating whether to go for broke and get a name brand paste too, but settled on liberal application. Better to err on the side of caution, I figured, especially since I intended to securely tighten the heatsink against the chip.
That was probably the hardest part done with, and seating the RAM was relaxing after that. Corsair have been the go-to name, but G.Skill were offering the same specs at significantly lower prices. Usually, this is a red flag, but I hadn't come up with anything bad about the G.Skills after searching. Oh, and the slots are apparently reinforced, but again this is the least I'd expect for the price. After hooking up my old SSD, it was time to boot, and... the motherboard lit up and powered down almost immediately, not even displaying an error code on the LED (another premium feature). Ulp. Fortunately, it turned out to be a case of a missing power connector, and once that was inserted, I could install my DreamSpark copy of Windows 10 Pro (retail S$225). Being in the Computer Science faculty has its perks. That done, I slid in all the 3.5 inch drives - whoever invented those bays came up with the second-best thing after sliced bread - and no boot again. It looked like both the 1.5 GB drives, which had been working the day ago, had died. Hard drives, I'll never understand them. This meant that all four drives I started 2012 with had conked, but at least there wasn't anything too critical on them this time. Filing the two apparently dead drives away, I made to fix the new SSD on the other side of the motherboard... and discovered that this necessitated removing the whole damn thing - again - to get the screws in. I simply left the SSD dangling from the front; no moving parts, it's ok (careful with the heat if they're detached, though)  Cover off, cover on There remained the minor irritant of the case door not closing fully due to the protruding hot swap drive, which was bothering me so much that I contemplated replacing the drive. As it happened, this resolved itself when i accidentally pulled the frontplate off while maneuvering the case onto the desk shelf (which itself had to be modified by drilling out and fixing it two inches lower, to gain clearance for headphone jacks and USB devices). The door turned out to be detachable after removing its hinges, which I suppose will improve airflow too. It was only left to complete the spring-cleaning, and pack the remaining cables and unused parts neatly:
Mr. Ham: Human, I still say this is a bloody waste of money... *flattens hamster again* [Software part to be continued...] Next: Softly Does It
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