Mini Server Build

Last week I finally pushed the button on ordering a small server machine to use at home for various miscellaneous purposes. The spec I settled on was:

• Case: Silverstone SG06B
• Motherboard: Asus P8H61-I
• CPU: Intel G620T
• RAM: 2GB Corsair Value Select DDR3
• Storage: WD Scorpio Blue 120GB 2.5" HDD

This should give me a versatile machine which can give me some power when I need it. Initially, I am intending to look at how much I can reduce the power draw. It should be relatively low to start with, but I can underclock the CPU and turn off one of its cores while it's not being used for anything intensive.

With no further waffling, on to the assembly pictures.

One of the best parts of building a PC - all of the shiny new parts arrive.

The new case in all its glory. It's a little larger than, say, the ISK series, but it has a 120mm fan and thus should be substantially quieter.

The case in pieces. The item front and center is an adapter for 3.5" hard drives, though I would advise simply going for a 2.5" drive.

The motherboard and accessories. As you can see, the only items you get are the I/O bracket and a couple of SATA cables, though it's unlikely you'd need very much more in a build like this. There is of course also the usual manual and driver disc.

Motherboard plus CPU, cooler, and RAM. This CPU/motherboard combination gives you video, audio, and the usual I/O, so there are no expansion cards.

The motherboard installed into the case and wired up. No cable tidying has been done yet, but I've tried to keep them away from the main flow path from the front fan.

A review of the case and some power draw stats will be coming soon.

New PC build

The parts for my new PC should be incoming within the next few days, so I thought I'd share what I ordered:

Case	Fractal Design Define R3 (Black Pearl) (link). I wanted to like the Titanium Grey variant, but for some reason I just couldn't.
Motherboard	MSI P67A-GD53 (B3) (link).
CPU	Intel Core i5 2500K (link). Who would buy something different? Except for Benny of course.
Cooler	Be Quiet! Dark Rock Advanced (link).
RAM	Corsair Vengeance DDR3 4GB (2x2GB) (link). It also comes in blue, which may have blended in with my motherboard better, but it just seemed a little tacky.
GPU	MSI GTX 560 Ti Twin Frozr II/OC (link).
PSU	Antec TruePower New TP-650 (link). A nice solid 650W supply. I could have gone for an 850W, but I don't think I'll be straining this one at all.
Hard drive	2TB Samsung HD204UI/Z4 Spinpoint F4EG (link). I've found Samsung Spinpoint drives to be very reliable (and quiet).
Optical drive	Samsung SH-B123L/RSBP (Blu-Ray) (link).

The total cost was £809.42 after VAT. I set myself a limit of £1000, so I think I did well on part selection. I may end up ordering more RAM (4GB is getting a little tight these days), but other than that I'm quite happy with the selection.


Update:
I have now switched the RAM for the following:

RAM	Corsair Vengeance DDR3 8GB (2x4GB) (link).

Scan responded admirably quickly to my request (the order was updated within an hour, I'm not sure exactly how long as I forgot to note the time I sent the request).

Expandable Data

I'm running out of space. Think about that for a moment, I have about 1.5TB of hard disk space on this machine... and I'm running out. I remember a time when I was pushing the space available on a 1GB drive. My next machine had 20GB and I got nowhere near filling that up. Next was a 40GB one and I was even further away from that, until I went to uni and discovered the sheer amount of things you could download (oi, get your mind out of the gutter, I don't think I could realistically collect 1.5TB of that). Since then, no matter how much space I have I'm always short.

I'll say this again. I'm running out of space on a machine with 1.5TB. A couple of years ago I couldn't even dream of having that much. Hell, we held a mini virtual celebration when our whole filesharing network broke 1TB. What the hell is going on?

PC Parts

On a related note (kinda), and further to this post, I've changed my spec a bit. The Striker Extreme is now a P5N32-E SLI Plus, which is about £100 cheaper and essentially the same board with a slightly different chipset. Did I say "essentially" the same board? Peel off the name sticker and see what's printed on it underneath... that's right "Striker Extreme". I can live with an upgraded 650i rather than a 680i, especially for that price. Also, the power supply is now the M (M12-600) model rather than the S. Not only is it modular for extra tidiness (tidyness?), it also has a better 12v rail or four.

Scan Fail

I've been holding back a rant about Scan for a while, mainly because I was hoping they could redeem themselves... but it appears they may have missed that chance. Let's break down the things wrong with how they operate shall we?

• Estimated Delivery Dates: They let you pick a date for the items to be delivered (though this has to be at least a certain distance into the future, see below). This is good. They don't deliver on that date. This is bad. I had one parcel over a month late and not delivered with no emails from them (again, see below), whereas one they actually sent to me came nearly a week early. I deliberately chose a date a bit further in the future than the first possible one and that was for a reason. If the delivery dates are chosen by them at random, why allow the customer the illusion of choice?


• Dead Time: After you place the order it just sits there in the system for 4-5 days before they look at it. You get the "Order Accepted" and "Payment Received" emails on the day of ordering and then the "Items Picked" and "Delivery Shipped" emails 4-5 days later with no activity at all in the middle. Why make the customer wait through artificial delays? Is charging for faster delivery so important? As a side-effect, this has an unfortunate habit of stopping you getting things. Say you place an order and everything's in stock. Everything is still in stock 4 days later. At the end of the 4th day an item goes out of stock just before they get to packing your stuff. Your things don't get sent and they don't bother telling you (see below).


• Money Handling: Payment is taken from your account as soon as you place the order, unlike Amazon who take the money only when they ship the items. If you need a refund on the other hand, that can take substantially longer. I'm still waiting going into my 5th day after being assured "the refund will be processed as soon as possible". How hard can it possibly be?


• Lack of Communication: If items go out of stock before they ship the order then they don't tell you about this. If you want to know if the shipment will make it to you around the date you chose then you have to go to the site and check every item yourself, there's not even links from the Previous Orders page, you have to manually search for the items. Even worse is they have a service where they send you a text when they ship something so you know to be ready for it. Pity this gets sent the next day, 5 hours after it arrives at your house.

Overall my level of service from them has sucked. So far I have receieved 1 out of the 3 orders I have placed. I have yet to receive the refund for one of the undelivered ones (which wasn't an inconsequential amount) and the other is floating in the void somewhere between "we've forgotten about it" and "we just don't care".


Edit:
I should note that since I made this post, Scan have extensively overhauled their ordering process. Check them out, their prices are still some of the best.

Mixed Bag

A variety of topics for today's post, and there were going to be more but I've managed to forget a few. No doubt they'll pop up soon enough.

First up is one of the mini-rants that seem to pervade this blog. This time it's the turn of HDR in Oblivion. Now, I know HDR provides an enhanced gaming experience by reproducing far more realistic effects for an intensely immersive experience and blah blah blah, but seriously, what's up with it in Oblivion? It seems that every light source, every piece of metal, and indeed every freakin' tree in the game becomes bright enough to both blind you and cause severe sunburn. Highly polished metal I can understand, but when it's every damn thing you look at I can only assume they were going less for realism and more "this is all a dream....". I swear I saw uber-reflective stone walls.

Moving into the domain of "random things I've seen", how about this one. The Dunelm in Loughborough (hate the green logo on the site btw, it's meant to be more of a tan colour) has a big uber Main Power Lever Of Doom upstairs on the wall, publicly accessible. If only it was a video game where I could throw that switch to cut all the power off without the police grabbing me.

And my final point I can remember - a quick pre-use evaluation of my new PC case. I went for Jeantech's Phong II (protip: get a new site designer) because reviews mentioned it was pretty damn good value for money. Anywho, it arrived and t'was all in order, which was nice :-) The thumbscrews are a welcome change from my usual "spend half an hour finding a screwdriver before doing anything", as are the pre-installed and nicely large fans. It comes with a 140mm fan in the front and a 120mm fan in the back, which should be substantially quieter than the 2 or 4 90mm fans that I'm used to. Also very nice was the compartmented box of colour coded thumbscrews and other miscellaneous parts it came with, as well as the pre-installed rubber grommets in the hard drive bays to reduce vibrations that would normally be transmitted to the case. Pretty much the only change I'm going to have to make to it is a simple swap of the side air duct for another fan as it won't line up nicely with the Freezer Pro 7 anyway. If I'm feeling adventurous I may rig this fan up to direct air over the graphics card rather than just straight into the case, we'll see. Overall I love my new case :-)

New PC :-D

Well the parts have started trickling in, though some are going to be delivered after I go back to Coventry so I'll have to wait to pick those up :-( Quick specs below, and yes there's some odd choices but I have my reasons :-P

Case: Jeantech Phong 2
Motherboard: Asus Striker Exteme NF680i
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 (2.13 GHz, 1066MHz FSB, Allendale Core, 2MB Cache)
Cooling: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
RAM: Crucial CT2KIT12864AA667 2GB kit (1GBx2)
Graphics: XFX 512MB GeForce 7950GT XXX (overclocked - Mem 1600MHz, GPU 610MHz)
PSU: 600W Seasonic S12-600