Hilliard-Giacchi Viper (Part 3: The Build)

Putting all the pieces together was neither complicated or time consuming. I began by taking the motherboard, power supply, expansion cards, and media drives out of the old case.

 Next, I installed the OCZ power supply.  I love the modularity.  This picture shows how the connectors plug into the power supply.  As only the needed connectors are plugged in there are fewer wires inside the computer allowing for more air flow.  The one issue I had was that this supply was longer then the old one.  I had to take out a fan on the top of the case to fir the power supply in the case.





 Here's the motherboard out of the box.

The protective cover on the processor socket comes off and the CPU is pit in its place.

Next I added the 32 Gb of memory (the red component).  These DIMMs are very high.  I wonder if the CPU heat cooler I have in mind will work.

 For now I installed the CPU fan that came with the processor.  I happened to set the fan down wrong and rubbed off some of the thermal paste on the bottom of the fan.  The paste is used to "glue" the fan to the CPU.  Not a big problem, but my first mistake so far after the fan issue.

 Here's the motherboard in the case with the power cable (black nylon bundle) installed.  See how compact the cabeling is with the OCZ power supply.

 Time to power it on.  My heart sank when nothing happened.  Turned out I had not properly inserted the power.  Made that fix and off it went.  The fan roars when first started and then is so quiet it can't be heard.  That and the use of a solid state drive makes for a very quiet machine.

The video card has the silver top and the VGA cable is plugged in.  The SSD is in a PCI slot just below the video card.  It has a small blue lite--visible only inside the case--to indicate its activity.

I had some trouble installing an operating system.  I had planned to make the host environment Ubuntu Server.  When I tried to install it the install worked but I couldn't get it to boot.  Turns out the SSD version I bought only boots in a Windows environment.  So Plan B: use Windows Server as the host and virtualize using Microsoft's Virtual Box.  So far I have Server, Ubuntu desktop, and Windows 8 running virtually.  A great machine if I say so myself!

Hilliard-Giacchi Viper (Part 2: The Get)

CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT.  Of course, it all starts here.  I looked at the top of the line Intel (I prefer Intel to AMD) quad-core but thought it was pricey (about $1,000) for what it delivered.  I selected the Core i7 3.9 Ghz (with overclocking).  It requires an H2 (LGA 1155) socked.

MOTHERBOARD.  I'm pretty partial to Supermicro, having had success with several of their boards. I also wanted the P67 Express chipset from Intel.  And, of course I needed a 1155 CPU socket.  The Supermicro C7P67 had the right configuration, including up to 32 Gb of RAM, the right number and type of expansion slots,8 SATA drives connectors with RAID, 14 USB ports, and assorted other goodies.

HEAT SINK.   I may need a CPU cooler in addition to the one that comes with the processor.  I've done some research and it seems the type of RAM I purchased is physically higher than some other DIMMs on the market.  I'll wait until after assembly o see what clearance I have/need.
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RAM.  The motherboard supports 4x 240-pin DDR3 DIMMs.  I'll populate the board with 4x 8Gb running at 1333 Mhz.  I need to do this to allow each OS a big chunk of RAM; in this case, 10+ Gb each.

DISK DRIVES.  Most of the data will be stored on hard disks I currently own.  I may configure them as RAID, but I don't need tremendous speed.  Where I need speed is loading OSs or software applications. With the RAID decision removed I next considered electromagnetic or solid state drives.  SSDs are faster and quieter.  So I selected SSD. Next, should I connect via SATA or PCI-Express?  The latter is faster and I have an extra slot, so PCI-Express it is.  Finally, size.I found an OCZ Technology RevoDrive 480 Gb to put in my shopping cart.  I'm really looking forward to seeing this drive work; it's supposed to be blazing fast.

VIDEO CARD.  'Here I went pretty much top of the line with an EVGA Corp. GeForce GTX 680.  It's a PCI-Express 3.0expansion card with 2 Gb of DDR5 onboard and two DVI, and HDMI, and a DisplayPort.

BLU-RAY.  My requirements were that the burner be fast and that it support burning and playing a wide variety of CD, DVD, and BD formats.  The Sony OptiarcBD-5300S-03 12X Blu-Ray seemed to fit the bill.

CASE.  I'm going to use a case that I bought some time ago but didn't use much.  It has lots of openings for 5.25 inch CD/DVD drives.  I'll keep most of these open to get more air to the CPU.  The case has a power supply, but at 450 w it seemed a little small.  I liked the modular design of the OCZ Pro 850W.  Modularity in this case means the electrical connectors plug into the power supply so one adds just what one needs, no extra cables inside the box impeding air flow.  Plus, it's supposed top be whisper quiet.

SOUND CARD.  I have a pretty good card that I'll try.  I may buy something else, but that will be later.  Also, I plan to use my current keyboard and mouse.  I may switch to a larger (24") monitor, but that can wait too.

A word on sourcing.  This was not particularly easy, probably because I wanted very specific things.  .  Supermicro doesn't sell to consumers so I was directed to MA Labs.  They have lots of stuff, but sell mostly in bulk to VARS or companies who prefer to roll their own.  They had the motherboard, the processor, and the video card.  Amazon--they seem to have almost everything--had the power supply, SSD, and the Vengeance DIMMs.  Neither MA Labs or Amazon had the Blu-Ray.  I got that from Tiger Direct.  C. Hilliard put me on to Frys  http://www.frys.com/ but they mostly have complete systems and, of course, every other electronic component one would want.  I also kept looking at Micro Center and Newegg, but found better prices or more inventory elsewhere.  BTW, Sony was absolutely useless: their web site is impossible and their store (the closest one is upstate NY) personnel mostly incompetent.


So, that's the get.  Now let's get going to assemble.

The Hilliard-Giacchi Viper (Part 1: The Want)

I'm a bit like the cobbler who had no time to make shoes for his children as he was too busy making money.  I talk about computing for a living and am pretty current on hardware and software, but have a dog for a personal desktop.  In fact, I have three dogs: an old Thinkpad I use for Ubuntu, an IBM ThinkCenter mini-tower I use for my A/V needs, and the minitower I'm on right now.  (I also have a server I haven't used in a while but it has some nice RAID drives I might use.)  The desktop I'm using now is the newest of the lot so let me describe.  This is a machine that I put together do long ago I can't remember.  It has an Intel Pentium III running at 1.11 Ghz with 1 core, 512 Kb of L2 cache, and a 100 Mhz FSB.  Intel made the PIII from 2/26/99 when it was introduced to sometime in 2003.  The box has 512--repeat, 512--Mb of RAM.  There are four drives: 20, 6, 6, and 12 Gb for a total of 44 Gb.  I have a DVD-RAM and a DVD-RW which were added later.  The video card, another clue to age, is a Diamond Radeon X1550.  I checked the Passmark benchmarks for video and found the current range to be from 350 (the best) to 131.  The score for the X115 was near the bottom at 153.

What do I need--a whole new setup. I'm thinking of virtualizing my operation so I can run a server (probably MS 2008), Ubuntu, and Windows 7 (and 8 when it is released).  In addition to my office productivity tools, I do want some high-end A/V capture, editing, and presentation capabilities.  I do some graphics and computational stuff so I need to consider those requirements as well.

Given that my gear is 10+ years old I'm thinking that I should go leading edge.  This might give me a 5-6 year window before I need to consider replacement.  (My current setup might have been good for 5 years.)

I mentioned this to my systems analysis and design student during spring semester 2012 and challenged them to design a system for me.  I offered to name the computer I assembled after the students who provided the winning configuration.  Well, only two students responded--and I didn't use many of their suggestions, but  I want to honor them anyway.  Thus the Hilliard-Giacchi Viper.

In the next post I'll tell you what I bought and how I thought about each component.