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I've discussed new projects before. I've even talked about the rebuilding of the "Blackbird" (or any number of others) workstation before. But typically, I'm pretty far along in the process before I start writing about it. So this is a little bit different.
This time, it's more like this,.... in the drawing stages. So far, I've used the network identifier of "Blackbird" on my primary workstation with 2 different chassis. The first, being in a Cooler Master Centurion 590 which held a Core 2 Duo/Quad generation machine, then on to the Cooler Master Cosmos II which holds the current "Ivy Bridge" generation. Some of you might remember that I didn't have any intention of changing cases, until the lack of space behind the motherboard tray shorted out the new board/heatsink combo. This time, I well and truly have zero intention of building in a new case since the Cosmos II is still the "800 pound gorilla" of computer cases and will hold anything up through EATX boards and 13 drives! No, this time, it'll be completely about the guts.
In the previous versions, I skipped 3 generations before pulling the trigger. Part of that had to do with me being able to move from a "Wolfdale" Core 2 Duo to a "Yorkfield" Core 2 Quad. In the current board, I've been able to go from the original low powered ("S" Spec) i5 to a regular power i7 of the generation. These LGA1155 processors have been so solid that I was able to go another 3 generations now before I even started my planning this next build. Not that I'm complaining about my current hyper-threaded i7-3770 cpu; I just think that enough of the peripherals have moved on to faster interfaces that it's time to think about it.
What I've been chewing on is this. A move to the more professional/workstation oriented LGA2011-v3 and X99 chipset. These exist on true workstation boards and not just "enthusiast" ones like the "Z" chipsets. Why? Actually, what I do with my machine is more oriented in that direction vs. overclocking and having lots of PCIe lanes for video associated with gaming. These boards also tend to come with M.2 sockets onboard so I can move on to the new faster NVMe SSDs for primary OS and application storage. They also tend to have 8 RAM sockets vs. 4 so I can start out with lower density memory that's cheaper and allow me to upgrade without pulling modules in the future. Anything I expect to carry over to the new system?
I've already said, I'm keeping the Cosmos II, but I'm also going to expect to keep my current data storage drives. They are 2, 1.5Tb, 7200rpm Hitachi Deskstars. Some of the finest and most reliable that they ever made. My plan is to put them in a "mirrored" RAID and use them as protected online data storage. On that front, I'll probably also keep the 2 optical drives (one DVD+RW, one Blu-Ray), but will probably replace the 500Gb Toshiba "scratch drive" with either a bigger one, or an SSD. Of course, the modular 650watt, Seasonic M12II will stay unless something blows up. Changes (apart from the MB/CPU/RAM)?
Yup; this non-gamer bought something from Team-Green..... a GeForce GTX 770 Reference card. Reason? It's a pretty decent upgrade from the Radeon HD 7850 that was my main graphics card, but mostly because I got it for $75..... really. Alert to all you frugal gamers out there who didn't already know this, but the "10 Series" cards from nVidia has had people dropping perfectly adequate "9", "7", and "6" series cards like nothings I've ever seen before. You throw in AMD's RX cards it's looking like Berlin in 1945. There's just a lot of really nice cards floating around out there. I'm also keeping an eye out for a GTX 750 (non-Ti version), to replace the HD 7750 in the computer as well which run my number 3 and 4 monitors. Some of you might have detected that there's something fishy going on here, since 22" monitors (even 4 of them, although 2 aren't that big) don't need this much power to run. You're right. I'm looking seriously at moving to 4K, so I'll need something along the lines of the 770 to run that. I'm not talking 4K gaming mind you, but just 4K, so I think the 770 will be fine for that. Then the 750, which needs no power other than what the bus provides can handle the two 22", 1920 x 1200 which will move to the side.
So, that's it in a nut-shell. It'll probably take a while before I pull the MB and do the actual up grade, but that's be basics of the plan anyway.
When the "Blackbird" went in for refitting (at least that's what they call it in the Navy), it cut loose a stream of parts. For us poor working stiffs, we don't just put them out in a warehouse, or the deserts of Arizona. No, we look at good stuff laying around and decide how they will be of greatest value to us. As for the Core 2 Quad Q9550 "Yorkfield", it's going on the auction block....literally. Apparently, they still fetch somewhere around $100 on eBay so that's where it's going to go to knock down the cost of the upgrade even further! The other stuff, not as much. Although, I've found that the price of RAM is now pretty darned good, it's worth more to me to keep the 8Gb (4 x 2Gb) that was in that machine for use, than to sell it at the somewhere between $40 and $60 that it sells for, although, they do free me up to sell the 2 sticks of 4Gb that they free up (explanation a little later).
As for the graphics card, it's my intention to whip up a little something in the oven! It was on-and-off glitchy, giving artifacts and sometimes would completely freeze up the computer. This usually means that the processor onboard is having some issue, and given that it's an ATI Radeon HD 6770 vs. an nVidia; that probably means a problem with the BGA solder joints vs. something internal. So, I'm going to take the plastics off of it and bake it in the oven to see if I can get that fixed.
What about the motherboard? Some of you might remember that I have another Cooler Master Centurion case. In this case, it's the "5", not the newer "590" that's home to the Blackbird. You might even remember me at some point talking about it being a XP box, so that I'll have something to look at when one of my clients who still uses that OS calls with some issue. Also, it houses my wife's sewing machine software which is only XP compatible. The other night, while the new Blackbird load was doing updates, I moved her software over to my "loaner" laptop which runs XP for the same reason. This eliminated the need to have an XP desktop, since I could just pull the ThinkPad Z60t out as needed. Of course, this left me with a perfectly good case with nothing to do....... what to do? Co-incidentally, I also have a stack of good PATA drives (3, 160Gb, and 1, 500Gb). I know, it just makes 980Gb, but hey, a terabyte here, a terabyte there.....
ACTUALLY, what I've decided to do with all that is to try out FreeNAS! TA-DA!
And so is born the Spartan, named after the C27J that originated as a possible replacement for the C130 Hercules. Remember my old file server.....the Hercules? It's been promoted to the Spectre these days, but see the connection? Anyway, it's my intention to take those drives stuff them into the Centurion 5 case.
......combine all that with the old board out of the Blackbird, and see if I can learn a thing or two about FreeNAS. Despite the lack of onboard video which would have been optimal, it does have 2 Ethernet ports which make it a good candidate for server duty. On top of which, the 8Gb of RAM give it the resources necessary to run ZFS if I decide to go that direction. I'll also reuse the one good Patriot PS-100 SSD out of the WHS 2011 server as it's boot disk. So, another "cascaded" part meets here to become part of my file server testbed.
