The Alien Has Landed

 

After a lot of searching, researching, eBay messaging, Fedex package tracking, AND hand-wringing...... the Alienware Aurora 7500 has arrived from Oakland, CA. Now comes the hard part. The actual building of this older machine from what it is into a (relatively) up-to-date gaming computer.

Let's start with the model of Alienware that we're working with in this project. The Aurora 7500 was one of the last of the "classic" Alienware desktops. The kind with the smooth outer case that really started their well-know lighting effects. In reality, these cases were simply mid-towers of varying sizes with external plastic cladding made for them by Chieftec. Unlike today's (post-Dell) machines, they are actually very normal underneath with pretty regular drive cages, PSU locations, MB attachments and even cooling system. This make them almost ideal for updating and adaptation.

As you can see, the insides are VERY, very normal. They pretty much all take an ATX motherboard which we'll discuss later. As equipped from the factory, they generally had fairly stock, though high-end motherboard of the CoreDuo/Core2Duo generation. Depending on how the machine was configured, they had either a "tower"-style HSF (Heatsink-fan) or (for the desktops of that time), the more radical "closed-loop" water-cooling setup. Pretty much everything inside these things were fairly normal, albeit, highly spec for the time.

Despite it's age, in our situation, we're certainly not looking to just rip it's guts out and put in a bunch of new stuff.....not if we can help it anyway. This machine comes equipped with an E8400 "Wolfdale" Core2Duo CPU, which is well-known as having excellent gaming characteristics as well as over-clocking potential if we want to go in that direction. What this does is, buy us time. In all probability, we'll look to do a major upgrade on the machine in the fall by replacing all the "guts". In the meantime, what's in this box will allow my student to play games at decent frame rate set at low or medium levels.

Which leads us to the heart of the issue. The reason that the seller was getting rid of this machine was that it was giving him graphic artifacts on his monitor. From looking at the pictures he posted in his ad, it was obvious that it was a graphics card issue. There was of course the possibility that I'm wrong and it's the Southbridge chip on the MB, in which case, that's scrap and we go directly to ripping that out of the case and starting over. But as it turned out, I was right. After a quick graphics card swap on the bench, the machine came right up with a "clean" screen! We are going to approach this from a couple of different directions. First, we're going to try the "bake the graphic card in the oven" recipe and see if we can at least temporarily solve the issue by "reflowing" the solder of the BGA on the GPU.If that doesn't work, we can use one of the many random cards I have stashed away for a situations such as this. In the meantime, a new graphics card (one really for the rebuild) will become the first purchase.

Otherwise, for the duration of the summer, this machine will remain "stock". Then around fall, when enough money has been saved to purchase updated insides, we'll rebuild it into the new Super (yet frugal) Alien.

The "In-Law" Computer

I guess, I'll have to count myself lucky that I don't have this kind of Father-In-Law relationship! However, we all know that, any sort of transactions with a family member is fraught with potential landmines. That's why there are all sorts of little rules like; "don't sell a used car to a family member" etc. Not too long ago, my father in law kind of off-handedly asked me to build him a computer. This was both a new thing and not; making it kind of weird. Let me explain. Unlike many folks his age, he actually knows quite a bit about PCs. He's worked the software end of it for the majority of his life as a higher ed administrator. Most of it with databases, but never-the-less, he has quite a bit of familiarity with them. So, there's that. Over the time that I've known him, he's always had laptops. In fact, over the years, I've helped him get several that he's progressed through, with the exception of this last one, a ThinkPad X61 tablet. It's now pretty long in the tooth and needed an update. What's weird about this is that he wants a desktop (after which I'm supposed to redo the laptop, but that's another story).

Doing things for the family is just not easy. That's why I get so nervous when I do a machine for my wife. A client is just so much easier to deal with. It needs to be inexpensive without being "cheap". It needs to be cutting edge, but reliable.....and inexpensive. It needs to be able to do pretty much everything, but......inexpensive. Did I say INEXPENSIVE? Like $400 range inexpensive. That's actually a little hard to do for a modern machine. Go buy a monitor and you've already knocked off $100. Now your starting point is $300!!!

If this was a "client", I'd look him in the eye and say; Core 2 Duo is what you can buy. For my father-in-law, I"m going to make his $400+ become a "Core" class machine running an SSD, with a 500Gb storage drive, 8Gb of DDR3 RAM displayed on a 19" monitor. This post is about how I'm doing it. .......and for my next magic trick........

I once told an opposing coach who's team, mine had just struggled to beat, that "I had to hand it to him". He had done an amazing job of "turning chicken sh*t, into chicken salad". We had played them earlier in the year and he had indeed done wonders with those kids! So, in my mind, I had to look over what I had sitting around and figure out how to turn all that into a decent computer for family.

After surveying the landscape, I came to the conclusion to start here. In my bedroom HTPC (aka Viking), was a Zotac H55 motherboard and i3/540 processor. It's a nice computer, but really........does an HTPC in our bedroom need an i3? Even if it's a few generations old, a Clarkdale processor is still very useable. Even the Penryn Core 2 Duos still run Windows 7 very well and this is the next full upgrade after that, complete with on-die GPUs. So, I decided that this wasn't that big of a sacrifice to make, since I found a Gigabyte Mini-ITX MB with an onboard Celeron 847 (which was derived from the Sandy Bridge mobile i3 processor) for $50. That meant, I needed to find a socket LGA 1156 Micro-ATX motherboard. I'll explain later.

After a laborious search, I finally came up with this. If you look up the Asus P7P55-M board, you'll find that it's a little weird, in that it doesn't take advantage of the Core chips' ability to do graphics, and of all things, has a serial port. However, it's it's got 4 (!) RAM sockets (which is a rarity for a Micro board), and has a serial port (!). Woohoo!!! Mostly, I was just happy to be able to get an Asus board at a good price ($59).

Now, the reason for a "micro" board......TA DA! I have a Cooler Master Elite 341 out in the garage complete with Thermaltake 500watt power supply! It was what I built my original WHS file server in about 3 years ago. So, it's had very little wear-and-tear after sitting in a cabinet for 2 years. For those keeping score at home, I've now spent $59 and have case, motherboard and processor.

Here is the actual key to this whole build.....any build for that matter. If you want your machine to feel fast, use an SSD. I was able to score a new 120Gb Intel 330 for $87. This puts us at $146 spent. From the metaphorical pile, will come a 500Gb WD Blue HDD, 19" Asus LCD, random keyboard and mouse and 8Gb of RAM.

......About that RAM. Since I'm robbing the processor out of the Viking, I figured I might as well take the 8Gb of Patriot G2 memory as well. This is going to cost me. I'll need to buy some RAM to replace it. What I'll probably do is to go ahead and upgrade my workstation to 16Gb and move it's 8Gb RAM of Corsair XMS3 to the HTPC rebuild. I'll send somewhere between $140 and $200 to replace the memory and board/cpu combo that I'll pull out of my HTPC. In the end, even the high side of the estimate, I'll be under budget.

In the end, what will matter is that my father-in-law should be happy with the results.

Desktops Are Worthless.....

That should be expected of someone who has a family of 4 working on 5 ThinkPads, doesn't it? Actually, what I should say that desktops are "worth......LESS", and not worthless. Maybe it reflects my old guys computer experience from way-back of working on them in the IBM PC-AT/XT days, but we have 3 (not counting servers) desktop computers in the house and it's about to become 4! OK, 1 and some time soon it'll be 2 are actually HTPCs, but of course they are really desktops that just don't sit on or under a desk. 

So, what do I mean; desktops are worth less then? For those who don't haunt Craig's List or looking at the desktop listings on eBay OR have been given any number of old machines by people because they heard that you are a "computer guy", then you might not be aware. Aware of what? Aware that the market for desktop computers and computer parts is ridiculously low or non-existent! 

Which gets me to why a guy like me would also have a desktop workstation. Other than the fact that the parts are so amazingly cheap for the kind of power you get, there are just some things that notebook computers don't do very well. One is the ever-present issue of file storage. Yes, I do in fact have a 4Tb+ home server for that, but I'm not talking about archival storage, I'm talking about temporary storage that is essential when you do a lot with media like photo, video and music. The fact is, that mechanical storage for notebooks runs twice what it is for desktop. The other issue is, you can't just throw a bunch of drives in a case, so you end up with USB 2.0 which is waaay sloooowww! My other issue goes back to working with media as well. It's all fine and good to web-surf or do anything text-based with a 15" or even 17", but to do anything effective, you really need at least a 20" monitor and in my case, one 22" WUXGA (1920 x 1200), one 20" UXGA (1600 x 1200), plus another WXGA+ (1440 x 900) display when I need it. Try that with a notebook computer of any kind! 

But it's not my desktop that got me going for this post, but some friends of ours who came home from a camping trip last week to find that they'd experienced a surge which killed half the outlets of their "surge protector", along with everything plugged into them. So, after looking at their situation, it was obvious that replacing the fried power supply of their 10 year old (socket 423, P4) Gateway wouldn't have been very efficient use of money. I told them that my guess would be that they could replace it with a MUCH newer MUCH faster machine for about $100-120. And my standing rule of thumb on electronics is to replace anything where the costs will be close to half of replacement. So as part of this conversation, I started doing research on the usual suspects of eBay and Craig's List. Thirty minutes later, I had confirmed my suspicion that with $100-150 in hand and some patience, anyone could get into a relatively powerful and a MUCH more up-to-date desktop computer. 

Specifically, if you want a fairly powerful socket 775 or AM3 dual core computer capable of running Windows 7 well, you can go one of two routes. There's the preferable (at least to me) route of finding a "generic" computer with nice components, but people who build these things tend not only to know what they are doing, but the worth of what they have, so these machines usually to sell for around $250. And although, they are typically worth every penny (and more), but it's not the price-point that our friends would be comfortable with at the moment. The second route would be the "name-brand manufacturer" build (such as HP, Dell, etc.). The fact of the matter is that because they sell so many that they surplus in the thousands at a time from large entities like, school, corporations, and the government. This drives the price down to half of what the specs would otherwise indicate. A good example would be an HP DC7700 workstation class machine equipped with a socket 775 MB, Intel E6300 Core 2 Duo CPU, 2Gb of RAM, 160Gb hard drive......all for $99! Really! I can take a another $100 and really heat this thing up, but it'll do fine as a family computer just as it sits. 

 

The important thing here is the Core 2 Duo fitted to the Intel socket 775. That particular socket started back in the "Prescott" P4 days. We want the later versions with a chipset AFTER the 8xx era (in general) so that it'll not only physically accept, but RUN the latest Core 2 Duo CPUs. If you are a regular "family" type user, there's nothing that you'll do that the newer C2D processors can't. AND this socket will even take the quad core ones as well. Just give it plenty of RAM! 

Now, another thing to watch out for. Take a close look at the image of the run-of-the-mill HP/Compaq business computer above. No....I did not flip the image. Remember when I said that I'd rather purchase a "generic" built computer? The reason is that the large manufacturers for whatever reason like to use parts customized to their specifications for their production purposes, such as  a weird power button header, odd drive mounts, unusual power supplies and worse of all, a non-standard MB layout. Many Dell, Gateway, Lenovo, and HP desktops use a board layout called BTX (which is backward versus ATX which is standard), so if you ever want to replace it with a newer board...you're out of luck! So, look for one with a normal layout such as some Dell Vostros and HP DCs. The other is if you are lucky enough to live near a metropolitan area or have a friend who does, then run a search on eBay for that area. Why? Desktops are heavy and it's expensive to ship them. PLUS make certain that you find a dealer that is OK with a  "local pickup" (message them and check), some of them jack up their shipping and handling (S&H) price to make more profit and don't allow pickups. That $100 whiz-bang desktop doesn't look like such a good deal with $40+ of S&H tacked on to it! 

In the end, I'll probably get them that HP which is located in a nearby suburb being sold by a dealer that's already told me he's OK with a "local pickup". That E6300 is a Core 2 Duo processor running at !.86ghz built on the 45nm process making it a pretty cool running CPU. A 160Gb drive is plenty for them, and since this machine is new enough to have SATA ports, throwing in bigger drives later will be easy. I checked and the MB has the PCIe slot necessary for them to put on higher powered video cards down the road as well. 

What a great (and cheap) way to go....as long as you aren't a gamer that is!