Propellerhead Gear: Blackbird Mk II

I love my computer, I really do. However, it's time for the old girl to go in for an overhaul. In this case (literally), I'm going to rip the old guts out and start over. Not that the "Yorkfield", Core 2 Quad isn't doing it's job. It's just time. In Frugal Propellerhead-speak, that means that the cost of a significant upgrade has dropped to the point where I can do it inexpensively.

You might remember a few ramblings about gathering parts for this build that began with this; a Gigabyte Z77X-UD4H motherboard that I picked up locally for $60. It got RMA'd back to Gigabyte for a broken PCI-e slot and came back as a replacement. The socket 1155 and Z77 chipset on this board allows me to install i Series, 2nd and 3rd generation CPUs in it, more commonly known as "Sandy Bridge" and "Ivy Bridge". Being a mid-line board, it gives me lots of nice features that are common at a $200 pricepoint. This 2 generation jump will allow me to go, not only a whole new series of CPUs, but also SATA II to III yielding a doubling of the critical throughput on storage, and the jump from USB 2.0 to 3.0 which is huge as well. Of course, there are other areas of upgrade like the jump to DDR3 and UEFI BIOS. 

One of the first things I had to get sorted out was storage. I had an OEM Samsung 256Gb SSD in Blackbird, and although, the capacity was fine for me, the SATA II interface was not. Which led to a series of machinations that produced this drive...... the Sandisk Extreme, 240Gb SSD that was in my wife's T61. Last month, when I upgraded her to a ThinkPad T500, it started a chain of events that would give me the correct drive without costing anything. First of all, I had bought a Dell E6500 for a client who wanted a 1Tb mechanical drive in it. The Dell, came equipped with a Samsung 128Gb SSD. That drive went into my desktop, which gave me it's 256Gb SSD that went into my wife's "new" T500. The T61 which had the nicer nVidia graphics went to my son replacing his T61 with Intel graphics. His SSD went into mom's old machine. His machine got a 80Gb mechanical drive and sold off. All that work yielded me a free 240Gb, Sandisk Extreme SATA III drive for free! Actually, that's not completely accurate. The sale of that T61 actually made me money on the whole thing, but I'm not going to bother trying to compute what the actual net profit ended up being out of all that; let's just say that it didn't cost anything.

In the last post I talked about mining Craigslist and this was one of the products. A pair of Corsair XMS3 DDR3/1600 RAM for $50, bought from the same guy that I got the motherboard from, so I also have the added benefit that of knowing it'll work on that board. The configuration will fit my philosophy on RAM. Which is: 

•  Adequate (4Gb) is not enough.
• When a major upgrade happens. Keeps the same amount for that OS, but cut the number of modules in half. I have 8Gb in 4 modules, so I need to drop down to 2.
• Leave yourself room to upgrade. The point above gives me 2 empty slots for future upgrades.
• Buy mid-line from a reputable manufacturer. For Corsair right now, that'd be XMS vs. the uber-expensive Vengence line. You still get lifetime warranty but half the cost. 

At this point, my Blackbird upgrade is up to $110. 

Now, I'm in the "home stretch", and just need a processor so I can start building. This turned out to be the most time consuming part of the whole process. Originally, I had thought I'd get my brother's old 2390T that he replaced in one of his computers. Unfortunately, he recently has taken a new position in Taiwan and hasn't been home to sent it to me. On top of that, it's the world's only non-Quad Core i5. I'm not really thinking I want to take a step backwards at this point. However, the concept of using a low-TDP (Termal Design Power) processor was intriguing. My current C2Q 9550 has a TDP of 95 which isn't too bad, and the typical Ivy Bridge chip is around 77 TDP is even better. When you look at Intel's list of 22nm processors (Ivy Bridge), you see lots of "S" spec chips that have a TDP of 65, with the current "T" spec chips down at 45 TDP. I'm all for that! If you've ever been in my south-facing office in the summer, you would be too!

This led to LOTS of contemplation and sleepless nights. Power vs. Efficiency? I knew I could get a really nice processor that would do everything that I wanted between $150 and $175. I had just done a machine with an i5 2500K, "Sandy Bridge" chip and it was flat-out, FAST. In the end, I knew that I didn't need, "nose-bleed" speeds; I just don't do that much "high-end" stuff. So I focused on "S" spec, Ivy Bridge chips. I started out looking at the commonly seen 3330S, then realized that the faster, yet just as cool models costs about the same. I even looked at the 3450P with the disabled GPU and all the way up to the current 3570S which sells for around $160. After reading reviews and benchmarks till my eyes crossed, I decided that the few percentage points between the chips weren't worth the $25-35 to me. Maybe it'd be different if I was a gamer, or did a lot of video editing, but then, I'd be looking at i7s, right? The other thing that I found out was that the "S" spec chips are generally sold to big OEMs....the Dells and HPs of the world. They use them in the "small form-factor" desktops that are sold by the thousands to corporations. When they are replaced, these machines are almost never sold off as whole computers, but are commonly "parted-out"/recycled. This means that there are lots of these chips appearing on the "secondary" markets (read eBay) as the first of these machines are being pulled at the 2 and 3 year mark. All that means: just be patient and wait for the right deal to drop in your lap. On Sunday, I caught a 3450S that sold to me at $133 with Free Shipping. That puts me at $243 and I'm starting to make plans to build.

One more thing. I'll have to admit, it's a bit of an extravagance. Although, it's just a $40 extravagance. This is a Kingwin FPX-004. I always wanted one of these, since the first time I saw one a number of years ago. A full (5.25") bay multi-function panel. This one has a card reader (one less thing on my desk), 2 fan controller with temp/rpm readout, eSATA, mic/headphone jacks, AND most importantly, USB 3.0 ports. That was my rationale. The new MB has a USB 3.0 head, so I really would like to be able to connect those devices without crawling under my desk. The final total? $283 for a total upgrade to Ivy Bridge. 

So, a week from now, the old Cooler Master Centurion 590 case will be completely new machine inside. Do I loose anything? The new board doesn't have an IDE header, so the Fujitsu 640Mb, Magneto Optical drive will probably bow out. But this thing is going to be one FAST AND COOL CAT. 

 
 


 

Intel is Out to Get Me....or at Least Confuse Me Greatly

Let me tell ya, this learning new stuff isn't for the faint of heart! As you know, I've been working on this gaming computer for someone, which in and of itself wouldn't be a big deal if they had a relatively reasonable budget for an up-to-date gaming PC..... say somewhere in the $2000-3000 range. BUT NO, it's $600! What that means is that I had to be creative and learn the "ins & outs" of the gaming computer world, but not only that, but the next level of PC hardware as well.....meaning the Post-Core 2 Duo/Quad era. Just when I finally get comfortable with the various parts of that generation, and having just climbed (almost) to the top of the heap in acquiring a Q9550 "Yorkfield" processor!

First of all; I've kind of learned to hate Intel! Since the arrival of the Lynnfield/Clarkdale, whatever you want to call their various families of processors, there's been a proliferation of CPU sockets. Everything from 1366, to 1150, to 1156, 1155/H2, yada, yada, yada. I hate it. P4 was socket 478 (after that aborted 423), then the Core Duos were the socket 775, now, we've got all manner of sockets! Which is why I finally settled on the 1155. At least that one can go from the Sandy Bridge G2, to the Ivy Bridge without having to buy a new board..... mostly..... if your board has a Z77 chipset anyway. The other ones.... mostly dead ends..... hate it.

Then, there's the whole chipset debacle. When combined with the myriad of sockets, this is a veritable minefield of processor/chipset/sockets to negotiate to determine what one should be bought. Take the Z68 for example. You're a gamer who wants PCIe 3.0, RAM at 1600? Nope, gotta get a Z77 board. Gives me a headache. This whole time, AMD has been pretty much on the AM3 socket. Oh yeah, Intel has been kicking the stuffing out of those guys, so never mind I guess.

Then there's the whole processor thing. Not only do we have the i3, i5, i7 thing going on, but you have "K" spec, "S" spec, and "T" spec processors within the groups as well. Oh, I almost forgot that there are the normal ones with no suffix. Of course, most people are familiar with the "K" spec, unlocked chips, but what about the "S" and "T"? S for lower power (about 65 TDP), and T for ultra-low power (35, or 45 TDP). Actually, for a normal user like, me, these are the ones that are really interesting. On my current Core 2 Duo/Quad platforms, I'm already at more computational power than I need most of the time, but on second generatoin (and later) Core processors, it's really WAY more power than the normal person needs. Yes, I targeted and got a 2500K for the gaming project just in case the kid decides that down the road he wants to play something like Starcraft Crysis, or any other game that is processor intensive. But for me? I'll probably be OK with a lower priced "S":spec 3330S from the Ivy Bridge generation, or even a "T" spec processor like I talked about before. For what I do (which is the same for most people), the money is better spent on an SSD (way faster speed I/O to the board), more RAM (run a bunch of stuff at once), USB 3.0 (way faster transfer speed with removable storage I use every day). So really, my jump to Intel's "Core" series of processors will have nothing to do with processing power, it's having the same (or somewhat better) level of power as I have now, while having a much cooler running machine. Although my 95TDP "Yordfield" is the most efficient of the high-end Core 2 Quads, that's still 50% higher than an "S" spec Ivy Bridge.

During the last week or two, I've spent as much or more time educating myself on AMD's various current graphics offerings. If I could have had the luxury of spending $500 on a graphics card, it would be a no-brainer, but I'm working in the $100-200 market space. On the bottom end of that space is the 7790, and on the top there's the 7850. 

You can see that at a similar price-point, why there's no real need to look at the 7770, while the $35 difference between the 7790 and 7850 actually does pay for something. Now, in this case, it's all about the needs of a gamer (even a lower end one), but I also learned a few things about how much power each of the different chips uses. In AMD's "Southern Islands" line of cards, it's pretty evident that 7750 version of the "Cape Verde" chip doesn't push a ton of polygons, but it only uses 55w, well less than half of the "Pitcairn" 7850. So while I was learning that at a doable price-point for my client the 7850 is a nice pick-up, I also learned that the 7750 will be a really nice cool running card for me.

In combination, the same research has yielded me twice the results! I've found the cool-running CPU along with a low-consumption GPU for me, while at the same time a high-speed, scalable CPU and beefy GPU for my client. I suppose, overall, I'm pretty happy, regardless of Intel's efforts to confound me!

The Frugal Gaming PC

When something is said about a "Gaming PC", this is what immediately comes to mind for most people. Some unmarried twenty-something, sitting in a darkened room with several thousand of dollars worth of computer, pizza boxes, chip bags and Mountain Dew cans! I guess, that'd be right in most cases but, I'm here to tell you that it doesn't have to be that way..... at least in the thousands of $$$ end of things. What? Is the Frugal Propellerhead branching out and about to start playing games? Not so much. Let me explain.

??? It goes back some time ago when my school's librarian asked me to look at a Dell Inspiron XPS M1530 that was acting up. It belonged to her teenage son.... well actually, that's not quite right. Note that it's pink. Apparently what happened was that her other son sent the younger brother his girlfriend's old laptop, that she had used, and abused and cast aside, so that they could play games together online. Kind of a cool idea, but the abused part had taken it's toll on this nVidia GPU'd  (!!!) machine. And of course the chip was failing, succombing to the infamous nVidia chip failures of that generation. It worked for him a a couple of months, then lived for about 6 more months after I "reflowed" it with a torch, but then ultimately died again. So, little brother gave up on the machine and it went to live in a closet. However, as it turns out, that wasn't the end of the story. I vaguely remember telling them that he was better off with a desktop rig and I'd help him put it together when he saved up some money. In the movies; your hero rubs the kid's head, who shuffles off with his hands in his pockets and the scene fades to black. Then about a week ago, the librarian emails me that the boy had taken my advice to heart and now has $600 accumulated and wants to know when we can get started! 

So anyway..... after I got over myself (yup, that's the look I probably had looking at my Outlook), I said; sure, I'll be happy to help (or something to that effect), and I'd get back to them after a little bit of research! Meaning, I'm going to have to bone up on all things gaming and the current state of desktop hardware... which by the way, is NOT what I normally use and make a business out of recommending to people. What follows, is what I've learned over the course of the last week and about to start the process of turning it into an actual computer.

As you've no doubt already told yourself: "IS HE CRAZY"!?! $600 isn't enough to put together a decent gaming rig! But, never fear..... FRUGALMAN IS HERE!!! So lets start with the fact that, I plan to cheat. In the image above is a Cooler Master ATCS 201 which is a VERY nice all aluminum case. If you aren't familiar with this now defunct series (at least around here) from Cooler Master. Think, Lian-Li. My impression is that they tried to see if they could compete in the boutique aluminum case market and decided that there was more money to be made in other areas. Anyway, there's one of them sitting in my garage. Not because I had a use for it. Because it was $35 on Craig's List with a RaidMax 640w modular power supply included! It originally sold for over $200 (case alone)! My plan is to build in it, using that RaidMax P/S and if he decides to go with something else down the road, then so be it. We just don't have to worry about those items now.

Then came the big question: To Haswell, or NOT To Haswell? After two days straight of reading every chance I got, I came to the conclusion that Haswell is:

1. Too expensive to fit in a $600 budget.
2. Too new for any really good deals to be had.
3. Too few benefits to be derived for a low-to-mid level gaming machine.

Sure, there are benefits. Clearly, it's the most future-proof, and it absolutely is the most efficient in a power-in vs. power-out equation. But in the end, the question to be answered is; what is this kid going to get the most bang for his gaming buck at his price-point. 

This became very clearly, a Sandy Bridge Core i5 processor on a Z77 Intel Platform. Yes, yes; I can hear the AMD supporters popping their Cheetos bags now. I know it's cheaper, and you can get more "cores" for your money. However, at the end of the day, you know (as does everyone in the industry), that AMD hasn't been able to touch Intel's mid-to-high-end line since the day the evil empire went to their 2nd Gen "Core" chips. The gap keeps widening as we get into the "Ivy Bridge" series and AMD completely has nothing in the works that can challenge "Haswell". I'm no Intel fanboy, having used AMD for years going back to my "Barton" build, but I just have no loyalty on this sort of thing and absolutely will go with whoever gets me the most computing power for the money. So, that aside; why that chip on that platform? 

 

The socket 1155 on the Z77 platform will give pretty much all the "modern" features (eg. USB 3.0, SATA-III/6.0) that people want without the price of the 2011 and Z87/Socket 1150 boards. It will also take the 2nd Gen Sandy Bridge as well as the still current Ivy Bridge CPUs, thus giving upgrade potential. In this market-space there are a number of attractive options ranging from the rather low-end Asrock/ECS boards to the other end of Asus/Gigabyte models. Then you get into the sub-models which address all manner of arcane features mostly having to do with overclocking. Be that as it may, this is where I decided the fat part of the price/benefit curve is at the moment which fits into the kid's budget.

Then, on to the CPU. This was a whole new world to me, since I've just now managed to master the miriad number of SKUs of Intels CoreDuo, Core2Duo lineup. So, I now had to learn Intel's "Core" line. Of course, given our platform choice, we've leapfrogged the first (Nehalem) series (3 digit Core, eg. i5-xxx) and move right on to the Sandy Bridge series. Remember; this is a budget build and there isn't enough room to move on to the Ivy Bridge chips. It became fairly evident, that i5 was going to be the way to go. You get quad cores, with plenty of cache, without paying for cores and speed that he won't use in the i7s. Obviously, the budget i3 weren't under consideration unless I simply couldn't find a good enough deal. I'm not even going to address that here, assuming that my readers will already know why.

Then came The Package..... Sometimes, you just get lucky and things fall into place for you and life is easy. This was one of those. Part of what made my decision for me was that while I was researching, I was also looking on eBay to see what the price-points were looking like on the used front vs. buying new. Don't tell anybody that I said this; but sometimes, new ends up being the way to go.... shhhhh.... but not this time. I ran across an eBay listing with an Asus P8Z77v-Pro board, with an i5/2500K (unlocked) CPU, AND 8Gb (2 x 4Gb) of Corsair Vengence DDR3 RAM, all nicely matched and sold together with no bids and starting at $300. After very little activity (4 bids total), I got it for $355 ($340 + $15 shipping). We're talking about a year old equipment at $100-150 less than retail. 

Now that we've spent over half the $600, what else do we need to do? Well, I sent him a series of links to spend the bulk of the $245 he has left. The most important of them is the boot drive for which I'm recommending a 120Gb SSD. For mass storage to go with that, I recommended a 1Tb/7200rpm Toshiba mechanical drive. As I've discussed before, these days, I'm routinely recommending to buy Toshiba desktop drives because they are really Hitachi DeskStars coming out of a Hitachi factory in China that have been rebranded as Toshibas but, sell for less! There's an explanation in an earlier post regarding this situation, so I'm not going to go through that here. I'm also having him pick up a plain-Jane optical drive/burner to load software and burn disks, which pretty much rounds out the necessities.

I know, I know....the heart of a gaming rig..... the Graphics card. You do know that beginning with the Nehalem "Core" processors Intel had DMI (direct media interface) built-in to the chip, right. Now I didn't say that it was good graphics processing, but by the Sandy Bridge chips with their 2000/3000 onboard GPUs, it was decent. No, not for Crysis 3, or Bioshock, but for old Star Wars games.... which by the way, is what he mostly plays right now.... integrated graphics will work.... for now. 

In the meantime, I'm going to have him put stuff on the all-important Christmas List! Things like a AMD Radeon HD 6850, or 7790. Whoa.... slowdown there nVidia fans, here's my take on that stuff. It's not a clear-cut Intel is kicking the stuffing out of AMD situation here. It's a there's so little to give between the two big boys in this area, it completely doesn't matter in the "mid-price" ($125-175) graphics card market-space that I'm just going to cut down on the amount of work I have to do. So I pick AMD because I already know quite a bit about them.... especially the "Southern Island" series. What else is there?

I know this is an area near and dear to the hearts of gamers everywhere. That is their peripherals. And again, I'm going to one of my little tricks:

That's right.... he has a birthday between now and Christmas! Did I mention that I was going to CHEAT! Yup, between those two very important celebrations, I would suspect that he'll be able to nail virtually every other necessity to fulfill a teenage gamers desires! So....., that's a wrap, right?

.......Well, not completely. Some of you may even be doing some mental math and have about a $75 hole not accounted for..... No, it's not for a cheap-o monitor. It's for things like adapters, cables, card readers and other various items. Then, what about a monitor? I'm embarrassed for you that you should have to ask the "king" of $15-25 monitors! What we're going to do is to either snag one, if it conveniently appears on Craig's List (or somewhere else), or we are going to use one of the old CRTs that they already have at their house. That's right, you didn't misread that...... C R T, as in Cathode Ray Tube. They still work! What we're going to do, is to use whatever we can find for free or othewise ridiculously low price, then when the correct time comes that some generous grandparent, or other family member is willing to check the monitor box on the aforementioned Christmas/Birthday Lists, then this monitor will become a "side" screen on the "Super-Frugal-Gaming-Rig"!!! 

YEA.... WE'RE DONE.... FOR NOW!