Propellerhead Gear: Blackbird Mk II, Part Deux

Yesterday was "Skunkworks" day. If you aren't up on aerospace lore, it's the highly secret Lockheed design and construction facility outside of LA. This place goes back to Howard Hughes and his work for the government during WWII..... and also where the SR71 "Blackbird" was birthed.

Beginning last Thursday (good timing huh?), the last of the stuff for the Blackbird rebuild started coming in; the Intel i5 3450S processor and the Kingwin FPX-004 Front Panel, cardreaderUSB3.0portsfancontrollercasetemperaturereadoutmicheadphone-thing. Oh yeah, the X300 screen, but that's a different story. Confronting me was; Thursday night, one child going to a "real" basketball game with her team, and the other child's Open House/Music Program. Then Friday night in the lovely village of Crandall with Soccer and overlapping Valentines dinner-date with my very patient wife who happens to teach there, which caused me to get home at 10:30, so no build. Saturday, I had kids' basketball, pretty much all day, cleaning the garage, spraying the yard for weeds and pulling the stack of old computer parts I promised to another ThinkPad Forum member....so yeah, wiped out. Then Sunday, of course there was church then grading two stacks of essays from my Advance Placement World History class. However in between the two sets of papers, I took a break by pulling and starting to disassemble Blackbird. Then finish grading the second set of papers. However I got nothing else done since it was now time for my son and I to go see "Jack Ryan Shadow Recruit", which I highly recommend for all you aging Tom Clancy readers out there.

After dinner at Wendy's (son's choice), it was time for........ no, not The Little Mermaid!?! Nope, that's there, because that's where mom and daughter had gone, about the time we got home! Slick planning huh? I took the boy to the late afternoon movie so that when we got home, the mother-daughter event was just starting in downtown Dallas! Two plus hours of solitude, otherwise known as SKUNKWORKS TIME!!!

Now, finally, I got the chance to put the "new" parts back into the old case. I moved all the drives to their new location since I was putting the new "avionics" (Kingwin Superpanel) into the top bay of the case. I had already swapped out the new (Sandisk Extreme) 240Gb SSD in the drive cage, so that went in as well. The Z77 board was bigger than the old one so I installed new stand-offs. Then it was board-time; the CPU got cleaned and went in, then I tackled the big CoolerMaster 212 EVO heatsink/cooler and let me tell ya, it's a huge chunk of copper and alluminum! The Corsair RAM went in next, then the board was installed. It was now time to connect ALL the many cables, followed by the cards. After that, comes the part that I hate. Crawling under the desk to connect all the various peripherals, in positions that make it hard to see and uncomfortable to be in.

I was rewarded by.....this.....a black screen, and the computer going through repeated loops of trying to P.O.S.T. I tried all kinds of stuff. Usually, a "black screen" is a sign of bad or loose memory. Not this time. Then I remembered that this board had a 2 digital diagnostic panel on the MB, which emphatically said "15". The manual said that 15, was Pre-memory Northbridge Startup. WHAT THE!!!! Off to Google, which said all kinds of things that didn't make sense until the end of the 3rd article I looked at which talked about a backside short on the motherboard. A-Ha, I said! I had noticed that it looked like the backplate of the 212 might have been touching the MB tray. One disassembly/couple of layers of electrical tape/reassembly later, the machine booted normally.

 

 And I got to see that wonder of modern computing....the UEFI! From here the load proceeded as normal, except much, much faster. I felt like some sort of Geek-Spy-Superhero who had just saved the world/western civilization by hacking into a secured computer system. OK, that was the Jack Ryan character from the movie, but still......

We are now in "test flight" time. Which basically means loading basic software, updates, and more updates. Then I started getting some errors on a few utilities I use. After more Googling, I learned that if you use a machine with UEFI, and GPT instead of MBR, you'll run into the problem I did (whatever the &^%^$#% all that stuff means). Anyway, the fix, is to repair or reload after having preformatted the drive before the Windows load occurs! Of course that means, 2 hours of work wiped out! In the mean time, the wife and child came home which as good timing since was a little frustrated and needed a break!

 

11 O'Clock, back to work and magically everything loads as it should. A couple of M$ updates rounds later, it's off to bed at 2:55 AM. Yeah, the sides are off. The cables are all over the place. My office looks like craziness happened there and I haven't gotten monitor 2 working right, but hey; that's why we crash-dummies get paid the big bucks, right? If there's a cautionary tale in all this; it's to never so a build without another fully working computer beside you which is hooked up to the Internet! In the end; the cat got to play in the boxes, and that machine? It's seriously faaaaast!

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. 

 
 


 

Mining Craigs List

Another year, another Super Bowl. They go by so fast, and in the modern league created by the salary cap, it's no longer interesting to me. So, what did I do on Super Bowl weekend?

I played my game....... but I play on a bigger field. It looks like this! If you live in the vicinity of a metropolitan area, Craigslist is a wonderful thing. For computing equipment, it's especially fruitful. In the last few decades, many corporations have moved their headquarters to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, and that means, lots and lots of computing equipment of all kinds. And of course, quite often, this stuff makes it's way onto Craigslist, or our famed "1st Saturday" flea market, although that's not what it once was due to the Internet. However, you can't just go running around willy-nilly all over the place. That's counterproductive in both time and gas ($$$) expended. It takes strategy. Sometimes, the planning takes the better part of a week! Here's how this latest effort went......

It started with a ThinkPad T500. I had a client who wanted something of this type and spec, after searching for several days on Craigslist, I was able to find one for $100. This price was excellent, and would give me the ability to put in a small SSD in it as well, then sell it for the $200 price that they typically sell for "retail". The seller of the machine was in the far northern part of Plano, which is the far northern part of the Dallas suburbs. 

I'm also constantly on the look out for SSDs in good shape, for a good price. Where do you think I get the 64Gb one that I put in the T500? Anyway, a guy had an OCZ Vertex 2, 120Gb model for $60. But it's a 3.5" form-factor drive you say. It is. So it's going into my HTPC machine which has a nice 64Gb Mushkin Callista in it and I'll move that into the T500. Instant upgrade for the HTPC and a SSD for the T500! 

In the middle of all that searching, I came across a Dell Latitude E6400, complete with dock, and 2 power adapters for $85. Since I sell these on a regular basis for $150-200 (depending on the size drive I put in it), it was a no-brainer. I don't want to belabor a topic I've written on before, but these laptops are just excellent deals right now and can be found anywhere if you pay attention. Plus they are way easy to work on, even when compared to the ThinkPads. Virtually all of the typical parts that need to be replaced, such as RAM, WiFi cards, etc. and be access by pulling one screw which secures a plate that cover the entire bottom. And they are darn-near as rugged as a ThinkPad as well!

The last item that needed to be secured was a pair of Corsair XMS3 RAM for my Ivy Bridge new-build. I had talked to the seller earlier this week about getting them this weekend from him since he lives in Arlington well west of Dallas. These are good, not great sticks of RAM that would fit into the concept of what I wanted to do with this new machine. First of all it was $60, and in today's world, that's a very good price for a pair of 1600, 8Gb x 2 DDR3 RAM. Although, not high-end gaming RAM, these could be tweaked a little bit if i want at some point in the future. As it turned out, I got a bonus when he had all kinds of trouble getting out to meet me and took $10 off for making me wait. So yeah, $50...... I can live with that!

Many of you who are older will recognize this from the Family Circus comic. It's known as the "Billy Path" which would periodically appear to show the circuitous route by which their son Billy would take to do some particular thing. By now, many of you might be thinking that my Saturday of picking up parts all over the DFW area looked about like this. In fact though, this is the art of Craigslist mining. 

Here's how it worked. We live about 10 minutes east of Mesquite which is one of the far eastern suburbs of Dallas. So I arranged to meet the first guy who was in far northern Plano first. This allowed me to make the best time by taking our very own PGBT (President George Bush Tollway) almost right up to the doorstep of his location, and pick up the T500. This was followed by a 25 minute run down Central Expressway (U.S. 75) to the 2nd guy who was basically due south. I had to wait for this very sleepy seller to wake up and bring me out the SSD, but by 9:30 I was a few miles to the south at a Target to meet the IT guy selling off the surplus Dell E6400. This put me right next to downtown Dallas and allowed me to run over to the 1st Saturday computer flea market to pick up a few odd-and-ends. From there, I picked up I-30 west head to Arlington by 11:00am. I was at my favorite "store", Electronic Discount in less than 30 minutes. In the meantime, I contacted the seller who had the RAM. Although he had problems and couldn't meet me at the store as planned, I spend an hour in that place perusing all manner of old electronics, go across the street the a favorite Vietnamese Pho place for lunch, then meet the guy on the way home. 

In the end, I was able to get all of the above done, and get home by 2:30 at which point, I grabbed my son and took him to his basketball game! I was gone a total of 7 hours. I spent $305, and about 3 gallons of gas (I drive a Honda Civic Hybrid). I sold the T500 for $200 while at the same time upgrading my HTPC's SSD from 64Gb to 128Gb. I sold one of the 2 Dell power adapters for $20. This all leaves me with $85 of expenditures not yet recouped, but I still have the E6400 which will bring at least another $150. Also, this whole escaped was funded by a sale of another E6400 from the night before, for $200. So, I had a great time, playing, will make somewhere between $70-100, after getting RAM for the new-build and upgrading my HTPC. 

That is now we mine Craigslist!