The Start of a New Project

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.
 

The Computer/Computing "To-Do" List

The first thing on my computer related list for this summer is to rip a "good" number of our movies on DVD into a universal portable format. From where I stand, "universal" video format would mean MP4. Please understand, that when I mean "rip", I don't mean to download! I mean to take DVDs that we've bought, own, and convert them to a different format for our personal use. I'm going to bet that, that fits in the vast majority of peoples' definition of "Fair Use". I'm going to leave the how part of it up to you to find out in the wilds of the internet. There are plenty of sites that describe the process in detail. The fact is that we are going to be spending a fair number of hours in vehicles, cabins, and hotel rooms this summer and the obvious use of movies in some computer file format will be advantageous.

The need for this comes from our family's conversion to the common use of tablets; iPads to be specific with the exception of myself (Android). You know of course that the iPad has no facility to physically connect to external storage. So an intermediary needed to be found. Earlier this spring, I came across the HooToo Tripmate as a wireless means of getting files to my students in the classroom. In the midst of that, I realized that it could just as well stream media to various platforms as long as they had the Tripmate App. About a month ago, I tested it with my ThinkPad Tablet (Android) while my friend Pat did the same thing on his iPad Air. I put a movie converted to MP4 on a flashdrive which was plugged into the HooToo Tripmate Elite (Newegg special, about $20). We both streamed the movie to our respective machines without issue. All that needs to be done is for each device to log onto the Tripmate's access point, open the App, navigate to the folder/file that the user wants and voila', INSTANT STREAMING MEDIA. Unfortunately, there is the "Teddy Roosevelt" digging the Panama Canal part, which is to laboriously rip and convert the a decent library of movies for the kids to access!

Item #2? Yeah, a power supply replacement. I recently came across a very nice Seasonic M12 II, 80 Plus Bronze semi-modular PS unit for about half of what the normally sell for.....so...... at some point, when I'm really ready to pull the giant Cosmos II back out from under the desk, then I'm going to switch it out from the Cooler Master 600w PS that's in there. So I needed this? No! But I'm a big Seasonic PS believer and they are quiet and run cool. I'm all about that. Plus; the price was right. About $45, after shipping. 

My garage isn't exactly an e-waste dump, but I've really got to get in there and do some cleaning out. Most of what I'm going to get rid of will go to the new computer club but there are some items that need to be sold....

....which of course, leads to this sub-list. Items to sell off! This is very difficult for a border-line hoarders like me, but I've gotta do it. 

Unfortunately, all this good planning to get things done isn't completely contingent on my motivation alone. I really need for my wife to figure out where she's going and get all the stuff in the garage into her new classroom! When that's been taken care of, then I'll be free to get my cache of computer parts out of the garage. Till then, the main trick to to NOT add to the pile!