Playing with computers

"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
09/08/2019 at 03:45 • Filed to: None

I know some will freak out about poor cable management, but one of the SATA III cards is acting up and once that’s replaced I’ll clean things up a bit more. At that point I’ll be able to run 8 SSDs out of the rack in one of the 5.25" bays. At this point in limited to just 7 unless I want to drop the speed down to SATA II speeds.

I should probably put in the 1000 W power supply, but this one is doing fine.

I did reverse the fan on the CPU cooler to pull the air up through it and out the top of the case via the big-ass fan mounted up there. I ran a few stress tests, and this 3.5 GHz processor is running fine at 5 GHz.

I also repurposed an ancient SCSI case to hold the Blu-ray burner. It incorporates a USB3 bridge board, so now I can easily switch it between computers as necessary. It also does a great job of lifting the primary monitor to a position that’s easier on the neck. A 27" monitor replaced the old 22", and another 27" has been set up on the old i5 I use for watching TV via the Plex server in the living room.

The 8-core workstation finally has the FirePro W7000 video card installed, and the old GeForce whatever has been moved back to the Hackintosh along with the second power supply to drive it.

Tomorrow I’ll get the third monitor set up. It’s an old-school 4:3 20" unit that can be rotated to portrait mode, and is excellent for reading documents and magazines. I might even hook up the 42" unit if it works without needing a power cycle for a clear image.

I was disappointed, but not surprised, to find that the cheap Chinese 5-port HDMI switch didn’t work. You get what you pay for, and I didn’t pay much...

DISCUSSION (8)

SilentButNotReallyDeadly...killed by G/O Media > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
09/08/2019 at 04:29

I feel that this build should have a random cassette tape (preferably metal... especially if you can find a metal chassis one ) attached in somewhere with a dummy red wire attached to it.

facw > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
09/08/2019 at 09:12

I should probably put in the 1000 W power supply

Why? A n 850 already seems like serious overkill for that system. Even with that heavy overclock, your peak power consumption should be way lower than that. Unless you are planning on a multi-gpu setup (and there’s not much reason to these days), there’s no need for these huge PSUs.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > facw
09/08/2019 at 09:51

You ’re probably right. I guess I was thinking back to the days of multiple hard drives and less efficient video cards and running out of pow er in those systems. The 1080 uses only one extra power connector as opposed to the old 670, and this build doesn't use a single spinning hard drive. I'll be fine as-is.

PyroHoltz f@h Oppo 261120 > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
09/08/2019 at 12:17

Get P3's kill a watt and see what you’re actually pulling from the wall outlet. If you’re withing 10% of your current PSU’s max power output (don’t forget it’s efficiency rating) then I would say consider a bump. But I agree with facw, you’re probably completely fine with the 850.

For what it's worth, don't measure anything but the system draw but that's probably obvious.

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16882715005

PyroHoltz f@h Oppo 261120 > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
09/08/2019 at 12:23

I’m also still rocking a z77 board for my workstation, i7-3770k .

You mention yours is an 8-core machine , is that an 8-thread i7 or some crazy 8-core (16 thread?) CPU for the 1155 socket on that board?

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > PyroHoltz f@h Oppo 261120
09/08/2019 at 13:03

I was actually referring to multiple computers in that post. My gaming machine is the Z77/3770K pictured, then there’s a Z420 workstation that’s running an 8-core Xeon, followed by an HP Elite 8300 CMT that I use as a hackintosh.

Those are all running through an ancient USB KVM switch, although the video signal is routed through a separate HDMI switch. I had to clean up the wiring because there was no consistency; the computers were on different ports on the KVM, video switch and audio switch, and I had a hard time remembering how to get all functions working at once. Now everything’s organized, and setting all three switches to the same number means they’re all connected to the same computer - what a novelty!

There’s another i7 in the living room acting as a DVR, and a first generation i5 just being used for video playback at my desk, and my old Mac mini that I’m not sure what to do with at this point. I’ve got a few other systems that need to be assembled and sold/given away. There’s also my old AMD 965 system waiting in the wings, and I need to hook it up and extract some data from it. Scattered about the office are some old Macintoshs, including my highly-modifed and once amazing dual 1.8 G4. And don’t get me started on the piles of notebooks...

Yes, I have too many computers. And iPads. And TVs. And phones. And pieces of audio gear. On the bright side, most of this stuff was picked at low or no cost, and gets serviced and repaired/upgraded as a hobby for me and gets cascaded down to others, many times for free.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > PyroHoltz f@h Oppo 261120
09/08/2019 at 13:04

I’ve got one of those somewhere but never thought to use it in this fashion. Thanks for that good idea!

Grindintosecond > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
09/09/2019 at 01:36

Hwmonitor should tell you package wattage draws of components. A single card system on overclock shouldn’t dra m ore than 600-650 watts. Dual card then your looking 800+