Sr Vr.

Whats that looks like it needs duct tape lol

If you'd have asked me, when I started my I.T career in 1996 (I used to run a shop, do local schools, callouts etc) if I would ever miss beige/grey cases and crave the look I would have first looked at you funny. Then probably clumped you around the earhole.

Now though? maybe I am just getting old but man, I never expected it to look quite so lovely. And yeah, it's been a wonderful trip down memory lane.

It didn't just get me on the thumb. Bugger got me on the foot too. But it was one of those uber clean slices you don't feel. I was lying in bed (my eyes are crap these days) thinking "WTF is that cack on my foot?"

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Who ever needed rolled edges? :D

It got me today on the hand. Not so bad. I bet come build time and when I cram all of that wiring in there it will be a bloodbath :D
 
Still have my first PC last time i turned it on the PSU went bang was a nice loud pop. Now I have it placed under the big TV as a stand as the shelving is unlevel and the TV is bigger lol, Was a good PC tbh lasted me 10+ years the one that replaced it was stripped and sold and the one I have now has had a few different versions of parts in it then either kept or sold.

Cases are better designed now I feel than the past look better but a classic case is nice in it's own way looking back, the main thing i don't miss from the past is 3k dail up and the fact PC's were generally harder to build as you really needed to pay more attention than now since we have better standards :)

As for the foot suck it up princess lol
 
Well it's built like a truck. I've not seen something so hefty in many years.

The front is amazing. There are two cast alu plates that hold the front panel in, then the handles are also cast alu as well, and the whole front bezel is machined alu.

Not something you get now for £60, that's for sure.

Because of my move to the USA in 2000 I have nothing from before that. My mother is quite probably autistic too, and when I moved she basically took everything I had from my childhood, photos etc and tossed it all in a skip. She never was big on empathy or thinking about other people's feelings. I suspect some of that is because she's a hard nut (she's been through stuff I can't even imagine tbh) and thus she's had to be tough.

The PC I was using just before I left may still exist, but if it does it will be buried in my cousin's hoarder house and I ain't going there. I gave it to him just as I left, and sold my workstation because it was very valuable. IIRC it was dual P3 Xeon 600 slot 2? with 512mb RAM (32mb was the minimum then) and a PCI Voodoo 5500. I nearly got that back about 5 years back, but said cousin who still lives down in that area let me down and it went to a landfill.

It's like a kick in the stomach seeing one of those GPUs up for £550 on Ebay.
 
Right. Last of the mods. TBH it isn't even really a mod, more of a easy hack.

Bottom right of the pic. You can see those plastic things.

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Those are for full length cards to go into. I don't have any.... Inside that area goes a 80mm fan. I have removed it, as it's a molex power house (annoying). I will be replacing it with this.

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Couple of problems though. Firstly it's not really all that necessary unless it's doing a job. I have found one for it... Secondly, if you were around in the early 90s to about 2000 you would know that dust filtering was at best rudimentary. AKA - awful.

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It was like trying to suck a golf ball through a garden hose. Now whether I use a fan or not I need a better solution than that crap. So I had a dig around and found this.

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Which is up to modern standards. Then I needed to find a use for the fan. I did. I am going to remove the plastic parts (they just pop out) and fit a drive carrier there for 2.5. The reason? I go back to this.

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These were designed for server use. The reason? well they are blisteringly fast. However, they are also the most reliable stable SSDs ever made. So are still very much in use in the server space. Linus runs his servers with them, only his are much bigger. IIRC he bought them from Amazon when they upgraded. They run warm, but are supposed to be in a cooled drive sled. Obviously I don't have one of those, so I am going to bolt it right in front of that 80mm fan. The bottom is all fins, so I would imagine that is where most of the heat comes from.

Given this will be the OS drive it needs to be very well looked after.
 
Sort of a last minute decision. Well, not last minute but thinking ahead.

The more room I can save on the rad the more slots I can use. Important, as I will probably change my network to 2.5gb.

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I got those for the rad. The intakes will be changed to the Eloops. I really wanted to go Noctua in this (beige and brownish) but it will cost me £100+. More than the 2.5gb switch I will be getting. So I can't justify it.
 
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My SAS cables finally arrived. I have no idea what took so long, because I ordered those before loads of stuff that arrived days ago. Still, they are here, that's the main thing.

The case has been finished up now and packed back in the box. I am taking the entire guts of it home tomorrow, so I should then be able to operate it and get the OS on. Have had some recommendations for cloud software, will look into both of those when I get it running.

There's no point building it until the back planes arrive any way, as they really need to go in first.

Back on the Alderlake rig tomorrow. New BIOS was launched a couple of days ago...
 
Bonus :D

About two months ago I switched mum's broadband. Talktalk ramped the price up and didn't offer her a deal to stay. So screw em.

Switched her to Plusnet. Thought we were going to get a £50 mastercard pre paid thing, turned out to be £100 :D

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Ordered two sets of those. 3200 this time, so I will either try running them all at 3200 or 3000 on the white set.
 
OK so I got home yesterday and had a thousand things to do. Smashed those out, so I started plugging things in. Already pasted the CPU. Turned out EK throw in some Kryonaut with their 1700 kit. I didn't need it, as I hadn't mounted that yet.

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I would say cable management is going to be erm, complex.

More good news. The SATA back planes arrived at mum's today. No duty ! So that's four days air from China and no duties. Stoked !

Have had to order a 5m VGA cable. I have no way of outputting video ATM. That's maybe a good thing, as I have so much to do.
 
Many headaches.

The 16 port card will not work. I am sure it functions fine, as Windows and Linux pick it up as a RAID card. However, when you install the driver in Win 10 it hangs. Then it kills Win 10, so you have to install it again. Meaning each attempt takes bloody ages. I have read tons of info, but it just seems to be an AMD isolated issue. IE, if I was running Intel it would probably work.

That leaves me short on options. So I have another plan. Watch this space.
 
OK. Been quietly plugging away when I feel like it. Got to a point where there really isn't anything else I can do.

After doing a lot of research it seems that the cloud software needs Linux. Either through Linux or a VM, no matter what. It does not function under Windows on its own.

I would have gone down the Linux rabbit hole (and will) but sadly it seems the 7300 GT is dead. What I mean is it works in Windows with no driver loaded, but if you go into Linux it installs a driver (which Windows doesn't have) and is garbled really badly. Due to this I can not work on it. Mostly because I am using a 7" screen. Maybe if I had it plugged into a better monitor or my TV I could get around that, but I really don't see the point in struggling for the sake of it.

As such I decided to focus my energy on other things. Like sorting out the PSU. I don't need many SATA connectors (maybe four?) but as of right now they were on Molex to SATA runs. Which are a real pain to plug in, and mean you need two lots of cable to do one task. Also, I decided to basically not use any extensions as they are not needed and the case doesn't have a hidey hole for left over wire.

Thankfully this PSU came with a set of connectors and a whole buttload of pins. You could basically get your own wire and remake every thing it uses. As such I removed the Molex ends from the SATA cables, and changed those to PSU connectors. I also found a Molex run (I didn't have any and was using red ones I made) which had a floppy connector on the end. I removed that and added a 5th Molex, which should be enough to power everything (the back planes use molex, so that's three). Any way, like I said I also decided to ditch the silver and red cables. So yesterday I got to that.

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When I was done I was left with this.

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Which is much, much better. The only other black braided cable other than the two SATA runs is the 4 pin (board needs 8+4) which I also had to make because the PSU only comes with 8 pin connectors and they don't split.

Am currently working to obtain a new fan for the PSU. It's cheap, flimsy and noisy and has developed a rattle. Am trying to get a Noctua, but it has to be a 3 pin so I have had to bid on a couple. If that falls through I will go with something else.
 
Right, decided to go a different route on the fan regardless of whether I win the Noctua.

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One main reason, getting it to work. The fan in the PSU has a non fan connector on. 3 wire, RPM, power and ground. It's also pretty short, meaning I would need to cut up the fan cable on the Noctua or whatever else and solder on the connector. With this? it has a connector about 40mm out of the fan. Meaning all I need to do is solder the wire from the Enermax fan to a fan extension. Meaning less soldering, and a much tidier solution without wrecking the fan itself.

I've also ordered an alu mesh filter/frame.

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Right now the PSU has a two piece assembly on it. A sort of normal 140mm silver grille and a surround piece.

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Which should replace both of those and offer filtration. Not that it needs much as the air it will be using is already filtered, but more to stop anything creeping through the PSU and ending up inside the PC. I will filter it at the back too, but any isolation "zones" will be better.
 
Right. Realised yesterday the cables on the PSU are mostly too long. Not the Molex and SATA etc, but mostly the heavy duty ones. So I spent the entire day shortening them.

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Now they won't need to be stuffed in and coiled up. I left this morning, so it was like my birthday when I got here.

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So finally some fun time. Not cutting wires and crimping on pins.

Mum was right, they are bloody heavy.

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They look amazing though. Very "nessy" which matches the decals I made.

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Trial fitted the thin fans.

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Which don't even reach where the board will be.

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Made sure the 80mm filter would fit.

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It will. Had a look over the 140mm Eloop.

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This is why I got this over a Noctua.

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All I need to do is cut the fan wire off the fan in there and wire it to a male connector, of which I have about 200. That's no joke either.

All I need now is one of those cheesy 80's keyrings that says "My other PC has a 3090Ti in it"

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Right, that's that crappy part out of the way. It was just as I expected. Jigsaw jumping around like zebedee when I turned the corners and really made me not very calm.
 
Decided against using the Quadro FX4800. It's a bit of a power guzzler, and uses up two slots. Spent hours and hours doing research as I don't want it to run games, but wanted something that behaves itself.

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It's a Quadro K4000 3gb. In other words it's a GTX 660ish, clocked lower, with 3gb of VRAM. Meaning it will be cool, quiet and well behaved. Unlike the equivalent of a GTX 280.

Was £50. I will probably save that in leccy in a couple of months the way things are going.
 
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OK, so the penultimate spend. £10.

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All this time I've been failing to remember that once it goes into its home I will have no rear access at all.
 
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