Lack of Posting

I realize I haven't posted much in the last month, been a bit busy fighting off a cold as well as some weird stuff happening at work. I hope to become active on my blog again soon as I still have many posts and builds to show off very soon. Hopefully I can break out of this funk and start writing again. Stay tuned for more updates and builds.

Reiter Rig Finished! Updates on other Builds

So the Reiter rig is finally finished. I received the RMA'd RAM back on 3/4/2013 and loaded it into the Reiter rig and fired it up. The rig completed POST beautifully. For good measure I made sure that the overclocks were still set correctly and then fired up Memtest86+ to verify no problems with the RAM setup. Ran through two passes with no errors. Excellent! Now it was just up to making sure that the system was still stable within Windows after changing out the RAM. I wasn't expecting any sort of issues but would rather test it again and verify it's all working than skip it and hope for the best (considering how this build has been going). I have acquired a new tool to help with testing the system stability called IntelBurnTest which stresses the system even more than Prime95 (if you can believe it) based on how it calculates certain data. I won't go too far into specifics, but it came back saying that it passed stability tests. Using IntelBurnTest cuts down on time required to see if system is in a stable basic state as it doesn't require running for 24 hours to find out if it is working correctly. In any case, I still fired up and ran Prime95 for 24 hours to just verify nothing else was going to surprise me with a curve-ball  The Reiter rig also passed that. So at this point in time, it seems like the Reiter rig is finally finished.

The insides of the Reiter rig (notice the replaced heat-sink fan)

One thing I did decide to do with the Reiter rig is replace the Silenx fan on the heat-sink with an Antec fan of similar configuration (simply because of the track record of Silenx) to verify that it would last for quite some time. There wasn't a noticeable change any of the temperature values and continued to run stable for the IntelBurnTest and Prime95 runs.

The Reiter rig finally completed

As the rig has finally seen completion, it's time to finally give it to the person I was building the system for in the first place. Hopefully nothing else will go wrong in the meantime with this rig as it's already seen enough problems to last a long time.

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Now, onto other rigs I've been working on. The Kentsfield rig has seen completion and has been deployed in the house without any hiccups. I will be doing a complete separate post on it in the future as there's a number of pictures about the rig I used and a couple of hiccups I had when setting up the system. Another rig I also have recently built is one using the Bitfenix Merc Alpha case. I am dubbing the rig the Mercenary and will also have a separate post about that one as well as there was a few design flaws I came across in the case that could see some fixing possibly but may just be the way the system was built. Also upcoming is going to be some posts about my own rig including a new power supply and mouse that I want to talk about. So stay tuned for a number of other projects I will be discussing over the next couple weeks.

Update on the Kentsfield Build

So I have received most of the parts for the build (which I will be dubbing the Kentsfield rig). All that's left to receive is the rig (was on backorder as the Merc Beta rigs are being discontinued) and the CPU. After receiving the Gigabyte GA-EP43T-UD3L board I then installed the Corsair XMS3 DDR3 RAM into the board. One thing that is nice about the GA-EP43T-UD3L is that it uses DDR3 RAM even though it's a LGA775 board (hence why I chose it). NCIX has informed me that they aren't carrying any more Merc Beta rigs and have no more in stock. As such I've changed the order to the Alpha version (which I will use for a different system). I have decided because I cannot get the Merc Beta rig, I am using an Antec VSK-4000 rig for the Kentsfield build. As the Merc Alpha has top fan mounts, I feel it would offset the aesthetic look I'm going for when building the rig that's why I have decided to go with the more streamlined look of the VSK-4000. In the meantime while waiting for the rest of the parts, here's some pics of the parts I've received so far:

A bunch of parts for the Kentsfield rig

The fans for the Kentsfield rig

The GA-EP43T-UD3L equipped with the XMS3 RAM

Update on the Reiter Rig and Another Project

So I worked on the Reiter rig over the last week determining what is going on that could be causing issues with the system still. As I recently have come into contact with a couple other DDR2 boards, I decided to test the RAM in another board to see how it worked. It didn't post for some reason and I thought to myself that there must be something odd with the RAM. I took one of the two sticks out and it posted fine. I swap the sticks and guess what? Beep code informing me that the stick is pretty much f'd. As RAM (for pretty much any manufacturer) has a limited lifetime warranty, I sent in a ticket to Crucial to RMA the RAM and (sure enough) they approved it. I then asked if I could just send both back so I can make sure I get a set of two so that there isn't a timing issue when I receive them back. They responded promptly with assurance and adjusted the RMA to reflect me sending two sticks in. As I was doing this, I overclocked the Reiter rig with the working RAM to verify that it would be stable under a decent overclock.

I put a E6600 into the system as I had one on hand (vs the E6300 I was originally going to build the system with) and overclocked the FSB on the motherboard (the GA-EP45-UD3L board I picked up a while back) to 333. This brought the CPU up to 3.0GHz (as the multiplier on a E6600 is 9x) and I set the RAM MHz to 800 as that is what it is rated for. After fiddling with the voltages a bit, I set it off for a Prime95 stress test for 24 hours. After 24 hours, the system was still running strong. Finally the system will be almost ready for working condition. All that is left to do now is send off the RAM to be replaced and then it will finally be ready.

I started working on another project as well recently. I will be building a newer generation system for my parents to use as they are still using an old AMD X2 3800+ system I built them a while back. The system I plan to build will have a QX6700 processor, DDR3 memory, a GA-EP43T-UD3L motherboard, their current HDD (Caviar Black) and the same power supply they are currently using (Antec HCG-520). All of this will be packaged inside a budget black case known as the Bitfenix Merc Beta. I will be filling all of the fan slots in the case aside from the one just above where the CPU heatsink will be installed (which will be a Zalman CNPS10X Performa) to allow for maximum cooling efficiency. I was originally going to build the system using a Bitfenix Outlaw case (as the way the system is currently stored it would allow for better side panel airflow) but the decided to go with a more traditional layout as well as have the option of putting a 3.5" card reader on the front without having to use a bay adapter. Most of the parts are on order as of now and I am excited to start working on this build. I will have more information as the build develops.

Building The Oh Baby! Rig

So I know it's taken me quite some time to write this post, but with 90 pictures, I'm sure you could understand. I expected this to be done more towards the end of my friend actually receiving the rig, but it appears that because of the huge amount of build pictures there are for it, it was a bit more than I could chew at the time. But regardless, here it is finally. The Oh Baby! rig post.


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Update on Everything

I took a few months off from writing on this blog to take a break from writing as well as personal responsibilities for computer work. Being back at work has kinda set me in a bad mood and I didn't want it to reflect on my personal work on my blog. In the near future I will have several updates such as the Oh Baby! rig post as well as a few other goodies I've installed into my personal system. Have yet to really sit down and work on the Reiter rig and every day I go to my work bench I just see it staring at me with anticipation to get fixed but I just can't seem to sum up the effort at this time to work on it. Hopefully in the near future I'll break this streak and begin working on it again (hopefully without having to invest too much money or time fixing it). Right now I'm not sure if it's a power supply issue, CPU issue or if there's something I'm just not seeing correctly. Either way, hope to start working on this blog again and keeping it active whenever I can. So stay tuned for some pretty pictures and long paragraphs.