The Kentsfield Build

After sitting down at my parents old AMD 939 system and seeing it's sluggishness, I decided to build them a new system for Christmas 2013 that would be much more responsive and perform more on par with newer generation systems but at a lower budget. Here are the specifications:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 @ 3.0GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP43T-UD3L
Memory: Corsair XMS3 2x4GB @ 1333MHz
Heatsink: Zalman CNPS10X Performa
Power Supply: Antec HGC-520 520W
Graphics Card: XFX HD 4670 1GB
Hard Drives: Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB
Optical Drive: LG DVDRW
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Case: Antec VSK-4000 with 3 Bitfenix Spectre Pro 120mm fans.
Other: 3.5" Black 10 in 1 Card Reader
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I didn't go with the most absolute newest generation system as my parents aren't using the PC for much more than printing documents, using it's storage, looking through the internet and checking emails so I went with a bit more of a budgeted approach while still allowing the system to be a quad core setup. I originally was going to use a Bitfenix Merc Beta case as the rig for this system, but as explained in the Mercenary v1 post, NCIX didn't have any in stock so I switched to the Antec VSK-4000 which is a nice clean looking mid-tower rig. Unfortunately I don't have a large amount of pictures to document the system build (considering it was built as a surprise) but I will try to cover what I can about the build.

Click Here To Read More

Update on the blog

So recently I've gone through and updated a number of photos in a number of the posts of my blog, slowly converting it over from imageshack to imgbox so that the pictures consistently load. Plan on continuing to do so as well as condensing the main page posts so that some of the longer stuff (like some of the more recent build posts) don't take up massive amounts of space on the main blog but will still have the full contents on seperate pages (eg. the Mercenary v1 rig post). I will get everything updated so that the blog will seem more consistent as well as I am working on several other posts regarding the v2 of the Mercenary rig, the Crimson Avenger build, and several other overviews/builds.

The Mercenary v1 Rig

As I mentioned a while back, I was putting together some spare parts along with some extra parts I acquired when building the Kentfield rig. I originally planned to use a Bitfenix Merc Beta case as it's rig, but found out soon after ordering that NCIX does not carry anymore of them. As such I switched the order to the Alpha version so that I could still use it for another build. Enter the Mercenary v1 rig.

Click Here To Read More

Updates on the Way!

So I'm back into posting on my blog again. I took a bit of a break as it seemed to be a bit of work for not many people reading it, but I have realized that it's a good use of time to show off my skills as a computer technician but also cover some other topics relating to gaming and hardware.

Finally got back into the creative side of things and started drafting up some new posts and coverage of some of the stuff I did over the last year. I'm also in the midst of updating all my pictures by moving to a different image host because imageshack has just been garbage recently and now isn't even free. So many of my pictures on the site are broken, so I will be updating the posts with fixed pictures and organizing the posts like some of the more recent ones so that the extremely long coverage posts will be shortened but take you to a new page to read all the content of the "article". Anyway, next thing I will be covering will be my Mercenary v1 rig (which has been more recently updated to a v2 build) so looking forward to finishing that up.

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.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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