The DHL guy dropped off my Ultra Micro Fly case today. It looks like a great case (at least for the $40 it cost). It is obviously not made of expensive materials. I have heard of case metal being sharp, but this one cut me so cleanly that I didn't even notice it until I saw the blood. I'll have to be more careful.
The case's side and top panels fit together well. It also came with an Ultra V-Series 400W power supply that retails for $60 on their website (although I doubt many pay that much for it). The wiring and plastic on the power connectors is noticeably lower quality than those of my old Dell, but the power supply itself looks better and comes with a lifetime warranty. I'm crossing my fingers that the power supply won't poop out on me.
The case also has a temperature probe for the CPU (or anything else in the system), as well as front USB, Firewire, and audio ports. There is an LCD temperature display on the front panel. It came packaged with a power cord, thumb screws for the back of the case, standoffs/screws for the motherboard/drives, extra pins for the clear side panels and a piece of yellow tape which I assume is intended for affixing the temperature probe to the CPU.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
¡Cuídate!
Heat Sink Mod
Last night I went to work on my modification of the heat sink mounting bracket I am using. I filed down the risers on the bottom of the bracket about 1/32" to compensate for the lack of an integrated heat spreader on the Core Duo CPU package. This made the heat sink so tight that I couldn't secure the latches without damaging the processor.
(update: This modification turned out to be necessary I later found out. I had just been using the mounting clips incorrectly. Please read "Start Your Engines" post for details )
It looks like MSI has already compensated for the difference in the CPU packages by making the CPU socket itself slightly higher. This means that I likely could have used the socket 478 heat sink and mounting bracket without modifying it. I added washers as spacers to the bottom of the bracket to bring the bracket back up to its stock height. When I tried this, however, the screws for the mounting bracket were not long enough to grab the backing plate on the back of the motherboard.
My local Fry's is out of stock on these mounting brackets, so I can't pick up a new one. I will try to find some longer machine screws at Home Depot, and hope they work. At least there was not damage to the CPU or motherboard during this process, and not too much time lost in the project!
When I attempted to install the heat sink, the thermal paste on the bottom of it was pressed onto the CPU die. I am not sure if I can get good contact using the same thermal compound when I reinstall the heat sink, so I also picked up some Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste and cleaner to take off the old thermal paste from the CPU and heat sink. The Arctic Silver Cleaner worked amazingly well and now the CPU die has a perfect mirror finish. I also scraped the rest of the paste off of the heat sink and used the cleaner to removed the residue. It looks surgically clean now too!
Friday, July 27, 2007
Keepin' it chill
So the first challenge I am facing in my PC build process is trying to cool my CPU without the stock heat sink/fan that usually comes with the motherboard. This is not an unwelcome challenge as many people have reported that the 40mm fan that comes boxed with my MSI 945GT motherboard is loud. I would like to have a silent system since I'm using a notebook processor in a desktop case.
The board fortunately comes with standard Intel socket 478 heat sink mounting holes so there are plenty of coolers out there that will mount on my board. The low clearance on the Ultra Micro Fly case that I am using means I can't use a tall CPU cooler, but there is enough clearance that I don't have to use a low profile cooler either. A standard sized Pentium 4 cooler should offer a balance of excellent cooling and silent operation. The problem is that the Core Duo processor I am using does not have the integrated heat spreader that Intel desktop chips come packaged with. This allows for thinner laptop designs and makes the chip itself slightly thinner than the Pentium 4 chips that the heat sink is designed for. For my project I will have to compensate for this difference in thickness in order for the heat sink to make contact with the processor die and provide effective cooling.
Some solutions which others have used that I've read about on online forums include:
- Ordering the MSI mobile pad from their online store. This was designed to use mobile AMD cpu's on desktop boards and basically serves as a heat conducting shim to fill the space between the heat sink and the mobile CPU. This retails for $10. Some have been successful using it on Intel mobile cpu's as well, but seems like it would not transfer heat as efficiently as placing the heatsink directly on the processor die.
- One guy sanded down a pre-1972 all copper penny to use as a shim. It's a cheap solution that probably works just as well as the mobile pad, but it still seems that sending heat through 2 layers of thermal paste before reaching the heat sink would not be very effective.
Another thing to note is that the processor can be damaged by all the force of the metal heat sink being concentrated on the small, bare die on the chip. Every stock heat sink I've seen that ships with boards that use mobile chips has a square of felt or foam to help spread the force over the entire chip and protect the die. It also keeps the heatsink level on the chip. I fashioned my own pad out of a piece of thin felt.
Cross Your Fingers!
Being do-it-yourselfer, by consequence of my dad being such a handy guy, I have been wanting to build my first PC from scratch for a few years now. The fact that we have a veteran Dell Dimension 4400 from 2001 that works perfectly fine has made it impractical to justify the costs of a new PC.
I caught a break last August when my employer offered to "loan" some CPU's to employees to build their own system. By the time I signed up the only choice was a batch of Core Duo T2700's, which, at the time, was the top shelf mobile CPU. I grabbed one hoping I could find a good deal on a mainboard to finally realize my dream of building my own PC.
To my dismay, budget limitations and the confounded reliability of our old Dell delayed my much anticipated project. I had two boards in mind and was hoping to find a great sub-$100 deal via Ebay or an out-of-sight deal from an online retailer.
On this limited budget, my first choice was the MSI 945GT Speedster-A4R for the following reasons:
- An S-video output baked into the board. This meant I could connect it to our existing TV set to use as a home theater PC without the expense of a video card.
- Future Upgrade Headroom. Space for 4 hard drives and 4GB of RAM, and a slot for a graphics upgrade later.
- It had a slot for a future graphics upgrade as well, but only space for 2GB of RAM maximum and would need a video card to connect to our TV.
This week I had another breakthrough in my project. The MSI motherboard that had been my top choice, but that retailed at $150+ showed up on Newegg as an open box item for $71! I jumped at the opportunity, and not minute too soon because the board was out of stock again the next day. I had seen this deal before, but it had disappeared for a few months as desktop boards that use my mobile CPU became scarce.
"Open box" meant more work for me because it would not include the driver CD, custom mobile CPU heat sink, or the custom I/O shield for the back of the computer case. I could download the drivers from MSI's website, and the I/O shield was mostly a cosmetic concern. The CPU heat sink would be my biggest obstacle. I will detail my proposed solution later.
My mission now is to get a system up and running for as little out of pocket expense as possible, while still getting outstanding performance. So far, these have been my expenses:
- Core Duo T2700 2.33GHz CPU - Free! Thanks undisclosed employer!
- Windows XP Pro - 1 cent + $2.52 shipping. Special purchase through employee purchase program last year! (When Micosoft was under the illusion that people would buy Vista).
- MSI 945GT Speedster-A4R micro-ATX Motherboard - $79 including shipping from Newegg.com
- 1GB DDR2 667MHz PC2-5400 Memory - $34 including tax and after using two gift cards at Circuit City
- Ultra Micro Fly Computer Case - Great case that includes a quality Ultra power supply at a great price - $40 after rebate from Fry's online.
- CoolerMaster CPU cooler and mounting bracket from Fry's Electronics (in-store) - $16 including tax. No shipping charges to worry about. This is a low end cooler made for the old hot-running 80-115 watt Pentium 4 CPU's, but is a monster of a heat sink for a 31 watt mobile processor. I'm hoping to be able to overclock the processor with this heat sink. My other hope is that I can use it without the fan running most of the time to keep a silent system going. I'll have to make some modifications to the mounting bracket to make this work on my processor.
I will detail my project build with pictures in posts to come! Thanks for visiting. If anyone is building a machine with the MSI 945GT Speedster board I am using, I'd love to hear comments on any tips you have or hear if you found any tips from this blog useful.
