February 27, 2005
A reminder that I should build Liebherr sooner than later
I tried to install my iPod today which seemed to make my PC go mental. Ultimately nothing but a cold boot would revive it. While it was rebooting, the nVidia nvRaid utility screamed, "MIRROR ARRAY DEGRADED".
So what the hell does that mean? The computer (slowly) booted up but otherwise did not complain. So I turned on the windows client for nVidia nvraid to see what it would tell me. It basically did nothing. It listed two drives and two "Mirroring"'s. There was no way to run diagnostics or anything else. There was no wizard to walk you through the, "so, your mirror is degraded" process. There's nothing online either. All I could do was dig out the K8N Neo2 manual and read their appendix on nvRaid. Unfortunately their step for "rebuilding" a raid didn't work -- that option wasn't even available.
So I ended up rebooting and jumping into the Bios-level nVidia nvraid software. It wasn't much more helpful but after a while I realized, "oh, it seems to think there are two mirrors here," so I deleted one, then I was able to tell the mirror to rebuild itself. It said, "healthy" instantly after that.
Then when I booted into windows, I turned on the nVidia nvRaid client and see that the current status of that mirror is "Rebuilding". The manual warns that rebuilding a mirror is a very slow process and can take almost a day to do. In the meantime I am letting the pc sit there and do whatever mysterious business it's doing, but keeping all other programs turned off until it finishes.
Ghhhh. I do not need this sort of shit. I need to get Liebherr built sooner than later.
As a sidenote, the crappy client software provided to manage this raid is another reminder that these cheap consumer-level motherboard RAID systems are not that great.
Followup, I found this manual to nvdia nvraid windows software
Followup September 2005. I started regularly having this degraded mirror problem with my nvidia nvraid system. I'd rebuild for 6-12 hours and then almost immediately have it corrupted(?) again. I was really getting disgusted. It wasnt' even clear what was failing, a drive, the driver?
In the event log I found messages like:
EVENT source: nvraid
The driver detected a controller error on.
and
The device 'NVIDIA MIRROR 279.46G
(SCsI\Disk_____NVIDIA__MIRROR___279.46G\2 disappeared from the
system without first being prepared for removal'
Ugh. I didn't even know where to start. What I ended up doing was running the MSI LiveUpdate program, which is supposed to goto MSI and ask, "what updated drivers, bios, etc are available?"
It tried to download a fresh motherboard chipset driver. But then I figured I better upgrade the BIOS first.
Upgrading the BIOS was harrowing. It took me a while to realize the motherboard won't allow me to get onto the BIOS using 'delete' unless I have COLD rebooted. Just hitting reboot and then selecting delete for the BIOS dumps me to a frozen, blank screen. Anyway, I upgraded the BIOS to 1.b. (Curiously the page I link to only has a BIOS upgrade to 1.A. The MSI LiveUpdate gets to 1.b. Not sure what the matter is.
Then I went back to install the mainboard/chipset drivers from nvidia. I couldn't find them. Not sure wtf is happening. Maybe they did somehow get installed without my realizing it, and then cleaned up after themselvs or something. Not sure.
Anyway, I stopped pursuing the matter (I couldn't find the thing to downlaod a second time and LiveUpdate seemed to think everything was now in order anyway) when I realized that after a final rebuild of the array, the array was healthy and seemed to be staying healthy. Now 4+ days later it is still functioning fine. Knock on wood. So hopefully the bios upgrade, or an accidental chipset/mainboard upgrade did the trick.
February 13, 2005
Kamaz final pricetag: $3039USD
Heat Sink Compound Bell Systems 9
Nexus Breeze Case Advance PC 185
Nexus AMD Fan/Heat Sink Advance PC 85
Nexus HDD dampeners Advance PC 70
Zalman 400w PSU The Hardware Place 155
2gb DDR 3200 400hmz memory MemoryWorld 888
MS Digital Media Pro Keyboard Laser Distributor 45
15-in-1 Memory card reader Cybermind 39
External USB HDD Enclosure Inforcom 59.8
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum w/ AMD Athlon64 4000+ Cybermind 1848.24
2x Seagate 300gb SATA 7200+8mb NCQ Cybermind 826.2
1.44MB Silver Sony FDD Cybermind 16.32
Sapphire Radeon 9800SE Cybermind 389
Sony DRU-720A Cybermind 147.9
MS Windows XP SP2 OEM Cybermind 260.1
sgd 5014.56
usd 3039.12
*individual prices in singapore dollars... currently 1.65SGD/USD
February 06, 2005
KAMAZ is now sitting on my desk
My new pc appears stable and is now sitting on my desk waiting to be uploaded with useful software, old user data, and to have the accessories plugged back in. It roughly followed my plans.
My plan was to spend my wednesday lunch hours picking up all the parts from around Sim Lim Square. Last on the list was the Nexus Breeze case. I was highly annoyed to find there were none in the store and I'd have to wait until Thursday to collect it. Thursday night I assembled the pc. I started late, 2030, and was busy with other stuff, so I wasn't ready to turn on the power until 0130. I was rational enough to say, "it's too late to get this finished tonight in any case, and if I wait till tomorrow it will give me some time to spot mistakes."
The Breeze case was a good recommendation by endpcnoise.com. The outer casing walls make it nice -- both the panels are sound-insulated plates that slide on with positive lock-down levers on the top. The front casing is also insultated and snaps on cleanly and positively. The top plate was tricky to get off the first time (it slides towards the rear). The case looks smart, although the plastic has a film to it that needs a good windexing.
The main chassis is quite average. Unlike my old HEC case, the 5-1/4" drive bays don't pull laterally out of the casing. It means that adding in components might be tougher with other stuff getting in the way. I mounted my two harddrives using Nexus DiskTwin Disk Vibration Dampener. There was an internal support strut that I removed to install the motherboard. The idea is that it supports heavy, bulky PCI cards. I didn't add any heavy, bulky PCI cards, so I just left out the stut.
The 120mm Nexus Quiet Case Fanis mounted on the bottom of the tower, helping to convect hot air up from the bottom out through the top rear powersupply duct. It gets in the way of many connectors on the motherboard (two USB headers, two 1394 headers, and those enormously annoying pins to the front casing led's and switches). The solution is just remove the fan until everything else is installed, then put it on last.
Being able to easily take off both side walls makes organizing the final wire harness easier. After I confirmed the PC worked, I cable-tied the hideous tangle into a modestly restrained tangle.
Not much needs done to the MSI K8N Neo2 platinum motherboard. The ATX-format case and the ATX-format motherboard matched fine. I do complain that the little tin plate that covers the plugs hanging off the back of the motherboard (keyboard, mouse, usb, speakers, firewire) is enormously cheap and flimsy. I could have made something just as good with tin snips and a coke can. Later I discovered I could buy aftermarket plates that would have been a lot sturdier, but there's no way I'm going to undo everything just to replace it.
I ended up getting an AMD 64 4000+. I tried to buy the top-end AMD 64 FX55 but Cybermind were out of stock, as were all their alternatives. It's a moot chip now that the AMD FX 57 comes out after Chinese New Year. The 4000+ is essentially an AMD 64 FX 53 w/o the ability to easily overclock. It runs at 2.4GHz with a 1MB L2 cache. I bought the 'box' edition. It includes a fan/heatsink and a three year warranty. I don't want the fan, but the chip by itself (no fan/heatsink) only comes with a one year warranty. I wanted a warranty that lasted as long as my target lifespan of the Kamaz.
I chose the Nexus AOP-6400 cooler combination heatsink/fan for AMD 64 CPUs. It was another good recommendation by endpcnoise.com. I didn't need to do any modification to the backplate of the motherboard. The heatsink didn't intrude in any other components' airspace. I wound up using generic silicon thermal paste. I had hoped to find the highly regarded Arctic Silver, but didn't look hard enough.
The Nexus 4090 power supply was too wimpy, as were the other ones recommended by endpcnoise. Instead I bought a Zalman 400w psu. Nothing tricky about the installation. Hopefully it draws as much air out of the case as the Nexus fan does. It varies fan speed as a function of temperature.
I bought the bulk of the products at Cybermind. I was dismayed to find they didn't have 1GB dimms in stock. I wanted to buy 2x1GB so that I could add an additional 2x1GB to the remainingi two sockets later. They recommended I go to MemoryWorld. It's one of the more professional-lookign stores in Sim Lim. The concern I had was their memory brand, 'Transcend', I couldn't recall being on the lists of known good memory for this finicky motherboard. I was hoping to find Crucial or Kingston. The guy assured me that they were good memories and that I could return them if they didn't work anyway. The motherboard came with a component test report. It listed 512MB transcend dimms, which was a good start. They listed very few 1GB units and Transcend was not on that short list. I figured/hoped that the list was made early, before 1GB dimms were common and that if Transcend could make a 512MB dimm, then the 1GB should work just as well. For what it's worth, the salesman told me the chips were manufactured by Samsung. As 31die pointed out though, what matters as much is the certification thresholds the manufacturer uses to declare the capability of the chip. In any case, the chips worked fine and were no problem.
I wanted to get the top recommended Seagate MaXLineIII drives but they didn't have them in stock. The $/mb sweetspot among the main harddrive makers is 200GB. I ended up getting a 300GB seagate instead because the 200GB models didn't have NCQ (Native Command Queueing). [Ooops, turns out NCQ is not supported by my HD drive anyway]Futhermore I didn't want to be too stingy on this drive because I don't want to add any more drives to this box and turn it into a noisy heat machine. I have never used a SATA drive before and no instructions came with it. By either good guess or dumb luck I managed to connect the power correctly. These drives have two types of power points, a SATA connector and a traditional 4 pin connector. If you connect both power points you'll destroy the drive. I only connected at the SATA connection.
(singapore dollars per gigabyte)
For floppy disk (necessary to load the SATA raid drivers during installation) I bought the Sony model (two dollars more and a weird silver color) because it's a Sony. I figured that reduced some risk. I was annoyed, however, that the floppy drive's plug was not 'keyed' -- you can connect the IDE cable upside down. 31die confirmed my guess that the little triangle/arrow mark on the plug should be matched with the red-striped side of the cable. Another disaster averted.
I had the intention to buy a Leadtek Geforce 6600gt-based graphics card. Cybermind didn't carry them. The sales guy pushed me to getting a Gainward 6600gt-based AGP card. He said they were better than the Leadteks anyway. I was a bit apprehensive about this choice, but I decided to trust them. It installed trivially in the AGP slot. It's not a big card. The only assembly mistake I made the first night was forgetting the plug in the secondary power to the video card. I recognized this mistake the next morning. At any rate, these cards don't fry if you underpower them -- they either complain at the BIOS level and don't let you boot, or they run at a crippled speed and complain at the Windows level.
I used my old Microsoft 'Basic Optical Mouse' (usb) and a new USB/PS2 Microsoft "Digital Media Pro" keyboard (tons and tons of extra buttons for launching applications and commands).
Now everything assembled, it was time to power up.
The procedure is a bit trickier than normal, as the two SATA drives need to be recognized as a RAID array. To achieve this you first tell the BIOS to enable the SATA Raid on the appropriate channels. Then when you install windows you provide the nVidia raid drivers. It took me to long to figure out how to enable the SATA Raid inside BIOS. The instruction manual didn't give literally exact instructions on how to do this and the BIOS interface is hardly intuitive. So I sat there for 20 minutes pulling my hair out "why is the option for enabling the SATA Raids grayed out!?!?!?!?!?" Finally I realized that if I enabled the presently-disabled option at the top "enable IDE Raid" it allowed me to enable the SATA Raid options I needed.
The manual told me to then reboot and go into the nVidia Raid configuration menu during the boot up, by hitting 'F10'. It absolutely wouldn't go into the configuration. I wasted ten panicked minutes trying until I decided to yank the keyboard out of the ps2 slot and use the USB slot instead. I had noticed that in the BIOS itself it apparently had support for USB mice and keyboards. It worked! (note: in retrospect, I may also have toggled this fancy keyboards equivalent of a 'F'-key num lock) Once in the nVidia raid setup I told it to treat the two drives like one big mirrored drive. Nothing fancy like combining striped and mirrored partitions, just reliability.
Installing Windows was quite turnkey. I fed it the special nVidia Raid drivers floppy disk. The only questionable choice I made was telling windows to format the partition regularly, not a 'quick' ntfs format. So I had to sit there for an hour or so while it formatted everything. I guess now I can have confidence that there are not secretly-bad sectors lurking in the filesystem, adding one point to the reliability/stability score.
Now that Windows was installed I was figuring that loading and updating some of the drivers would eliminate some of the strange screen effects I was seeing. I was having streaks of bad pixels shooting horizontally for a few centimeters across the screen. However, even after loading all the drivers the problem persisted. I tried different resolution settings. Only in lowest resolution would the screen be free of these streaks. Any higher resolution was worse. At some resolution settings, the monitor (Sharp LL-T2020-b) gave up and complained "OUT OF TIMING V:37hz and H:38hz". Reseating the board, cables, power did nothing to help. I started getting scared when I realized, "this problem was occuring even before I installed windows -- thus it's either a card, motherboard, or bios problem."
I called the only Gainward office somewhere in the Bay area. A Taiwanese guy answered. They were obviously totally not setup for technical support there. You would have thought that I had called direct to their engineering room or perhaps pantry. He told me that they don't even sell this card in the US and I needed to call Taiwan. Since it was 0200 in asia, this was not viable. Instead I installed the old ATI card from Unimog. It instantly snapped into full 1600x1200 mode and was happy as Larry. This was a relief in that it indicated the problem wasn't too serious (broken motherboard, broken monitor, etc). I called Cybermind the next morning, hoping that they'd tell me what mistake I was making. His single lame suggestion didn't work so he told me to return the board. Before I went in, I researched and decided I'd buy an MSI geforce 6660gt. These boards are regarded well also and I figured it maximized compatibility... nVidia chipsets on both VGA and Mobo and both boards designed by MSI.
You can understnad my dismay when the exact same problem appeared. I felt like vomiting.
I couldn't find a solution online. The Cybermind people said bring the system down and their tech support guys would sort it out. My guess was that I had some subtle driver or configuration problem. When I got to Cybermind, I was dismayed by the tech support 'desk' in the back of the store. It looked much more like the workshop of the slightly-deranged man who has four thousand old lawn mowers in a big barn. Politely, the help had 'dull eyes'. I had hoped they'd do some clever thigns with Windows to diagnose the problem. Nope. They plugged my pc into a crappy old CRT monitor, popped it into 1600x1200 mode, and when it worked, pointed at my Sharp monitor and said, "must be a monitor problem." I had a good alternative to going apeshit when they tried to shift blame -- I produced the ancient ATI Radeon card that does work. That trapped them into admitting it was a different problem. We tried another MSI 6600gt card. Of course the same problem. It was plainly something with the chipset. A leadktek 6800gt also didn't work (same problem). Ok, so what the hell to do? Try a radeon. We plugged in a Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro Atlantis board. Worked perfectly. Apparently the 9800 series is inferior to the 6600, but the next step up in the radeon line is double the price. There is no point for me to buy a 800$SGD VGA card. Not just a waste of money, I don't want a loud howling fan in my machine. Since this thing seemed to work, I accepted it.
I was highly annoyed with the Cybermind store, though. The Sapphire card was sixty-odd dollars cheaper than the MSI Geforce. I should have expected to be given only 'store credit' for the excess, but what really set me off was that the credit was only good for seven days! Outrageous. Doubly so since next week is Chinese New Year, so half the week the place will be closed and the other half it will be a zoo. I got them to extend the credit for a longer duration, but I was in a fit at that point. The money is essentiall lost anyway. I have no more big ticket items to spend on (well, I guess the StorageBrick project, but I don't know what parts that will need) and I despise forcing myself to spend 'gift certificates' on little trinkety rubbish. This is a store that sells components, not small items. What am I going to buy, six bottles of screen cleaner?
Anyway, now the PC is working and I have the long slog of updating drivers, installing software, and fine-tuning the thing.
"Yes," the answer is it's damn quiet. Quiet enough that my room airconditioner is now a contender for most annoying room noise. As far as the 'pareto' noise source in the PC it must be the VGA card fan. It's really only audible when the side panels are off -- its pitch is a fairly annoying high frequency. I also noticed an intermittent annoying buzzing/za-za-za sound emanating from the powersupply, but that went away after a while. At any rate, it's a dramatic and satisfactory improvement from the Unimog. I don't think any further sound enhancements are necessary.
Heat? I installed the MSI 'CoreCenter' application. It's designed for overclocking the CPU, something I don't need to do, but it does provide some other telemetry: CPU speed, CPU Temp, System Temp, CPU Fan Speed, and NB Fan Speed.
The diode-best CPU temp sensor has ranged between 40c and 65c+. I have read mixed reviews about its accuracy (tends to read low?), but apparently AMDs run pretty hot, so none of these numbers are a big deal I think. Average speed seems to be around 45c. System temperature is monitored from I-don't-know-where. It's average 34c, so that should be fine. The CPU fan speed always reads zero because the Nexus fan doesn't report its rpm like the stock AMD fan does. The NorthBridge (NB) fan seems to always run at 5113rpm.
I turned on Cool'N'Quiet settings (needs to be enabled both in Bios and in the 'CoreCenter' windows application). The CPU seems to run at 1000mhz most of the time. A copy of "Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow" came with the video card, so I played it for a while. (hint: BORING) The machine worked smoothly. Unfortunately I couldn't monitor CoreCenter while I was playing and by the time I exit the game it usually has slowed down the CPU, although it's still comparatively hot. Right now the PC is doing absolutely nothing and it's operating at 1004mHz, 40c CPU and 33c System.
add:
X zalman power supply
X quietness
( ) price listing
( )
January 30, 2005
Case and cooling
Going Simple
I'm going to submit another stipulation, "go with the silencing/cooling systems suggested by endpcnoise.com". I want a cool, silent pc setup, and they specialize in designing those systems. I'll follow their advice.
The reason this stipulation is possible is that I was very lucky to find a Singapore distributor for Nexus, which endpcnoise recommends. The store is Advance PC #05-43 Sim Lim Square +65 6338-3717 (They recently moved downstairs from #06-26).
I think I'll just incorporate the entire nexus line of products:
- Breeze Case $185SGD
- NX 4090 400w Power Supply $200SGD (need to check that this PSU is compatible with the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum)
- AOP 6400 CPU Fan/Heatsink $85SGD
- Disk Twin Hard Drive Dampers $35SGD per set
This solution overlooks the stock northbridge cooling fan on the motherboard. However, since there is no tidy solution, I'll wait till the system is built to identify the remaining worst offender.
oops, this thread implies that the nexus 4090 isn't strong enough for the Neo2, in fact I found several messages saying the Nexus couldn't produce enough. I found this recommendation:
Well, the 4090 doesn't provide enough juice: +3.3v 28a, +5v 28a, +12v 16a according to these specifications, so it should be no suprise ther are problems. Ok, find something else.
EndPcNoise has some other suggestions:
Silent Server 550 Watt Quiet PSU Fail: +3.3 27a +5 29a +12 18a
Fortron Blue Storm 500 Watt Quiet Power Supply Fail: +3.3 30a +5 28a +12 15a
QUIET POWER Zalman Power Supply 400 Watt B Pass: +3.3 28a +5 40a +12 18a
So I guess the revised choice is the Zalman 400w. I'm pretty sure this will be available in Singapore -- see a lot of Zalman heat sinks and fans and things already.
CPU
Choosing an AMD CPU 64 takes three parameters: availability, price, and performance. Browsing through price flyers I collected last week, it was pretty obvious that AMD 3500+ is approximately the fastest cpu commonly available. 3800+ are occasionally listed. 64FX are only listed under the "ask" or "N.A." descriptions. Ok, so it's a question of a 3500+ or a 3800+.
Xbitlabs compared the 3500+ and 3800+
- In photoshop the 3800 is 8% faster than 3500
- In the Winstone 'multimedia creation' benchmarks, the 3800 is 7% faster than the 3500
- In the Winstone 'office' benchmarks, the 3800 is 2% faster than the 3500
Ok, so that max improvement is something like 8%? Say I'm off by a factor of two, and actually I'd enjoy a 16% performance advantage with the 3800+, how does it look economically?
Here is one set of price points:
- AMD 64 3500+: $509SGD
- AMD 64 3800+: $1190SGD
Ok, so I pay 134% extra for only a (optimistic) 16% performance advantage? Fuck. That.
So I guess I'll be going with the 3500+
Background reviews:
Comparison table of several top-of-line CPUs
Techreport compares (Socket 939) 3500+ and (Socket 754) 3400+