Show Us Your Rig [4]

essenbe said:

Lady Fitzgerald, Nice UPS. Leaves you plenty of head room to expand. That means your building is not over. That's good news. Congrats on the new build. Well done. But, if you're like me, you're happy about the new build, but sad that it's over. If you have the habit as bad as I do, there's nothing better than having the build done and hearing that first POST beep. But, when I hear that beep is when I start thinking about the next build. It's addictive. You did a great job and deserve congratulations...

Thanks, Steve. Don't worry, I still have plenty of work to do on this rig. This is a shot of the bad boy that will be delivered next week (it's the reason I haven't buttoned the case sides yet):



Of course, it will take two of these octopi to make it useful:



Those will have to be partially sleeved and the unsleeved portions blackened with a felt pen so the cables will match the rest of the cables (yes, I am anal!). The really fun part will be routing those cables to their destinations. The ones that are destined for HDDs I will be installing in the future will be twist tied to the SATA power connector the drive will get plugged into (being the anal old bi...broad I am, I straighten out and save all the little wire centered plastic ties that come with cables, etc.).

I'll also be adding one or two TV tuners (I'll start with one and add the second one if I find I need it). For now, I'm going to use the USB WiFi adapter from my old XP rig for now since it worked fine with my router (the computer is in my bedroom and the router is in the bathroom linen closet since I didn't have anywhere to put it in the bedroom and still be able to get to it). I may add a WiFi card in the future. A sound card is also a possibility depending on how the onboard audio works out.

I'm also seriously considering pulling out the two 2TB HDDs (a WD Black and a WD Green) before I add the twin octopi and putting the black in the top slot and replacing the Green with the 2TB Black I pulled out of my old XP machine (I'll have to reformat the drive once I verify I have it properly backed up before I put it in). The Blacks draw more current than the Greens but they are more reliable and don't cost that much more (especially since I'll only be buying them as I need them and can watch for sales). I crunched the numbers and, even running six Blacks, the voltage drop on the ladder SATA power cable will be only 0.03 volts, not enough to even write home about (there was a reason I fought with that #14 wire). I was going to number the data drive names running from bottom to top since the boot SSD is on the bottom of the case under the HDD stack. By flip flopping the HDD order, if I later determine I don't need the sixth data drive slot, I can use that space to house two 64GB SSDs running in RAID 0 for the boot drive and use the present 128GB SSD to cache the main data drive (I've left the proper SATA ports on the MOBO unassigned for that purpose).

essenbe said:

...@Zalith. Sounds like a very nice upgrade for you. Good job. I know you will be happy with the improved performance. Sounds like it will be a killer rig, but we demand a lot of pictures. You have to remember, a lot of us have the addiction real bad. So, when we aren't building, looking at pictures of others builds helps reduce the anxiety, just a little bit.. We love pictures. Can't wait to see more of Lady Fitzgreald's build and yours to hold off the beast a little. It sounds like you are going to have a pretty strong build. Well done...

The pictures are good for far more than anxiety reduction. I have learned a lot from pictures people have posted here and on other forums, both what to do and what not to do. They were also my inspiration to attempt a semblence of good cable management even though I don't have (nor want) a window in the case side and LED lighting inside the case.

essenbe said:

...Both of you need to get busy and change your system specs to the new and improved ones.

Once this thing is done, my focus will be on putting it to work (and occasionally adding a drive). I've already spent a fortune on this puppy and, being on a fixed income (as long as the morons in Washington don't try to cut my Social Security income), I won't be able to afford much more than occasional new drives every once in a while (thank God there is a limit to how many I can stuff in this case!).

I do not have a digital camera but if you know what a Haf 912 Case looks like that would be it. I have a 200mm fan in front for intake a 200 mm fan on top for exhaust.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

...I'm also seriously considering pulling out the two 2TB HDDs (a WD Black and a WD Green) before I add the twin octopi and putting the black in the top slot and replacing the Green with the 2TB Black I pulled out of my old XP machine (I'll have to reformat the drive once I verify I have it properly backed up before I put it in). The Blacks draw more current than the Greens but they are more reliable and don't cost that much more (especially since I'll only be buying them as I need them and can watch for sales). I crunched the numbers and, even running six Blacks, the voltage drop on the ladder SATA power cable will be only 0.03 volts, not enough to even write home about (there was a reason I fought with that #14 wire). I was going to number the data drive names running from bottom to top since the boot SSD is on the bottom of the case under the HDD stack. By flip flopping the HDD order, if I later determine I don't need the sixth data drive slot, I can use that space to house two 64GB SSDs running in RAID 0 for the boot drive and use the present 128GB SSD to cache the main data drive (I've left the proper SATA ports on the MOBO unassigned for that purpose)...

I started to watch a movie this afternoon and found it wasn't worthy of my full attention so I tried to get rid of the C: partition on the HDD I pulled out of my XP rig. I was able to get all but 9MB into the data partition, which shows up in Disk Management as Unallocated. It's annoying as an itch you can't reach but I'm not going to lose sleep over a lousy 9MB. Once I have copied the data I want to keep to DATA Drive 1, I'll reformat it. That will be faster than deleting folders and defragging.

I then moved Data Drive 1 to the top HDD slot and put the HDD from the XP machine (now Data Drive 2) in the second slot from the top, replacing the Green that was going to be that drive (I'll use it to backup a future drive). I'm going to wait until I get the OS installed on the boot drive before I install the SATA data connectors on the data drives. For now, a better movie is now on.

essenbe said:

Gary said:

I do not have a digital camera but if you know what a Haf 912 Case looks like that would be it. I have a 200mm fan in front for intake a 200 mm fan on top for exhaust.

Which one do you have, Gary?

The one on the right.

Thanks, It serves its purpose. It is like the bottom of the line of Haf Cases but I like it.