JD™ Posted December 12, 2014 Report Share Posted December 12, 2014 Mine is a Frankenstein of everything I had lying about, mainly old Dell PCs with their innards taken out and packaged into a butchered cupboard. I was reading about the old corkboard servers that Google made in the early days and decided to have a play. It's been interesting to build something that works. It's not powerful, it's not hi tech, and I don't know most of what I did, but it gives me a testing platform for a ridiculous idea I've got. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forteh Posted December 12, 2014 Report Share Posted December 12, 2014 (edited) Motherboards screwed to the wall make the best computers! edit: it is a good bit neater than that now though, the gtx260 has been replaced by the much shorter gtx660 which only needs one power lead, the optical drive had been removed altogether and the hard disks relocated to the right hand wall and tucked away behind the wooden upright. edit2: yes I called my machine Frankenstein Edited December 12, 2014 by forteh Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MartMini Posted December 12, 2014 Report Share Posted December 12, 2014 get a picture up JD! if its as Frankenstein as it sounds, itll be a laugh! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JD™ Posted December 12, 2014 Report Share Posted December 12, 2014 I shall try to remember to get a picture up on Monday when I'm back in the office, if it hasn't burned the place down over the weekend! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muel Posted December 14, 2014 Author Report Share Posted December 14, 2014 Get her on a command line only interface, see how long the love lasts... I've been spending my day sorting out a cluster, and my brain is itchy.Given time! First thing I did was remove the software center so she has to install everything from the CLI. Soon the home server will be CLI only so she'll have to learn the basics if she wants to store her music and telly on it. Mine is a Frankenstein of everything I had lying about, mainly old Dell PCs with their innards taken out and packaged into a butchered cupboard. I was reading about the old corkboard servers that Google made in the early days and decided to have a play.It's been interesting to build something that works. It's not powerful, it's not hi tech, and I don't know most of what I did, but it gives me a testing platform for a ridiculous idea I've got.You have an actual cluster? That's pretty rad. Post pics! I need to sort out my rack soon so I'll get some pics up then. It's all a bit sqashed in and messy, thinking about adding a Raspberry Pi tray to hold a bunch of Pis for doing something cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HippY Posted December 14, 2014 Report Share Posted December 14, 2014 (edited) Internet is a weird place. he is going to WC 2 of them btw Edited December 14, 2014 by HippY Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muel Posted December 14, 2014 Author Report Share Posted December 14, 2014 Best thing to do with a titan. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bike_dummie Posted December 17, 2014 Report Share Posted December 17, 2014 Any tips on putting a pc together? Never put anything like this together and really don't wanna screw it up! but hey how hard can it be Also a good 'how to' guide would be cool if somebody's got one? Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forteh Posted December 17, 2014 Report Share Posted December 17, 2014 It's all pretty straight forward, follow some basic guidelines and stuff should work Are you speccing the components or are you buying a kit bundle? Earth yourself - computer parts can be very sensitive to static discharge so take off the acrylic tracksuit before you start, avoid touching contact pins and you should be good. 99% of modern components will only go together one way, they will be obviously keyed so if it isn't going in easily then it's probably wrong - note that when dealing with a brand new motherboard the ram and pcie slots can sometimes be a little stiff. Plan your cable routes to be as neat and tidy as possible, cables tucked out the way don't impede on airflow and hence cooling; also makes cleaning dust out a lot easier. Read the included manuals/quick start guides, they will typically have sufficient information to get you through - don't expect an idiots guide though. A little common sense is required When fitting the cpu cooler, always best to get some decent thermal grease and learn how to apply it. Too little and it will run too hot, too much and it will run too hot and make a mess everywhere! Windows7 setup is a doddle, put disk in drive, set it to boot off the dvd drive and let it start up. You will need to grab drivers once it's all installed, ignore the disks that come with the hardware (invariably they will be well out of date), go to the component manufacturers website and grab the latest versions. Make sure you have internet access on another device so you can google/troubleshoot problems Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weirdoku Posted December 17, 2014 Report Share Posted December 17, 2014 I'd say grab the drivers first using your old computer or another one before putting it all together. Put it all on a USB drive ready to use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muel Posted December 18, 2014 Author Report Share Posted December 18, 2014 Is this a one off build of do you think you'll become a proper hardware nerd?If the latter, I'd blag a load of free, broken computers from somewhere and just start tinkering. I learned more doing that than reading any guide. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bike_dummie Posted December 18, 2014 Report Share Posted December 18, 2014 It's all pretty straight forward, follow some basic guidelines and stuff should work Are you speccing the components or are you buying a kit bundle? Earth yourself - computer parts can be very sensitive to static discharge so take off the acrylic tracksuit before you start, avoid touching contact pins and you should be good. 99% of modern components will only go together one way, they will be obviously keyed so if it isn't going in easily then it's probably wrong - note that when dealing with a brand new motherboard the ram and pcie slots can sometimes be a little stiff. Plan your cable routes to be as neat and tidy as possible, cables tucked out the way don't impede on airflow and hence cooling; also makes cleaning dust out a lot easier. Read the included manuals/quick start guides, they will typically have sufficient information to get you through - don't expect an idiots guide though. A little common sense is required When fitting the cpu cooler, always best to get some decent thermal grease and learn how to apply it. Too little and it will run too hot, too much and it will run too hot and make a mess everywhere! Windows7 setup is a doddle, put disk in drive, set it to boot off the dvd drive and let it start up. You will need to grab drivers once it's all installed, ignore the disks that come with the hardware (invariably they will be well out of date), go to the component manufacturers website and grab the latest versions. Make sure you have internet access on another device so you can google/troubleshoot problems I'd say grab the drivers first using your old computer or another one before putting it all together. Put it all on a USB drive ready to use. Thanks for the advice guys, gonna sound silly but what are the drivers? What are they for too? Is an esd wrist strap enough or should i get a mat aswell? Is this a one off build of do you think you'll become a proper hardware nerd? If the latter, I'd blag a load of free, broken computers from somewhere and just start tinkering. I learned more doing that than reading any guide. More of a one off build but would be adding items such as graphics cards, HDD as and when i need them. I have no way of getting any old components either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forteh Posted December 18, 2014 Report Share Posted December 18, 2014 (edited) Drivers are the bits of software that allow windows to talk to the hardware properly, it used to be that a fresh install of windows would be absolutely dead in the water with no hardware working correctly until you loaded the drivers off a cd - no usb drivers, no network drivers so you couldn't even go on the net to download them. This has all changed and windows7 will contain enough to get you connected to the net and most functions of the machine working, you're then free to go download drivers (or predownload them to a usb stick as sav suggested). Typically you will need drivers for the following: - CPU/motherboard chipset - Grab them from the website of the motherboard manufacturer. USB host controller - Grab them from the website of the motherboard manufacturer, may well be bundled in with the chipset drivers. GPU - Grab them from the website of the gpu manufacturer (nvidia or amd typically or intel if using an on-die gpu). Network - Grab them from the website of the motherboard manufacturer. Soundcard - Grab them from the website of the motherboard manufacturer if using onboard, if you have a seperate soundcard get them from the manufacturers site. In my experience it is best to install them in that order with a reboot between each install, not 100% necessary but it eliminates the potential for corrupted driver setups. Whilst the default drivers that are bundled in with windows7 will work, they will likely be out of date/unoptimised and it won't be working correctly. To check on hardware driver issues go to system from the control panel and then device manager - any errors should be flagged with a yellow warning symbol. To be honest as long as you are careful you should be ok with static, an esd strap will be fine though if you've already got one - I've never bothered myself and never suffered a loss from static. Old computers are dead easy to come across, I've just thrown 5 away from work Edited December 18, 2014 by forteh Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bike_dummie Posted December 18, 2014 Report Share Posted December 18, 2014 Drivers are the bits of software that allow windows to talk to the hardware properly, it used to be that a fresh install of windows would be absolutely dead in the water with no hardware working correctly until you loaded the drivers off a cd - no usb drivers, no network drivers so you couldn't even go on the net to download them. This has all changed and windows7 will contain enough to get you connected to the net and most functions of the machine working, you're then free to go download drivers (or predownload them to a usb stick as sav suggested). Typically you will need drivers for the following: - CPU/motherboard chipset - Grab them from the website of the motherboard manufacturer. USB host controller - Grab them from the website of the motherboard manufacturer, may well be bundled in with the chipset drivers. GPU - Grab them from the website of the gpu manufacturer (nvidia or amd typically or intel if using an on-die gpu). Network - Grab them from the website of the motherboard manufacturer. Soundcard - Grab them from the website of the motherboard manufacturer if using onboard, if you have a seperate soundcard get them from the manufacturers site. In my experience it is best to install them in that order with a reboot between each install, not 100% necessary but it eliminates the potential for corrupted driver setups. Whilst the default drivers that are bundled in with windows7 will work, they will likely be out of date/unoptimised and it won't be working correctly. To check on hardware driver issues go to system from the control panel and then device manager - any errors should be flagged with a yellow warning symbol. To be honest as long as you are careful you should be ok with static, an esd strap will be fine though if you've already got one - I've never bothered myself and never suffered a loss from static. Old computers are dead easy to come across, I've just thrown 5 away from work Thank you, I think i will download them onto a stick today to save the hassle of finding them tomorrow I have an esd strap already from work so no harm in using it but wont bother buying a mat I will take a wonder and see if i can find one then, would be good to practice on an old pc before i assemble mine. Thanks for putting up with all my dumb questions this pc stuff is still very new to me... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forteh Posted December 18, 2014 Report Share Posted December 18, 2014 (edited) That's fine, it's all very easy these days but everyone has to learn somewhere My first pc software rebuild was a crappy machine I bought in 2nd year of uni ('98) - amd k6 300mhz, 32mb ram 200mb hard disk iirc, had windows 95. Wanted to play colin mcrae rally and the onboard vga adaptor was barely capable of playing minesweeper so badgered my housemate to drive me 25miles to the nearest pcworld to buy a gpu. Someone had dropped a bollock when labelling the boxes and I picked up a riva tnt 128 card (Diamond Viper 550) - top of the range graphics card with 16mb vram costing 150 quid, it had been labelled as a a bog standard riva and got it for 85 quid Got home all eager, took the case side off, put the gpu in and hey presto windows95 doesn't support it My housemate proceded to inform me that I would need to upgrade to windows98 and showed me how to format c:\ from dos, I had not got a clue what I was doing and basically wiped my brand new computer I had blown a large portion of my student loan on! Having drunk a couple of bottles of wine by this point he was too pissed to bother to help me and I had to beg my other housemates win98 install disk. Installed win98 no major problems, managed to use the driver disks packaged for the motherboard, however the drivers bundled with the gpu just would not work and didn't recognise the installed card Badgered pissed up housemate to borrow his computer (as he was the only person with a dialup modem) and went searching on altavista for the nvidia drivers. Found the required package (detonator driver package iirc - the start of the unified gpu driver packages that would cover the whole range of available cards) and started the 5mb download. Took about 30 minutes to download (god bless you 56k!) and then realised I had no way of transferring 5mb from his computer to mine so had to then acquire a zip drive (think 100mb floppy disk) to copy it across. After several hours f**king about with it I eventually got the gpu working! I played colin mcrae (which was looking beyond beautiful at the time with super fluid fps) all through the night and missed the next days lectures - it was well worth it though Edited December 18, 2014 by forteh 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forteh Posted December 19, 2014 Report Share Posted December 19, 2014 My psu fan has gotten noisy (it's 7+ years old) to point that it's a constant drone Trawling through the ocuk christmas sale and found some 140mm enermax silent fans with auto speed control for a whopping 2.50 each so bought a pair with the intention of using one as an inlet fan (when I eventually put a side/case on my computer) and using the other to cool the psu. Ordered wednesday afternoon, marked as dispatched within 20 minutes with free shipping and arrived thursday morning The original psu fan was 120mm, I figured I would try to shoehorn the 140mm in there or mount it externally and juat have it pushing air into the psu. Took the case off, offered up the new fan and got about 4mm space on each side, it's pretty snug to say the least! I needed to cut a couple of small sections off the fan frame with a hacksaw to get it to sit around a couple of the components (a coil and some transistors) but it sits in there perfectly, don't even need to screw it down it's that well fitting! The fan comes with an attached thermocouple for automatic pwm speed control which is a nice touch (unfortunately I can't find any fan curves so not sure what speed/temperature it will be running at), I slipped this between a couple of fins on the heatsink that the fan sits against and secured with a dab of cyanoacrylate, the fan should run full speed due to the heatsink temperature. Cut the 2 pin plug off the original fan and soldered it onto the new fan having removed the 3 pin plug. Reassembled the unit, put it back in the machine and fired it up - completely silent. The only noise I can hear is the 1tb sshd initialising (it's a very, very quite drive) but because windows is on the ssd most of the drive activity is silent. The cpu and gpu fans are silent on idle so all together a good result considering the humming it was making! Of course the cpu fan is comparatively noisy when it spins up under load but as the case is currently open that's to be expected. I will make a hinged wooden door, line it with eggbox foam and use rare earth magnets to act as a door catch. The second 140mm fan will be mounted on the underside of the case as a cold air intake, as it's a good 10" off the floor it should be moderately dust free hopefully! If you need some new quiet case fans then get onto ocuk quickly, they have a fair few of these things and are a bargain for 2.50! RRP them seems to be 10-14 quid a piece Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weirdoku Posted December 19, 2014 Report Share Posted December 19, 2014 I can't hear my NF-F12s. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forteh Posted December 19, 2014 Report Share Posted December 19, 2014 Are they running at full speed with an open case? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weirdoku Posted December 19, 2014 Report Share Posted December 19, 2014 Nope. No need for full speed or open case haha. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forteh Posted December 19, 2014 Report Share Posted December 19, 2014 (edited) The thermalright is silent on idle, it's audible whilst playing arma3 but that's loading 1 core 80-90% and the rest 25-40% with cpu temps aroun 45-50°C. If I dropped the overclock down to 4ghz it probably wouldn't spin up at all apart from stress testing The case is only open because I haven't made a side for it yet Edited December 19, 2014 by forteh Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forteh Posted December 25, 2014 Report Share Posted December 25, 2014 Wife got me a raspberry pi Got to figure out what to do with it now! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weirdoku Posted December 25, 2014 Report Share Posted December 25, 2014 Mines sitting in a box since release. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forteh Posted December 25, 2014 Report Share Posted December 25, 2014 I shall probably make a media server out of it initially, dump all the movies onto an external hdd and stream to the tv, save the kids having to use the Xbox it have my pc running Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark W Posted January 1, 2015 Report Share Posted January 1, 2015 This is a bit "whats the best brake pads lol" but where would you guys recommend looking for good deals on laptops? At present it's easier for me to just carry my PC tower around with me and use whatever monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc. I can find when I'm off working places, but the PC I've got is a bit of a shitter and I've had issues recently having to open it to plug connections back in securely after it's been in my car. Aside from that I've got some international trips coming up soon and it'd be handy to get a head start on editing by having a complete setup I can just switch on wherever. If anyone's got suggestions for places to look that would be ideal, thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weirdoku Posted January 2, 2015 Report Share Posted January 2, 2015 Can a Mod ban the first person that recommends you to just buy a Macbook just cos it's a MacBook. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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