Well, it's finally finished. Unfortunately, the Acronis image I reinstalled after the graphics testing wasn't quite up to snuff. It altered the boot record and caused Vista 64 to go kaboom looking for the previous user profile. That's a new one on me. I finally just gave up and reinstalled the OS with the latest drivers, but no apps. Dual-boot is gone. I figure the winner will have their own tastes in software and they can register the programs as well when they install them.

Here are a couple of amateur pics I shot with the cover on and the lighted fans, etc. The blue light motif (which is washed out by my flash) was pretty much part of the case and it overwhelmed the UV with only two reactive cables on board so I ditched the UV. It's in the box so the winner can have at it as they see fit or use it in another system. I think it looks nice as is. In-house photo maven Robert Cardin will be doing an official photo on Monday that I'll post.







The gaming scores were quite nice. 187fps for Doom 3 anti-aliased at 1280*1024 and 258fps for Far Cry with the same settings. If you get fragged with this system, it's your own fault.

I'll be back with one more post to thank everyone involved.

Cheers, Jon

Well, for the first time in a week I don't feel like a train wreck. Sorry to the winner, but until I make it in to finish testing and packing up... Actually, we're still waiting on a boxed CPU and the USB version of the Xbox 360 controller before we can ship this puppy out. If all the paperwork is finished, that should be by mid next week. We also have to take a few pictures of the finished machine (just the box).

The games tests wouldn't load on the machine according to William Wang of the Test Center. Probably because of all the games already on there. I'll have to do a clean reinstall to get those done I suppose.

I guess this is all a bit anti-climactic and few people are reading anymore. After all, it's just not the same if you don't stand a chance of winning the thing. Collective sigh. Still, must finish the job and all that so I'll be logging till the end.

Cheers, Jon

Thumb Twiddling

I'm sitting here watching WorldBench run (not for long mind you) and I thought I'd relay some of the interesting discoveries from the memory configuration process.

First and foremost, when you buy a memory "kit", say a 4GB 1600MHz kit, that's all that's guaranteed to work in your system. You can't just buy another 4GB kit and know the 8GB will work under all conditions. It may, but there's no vendor guarantee. This is really only an issue on the bleeding edge, but it's worth noting that there are no 8GB kits. I'm going to have some long talks with memory vendors after the dust has cleared and I'll be able to offer more particulars. All I can say to you system builders out there is that both "Bleeding Edge" and "Beta" start with a "B".

Our preliminary test run at 3.66GHz with 4GB of 1600MHz memory garnered a 133 WorldBench score. That's about 3 points shy of the record I believe, but there's a lot of headroom here. Currently we're running the same config but with 8GB. Worldbench kept hanging with the memory voltage at only 1.8 and the northbridge at 1.3 so I bumped those up to 2.0 and 1.45 respectively. These are the highest "safe" settings in the EVGA 790i Ultra Sli's BIOS. nVidia has done a nice job in that regard. "Safe" voltages are in green, greater voltages that might be dicey are in red. Nice touch. The 790i SLI Ultra also has lots of pre-configured overclocking settings so it's very friendly in that regard.

Later...

I managed to finish one run of the 8GB and the score was 135. Unfortunately, the Firefox 2 and Firefox/Windows Media Encoder multitasking portions didn't complete during the 2nd and third passes so that's not official. The Test Center's William Wang will be back on Monday to continue official testing. I'm going to switch to the Crucial Ballistix 2000MHz and run it overnight and see what I find in the morning.

Even Later...

With 4GB, the Crucial 2000MHz wasn't stable in the least, freezing, and failing the Vista memory diagnostic. At 1600MHz it seems to be fine. We may not be able to go 200MHz with 4GB. Drat. Before I left, I cranked the QX9650 up to 4GHz (upped the voltage to 1.45) and left it running with the Crucial at 1600MHz, hopefully it will be fine and have completed three runs when I return. I didn't have to increase the CPU voltage at all for 3.66GHz.

While high WorldBench numbers are nice, speed was not the sole criteria for this machine. It was meant to be well-rounded PC equally equally suited to a number of different tasks. We'll probably break the record, but I expect a number of machines to eclipse the mark in the near future with the latest hardware.

Skulltrail IS Fast

I said it once before about the D5400XS that I had to forsake. It was FAST. It didn't show up in our tests, but subjectively I have never, ever seen Windows behave that snappily. I initially attributed that to the SSDs, but it was really the D5400XS. That said, there were reasons behind the decision to ditch it that readers have asked about. Subsequently, I found out that the eSATA not working was probably more the fault of the Adaptec 3405's BIOS, but that revelation wasn't enough to bring the Skulltrail back.

The reasons the D5400XS left the build were as follows.

1. Blocked slots. I couldn't use the E-MU 1616m sound card because the SLI graphics cards blocked the PCI slots.

2. Thermals. The 800MHz FB DDR2 memory ran very hot. The CPUs gave off a lot of heat, and cooling two CPUs was going to mean coolant tubing running all over the place. Also, the stock plumping wasn't designed with 2 CPUs in mind. Then there were the two 9800 GX2 which blow a lot a heat as well.

3. The long boot time was driving me crazy. 30-45 seconds before the LCD even lights up to show you the unit is working is too long for a consumer machine. Intel needs to dump the server boot diagnostics or at least provide an option to bypass them. Check the VGA first and at least let us know what's going on guys.

4. CPU availability. In the long run, I wasn't sure that Intel would continue to provide unlocked LGA771 CPUs. At least in a timely fashion. They may, but they're very expensive and I know they'll continue to provide enthusiast LGA775 CPUs for as long as the socket is sold.

In the end, I made a judgment call and decided that the majority of users would be happier with something a bit more mainstream that boots faster and that they'll be able to drop a new processor into. And the sound card... I hope the winner is musical.

By the way, thanks again to Daniel Snyder and the D5400XS team for the help they provided. Maybe next time.

Cheers, Jon

They should be announcing the winner tomorrow, but I'll be winging my way to Oklahoma City on a brief trip and will miss it. The Dream PC is in the trusty hands of the test center's Thomas Luong who's putting it through its paces. Acronis True Image 11 and Disk Director 10 showed up and have been added to the software stack. Thanks to Acronis's Stephen Lawton for that.

I couldn't get hold of the Icemat Siberia headphones so I opted for the Creative Fatal1tys instead. Hope you're all not too disappointed. I'll be packing up stuff this weekend, but we may also run some more tests and do an extensive burn in so the main system won't be in the box till next week. I still have to drain the coolant and tidy things up. Hope the winner doesn't get too antsy.

Cheers, Jon

Just moved Flight Sim to Vista 64 and now there are no BSoDs. B4 you start thinking that you simply must switch to Vista for any of the games I'm having problems with, remember that nVidia is prioritizing 9800 GX2driver development for DX10 and Vista (hence quad SLI in Vista and not XP). I didn't have any problems with either OS with the older nVidia 7800GTs installed.

By the way, to create that wide-screen, multi-display view for Flight Sim.

1. Start flying.
2. Right-click and de-select Hide Menu.
3. Select Virtual Cockpit from the Views\New View\Cockpit menu.
4. Drag the new window to the right or left monitor and resize it (you may have to select Undock View from the Views menu).
5. Use the keypad to adjust the secondary view to the right or left, up or down.
6. Repeat the process for the third monitor.

Electronic Arts makes quality games, however, their annoying habit of forcing you to have the DVD in the drive to play stinks. If you leave it there, it wastes time during the BIOS boot as well as the Windows boot. If you don't, then you must track it down and insert it every time you want to play the game. Then there are the advertisements by Intel and nVidia within the actual game intro. Sheesh.

Also moved Crysis over to Vista to take advantage of the quad SLI (only dual in XP) and am currently moving partitions around to make more space for Vista 64. I flirted with removing XP all together, but then I thought that it would be a pain for whoever wins to reinstall it if they prefer it and the driver thing should be resolved fairly soon. I still use XP, by the way...

Hopefully, the Corsair Ballistix will be here today which will mean WorldBench time.

By the way. Because the eSATA on the D5400XS wouldn't work with the Adpatec 3405 on board, I got it in my head to use the Iomega UltraMax Pro only via USB. It finally occurred to me to put it back on the eSATA bus with the EVGA 790i Ultra SLI and now no USB boot problem. If you can't lick 'em, switch the bus.

L8r.

Jon

Okay, I've got to get on my soapbox at least once during this interminable build.

Major, major kudos to CRU Dataport--the purveyor of the 4-port SaS external box--for using corn starch peanuts as their packing material. Living in a sometimes windy city, I know how many of these little peanut beggars wind up in the street and everywhere else. I've actually seen them in national parks in supposedly remote areas and wasted some time I wanted to spend enjoying the sights cleaning them up.

You'll never see the corn starch variety for long, however, as they will dissolve in the rain in a relatively short period of time. Woohoo!

A couple of vendors have used paper. Just as good as it's easy to recycle.

Alright, enough of that. Back to the Dream PC. Here's that surround FSX cockpit I was talking about. Okay, so I didn't have the window on the right-hand monitor lined up quite right and I didn't have the monitors as close together as they could be or angled properly. I was just stoked to be there...



All the SaS drives are in the external box and the array is fine. Still can't get the Adaptec controllers to cohabitate though they work fine on my office test bed.

Cheers, Jon

My editors always remove my alliterations, but this is my blog darn it, and if I find them amusing I'll use them.

It seems that Windows hotfixes have saved the day. I can actually Flight Sim and play Battlefield 2142 in XP now, though the former BSoD's upon exit from the program. For the vast majority of tasks, the system is stable and usable--no mainstream applications such as Office or Adobe CS3 have any problem.

I've tweaked the Corsair 1600 DDR3 to actually run at 1600MHz (7-7-7-20-2) It JEDECs at 1333Mhz which I find a bit odd but it runs fine at the new settings, though an increase to 1.9 volts (from 1.5) was recommended by Corsair for stability. I'm currently running it unlinked from the FSB which is only 1333MHz on the QX9650. This is all pre-overclock and I may switch back to 4GB of 2000MHz before is all said and done.

Other than the continuing mild driver issues and waiting for the SaS enclosure, it's all about tweaking little things. I'm going to relinquish the system to the Test Center so they can WorldBench it overnight. I'll let you know how it goes.

Tomorrow I may move all the games to Vista as I was just informed that the nVidia XP driver don't support quad SLI (two cards with two GPUs apiece equals quad SLI). Maybe they mentioned that before. Kinda' leaves the rationale for XP on this machine out in the cold, but I'll leave it on as whoever wins this may prefer it (I still use it). Downloading the Crysis 1.2/1.21 patches as we speak.

Iomega's Web site says that USB drives greater than 500GB can cause boot problems with many computers. While this surprises me somewhat, it may mean that you'll have to leave the Iomega UltraMax Pro powered down at boot.

I have the 5445 controller from Adaptec for the external SaS box, but no SaS box yet. More on that later. Thanks to Adaptec's Cara Zuber for the help with the SaS controller issues. By the way, though it has 2MB of BIOS the 3405 is only trying to grab 34KB of memory. I'm figuring that if it were 32KB, they wouldn't be having this problem But that's just a guess based on the problems I've been having with a system that was originally worth $30,666. The last three digits being the issue.

Cheers, Jon