I ragged a bit on the Gigabyte 3D Mercury case in my first post, calling it a near thing. Actually, the case isn't a near thing at all, it's the Skulltrail D5400 motherboard that's caused the most difficulty. Not that it isn't a wonderful product, it's just something new to the consumer market with special needs. A pampered rock star if you will.

First off, it's eATX, meaning large, with only relatively few cases on the market that will accommodate it. Next there's the fact that it's socket LGA771 meaning none of Intel's mainstream LGA775 processors fit it. There's no throwing two cheapos in this thing and upgrading later. Then there are those two darn EPS12V 8-pin sockets. If you've been reading, you'll already know that it was very difficult to find a power supply that offered two leads and I've yet to spot an adapter to split a single EPS12V connector into two. You might not want to do such a thing anyway, as a single 12-volt rail might not be up to the task (though I was perfectly willing to try it!).

The D5400XS I'm using at the moment is an alpha preproduction unit from Intel though I've been assured it's virtually identical to what will hit the retail channels. Even now that I've got everything in place, I'm still trying to figure out why it's so slow to boot. It takes forever to recognize the OCZ SSDs and I'm hoping there's not a compatibility issue. Oh, well... that's why they pay me the big bucks.

Caveat: The following is meant to be illustrative of the problems one can encounter when configuring and troubleshooting with new hardware and technologies. It is most emphatically NOT a rant against any particular company. I've encounter such issues with virtually every vendor in the industry at some point. Technology is programmed by humans who make mistakes. Perhaps not as many as I make, but...
I figured the slow drive recognition was a BIOS/SATA controller issue with the SSDs that might have been spotted and solved by now so I downloaded the 2/18/2008 BIOS update from the Intel site. Unfortunately, after burning the ISO file to CD, I booted and was greeted by a prompt saying "Missing parameter in config file". Go figure. What said parameter was and why it was missing, I'll probably never know. Suffice it to say that I was not pleased.

Tried the interminable boot again, and this time I got the proper boot prompt. If only I'd pressed the key within the required 15 seconds. One more interminable boot (The drive recognition sequence is what was taking forever--hanging at the two SSD drives. Things were very quick after this section) and then the updater hung yet again at the Linux -InitDisk. There were also messages about INT13 failures. I let it sit there for quite a while and worked on this blog entry, remembering that this is where the BIOS hangs. It was trying to find a partition on the SSDs ten minutes later when I finally decided to just pull the SSDs (which are eventually recognized) and try the reboot without them attached. Pretty darn quick this time and the BIOS flash transpired without incident. When this system actually kicks into gear, it's not playing games. Well, not yet anyway.

Alas, the BIOS flash didn't solve the problem so I'm going to have to quit till Monday when the OCZ and Intel folks are available for comment. Until then.

Cheers, Jon

February 25th, 2008
The Adventure Begins...
As a long-time contributing writer and tech editor for PC World, as well as someone who's got their head inside a PC case for at least a few hours every week, it's fortunately fallen upon me to oversee, test, and assemble PC World's Dream PC. I get a kick out of playing with the latest, greatest stuff so this is hardly what I'd call a tough gig--I'm having a ball.

That said, with a set of components chosen by not one, but a number of editors, there are bound to be some that won't play nicely with others. I'll be dropping by here every so often to give you a status report and a blow by blow of some of the issues I run across.
I can already tell you about some stuff. Numero uno--the Gigabyte 3D Mercury case has been a near thing. The paint job looks great and the liquid cooling is, well, kewl.

But I've had to temporarily remove the two back panel fans to squeeze in the extra large, EATX Intel Skulltrail D5400XS motherboard. It fits with only a millimeter or two to spare.
Also, because of the location of the liquid cooling tank and its fan, we've had to switch to a shorter power supply. The Ultra X3 we wanted to use, a marvelous unit with a modular cable system that lets you use only the cables and connections you need, was too long and has been replaced by a standard-sized 1000 watt OCZ ProXtream.

The OCZ hasn't shown up yet, so I started workbenching (assembling outside the case) the main components today using the Ultra X3. Alas, the Skulltrail with its dual LGA771 (no, not the more common LGA775) CPU sockets demands two of everything, including separate 8-pin, 12-volt power connections. While the Ultra X3 has two such outlets, the package only contained one cable so I was unable to fire anything up.

On the workbench I'll be using two Zalman CPS9500 AT copper coolers to keep the thing cool so I don't have to mess with the Mercury's plumbing. Installing those was a bit of a challenge, partly because the Zalman docs talked about force-fit clips, and my units shipped with screw down types. You must also screw together the front mounting bracket to a stress relief plate on the back of the motherboard which required handling the Skulltrail a bit more than I'd like--you never know when that stray bit of static electricity might rear its ugly head!

I used OCZ's Freeze thermal compound in lieu of the small tubes of paste Zalman provided. In my recent experiments, Freeze has resulted in CPUs running several degrees cooler than with my previous favorite--Arctic Silver. On the other hand, it's a bit gooier than most compounds and as a result, a bit messier.

Tip: you don't need more than a very small circle of any thermal compound. I've had to clean up PCs where it's been slathered on like icing on a cake and it can be a real mess.

Tip 2: You don't need to spread the compound around--place it in the center and the pressure of the cooler CPU plate against the CPU will spread it for you.
Well folks, that's it so far. Can't wait to fire this puppy up and start working with those dual 64GB solid state drives! Should be a lot of fun. I'll post some pics of the stuff on the workbench if I remember to drag my camera along tomorrow.

Cheers, Jon
P.S.

By the way, I'm required by contract (and conscience) to mention that Tiger Direct has provided or procured all the components in the Dream PC. They've done the heavy lifting in this area so thanks guys.