Workstation Pocket Rocket: Another Ratdude Project?

[ratdude747]

Re: Workstation Pocket Rocket: Another Ratdude Project?

Bought HDDs... Some 250Gb 7200.14's like I use in the file server... found 3 for <$24 shipped. If all 3 are good (no SMART errors or the like), the 3rd will go to said server as a hotspare (which it currently has 0 of, since two of the 16 drives I bought last year ended up being turds)

[ratdude747]

Re: Workstation Pocket Rocket: Another Ratdude Project?

Things have happened... posting from it now. Will post pics later.

[ratdude747]

Re: Workstation Pocket Rocket: Another Ratdude Project?

Ok, here's some quick pictures:

The replacement case came in... and it smells ... But what I'm after is there, so I got to cutting, drilling, grinding, and welding:



What was done there:

• Two standoff areas chopped off
• One standoff unscrewed and re-drilled and tapped (installed with blue locktite due there only being one turn of thead in the hole)
• Tray cut like before (using an angle grinder, not tin snips), and this time tack welded back into 1 piece.

With that, all MB holes have standoffs finally . The welds look like ass, but considering my crappy welder (HF 90A Flux Core turdball), I'm not too pissed at myself. Luckily, I had my measurements close enough, and I was able to install the tray into the old case:



After that, toss on the parts removed plus some parts that came in (HDD's and power supply), and we get:



The PSU is the 600W HP Envy (Delta) unit, but modified. The drive cables were close enough (just needed to cut off some extraneous plugs), but since it was made for a case with the PSU on the other side of the motherboard, the PCIe cables were too short and the ATX and 12V cables were too long. With the magic of cutting, splicing, and hiding things under reclaimed sleeving, that was fixed to what is shown. Not too shabby?

From here, I powered it up, setup the RAID0 array, and installed Windows 7 Ultimate... which brings me to the last post.


So, here's all that's missing yet:

• I/O shield- on a slow boat from china.
• Real DVD drive (the one shown is a testing drive)- in the mail, will do a separe post on modding the old stock ide drive's bezels to fit the new SATA Lightscrib burner
• GPU- not yet bought, but my new coworker apparently has a GTX 970 sitting... maybe we can strike up a deal. Main rig V6 already has one of those, and another would be overkill... but its a sleeper, so overkill isn't an issue

[Topcat]

Re: Workstation Pocket Rocket: Another Ratdude Project?

One glitch I see, since you raised the motherboard tray up a bit, the IO shield will no longer line up with the ports...

[ratdude747]

Re: Workstation Pocket Rocket: Another Ratdude Project?

One glitch I see, since you raised the motherboard tray up a bit, the IO shield will no longer line up with the ports...

Nope. The tray position is matched to the back panel; both are raised 2-3mm and still lined up with the original rivet holes. The part that contains the I/O shield and card brakets is a separate rivited stamping from the main case body: (pictures shown are from a prior post I never properly wrote up)



All that I swapped was the motherboard tray (out with the butchered piece); the rest of the first modified case stayed. Hence why I had to be careful with my measurements to make sure the welded tray would fit in the modified case body.

To make the inner rear panel shift, I bent out the bottom opening (where there was interference) and chopped off the upper 3mm of the inner rear panel to clear the bottom of the power supply:



Had it been all one rear stamping, this wouldn't have worked... luckily it was made from two stampings, and I could shift as such and redrill the rivet holes.

[Topcat]

Re: Workstation Pocket Rocket: Another Ratdude Project?

Good on ya. Couldn't see that in the pics.

[ratdude747]

Re: Workstation Pocket Rocket: Another Ratdude Project?

Sniped a GPU:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/202448029026

Ok, so I am putting a king kong GPU in it... It's an ASUS Strix GTX970 4GB.

More than I wanted to spend, but for $125... My coworker was probably going to offer me 150 for his EVGA 970... Same thing as what I paid for the Zotac 970 in Main rig V5/V6.

This one from the pictures I found is a true 2-slot card, so it should fit... my Zotac, not so much .

Good score?

Other than the HDD array speed, this will beat out all but my nicest system (Main RIg V6)... My wife might be getting an upgrade?

Edit- I ran the numbers through a PSU calculator to make sure it will still work... they said 540W, Recommended 590W. I have a 600W Delta (HP OEM) in it...

[Topcat]

Re: Workstation Pocket Rocket: Another Ratdude Project?

Not a bad GPU....my fastest GPU is a GTX580....

[ratdude747]

Re: Workstation Pocket Rocket: Another Ratdude Project?

Not a bad GPU....my fastest GPU is a GTX580....

I also saw a GTX 960 that would have gone for $81 shipped had somebody bid on it... it was my backup plan had I been outsniped on the GTX 970.

Also, if my coworker still wants to sell his GTX 970 (upgraded to a 1080ti)... oh boy. I could get myself into big trouble ... Or get you into big trouble .

Anyway... the DVD drive came in, and it turns out that the drive in Main Rig V4.1 actually is IDE, and all liteon drives that match the emachines bezel are IDE. This wasn't a show stopper though, because luckily, the IDE to SATA adapter likes this drive (or more likely, the old buner is dead).

Installed:



The only issue is that this drive was one my lite-on's with an eject jam issue... and swapping the belt from the old drive (which wasn't as glazed as the new drive's belt) didn't help. Anybody know a source for liteon eject belts?

Also, I discovered that the adapter (and all of these adapters ever made) have the SATA connector upside down relative to a normal SATA drive. Luckily, since this will always have an IDE drive in it, I was able to flip the SATA connector on the power supply strand being used for such drives:



Buy buy dead liteon SHW-160ps (Meh DVD burner), hello Liteon DH20A4H (kickass DVD Burner w/ lightscribe)


As for the new GPU, I checked, we have the full case length available:



Also, the side panel is vented which always helps:



Getting closer...

[ratdude747]

Re: Workstation Pocket Rocket: Another Ratdude Project?

Good news: something came in the mail today:



The **** who sold me the GPU sent me this... with a bare card inside . No bag or other padding. Too bad eBay feedback only has a rating for shipping cost, not shipping quality . This is up there with the LCD Topcat received with flattened coke boxes for padding.

Luckily, the card appeared to be intact, and time to fit it in the case:



There is a RAID card in there somewhere... . King Kong GPU it is!

Butt shot:



(yeah that's a OEM key there... I really don't care )

See the shifted back panel?

She fits... Whew.

Better yet, she runs... and benchmark time:



The nice thing about Maxwell/Pascal GPUs is that they from what I read are less dependent on the main CPU and thus aren't really bottlenecked by only having PCIe 1.1 speeds (Intel didn't get PCIe 2.0 until the Seaburg chipset, one release later). Citation (good reading):

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...-gpu-123&num=1

Yes, that's with a Pascal card (a bleeping 1080Ti!!!), but I recall reading somewhere that Kepler or Maxwell made a significant change in the card operation resulting in less CPU-dependence (and thus lower bandwidth needs on the PCIe connection). An AMD card wouldn't have done too well here... but this 970 seems to be just fine, if not otherwise overkill.

So, here's the bad news:

• The Card reader cannot do SDHC, nor will the spare. Both are two of the three different card reader versions emachines/gateway used in these cases. Both use Alcor AU9368 chips. There was a 3rd completely different reader used in this style case which I think supports SDHC (like the emachines system I used to own years ago), and I have one on order.
• The I/O shield still isn't here
• The system isn't breathing well... had to bump up the fan settings a bit to get CPU temps reliably under 80C (and that's with EIST enabled). I'll at a minimum probably swap the 90mm arctic cooling fan for something higher RPM (moves more air)... louder, yes, but I think a lot of it is a single of such isn't keeping the case adequately ventilated.

It's progress...

[Topcat]

Re: Workstation Pocket Rocket: Another Ratdude Project?

LOL...I'm amazed you remember that trashed monitor packing job!

Here's a little somethin' for ya.

[ratdude747]

Re: Workstation Pocket Rocket: Another Ratdude Project?

LOL...I'm amazed you remember that trashed monitor packing job!

Took a bit of digging to find it... but every time I get something badly packed, I think of that one. Too dumb to forget.

Here's a little somethin' for ya.

Thanks. For those playing at home, SM was so kind as to delete most BIOS's from the X5 series to the X7 series from the downloads page... probably some sort of site migration. Really old stuff (p4-P2) and newer stuff (X8-X11) is still there. No bios, no bueno. Now will I SLIC it... or just DAZ it... hmm...

[ratdude747]

Re: Workstation Pocket Rocket: Another Ratdude Project?

Card reader came in... no bueno. Same bullshit Alcor chip... and from my limited research a pin-compatible SDHC capable card reader chip doesn't exist. I must be remembering things. Dang it...

While visiting my parent's house yesterday I did find a component from the 1st Emachines build that I actually have a use for:



That cooler was off the stock cooler, which I swapped for a Freebie scythe Katana (One of my first KeriJane freebies from back then!) and moved this cooler to the case... it's rated for cooler use (speed/air flow wise), but that's what I need here... and it fits the bill. IIRC it's a dual ball bearing unit. Since the swap, my temps are a shade lower, and that's running the "quiet" fan profile... less noise and lower temps, win-win.

Other than the I/O shield and a proper place to use this (it's currently replacing the V4.1 Iriwndale monster), this build is done.

Now tell me... if you didn't see this thread, would you be fooled by this

[Topcat]

Re: Workstation Pocket Rocket: Another Ratdude Project?

Not finished till there's a butt shot with an IO shield.... That's like doing an engine swap and not putting the hood back on!

[ratdude747]

Re: Workstation Pocket Rocket: Another Ratdude Project?

Not finished till there's a butt shot with an IO shield.... That's like doing an engine swap and not putting the hood back on!

Well, It's not supposed to be here until 10/17... china shipping BS. I'm going to be in Canada for work the next two weeks...

[ratdude747]

Re: Workstation Pocket Rocket: Another Ratdude Project?

Well, It's not supposed to be here until 10/17... china shipping BS. I'm going to be in Canada for work the next two weeks...

Time has passed, and I'm back in the states.

Time to install an I/O shield... but first, some retaken pictures of the case modding:







Yeah, the welds are a joke, but it got the job done...

Installed the shield, everything back together:



Went to hook it in, and the I/O shield doesn't quite fit:



That section was made for 2 USB's on top of right-side-up LAN, not 2 opposed LANs. Too late to fix the opening above the upper LAN, but I was able to in-situ fix the misplaced divider:



Redone butt shot:



----

Other than not having a confirmed use for it (or whatever it replaces) and replacing a drive belt in the DVD drive, all is well here and this build is done. Then again, none of my builds are truly ever done, so who knows.

Good build?

[Topcat]

Re: Workstation Pocket Rocket: Another Ratdude Project?

Not bad at all! IO shield fit good all things considered.

[ratdude747]

Re: Workstation Pocket Rocket: Another Ratdude Project?

My wife uses this as her daily driver... and the other night, we were awoken at 2AM due to a smoke alarm in it's room. Quickly determined something inside had gone ...

I first tore down the PSU... Delta with stock caps. Nothing obviously awry, passed all testing. But when I pulled the cards, I saw something:



At first I thought I blew a cap on the board, but no, that's not from the board (it wiped off easy enough). Looking on the part of the GPU that sits over that soot spot, sure enough, there's some carnage:



(Note: This is an EVGA GTX970 of the power hungry 6 pin + 8 pin variety... for "technical" reasons I had to play musical 970's with my other systems and the ASUS strix ended up in another system (where it runs great, knock on wood).

Pulled the heatsinks... and well Jim, she's dead!





From what I can tell, one of those two caps shorted... or it's shorted now. Can't be bothered to mess with it due to the amount of carnage.

Surprisingly, the rest of the system still runs, to include the mobo. Supermicro for the win!

Since, despite it being an old Harpertown (Core 2!!!), it is a preferred system, so it is getting another GPU. But, in the ratdude spirit of going overkill, since I don't need native VGA support, I'm not putting another 970 in it... oh no. I found one of these for $180 after tax on eBay:

https://www.zotac.com/us/product/gra...tx-2070-blower

(Those not clicking links: It's a Zotac extra-long RTX 2070)

May be pushing the 600W PSU a hair... but whatever. The EVGA 970 (one of the less-efficient ones at that) probably hogged just as much. And due to the peculiar slot usage of the board, the GPU fits in under the HDD cage... perfect fit?

I was going to put in a $160 RTX 2060... but for the "minimal" marginal cost, why the heck not?

[Topcat]

Re: Workstation Pocket Rocket: Another Ratdude Project?

I thought the motherboard was trashed from the initial pics you sent to my phone....until I saw the GPU. That had to stink! I too vote in favor of the 2060

[ratdude747]

Re: Workstation Pocket Rocket: Another Ratdude Project?

I thought the motherboard was trashed from the initial pics you sent to my phone....until I saw the GPU. That had to stink! I too vote in favor of the 2060

It sure did...

But I'm putting a 2070 in it. Only $20 more!