jLuger.de - Assembling and installing new computer

Home Blog Articles Legal Info About Me
I've got a new computer. It has a quad core CPU, 8GB RAM, is relatively quiet, and didn't cost a fortune. Sounds too good to be true? Well, it has no dedicated graphic card and I didn't by it off the shelf but instead assembled it on my own.
Unlike with the one before I didn't choose the components myself. The German magazine c't had two months before an article about custom PCs. One proposal was AMD based and the other one on Intel.

I had chosen the Intel one as the article stated that it should consume less energy and provide more CPU power for single threaded application. I've heard also that it should have good open source 3d drivers. A very important point as I had a lot of hassle with the onboard NVidia GPU chip on the old computer.

The proposed components:
I've modified the list a litle bit:
Issues on assembling the parts
I wanted to start with putting the HDD into the HDD Vibe-Fixer. I had already done this for two other HDD. So I knew that there are eight small silicon tubes. Two of them have cuts. You need to sort them out as they are needed later but you shouldn't do the assembling without them. Guess what happened after I've sorted out the six one without a cut. There were no tubes left. I've solved the issue with decouplers that came with the chassis but I'm not very pleased with them.

The Rasetsu CPU cooler uses a "Push Pin" technique to fix it to the mother board. They provide a nice picture that shows the thee steps of putting it to the start position, pressing it down, and being done. What the three pictures miss and is hidden far away in small text is the fact that you need to turn the pushed down pins. Without this last turning the cooler won't last at the motherboard.

The switches and LEDs at the front of the chassis need to be connected to the motherboard. The documentation is very clear about what two pins are for Power LED, On/Off, .... If you've read carefully you may noticed that I talk about two pins. One for plus and one for minus. The issue is that except for the Power LED there is not hint on the plug what side is for plus and what for minus. Although the parts in question are save for wrong polarity I hate to do trial and error when there is electricity involved. BTW, I deducted the direction of the plugs from the Power LED but I still think it is easy to mess it up.

Issues on getting it into operation
After the parts were assembled I had a complete computer. But in order to use it I needed to attach a monitor, keyboard, and a mice. The last two reminded me on the fact that Intel propagates the legacy free PC. Legacy free may sound cool and progressive but in this case it also means no PS/2 slots on the motherboard. And I very much dislike to abandon good working hardware that I'm pleased with. For the start I've taken a spare keyboard/mice but later I've bought a "USB - 2xPS/2" adapter.

While the missing PS/2 slots was just anoying the power suply caused me some real headache. I've put the computer into power socket one and it turned on immediately. Then I connected the computer to power socket two (near a monitor) and it didn't start. Neither on connecting the power cord nor after pressing the On/Off switch. After going back to power switch one it didn't start directly but the On/Off switch was working. So I'moved to power socket three (together with the monitor) and it turned on immediately after plugging in the power cord. There I could install ubuntu but wasn't pleased with the location of the PC. So I've tried power socket two again and this time the computer started immediately after plugging in the power cord. The issue solved as it always turned on after it got power.

Of course getting on on power wasn't very satisfacting and so I've did some research. There is the option "After Power Failure" in the BIOS. It has to be on "Stay Off". I've checked in it was in "Stay Off". But on the same screen are some more wake up options. I've changed them and ended up with this:
Now I have to press the On/Off switch in order boot the computer.

Configuration
I've intended to run the computer with Ubuntu 11.04, 64Bit version. On the old computer I've used ubuntu 10.10 32Bit. So the switch provided a great source for trouble. But before I dive into this first let me explain the basic layout of the installation.
I've got a 16G swap space after the installation routine continuously asked for one (better waste a little space now than later being sorry for not having it).
Then I've created two 100G OS partition. One for the OS, the other for a test copy of it. A test partition saved me a lot of trouble on my old computer when the proprietary NVidia wasn't compatible with the latest kernel while there was no open source driver capable to run my graphic chip with 1600x1050.
The rest got a data partition that is mounted under data in my home directory. Why not use it as home directory? The test copy of OS should not get access to this partition but still be fully functional. That won't be possible when this partition is the home directory.

The new system provided my first contact with Unity. At first I thought that I can use it as I start programs only via terminal or there are icons in the top panel. So moving the icons into a side panel should be an issue, or? Well, I also use some widgets in the top panel. E.g. CPU scaling, system information, weather, and so on. And they all were gone in Unity. So I've finally switched back to Ubuntu classic where they are available. The main driving reason was the CPU scaling applet. The computer was new and I was very curious what the scaling was. Especially if there was some throttling because of thermal issues.

As the most of the other software stayed the same the remaining configuration went pretty smoothly except two things.
First I've learned the drawbacks of native code with Java. All SWT based application needed either to be configured to use the 64Bit libraries or I could download a 32Bit version of Java and use this. Doesn't sound like a great deal but for the first solution I had to remember that it is possible and then check how to do it. What about using the second option? I've done only a short test with it but eclipse spilled out a large pile of assert statements and the splash screen didn't work either.

The second issue is with my editor for the homepage. Seamonkey can't do spell checking in Natty. See this bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/seamonkey/+bug/723830

Besides the problems there was also a real highlight: The configuration of my printer. I've just plugged it in and powered it on as my computer started immediately working. I was just wondering what it is doing as a message appeared. In the message I've read that my printer was configured. Thats the way configuration should be done.

Conclusion
So was it worth the money? There is some slight improvement but not as much as there was when I've switched from single core to dual core. The only situation where it really rocks is when I run multiple instances of VirtualBox. I couldn't run two on the old computer wihout a performance penalty. On the new one now I've already started three and still got no performance penalty.

© Jörg Luger