September 17, 2023

She's ALIVE! Say Hello to Purah!

There is still a lot of work to do. The build went pretty well. The one issue I had were some bent pins in the header for the front panel USB3 connector. That really should have been sticking up out of the board (Along with the SATA connectors) because sticking straight out from the edge runs into the drive bay rack. I also had to dig out the extra cables from my power supply because the MB wanted a second 12v cable.

Even the Windows Install went well. I made sure I left the ethernet unplugged so it created a local account. Ran some updates, and along the way MSI ran a mass installer that only runs once (where does it come from?) that put in all the drivers and support programs. I only refused the third party apps.

I have not installed the graphics card yet, just using the built-in, simply because it works well enough for now.

First round of Windows updates took longer than the install!

Getting FireFox installed was a bit of a pain. I had saved a VERY out of date installer. (Ugh, version 48! it was SO ugly!). Trying to copy my profiles over from the other SSD didn't work until I found that it had AppData in all three folders.

Some of the really old shit still works. The Eudora installer worked, and so did the C S 2.

Samsung Magician said the SATA SSD had a read speed of 406 MB/sec. The M.2 drive reads at 7002 MB/sec. Although I guess some of the zippiness gets tempered by the bloat of the OS.

I even installed uTorrent without an issue, although I haven't migrated the data or hooked up D: yet. A security scan didn't complain about it, oddly enough, but I put an exception on the .exe anyway. It didn't handle the UI scaling very well, so that may take some fiddling.

So far it's very quiet. The fan on the cooler isn't quite a Noctua, but that's the only moving part. Since this board doesn't have a digital temperature display, and I haven't seen any software the colors the fan LEDs with temp info, I may just disable them and finally put the sound-insulated side back on this case. (Once I finish loading in the other drives.) And hey, I still have slots for two more M.2 drives....

Next task is getting WoWS loaded up and see how well that runs (considering it didn't run at all on the old system as it decayed) (I mean, it USED to run great, for years. I don't understand what went bad, but something did, and I could never find out and fix it. I guess I did finally take the "Just get a new computer!" advice....)

Now to see if I can watch you Tube without crashing. I will be VERY upset if I do.

Posted by: Mauser at 07:21 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 489 words, total size 3 kb.

1 ...and there was much rejoicing! (in the first picture only...)

-j

Posted by: J Greely at September 18, 2023 04:36 AM (oJgNG)

2 Very peculiar choice of artist...

Oh yeah, YouTube test passed. I still need to connect the D and H drives. That might be complicated by the automatically added Recovery partition on the C drive that might be D.

Posted by: Mauser at September 18, 2023 06:45 PM (BzEjn)

3 I chose the bunnygirl, not the artist, whose obsessions I do not share. It's the classic "very well done but not something that toggles my switches".

-j

Posted by: J Greely at September 19, 2023 02:19 PM (oJgNG)

4 It is actually the DVD drive that slotted itself into position D, so that will be addressed soon enough.

I've set the monitor/TV to 1440p, and the UI to 100%, which works out to be pretty damned comfortable on a 52" TV.

YouTube passed watching a Jingles video at 1440p, a first for me.

In the process of installing all my Wargaming titles overnight tonight, this will show if I even need a video card or if the onboard graphics are capable of handling it. I mean, I can start by putting the 1070 back in, but I'm thinking next month something beefier is on the agenda.

Posted by: Mauser at September 19, 2023 06:57 PM (BzEjn)

5 WoWS gets me 71 FPS in the lowest graphics mode at 1440p. Which will do for now. It's more than double what my laptop was able to do at 1080p.

Posted by: Mauser at September 21, 2023 05:57 PM (BzEjn)

6 Feeling validated. The box in the hallway my computer case came in that's been sitting there for years has just yielded a cornucopia of hard drive screws and an extra SATA cable that I needed for this rebuild.

My case has a slot in the top that can accept bare drives. That's where my old SATA SSD (now known as F: was.) That I connected to the two SATA ports that apparently are run by the chipset on the MB. I decided to move that drive inside into one of the four drive bays (hence the need for the screws). After that, I attached it to #1 of the other four SATA ports that apparently are driven by the CPU instead of the chipset. The drive speed went from the previously reported 406 MB/sec to 563 MB/sec.

I put the D and H drives back in and hooked them up. uTorrent already had its preferences moved, so it started up with only one single file needing to be rechecked. H is causing me fits only because Windows decided to re-index it very aggressively. While I was gaming. The temp really shot up.

Moving the SSD from the slot to the drive rack meant I ended up pulling the two drives I was using for backup. (Leaving me with an empty slot still). That means I can use the slot for its intended purpose, temporary installation of drives for backups. I'll just have to get into the habit....

I found the setting to make the fan color reflect the CPU temperature. But frankly, the heatsink fan is telling me with noise. Even with 10% utilization, things are getting loud and hot. I may need to change the thermal paste. Supposedly it was pre-coated, but who knows. OTOH, installing a video card should take some of the load off too. But I'm wondering if I need to go back to water cooling to keep this silent.

Posted by: Mauser at September 23, 2023 10:08 PM (BzEjn)

7 I got rid of a lot of stuff before the cross-country move, but I still had the original shipping boxes for all the computer gear and large kitchen appliances, which protected them nicely, and they went into my huge basement when I unpacked. The boxes of screws and cables went into my office. The one thing I couldn't find was the rack-mount kit for the switch, and the vendor sent me another one for free.

-j

Posted by: J Greely at September 28, 2023 07:50 AM (oJgNG)

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