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So my laptop died. I had a perfectly good hd, processor, cd, ram, encased in a shite
laptop. I admitted to myself that i'm hard on machinery, and fragile electronics was a bad idea for me, and I'm quite poor, so I went ITX. This is a braindump of what happened. BTW, i've been here for years, years ago, and I got time deleted. Good to be back.
I bought these off directron:
http://www.directron.com/j7f2we1g5d.html
*$15 Mail-In Rebate* MB-J7F2WE1G5D 1 169.99
JetWay Motherboard / CPU
Bundle J7F2WE1G5D: JetWay
Mini ITX Motherboard and
VIA C7 Nano Processor.
http://www.directron.com/cubid3688sl.html
Silver Morex Cubid 3688 CS-Cubid3688-SL 1 74.99
Mini-ITX Case, for VIA
Motherboards, Fits Slim
2.5" HDD, w/ PSU
*Free UPS Ground* Corsair DIMM-VS512MB533D2 1 52.99 *Shipping will be added manually
Value Select Memory - for any other shipping method = OK
512MB DDR2 533 PC2-4200
240-Pin, VS512MB533D2
I opted to recieve a 80mm green fan with my over 200 purchase, although the fan in no way fits in the case.
The morex case is pretty small. They claim that there's no room for a pci card, but what they give you is a sideways serial port-shaped cutout, through which I ran the antenna jack of a low profile linksys card. Only a small amount of ugly sheet metal bendage got it to fit perfectlyish.
I'm not happy with the quality of the jetway board. I had to work with it to make it meet my expectations. Three, not two or four cheap plastic pins held the processor down. i poked the corner with the empty hole, and the heatsink wobbled around in a way that did not convince me that it was touching the processor, which would account for 55-65C temps. Sure enough, the underside was a mess of white goop. I scrubbed off the goop, carefully applied a silver-colored off-brand thermal goop in a very thin layer, cut 10C off the temp. I rigged a zip tie to hold down the 4th corner, another 5C off. Did the northbridge as well.
Why was I so morbidly interested in the cooling? The machine was cutting off under load, all the damn time. It was a mess. I tried to turn on throttling, it turns out that throttling kicks on all the time no matter what, loud beeping and all. My adventures with the heatsinks cooled it down, but it still wasnt stable. I was pissed and confused. For some reason, I overclocked it to 110fsb, and for some damn reason that was what made it run stable.
So now i'm happy. I needed a POS box (piece of, not point of) to run visual studio, and this gets along handsomely. It runs exactly like I thought a crappy 1.5ghz processor would, if not better. A lot of people on hardocp wouldnt be caught dead actually using one of these rigs as a desktop, but I'm in love with linux and linux loves every POS.
In the future I see this system getting marinized as best as cheaply possible, as in I want to take it on a boat. Low power consumption turns me on, with the consideration that I may want to compute on battery power. I got no idea how to go about any of this.
laptop. I admitted to myself that i'm hard on machinery, and fragile electronics was a bad idea for me, and I'm quite poor, so I went ITX. This is a braindump of what happened. BTW, i've been here for years, years ago, and I got time deleted. Good to be back.
I bought these off directron:
http://www.directron.com/j7f2we1g5d.html
*$15 Mail-In Rebate* MB-J7F2WE1G5D 1 169.99
JetWay Motherboard / CPU
Bundle J7F2WE1G5D: JetWay
Mini ITX Motherboard and
VIA C7 Nano Processor.
http://www.directron.com/cubid3688sl.html
Silver Morex Cubid 3688 CS-Cubid3688-SL 1 74.99
Mini-ITX Case, for VIA
Motherboards, Fits Slim
2.5" HDD, w/ PSU
*Free UPS Ground* Corsair DIMM-VS512MB533D2 1 52.99 *Shipping will be added manually
Value Select Memory - for any other shipping method = OK
512MB DDR2 533 PC2-4200
240-Pin, VS512MB533D2
I opted to recieve a 80mm green fan with my over 200 purchase, although the fan in no way fits in the case.
The morex case is pretty small. They claim that there's no room for a pci card, but what they give you is a sideways serial port-shaped cutout, through which I ran the antenna jack of a low profile linksys card. Only a small amount of ugly sheet metal bendage got it to fit perfectlyish.
I'm not happy with the quality of the jetway board. I had to work with it to make it meet my expectations. Three, not two or four cheap plastic pins held the processor down. i poked the corner with the empty hole, and the heatsink wobbled around in a way that did not convince me that it was touching the processor, which would account for 55-65C temps. Sure enough, the underside was a mess of white goop. I scrubbed off the goop, carefully applied a silver-colored off-brand thermal goop in a very thin layer, cut 10C off the temp. I rigged a zip tie to hold down the 4th corner, another 5C off. Did the northbridge as well.
Why was I so morbidly interested in the cooling? The machine was cutting off under load, all the damn time. It was a mess. I tried to turn on throttling, it turns out that throttling kicks on all the time no matter what, loud beeping and all. My adventures with the heatsinks cooled it down, but it still wasnt stable. I was pissed and confused. For some reason, I overclocked it to 110fsb, and for some damn reason that was what made it run stable.
So now i'm happy. I needed a POS box (piece of, not point of) to run visual studio, and this gets along handsomely. It runs exactly like I thought a crappy 1.5ghz processor would, if not better. A lot of people on hardocp wouldnt be caught dead actually using one of these rigs as a desktop, but I'm in love with linux and linux loves every POS.
In the future I see this system getting marinized as best as cheaply possible, as in I want to take it on a boat. Low power consumption turns me on, with the consideration that I may want to compute on battery power. I got no idea how to go about any of this.