New PC: Why I don't like brand named PCs

I was complaining about limited SATA connections on Dell motherboard.

Turned out I was wrong. Look at this picture - here are the available connectors:

Those black and blue ones at the edge of the board are used for the the HDD and DVD drives, so there was only one available. But when I was checking BIOS setup today, I noticed it lists more SATA slots. I did one more closer inspection, and finally understood what those numbers and text near the SATA ports on the motherboard mean. Those black and blue connectors are actually double ports! Right under the ones, which are visible and have cables connected, there are two more connectors, which are hidden and not noticeable from any possible angle. And even when I found them, it was very difficult to connect the SATA cables there - without seeing and with limited access.

I've never seen the SATA connectors design like this! If I had a manual for the motherboard, I could figure that out earlier, but alas, seems like there is no such manual coming with Dell XPS.

So, finally it looked like I could connect my other HDD. But that was a hasty conclusion. I was still unable to connect the additional drive, because the SATA power cable was not long enough. It was designed to work only for a specific hard drives position in the original XPS case - the distance between the connectors is very short. I could use one cable with three connectors to power two drives, and the second cable, even though it had three more connectors, could only be used either for the DVD drive, or for another hard drive, but not for both of them. Normally the power supplies have at least a couple of molex connectors. Even though they are not used for the HDDs these days, there are adapters for other components, like fans, special motherboards, PCIe cards. But Dell power supply does not have any, so I couldn't even use this way. I need a SATA power splitter.

How many more surprises should I expect from this Dell?!?

Here's a list of annoyances I had to face with this Dell:

• It is too loud
  
  • Cheap and extremely noisy VGA cooler
  • Stock CPU cooler - noisy and not very good
  • No HDD vibration dampers
• Non-standard design of the motherboard, and no documentation for the motherboard
  
  • A bigger and better 3rd party CPU cooler doesn't fit
  • Difficult to find and use extra SATA ports
  • Not enough fan power connectors on the motherboard
  • Only Dell front panel with non-standard USB ports can be connected (and cannot run without it)
• No molex connectors from the power supply
• SATA power cables are designed to be used only for a specific HDD configuration
• Not enough USB ports on the back

The main idea is: all the components of this Dell PC were designed for a specific configuration. The customization/upgrade/replace abilities are extremely limited. This kind of a PC is intended for the users who are not expected to do anything with it. Want to change something? Order another configuration or even another model!

It is not for me for sure. I've never wanted to buy a brand name PC for myself - saw several of such machines, and every one of them used some custom components, which were difficult to customize or upgrade. This is the first time when I had to get a brand name PC, and it will be the last one!

New PC: Making it quiet - III

As I mentioned in the previous post, the Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Pro cooler didn't fit into Dell XPS case. What to do? I didn't like the option of exchanging it for a smaller one, as smaller fan would be louder, as its smaller fan needs to rotate on the higher RPM, which eliminates the main goal of making my PC quiet. So I decided to replace the case. I didn't like the XPS 9100 case anyway - it was not designed with silence in mind. Nothing was done to make it quieter - no insulation, the hard drives, DVD drive, and fans are screwed directly to the case, without any vibration dampers. The only good thing - it had 120 mm case fan, which wasn't too loud, rotating at not very high RPM.

I did a lot of research on the quiet PC cases, and selected one, which got a good review on Silent PC Review, and was frequently mentioned in the reviews of other cases, as one of the best - Antec P183:


The main silencing features of this case are: three-layer, sound-deadening side panels and front door; HDD mounting with special cages and silicon anti-vibration grommets; a separate chamber for the power supply in the bottom of the case also helps to reduce noise.

This case was in stock at A-Power, so I bought it from there. I spent the whole evening moving all Dell components from the XPS to this new case. It is slightly bigger than XPS 9100, and with the top fan removed, the Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Pro fits perfectly.

Of course it didn't go as smooth as I planned. When I installed all the parts, connected everything, and powered it up, the computer didn't want to boot. It kept complaining about the front USB not connected. It also wanted a case fan, so I connected one, and the error message disappeared. But that front USB was painful! First I tried to connect the case front panel - the error was still there on the next boot. Then I got a card reader with ports USB from the old computer, connected that panel, switched on - the same error message. Finally I just disassembled the XPS front panel, removed the card reader with USB ports from there, connected the cables to the motherboard, and that helped! The computer had finally booted. Apparently those original USB ports from the XPS are special. It looks like they have some capacitors, which are probably used to detect the connection, so the motherboard only works with the original USB ports panel!

I didn't really need those ports and the card reader, but didn't have a choice - they had to be connected for the computer to boot, so I put the USB panel inside the case (just used some wires to keep it in place), and connected a couple of USB extenders, so I could at least use those ports. I also found a place for the card reader: could put it into 5" mounts in the front of the case. It doesn't look very aesthetically pleasing, as it's supposed to be covered by the cool shiny semi-transparent panel of the XPS case, and that panel is not detachable. But at least it is connected properly, so the computer boots, and the reader is even accessible, so I could use it to read from the SD cards used in our cameras.

Now, the results.

Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Pro with heat pipes and big 120mm fan works much better than the stock Intel cooler. Here are the temperatures:

	Idle	Load
Stock cooler	38-40°C	70-73°C
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Pro	34-35°C	57-60°C

And most importantly - the computer is now noticeably quieter than before! It is a combination of several things:

• The case is specially designed to be quiet
• Video card cooler is replaced with a big copper one with a low RPM fan
• CPU cooler is replaced with AC Freezer 13 Pro
• Case fans are replaced with SilenX low RPM & low noise ones

It is not dead silent yet, as there are still 5 working fans inside, but the noise they produce is very low. During the day with all the normal sounds around I can barely hear it. And even in the night it's not very noticeable.
I'm happy! :)

New PC: Making it quiet - II

My Dell XPS is still loud. Next component to replace is the CPU cooler. It seems to make the most noticeable sound now, especially on load - when building the CPU is used up to 100%, gets hot, and its fan starts buzzing like it's going to take-off.

After reading some reviews and checking what is available at NCIX, where I usually buy my computer parts, I decided to get Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Pro:


It is supposed to be very quiet and work much better than the original cooler.

So, I got it, opened the case of my Dell, and found the next surprise: the CPU socket on this motherboard is very close to the edge, so close that the huge radiator of the Freezer 13 Pro does not fit into the place without removing the power supply. What a disappointment!

Now I have to decide what to do - take a smaller cooler so it fits there, or bite a bullet, and move the whole computer into another, even bigger case.

New PC: Making it quiet

This Dell XPS is pretty loud. I knew it wouldn't be the best, but I didn't expect it to be that bad. It might be OK in a regular office environment, but in my home office, where there is no much noise around, the computer is the loudest piece of equipment.

The most annoying thing is the video card. By the way, its brand is "Pegatron" - I've never heard of this name before. Apparently that's a part of ASUS company, which split several years ago. This video card has a very cheap small and extremely noisy fan. I was tired of that noise, and after I got a permission from Mozilla IT guy to modify my PC (as long as I don't break it :)), I started from that annoying little VGA cooler.

I had a pretty big and heavy copper VGA cooler, which I bought several years ago for my HTPC. Since then I upgraded the motherboard in the HTPC, to the one with integrated nVidia 8200, so this VGA cooler was not used. Luckily its mounting screws could be adjusted to fit the holes on the this ATI HD5670, and the radiator did not touch any parts, so I installed it. There was one problem though - the original fan on the VGA cooler was connected to the card itself, and that connector was too small for a 3rd-party cooler fan. Dell motherboard doesn't have any more fan connectors, so I had to be inventive - I cut two pieces from a paper clip, ground them down a bit, inserted into a floppy drive power cable, and connected the fan to that improvised power source. It worked! I put everything together, and now my computer is noticeably quieter without that constant buzz from the video card.

New PC: Need more hard drives

I still had a lot of useful files on my old PC, and it wasn't convenient to access them. It's especially confusing when there are copies of the same files and folders on two machines (like "My Documents" folder, where I had a lot of stuff - from everyday notes, to my financial data needed for tax return). As I've switched to a new PC, I decided to move the hard drive with all my stuff into it. I also had an SSD in the old PC, which I wanted to use.

So, I repartitioned an older 500GB disk, which I had available, moved the system and all the required data to it, got SSD and the HDD from the old PC, opened Dell XPS, ready to install those two drives, and suddenly stopped confused, as there were no place to connect these drives - there was only one SATA connector available! Also there were no place where I could put the SSD so I could screw it to the case - the case was designed only for 3.5" drives.

Well, it's not the first time when I had to invent something, so I managed to connect the SSD and fix it in place, but another HDD was out of luck.
Does this Dell motherboard really have only one extra SATA port?!?

New PC

In January I switched from a contract to a full time position at Mozilla, and as an employee I was eligible for a new computer. I definitely needed a powerful machine, as full Firefox build takes about an hour on my 3 year old PC with Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 CPU. I knew I needed something like Intel i7, so I asked about that and Mozilla ordered me one. I would prefer to assemble a computer myself (at least select the components), but as it had to be ordered and paid by the company, I didn't have much choice, had to go with some brand name. Dell was one of the obvious choices, so I just pointed at some Dell XPS with i7 and configuration close to what I wanted, and it was ordered.

Yesterday it was finally delivered! That's Dell XPS 9100, Intel i7-930, 2.8 GHz, 12 GB RAM, 1TB HDD, ATI Radeon HD5670. Here it is:


This thing is big and heavy! The box, which it came in, was huge! The Purolator guy who delivered it was driving a full size truck, which he backed up to our driveway, and took it all. Normally he drives a regular post office delivery vehicle, but not this time. I guess the big truck was chosen just because of my box. :)

So, I got the new PC set up and running, got Ubuntu installed, copied most important stuff from the old PC, set up Mozilla environment, and tried the build. It took about 20 minutes! A huge improvement compared to the old PC! Now I can build even during the work day, not overnight, as I usually did before.

By the way, it took me a while to install Ubuntu. I wanted 32 bit version, as it's known to have less compatibility issues, but its installation was consistently failing somewhere in the middle. I burned three CDs on two different CD-writers, tried USB-drive - no luck. Only the alternative (text-based) setup worked, though it was very slow. But after I finally installed and ran the system I realized, that 32 bit limits the available RAM to 4GB. Somehow I forgot about that, or rather just didn't think that Linux has the same limitations as Windows (why would it be different?). I just didn't use 64 bit system, and didn't have more than 4GB of RAM in my PC before, so my unconscious mind didn't tell anything. Anyway, I installed the amd64 version, got access to total 12GB of RAM, and now I'm all set.