Category: Tech

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My new network server, is my old Optiplex? Seriously?

How did we get here?

To begin with, why would anyone need a network server? There can be several answers, including file storage, a plex server, or even a game server. Different uses means different ways of creating and storing data. There is no wrong way and virtually, no wrong equipment There are limitations, however, as to what you can do with what equipment.

In my case, I have a YouTube channel and keep not only raw footage, but finished videos. I do have a back up, of sorts, but it’s poorly done and not an elegant solution. There are duplicate files on two computers, and I use of a back up USB, and Western Digital cloud device. A device that needs to be reconfigured to be more efficient. Long story, short, I have no reliable, streamlined solution. I may not lose data, but it would be a pain to retrieve some of it.

Enter the HP FrankenDell. This computer has a Xeon E3 12700 v3 four core/ eight thread CPU on a Dell motherboard. It came from an Optiplex 9020, and has 16GB of memory tucked very creatively in an HP case from 2008. I’m looking for reliable file storage with something that runs efficiently, and the Xeon fits the bill. Originally, this a sleeper gaming PC, but the extra drive bays make it perfect. There is still the execution to tackle, though.

Setting up the network server?

One of the easier ways is simply create a new file on a hard drive and make it shareable. Doing this will give you an address of sorts that other computers on your network can find. The drive needs plenty of room and to stay connected to the network. The second step is to go to the next PC and find that drive location.

Click on ‘This PC’ in the file explorer. That presents you with a few options across the top, but it may require you right click on ‘This PC’ and chose ‘map network drive’. Select a drive letter you aren’t already using, and put in the address from the first PC. You need to use a double backslash ‘\\’ for this, so don’t forget. In my case, I also copied it to the desktop and changed the icon.

A simple test making sure anything going into that folder gets ‘dropped’ in the other PC’s shared folder and we were in business. It doesn’t solve all of my issues, but it’s a start. A start I can build on and improve. After ordering some new sleds for the additional dives, I have room for at least four or five drives and I can start the next step.

What is that, you ask? redundant storage, a raid solution to make sure I don’t lose data, and creating something I can access from anywhere. Those are some pretty lofty steps, but the first one was to get the ball rolling. Mission accomplished. The drive bays came in, so it’s time to add more storage, but very soon, we begin the next part, and of course, I’ll share the story.

The latest video on it is here, and to go back to the blog page, go here.

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Cooling the CoolBlue build. It should be very easy, right?

How did we get here?

This started easy enough, add an All-In-One cooler to CoolBlue. Yeah, not so much. Oh, everything leading up to the change went well, but it wasn’t until getting our hands dirty that things took a turn. Let’s start from the beginning.

I had a Corsair H100i CPU cooler not being used, but it wouldn’t fit as it was, so I went shopping. I had to find a retro kit, which in this case was four slightly shorter stand off posts. That was easy enough, they are widely available and not unreasonably priced. Not unreasonable until you factor in shipping.

The Corsair site had these for 7.99 USD, great, let’s order them. 9.99USD for shipping. What? They cost more to ship than the item cost? You’ve lost your pea picken’ mind! There were several sellers, however, on eBay, so that’s where we ordered. Four days later, things looked ready to go.

I chose to reuse the DeepCool fans already in the case, which was fine, but as it turns out, the case has a flaw. The fans that mount to the top of the case, can only mount in the center. Many case manufacturers add additional grooves so things can be pulled closer to the glass panel and not have an issue with the height of cooling blocks on the motherboard. This case lacks that. My next option was mount the radiator behind the front panel.

A Different Problem

Technically it fits, but it looks awkward. The front has three fans mounted and now the top two reach into the case further, making things look sloppy. There is also the matter of the CPU cooling block having a lot of extra cables causing clutter. Still, I could look past that if it kept things nice and cool. It didn’t.

Okay, it did keep things cool, but only as much as the tower cooler I took out. Not a good trade. It looked bad from the front, more cables to manage in the back, and now the temps were only slightly better. By slightly better, I mean margin of error better. I was able to get slightly better temps by removing the front panel, but that’s not ideal. So, you’re thinking, a horrible fail.

Yes, and No. It was a failure, but I learned something. What not to do.

What’s next for CoolBlue

The very next thing to do is remove the All-in-One cooler from the build. Aesthetically, it’s not pleasing and it’s also not effective.

Next, I will look at the big brother to the current AG400 CPU cooler, the AG620. This is rated for a higher total power output, and although it’s more than that CPU needs, it pushes more air directly out of the case. It may only mean a few degrees cooler, but to be honest, temps weren’t bad, I was just looking to improve them so I wouldn’t have any throttling when I edit.

This also may mean a different case. CoolBlue gets it’s name because is a Intel CPU/GPU build with DeepCool parts, (including the case), but I did put a CoolerMaster power supply in. I may be able to do the same with the case and still keep the theme. I may even be able to find a blue case. If I find one with better airflow, that can solve all of the problems at one time, and that would be cool. No pun intended. After that it will be the process of swapping SSD’s and loading programs I use most often, then it may be ready to become my new every day driver. We’ll see.

Link to the YouTube video

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The Amazing Lenovo M700. Slow and Dirty Edition

How did we get here?

That part is actually easy enough. My friend Tom has a Lenovo PC he ‘inherited’ from work and it needed some attention. It came complete with an intel i5 6500 four core beast of a processor, 8GB or memory, a 640GB Western Digital Blue spinning hard drive and a fair amount of dust. The dust wasn’t the problem. Okay, it was a problem, but a very small one.

The big problem was the hard drive. I’ve been working with computers a long time and never seen a 640GB drive in the wild. To top it off, the drive had a lot of data, so a 500GB was out of the question. To anyone that hasn’t been SSD shopping lately, prices have fallen, drastically, so now may be a good time. I found a 1TB TeamGroup drive for around 50 bucks. Then, it was time to clone. We’ll get back to that in a minute.

Dusting didn’t take long. I got out the electric duster and blew out the big stuff, then turned my attention to the fans, and repasted the CPU cooler. It didn’t have heat problems, but I erred on the side of caution. A microfiber cloth and some alcohol wipes, and it was cleaned up and ready for the next steps. I needed a video card, and to replace the antenna on the wifi card. Taking care of the drives would be easy, and it would be ready to give back. I was wrong. Very, very wrong. The drives were not easy, but we’ll get back to that.

Starting off with the easy steps

The final step mechanically was to add in a graphics card. Nothing fancy, Tom said he just needed an HDMI port, and NVidia’s GT1030 has that. To any that may be reading this, and not familiar, the GT1030 was the low end of the 10 series cards from NVidia. After its release with 2GB of DDR5 memory, NVidia cut corners on future models by using DDR4 instead. There is a very real difference between DDR4 and 5. DDR5 is twice as fast, for one. Still, this fit the need. This isn’t a gaming PC, it just needed a tune up and an HDMI port, which the 1030 definitely has.

With the CPU in good shape and the graphics card installed, it was time to tackle the hard drive issue. Total time for this thing to boot up was about three minutes. It should have taken less, but the BIOS was set up to boot with a network connection. The problem? It wasn’t on a network to boot from. The HDD did have an operating system, though.

Every boot first went through the network process, then checked the HDD, which sounded bad. It almost sounded like scraping on something. I’m sure most of you have heard the sound of a drive clicking as it searches. This one sounded tired. It was time for the new SSD. Luckily, I now had one. I just had to clone the old one.

The cloning process

Did you know there is no company that offers a true open source cloning program? They all either make you pay up front, sign up for an elaborate scheme to get your data, offer only a small trial period, or a very limited set of utilities until you subscribe to a monthly program. Hmmm, Yeah, that’s the reason I don’t use Adobe products, either. Then, I remembered the only thing good about that 640GB drive. It was a WD. That means it has a version of Acronis specifically for Western Digital drives. Nice. I downloaded the software and I was in business. I chose what type of cloning and was ready to start.

Then came the real problem. The drive sounded like it was on it’s last leg, and I wasn’t 100% sure it would even survive the cloning process. That wasn’t the only issue, though. It was going to take five hours to clone. Five. There was no way this was going to survive five hours of activity. I started the process and left it over night expecting an error message when I woke up. Instead, I was greeted with success. Nice! I unplugged the HDD and tried it. After the network attempt, it booted into the SSD. We were doing well, so far.

The next step was to get into the BIOS and redirect the boot order to the SSD. I plugged the HDD back in and it promptly failed. It booted first to the network, then from the HDD. What? Seriously? But I already changed the boot order! The flipping thing had four different boot up scenarios in the BIOS. Completely ridiculous. This was definitely a former office PC.

The finished Lenovo

I set all of the boot orders the same. Check for a USB device first, then move to the SSD, then to the HDD. I saved, exited, and waited for it to punk me again. It booted straight from the SSD in about twenty seconds. Finally, we were in good shape. There were some final touches cleaning, a new antenna for the network card, and we were truly in business. This thing had new life.

Then curiosity took over. I chose to test Shadow of the Tomb Raider and CyberPunk, and wasn’t surprised by it’s lack of achieving even twenty frames per second, but that was never the goal of this computer. It will be primarily used as a creative tool, and not need to be the end all/ be all PC. There’s no need to equal to a two thousand dollar custom PC, or even a budget gaming PC. It just has to be solid, start quickly, and output using HDMI.

After running it through a few tests and making sure the graphics driver was good, I gave it my blessing. With any luck, this PC will last several more years. Or, at least long enough for Tom to get all of the use he needs from it. Now, it’s on to the next project.

The video can be found Here.

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CoolBlue Gets a Huge Upgrade – So Much Better!

How did we get here?

It started simple enough with only wanting to build a PC with two brands. CoolBlue was a combination of DeepCool parts and Intel, but it was incomplete. I wasn’t using an available intel NVMe drive and the fans were not all addressable RGB. Sometimes, I don’t leave well enough alone. The link to that blog is here

While looking for said parts, I found a price drop on a 12700KF from intel. It was a good deal, but I was only interested if I found an equally good deal on the motherboard. Damn. I found one. That meant if it turned out better than my editing rig, I had work to do. Swapping platforms is a huge deal.

There was only one way to find out if the combination would be better, so I got to work. The parts came in and this time the build went much quicker than the last effort. With everything installed, including the new NVMe and fans, I started testing. So far, the tests have only included the Arc A750, intel’s graphics card, but the CPU intensive tests told the story.

The testing

On a free benchmark render tool called Cinebench R23, I saw what amounted to a 50% uplift in performance over my current setup. This test renders a complex image using only the Central Processor with no help from the Graphics. One and a half times better performance out of the 12700KF was far more than I could have planned. It was time to run the game benchmarks.

Not having run benchmarks on the Ryzen 7 5800X combination with the Arc A750, I had to rely on uplift from the intel 11400 tested previously. The change was not only noticeable, but I was getting results from the A750 that before had been failed tests. It just ran better with the new CPU. The A750 wasn’t good enough to be my daily driver, but it was obvious, the new CPU was.

I used a DeepCool AG400 tower cooler, which will handle most activity well. And, with four PC120 fans, temperatures were very stable during most testing. It throttled during CPU stress tests. Yes, the same R23 test that measured a 22000 score did so with a red CPU light on. It was impressive.

This is a great processor, and better than what I’m using. I now had a conundrum.

Is CoolBlue my new everyday rig?

My set up with I Am Number Four is very solid and stable. It’s been my workhorse for the channel, and my growing social media effort. Changing, would require me to swap a lot of drives, and programs over. I was hesitant. I’m still hesitant.

I will need to find which drives to move, and what to do with I Am Number Four, but CoolBlue, will indeed become my editing, streaming and gaming rig. You don’t realize how comfortable you are with something until you go to change it. I still don’t use the gaming setup in the other room, so I will be breaking that PC down as well. I didn’t see that coming, but I guess I’m crossing a threshold of sorts.

This is a very capable PC and will be a great next step in handling everything I need to throw at it. And, for the first time in a very, very long time, my ‘Go To’ rig will be an Intel. I will, of course change out the graphics card and the power supply, but it will be a Cooler Master, so the name will stay the same. Paired with an RTX 3060Ti, there won’t be much it can’t handle. Welcome to the family CoolBlue.

The YouTube video can be found here.

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Intel’s new GPU and CPU, match made in heaven?

How did we get here?

It started when I thought it would be a good idea to buy the Intel Arc GPU to test. I picked up the A750 for a reasonable price, (which is about to drop), and went to work. Testing did have it’s issues and there were some bumps in the road, but I got results that were helpful. I then turned my attention to building and testing a rig with both Intel CPU and GPU in it, and that wasn’t so easy.

There were issues recognizing the GPU and an NVMe drive, but the primary problem was acting like something altogether different. After realizing a BIOS update was necessary, I was back on track, but nowhere near as excited. Links to the BLOG and VIDEO, in case you are interested. It was some work, but it did work.

I wasn’t able to complete benchmarks because of issues with time, but I needed to post the video. So, I went back to work on the same rig after posting, and ran into more issues. I was already aware that some games were not going to run properly, so I left them off the list. I was also aware that one game just takes forever to benchmark, so I left it off as well. Bad choice. Benchmarking on that is going on as I write this.

Issues

One of my biggest issues was that the game with the Vulkan graphics API won’t select that protocol, forcing me to stick with DX11, a known shortcoming. In fact I had problems with another title that has DX 11, Borderlands 3. It’s a game I have thought about dropping, but now I may actually have to.

I was testing on DX11 and DX12, and it just quit. Period. Won’t run. It shows the splash screen then shuts down completely and won’t start up. I have a similar problem trying to run this game on my editing rig, but Borderlands3 now defaults to DX12 and I have several games with that setting. It’s great to benchmark, but it may be time to retire it.

Other issues included World War Z where it caps the framerate and I get horrible artifacting, and Horizon Zero Dawn has the same framerates no matter the actual resolution. The latter of the two was confusing during my tests with the Ryzen CPU, so I was expecting it, but it shows Intel still has some work to do on their drivers.

What’s next for the Arc GPU?

I’m not done with this one yet, though I decided that CoolBlue (intel test rig) needs some changes. Instead of just changing a fan and getting an Intel NVMe to bring this closer to a true DeepCool/Intel build, I ordered a new platform. For the first time in over ten years, I am probably going to make my main rig an Intel.

I will be changing the GPU, mind you, but I will test this A750 with a 12700KF in a brand new B760 motherboard. The choice wasn’t made lightly. I was going to go with AM5, but recent problems with motherboards overvolting these CPUs had me turn to something already proven for my new build. But that’s another story…..