I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC

For the past couple of years, I haven't been a PC; I've been a Mac. I got a MacBook Pro some time ago, and gave my PC to my dad. And, so we're clear, it's been great; I love the Mac platform, the Mac hardware, everything.

But, I recently decided I missed something about the PC. The games, the modularity, the upgrading and reading about new tech...there's something there that I'm not getting with the Mac. So, while I haven't switched (and have no plans to do so), I did go ahead and buy the parts for a new gaming PC.

I think I'd sort of forgotten how much there is to such a project: learning about, and then selecting and buying, a case, motherboard, CPU, hard drive, optical drive, graphics card, power supply, and some good ol' RAM...plus, if you're serious (and boy, was I serious), an aftermarket CPU heatsink and fan. Ah, and, of course, an operating system (man, I love Linux, but the sad reality is that you need Windows for gaming), and we might as well throw in a KVM switch so I can have both my MacBook and my PC plugged into my big-ass Apple Cinema display. I mean...just look at all that stuff!

So, anyway, the last of it arrived on Monday, and I set to putting it all together. It had been years since I'd done anything like this, and so I was a little rusty. I sat for a minute with parts strewn all around me, wondering where I should start. In the end, I recalled the words of the immortal Captain Ron: "If anything's gonna happen, it's gonna happen out there." I grabbed the motherboard, half at random, and set to installing it in the case.

The only problem that arose there is with the fact that I'm not entirely sure Lian-Li wasn't telling a bald-faced lie when they claimed that the motherboard tray in their otherwise very spiffy case was removable. I still have no idea how that thing would detach from the case. Oh well. I got the board installed anyway.

Next went the CPU, an Intel Core i7 920, which I chose over the AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition only because I live not far from a Micro Center, and (at the time of this blogging) they have an outrageous discount on the i7 920: $150 off, for a total price of $200, just $10 or so above that of the AMD processor. Nice. No problems getting that in, either. It was a bit crazy, though, thinking about the whole quad-core processor thing. Last time I did this, we had one core (in fact, I don't think we even really used the word "core"), and we were happy in those days!

Then, the heat sink and fan. You see, the stock cooling apparatus that comes with the i7 920 CPU, being roughly the size of a Volkswagen Golf, is clearly inadequate for the task of keeping any serious system from overheating. Thus, we turn to the Cooler Master Hyper 212+.

The whole thing astounds me. Tiny little CPU, stonking great big heat sink and fan. I remember when the heat sink was barely bigger than the processor itself. Anyway, so, yes, this thing is huge. Thermal grease (helpfully included with the Hyper 212+ kit) goes on the CPU to help conduct heat. Then we screw the heat sink into the motherboard so it presses down on the CPU a bit, and then we attach the fan to the heat sink via some rather arcane wires. Oh yeah, and we swear loudly at whoever thought it was a good idea to have the Hyper 212+ installation instructions be composed of virtually nothing but overly detailed (but very small) line drawings. Very helpful, with the lines, and the other lines, and the near complete lack of depth. Thanks.

Anyway, I eventually figure out how to get the fan going. Keen. Now it's RAM time, and I easily install the OCZ DDR3 PC3-12800 Gold Low-Voltage Triple Channel kit. 6 GB of memory (the very thought still dazes me a bit), done and done. Time to stick in the power supply, and start hooking things up!

Dear God. When I opened the box to the power supply unit, I swear to you, power cables sprang out at me like tentacles at a Japanese cartoon schoolgirl. Yet another thing I don't remember from my earlier days of computer construction. Talk about a snarl. Fortunately, my case came with a little cable organizer thing near the PSU that I could push the unused cables into to keep them out of the way. Applause, Lian-Li.

Graphics card time! I went with the Diamond Radeon HD 5850. The 5850 seems like a great balance of performance and price, and it seems the rest of the world agrees, seeing as how it's one of the only ATI-based cards that retailers can't seem to keep in stock. I have no particular brand loyalty to Diamond, though they do nice enough work; it was just the first brand of 5850 I found that I was actually physically capable of purchasing.

Anyway, that's not half so interesting as the expansion card slot management system Lian-Li's case has going on. Normally, the blanks for the slots in a case are held in by screws, and you have to unscrew it, remove the blank, add the card, and then screw it in. In this case, you just pull up the lever, remove the blank, add the card, and push the lever back in to clamp the card into place. Very clever! Applause again, Lian-Li.

Now, the main OS and programs disk drive (an OCZ Vertex 120 GB solid-state drive) and the data storage drive (a Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB drive). It's my first time installing SATA drives, but I figure it out easily enough. Then the DVD drive; it's an IDE/ATAPI drive, and old hat. No worries.

I start connecting the case switches, fan power lines, and LED lines to the motherboard. Just one little snag: the motherboard expects the power LED line to use two pins (PLED- and PLED+), but the case demands three (PLED-, N/C, and PLED+). Ugh. Quickly, Robin - to the Internets!

I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before, but Someone Else had a similar problem, and they just poked the PLED+ wire out of the line with a pin, and stuck it the N/C (no connection, i.e. unused) hole in the plug, and then everything fit all right. Works for me! I still don't know why there was this inconsistency -- isn't the ATX standard supposed to prevent stuff like this, or something? But, whatever. I have better things to do, like finish this installation!

I'm just about done. All I need to do now is install the I/O port panel shield, and I'm ready to go!

You should have heard how I swore when I realized the shield needed to go on the inside of the case, before I installed the motherboard. Mom would have been proud. ;)

Well, nothing for it. I unscrewed the motherboard and moved it just enough to be able to put the shield in, fought with the alignment for a while, and finally managed to get everything to fit right. Screw screw screw, all good!

Anyway, from there, it was more or less all gravy. The KVM switch I got works pretty well, although I need an audio cable extender or something so I can fit it 'round the side of my MacBook. Windows 7 RC installation went smoothly, and it's pretty quick. Getting the graphics card drivers to work right was a bit of a bear, but I eventually managed that too. A couple of not-exactly-bleeding-edge games (Orange Box and Painkiller) run perfectly at the highest available settings, which is nice! Also ran a memtest to prove that all six gigs of RAM are fully functional. Stick a fork in this big black 2001-reminiscent obelisk: it's done.

More pics! Enjoy!

Final system configuration:

• LIAN LI PC-A70F Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case
• PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad Black Power Supply
• Intel Core i7 920
• ASRock X58 Extreme LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX
• DIAMOND 5850PE51G Radeon HD 5850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card
• OCZ DDR3 6GB PC3-12800 Gold Low-Voltage Triple Channel
• OCZ Vertex Series 2.5" 120GB SATA II Solid State Drive
• Western Digital WD1001FALS Caviar Black 1TB SATA 3Gb/s 3.5in Internal Hard Drive, 32MB Cache, 7200RPM, OEM
• Pioneer DVR-1910 Black DVD/CD Writer
• Cooler Master Hyper 212+ Universal CPU Cooler supports Socket LGA1366/1156/775/AM3/AM2/940/939
• IOGEAR Mini View Micro DVI-D KVM with Audio
• Windows Vista Business 64-bit (w/ free Windows 7 upgrade coupon)
• Windows 7 RC (free gift w/ Windows Vista)
  

New and Interesting Things

I am surprised to find that, after having owned my MacBook Pro for almost two years now, I'm still learning new things about it. Like, for instance, this:

If you place two fingers on the touch pad while you click, you'll make the context menu pop up - just as if you'd command-clicked or right-clicked on a two+ button mouse.

Found that out by accident the other day. I wish I'd known a lot earlier - that's useful!

iPod, uPod, we all pod for iPod

So the other day, my iPod, a 4th generation 20 GB model from a few years back, started flaking out on me. It froze up, which didn't worry me, since it had done that before, and all it took was a quick reboot¹ to bring it back to life. This time, however, that procedure sent the poor device into an endless cycle of rebooting - a cycle I could do nothing to break.

Fearing the worst, I ran a few diagnostics² to reveal the problem: hard drive failure. Excellent.

Well, I'd been thinking about getting an iPhone for quite some time, because they're so damn cool and stuff. If this wasn't an excuse to go out and nab one, I don't know what was...except that, according to the rumor mill, a new version of the iPhone, one supporting 3G network connectivity, is due out sometime this year - possibly within the next few months - and I truly hate buying expensive equipment only to have it become second-rate immediately afterwards.

Anyway, I needed an iPod to tide me over until I was ready to take the plunge into iPhone-land. I could have gotten an iPod classic for about $250, but then I'd have felt like a chump if the next iPhone model came out a month later. The Shuffle was another option, since I mostly only use my iPod to listen to a single playlist in shuffle mode while working out anyway - and at about $50, the price was certainly right. On the other hand, I knew I'd get frustrated with it if the new iPhone took more than a few months to come out.

So, for about one-fifty, I went and bought myself a nano.

Dear, sweet Lord, is this thing tiny. I put it in my jacket pocket for a little while, and I had to keep touching it to make sure it hadn't fallen out. It doesn't come with a clip, so I bought a nice little incase sleeve/belt clip for it, so that I don't have to hold it in my mouth while I work out, which I could easily do, by the way.

The model I bought was the cheaper, 4 GB model, which is fine; not enough to hold everything in my iTunes library, but certainly enough to hold what I generally feel like listening to in this phase of my life. The screen is gorgeous, bright, and colorful - it's my first color iPod, so I'm still not used to that.

I was skeptical of the whole "watching videos on a two inch screen" thing, so I spent a couple bucks on a TV episode at the iTunes Store. I'd have expected my eyes to be hurting after forty minutes of staring at that tiny little thing, but I was perfectly comfortable the whole time. I'll chalk that up to the nano's sharp, vibrant image. Seriously, I'm impressed.

Oh, yeah, and it plays music good, too.

So, in case you can't tell, I like it, and I highly recommend it to anyone who's looking for a music player in that particular specific price and feature space. I think it will tide me over until the iPhone 2.0 comes around beautifully. :)


¹ To reboot a 4th-gen iPod, simply hold both the center button and the Menu position on the clickwheel simultaneously for several seconds.

² To enter diagnostics mode, reboot the iPod so that the Apple logo is visible on the screen. Then, hold both the center button and the Rewind position on the clickwheel simultaneously for several seconds.