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New Computer Build

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bryan1

Well-Known Member
G'day Guy's,
With winter coming on and less power from the solar our main P4 computer is the biggest power hog so I decided to set a $1,000 budget to make a high end low power computer.

I got this power supply and the enclosure for it
**broken link removed**

Also this motherboard
**broken link removed**

The cpu I got is a i5-750 quad core 64 bit Intel and I got 4 gig of DDR3 1333 ram, a WD 500 gig HD and a 19" wide screen LG LCD monitor that only draws 25 watts.

The total cost came $1,028 which although slightly over budget it gives me a cheap high end computer.

I have an old case I can use and keyboard, mouse ,DVD burner so for the foreseeable future this computer should see me right. I got a OEM legal winblows 7 premuim for $108 which I didn't included in the computer build.

Cheers Bryan
 
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What hard drive did you go for?

Did you go for the ultimate performance, low power SSD which lacks capacity or a low revving, low power, slow mechanical hard drive?
 
G'day Hero,
The hard drive is a western digital caviar black sata 500 gig one, 7,400 rpm and my mate said it would outperform the green sata drives by abig margin and only use a tad more power.
 
G'day Hero,
The hard drive is a western digital caviar black sata 500 gig one, 7,400 rpm and my mate said it would outperform the green sata drives by abig margin and only use a tad more power.
G'day Bryan,
Interested to know if all the Oshonsoft kit/modules are compatible with Win7.??
Are there any know legacy program/hardware problems you are aware of.?

Eric
 
Hi Eric,
I have everything here apart from the motherboard and the psu which is coming in from over west. Hopefully it will be here before the weekend as I keen as mustard to get this thin built and working. One of the first things I will do is try and install oshonsoft and some of your modules and see how they go. Also with the bigger monitor using autocad should be a dream to use.

cheers Bryan
 
Don't forget to set your Power Scheme settings to minimize power consumption when in standby mode or when running background tasks (shut down monitor, etc)
 
Well finally got the new puter up and going, when I first powered it up all I got a was several beeps from the motherboard, a quick phonecall to my local puter shop and it turned out the i5-750 cpu did need a graphic's card. So about $110 later with a new sata DVD burner and a Gigabyte 8400GS graphics card I'm up and running. I was impressed as the winblows 7 install was over and done in about 12 minutes. But winblows as usual kept asking for activation everytime I did a reboot installing drivers. One thing that did concern me with the Zotac install CD the wifi card wasn't shown but yea it turned out winblows had already got it. I have set my linksys wifi router to a pretty strict password and as soon as I put one of the keys in winblows was happy. Got a heap to install and YES Eric I will try your OS routines when I get a chance.

Later today I'll put a clamp meter on to check the power consumption but first looks this new puter rocks.

Cheers Bryan
 
Your first post states "winter coming on" .... I'm not totally familiar with climate seasons of specific world regions, but your winter season is about to begin? Wow! You have my sympathy.
 
Your first post states "winter coming on" .... I'm not totally familiar with climate seasons of specific world regions, but your winter season is about to begin? Wow! You have my sympathy.


Yep winter is just around the corner and the solar charging days are heaps shorter is power will be conserved where we can. Being off the grid does have power woes especially when the sun doesnt shine and theres no wind around.

Anyway I put a clamp meter on the negative input lead whilst I had several programs running and the new puter was drawing just over 2 amps @ 25.2 volts DC, couple that with 24 watts from the 19-1/2 " wide screen lcd and this puter build has turned out to be a high end puter using very low power.

My next puter build will be an Atom based one and will use even less power, in the end all the puters here will run off DC and not only will we be better off power wise but it will also be a serious upgrade in puter hardware.

Cheers Bryan
 
Well guys it seems winblows 7 home premuim is more prone to BSOD's than any other winblows OS's, not everytime but most times I start this 24 volt DC puter I can use it for around 10 minutes then firefox goes 'not responding' and soon after the BSOD. The puter will bootup again but stay on the Zotac initial startup screen and hang. I think the problem might be running the DC psu fan on 6 volts instead of 12 volts but when the puter hangs the psu is cool. I wonder if the it might be the supplied intel heatsink aint doing it's job as when I go into the bios the cpu is around 74C.

Before I do any digging into hardware any tips will be greatly appreciated.

Regards Bryan
 
Well guys it seems winblows 7 home premuim is more prone to BSOD's than any other winblows OS's, not everytime but most times I start this 24 volt DC puter I can use it for around 10 minutes then firefox goes 'not responding' and soon after the BSOD. The puter will bootup again but stay on the Zotac initial startup screen and hang. I think the problem might be running the DC psu fan on 6 volts instead of 12 volts but when the puter hangs the psu is cool. I wonder if the it might be the supplied intel heatsink aint doing it's job as when I go into the bios the cpu is around 74C.


Before I do any digging into hardware any tips will be greatly appreciated.

Regards Bryan
hi Bryan,
74C IMO is too high for the cpu.
When you boot up can you go into the set up screen.?
On some PC's the measured temperature of the cpu is displayed in real time, leave it running and if it crashes at a certain tempr.

The other point is the cpu heating is increased by how much the cpu work is doing, is there any pattern on how many and which programs are active when it crashes.?
 
Hi Eric,
Yea 74C does sound high, I did have this problem before when I left the power supply turned on as a green led on the psu flickers and as soon as the puter was turned on it hung or wouldn't boot. Now I turn off the psu supply when I'm finished but the problem is still there. I reckon it's time to see if this puter will run directly off my fridge battery charger and take it in to my local puter mob.

Cheers Bryan
 
74C is VERY high. You should be shooting for no more than 60 IMO. 34-40 would be ideal. Did you use the crap paste that comes pre-installed on intel heat sinks? If so you need to remove the heatsink and clean it off of both the processor and heat sink. Next to you need to get some quality thermal paste such as artic silver 7. Wrap your finger in cling wrap and put a drop the size of a bb on your finger. Apply it to the heatsink using a small circular motion. Reinstall it and check your temps.

I was able to keep an older Pentium D 805 (with a stock clock of 2.66Ghz) at 34C at idle with it being overclocked to 4Ghz on air. (but with a different heatsink)



For the record win 7 has been the most stable in my experience.
 
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