Computer Build

I like this motherboard a lot. It supports 8th and 9th gen processors, so was a good fit for my i5 processor. It has four slots for DDR4 RAM, a full-size PCI-E slot and two smaller PCI-E slots. (Not enough of a wirehead to be able to tell you the difference off the top of my head. The full-size slot is for the graphics card…)

The onboard audio is decent, it has USB 3 onboard, and it comes with an M2A connector for an M.2 Socket 3 NVME SSD drive. In addition, there is support for five other SATA3 drives on traditional SATA connectors. (You can attach six SATA3 drives if you don’t use the M2A connector.) The manual says you can use all six SATA connectors if you use an M.2 PCIe SSD, but I’m not sure if that means installing it in a PCIe slot… Again, perhaps a real wirehead could tell me.

The bios is pretty cool for an old guy like me: GUI with mouse driver. I was able to set it up fairly easily to allow me to dual-boot (although I only have Linux installed right now).

The integrated video is very nice. In fact, it would have been all I need except for a couple of games that refuse to run. For work, it is more than sufficient, and supports three screens.

There are power connectors for two fans (CPU and System), and there’s a front panel audio connector. I’ll have to finish this part later, as I’m currently diagnosing a problem with my front-panel audio: The channels are mixed to come in the same on both left and right, but many audio sources (particularly video) seem to drop one channel out. I don’t know if it’s the board, the cable, or the case, but I’ve now tried several headphones and headsets, including one that is the old headphone-with-no-mic variety, so I know it’s stereo only.

With four RAM slots, I started off with 16GB of memory, and then upgraded to 48. If I have spare cash lying around, I may pull the 8s out and go to 64GB, but I haven’t seen a need for that yet.

Nice supply with braided cable covers. Lots of connectors for lots of stuff. 600W, so it handles the cpu and graphics card (and is probably overkill, to be honest).

Okay, I felt a bit indulgent getting these, but they are very nice fans. They came in a five pack, so I put one on the back and one on the side, and still had three left over (to easily replace a fan whose bearings went out on my NAS). Very quiet, very efficient. (As I write this, my computer reports that system temp is 42° C (~108° F). With a high-temp threshold of 84° C, I’m pretty comfortable.

While I do occasionally see a process thrashing this CPU (usually only on a couple of the cores) it’s been a real pleasure to use. It installed nicely, and with the cooling I’ve installed runs cool enough for me. I went with Intel instead of a Ryzen because I’m planning to do some streaming with OBS Studio, and UserBenchmark has some interesting stuff regarding a memory bottleneck on the Ryzens.

I’m too old to be ready to try liquid cooling on my system, but this guy is enormous! It barely fits in the case, but with two fans attached, I feel like it’s really doing its best to keep the CPU cool.

Yes, I still want an optical drive. Part of the reason is that we buy DVDs of movies that we want to watch again, and I rip them using MakeMKV and put them on our media server, to save wear and tear on the discs. I got this one because it was SATA, and because it supports the M-type discs that supposedly last for 1K years. True, I don’t currently own any of this media, and my backup strategy does not currently include optical disc backup, but better to be prepared, right?

One of the most expensive parts of the system. I finally got one of these from NewEgg, because the prices on Amazon were ridiculous. In fact, after I ordered, I was told they were out of stock, and would I like to cancel my order? I said, no, I’d rather wait and have them ship it when they got it. It was a little delayed this way, but finally arrived. Then, I just about had a heart attack after I installed it and the system wouldn’t start. It turns out that in inserting the card (which required a fair effort) I had pressed down on one of the latches of a RAM card. The card was partially popped, and the system refused to start. After I checked everything, got the DIMM reseated, etc., everything worked fine.

I have had a couple of times when the proprietary Nvidia drivers don’t want to play nice on my system, but it has taken care of itself and I currently have no complaints.

I ordered a HGST Ultrastar 8 TB drive for this build, but when it came it had a SAS connector instead of SATA, so I had to return it.

It’s hard to shop for storage these days. Amazon has blown searching on their site to smithereens, and NewEgg isn’t much better. You can specify the type of drive you want as carefully as you like and you’ll still get lists spammed with all sorts of things that are mis-tagged by the Chinese merchants competing for your dollars.

I ended up putting in a WD 1TB Blue SN550 NVMe drive in the M.2 slot on the motherboard. I also had a couple of 128GB SSDs (Crucial 128GB 2.5″ SATA CT128M4SSD2) lying around from a previous project, and a 2TB drive(WD20EARS – apparently a Caviar Green) from another system. I slapped them all together with LVM2 to make one big volume. I’m backing up to a WD My Book 8TB desktop drive connected by USB 3.

I will eventually get something like the Ultrastar to go inside, and the My Book will get shucked and installed in my NAS, and the Caviar Green will get retired to a system that I don’t care about so much (as they have a reputation for failing). I will also likely upgrade to some 3.5″ SATA SSDs and pull the Crucials out to go in something more suited to them.

I don’t need anything fancy in a case. I want something that’s big enough for my motherboard and drives ^[1]and cpu fan — oh my!. I like steel, although I’ll work with a certain amount of lucite.

This one also sports two USB 3 ports on the front panel, as well as headphone and mic ports. It has three exposable 5¼ in bays for my optical drive (and I could put in a tape drive, floppy with adapter, 5 ¼ in floppy, hot-pluggable hard drive sled, etc.)

In addition to the normal case fan on the back, there’s a place to mount a fan on the side grill, for better air flow.

Everything fit, and although it doesn’t have tool-free drive mounts, it works.

I subsequently found another case that met my needs even better for a bit less, but no regrets.

I had ordered a Cooler Master SK650, with low-profile Red switches, but the keyboard was defective, and I ordered the CK550 to use while waiting for the SK650 to be RMAed. I like the feel and accuracy of the CK550 a lot. It’s noisier than the SK650, but that’s a trade-off I’m willing to make for a keyboard that types what I want it to type.

The backlighting is a lot more useful than the backlighting on my dinosaur Saitek Eclipse II keyboard, where the lighting was more like mood lighting. It didn’t actually help me to discern letter shapes on the keycaps. In addition, the inclusion of a key puller allowed me to physically move the Control, Alt, and Super keycaps to the places where I actually have them mapped.

I’m keeping the SK650 for now, and it will likely be my travel keyboard, as it has a nice velour bag to travel in, has a detachable USB-C cable (for better packing and less travel stress on the cable) and is lower profile, but even after it came back from the RMA it’s a bit too soft and I tend to repeat bottom-row keys.

For several years, I have preferred trackballs to mice. I find they bother my broken right wrist less, and they work better than mice on the cluttered desk that always manages to be my work surface. The Expert Mouse has a large ball, which is great for control over large or small distances. The ring around the ball is also nice, as it makes scrolling easier (especially in this new era where software designers hate scroll bars).

Back in the day, there were several companies that made replacement balls for these trackballs (55mm ball, if you’re looking) that were either novelty (8-ball is what I remember, specifically) or of differing weights. I have found someone who still sells replacement balls, but although I have a tendency to drop mine, and have it roll who knows where, I haven’t needed to replace it.

The trackball is optical, so rather than having oil accumulate on the rollers, it tends to have lint accumulate on the sensor. This is easily dealt with, as the ball lifts out easily, and you can blow out the lint in a moment.

I use the USB version, FWIW. Wireless means either constant recharging or replacing batteries when it’s least convenient. Wired means it’s always the fluff when my “mouse” starts behaving erratically.

Also, while the trackball has four buttons, I only use three (currently). When I played WOW I had all four buttons mapped to various things, but I never generally used even the third button until I switched to Linux. Now, I’m addicted to inserting selected text without using the clipboard buffer…

It appears that Logitech has a trackball that also uses a 55mm ball, although it’s not centered (it’s placed under the thumb in a more mouse-like enclosure). That might be better for accessing the buttons. Certainly one reason I haven’t explored the use of the fourth button is that it’s awkward to access.

I like the idea of a multi-touch trackpad, but I haven’t seen a solution that wows me for a price I’m willing to experiment at, so… This is also why I use keyboards with numeric keypads — I would be happy to use a tenkeyless with an external pad, but I haven’t seen a pad that encourages me to spend money on it.