Anyone who knows me well knows I have a thing for the color pink when it comes to my electronics. I don't care if it's too girly or if represents the absolute opposite of "girl-power", I just love pink. And green....but mostly pink. I've had a pink Razr, a pink case for my Blackberry Pearl (whose pearl I hacked to shine pink), pink headphones, a pink and gray laptop bag for my pink Dell Inspiron 1520. It's kind of sick when you think about it.

So, needless to say, when I saw the new, special edition Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse 3000 in pink, I immediately added it to my wish list of must-haves.

The mouse is just like its plainer cousin, the "not special edition" Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse 3000, complete with the snap-in receiver that saves battery life and the compact shape and size for ultra-portability.

But for those of you who get a little nauseous at the color pink, you should know the mouse also comes in red, green, brown, and khaki.

This Part 3 of a 3 part series on My Dream Machine (Part 1, Part 2)

Tuning.

I finished Part 2 with a Windows Experience Index of 4.7

Stated goal: an all round 5.9 for all measurements.

Off to order more bits, and change some components in the beastie: General Melchett.

Tweaking time.

Video Card.

At the time of building this machine, the NVidia GeForce 8800GT cards were extremely popular, if not sold out. Many gamers and performance enthusiasts had to wait in a queue for their cards to arrive. DirectX 10. Those extra smooth graphics in Crysis. Nice. Shame I don't play Crysis, but if I did - it would look way excellent.

Once the card arrived, and I arrived home: a quick swap over and installation of the Vista x64 drivers, and another check of the Windows Experience Index: 5.6. We are getting closer.

Temperature

Like any new performance car owner, I want to take it out on the track and safely measure the top speed. How fast can this thing go?

Before heading down the motorway of speed, it's time to talk safety.

Too much heat in your PC, and your engine is going to be fried. Melted bits of copper, silicon and gold. Fire could erupt. Safety first. To ensure safe speed, keeping your performance PC cool is paramount.

Using a nifty little tool from Franck Delattre, CPU-Z: you can find out many things about your motherboard. The hotter a PC is, the less efficient the electrons. The cooler, the longer the components work and the more efficient your PC. Keeping air flowing through the PC and cooling all the hot bits is a key game all performance enthusiasts.

I decided to get a faster yet quieter rear case fan to pull air through the case, and replace the stock-supplied CPU fan. Intel provide a sufficient CPU fan with their processors, but knowing that colder is better, a little research was in order. 

After looking at what other AUSPCMarket guys where buying for their Intel Q6600s. Result: Zalman CPU fans. Below is a photo of the fan installed.

Installation process (note, being the hardware n00b that I am: this took an hour. Chiefly gathering the courage to remove the underside heatsink)

• Remove motherboard from case
• Remove existing CPU fan with the badly designed plastic clips
• A benefit of the Gigabyte motherboard: removable underside heatsink. Remove this
• Screw new baseplate onto front/backside of motherboard
• Clean off old thermal grease from top of CPU
• Re-apply new thermal grease to top of CPU
• Screw down new baseplate for fan
• Clip on new fan
• Wire in fan to CPU_FAN connector on motherboard
• Replace motherboard, restart PC

What is my target temperature?  Less than 50degC in my research is a good target temperature for my configuration. With the application of the Zalman fan, I managed to reduce the core temperatures by an average of 5-7 degrees C, and the ambient temperature in the case by the same measurement. This was a net change in temperature after installing the new RAM and Video card as described above. The NVidia Geforce is a mini-motherboard on its own: it has its own power connector, fan, processor and memory.

I found CPUID's Hardware Monitor an excellent, and more accurate tool, for measuring both the speed of the fans and the temperature on hard disks and video card.

Overclock

As this machine is my "go-to-work drive", stability is critical. Burning out a cylinder is not a good look.

But, on the weekends.. well, it's time to see what General Melchett can do. As a side note, I own a MINI Cooper S John Cooper Works. My wife has taken this beauty of a car around a racing track at near 200km/hr. This also happens to be my work car. Really don't know why this is relevant, but I thought I'd post it anyway.

Overclocking is a little rocket science, a little play with the numbers and mostly fun. Essentially, you are tweaking values in the BIOS at boot time to increase voltages, bus speeds and clocking to get a faster PC. Thankfully, for overclocking newbies, the Gigabyte BIOS has a great mechanism for tweaking. If you set something wrong, it switches back to a known-good default. Almost fail-safe BIOS tweaking.

By tweaking the Bus Speed to 350Mhz, I managed to push the processor to 3.15Ghz. The fans where blaring as the core temperature raised to above 60degrees C due to the core voltage going to greater than 1.3v - the cries of "she cannae go any faster, captn" rang through my head.

Memory

The memory scored a 5.6 in the initial construction. Using two packs of Corsair Twin2X DDR2 XMS2-6400 Twin Pack was financially a good purchase, however not the fastest. The speed is not the absolute maximum; with a little research I found that the Corsair was OK. It was more a matter of latency.

Memory has speeds. There are these strange codes saying things like "2-2-2-12". These numbers refer to the latency timings at a very low level; and the smaller the numbers the faster the memory can be read to and written from. And it is no the direct speed, but rather the "queue waiting time". The smaller the number, the smaller the queue and the less waiting time.

A quick review of the Gigabyte motherboard list of supported RAM modules pops up an interesting choice: Geil DDR2-800 Quad Pack. Lower latency timings, and boom! above that 4Gb barrier on the beastie.

Lesson: when making performance PCs, check memory latency timing speeds. Lower the better.

Recheck the Windows Experience Index:

We get 5.9s all around! Success.

Added bits bill: AU$1,257.19

Further Reading

• arstechnica: The Ars Technica Motherboard Guide
• Hardware Secrets: Understanding RAM Timings
• X-Bit labs: Newbie Overlocking Guide
• Tom's Hardware: Overclocking Marathon Day 1
• Tom's Hardware: Dual vs. Quad Core CPUs

This Part 1 of a 3 part series on My Dream Machine (Part 2)

I am a software guy. Install software, tune the bits, configure the system. Find the limits. Show others how to use it. Software has been the central theme of my geek journey. A Hardware Guy? Well, not so much.

Traditionally, Dell and Apple have made my software-centric life a breeze. After finding some money resting in my account (or someone else's budget), I would wander to an online store and build a machine. After two weeks of impatience, the computer arrives and off I go into software installation heaven.

Challenging your limitations is a natural part of human existence. For me, I had conquer my own personal everest. Time to build something that will go fast, just like the car tweakers from The Fast and the Furious.

Building your own computer is at the core of PC freedom. Picking and choosing the components, plugging it all in. Installing the software. Ensuring that the devices all work. Knowing that your tool-of-trade is constructed by your own hands. Adding more bits later. Finding more money. Adding blinkenlights. All a part of the experience.

Time to build my own dream machine. So started the General Melchett project.

Goal.

Apart from building my own machine, I wanted to make a fast-yet-upgradeable computer. Defining fast as a 5.9 score for all components of the Windows Experience Index in Windows Vista's Performance and Tools

Why only 5.9? 5.9 is as fast as the present versions of Windows Vista display.

What do I want to do with my self-created frankenstein-ian machine?

• Anything better than my Toshiba M400 for editing videos. In fact, anything is better than the old Toshiba.
• Able to run multiple virtual machines under Virtual PC to test out software, special new things from Microsoft and others without breaking my main workstations
• Dual screen to have TV/video/Podcasts running on one side, whilst working on the other. Or at least attempting to work 

Making an informed purchasing decision using internet tools and research is easy. As an Aide-mémoire, I installed Live Labs Listas, to manage my collection of knowledge in snippets.

So the simple goal is a reliable performance machine that have fun driving to and from work everyday. Maybe pop out onto the racing track on weekends.

First: Vista x64. what is 64-bit?

The first consideration was a desire to run Vista x64. I needed to the full value of the 64bits that Microsoft have engineered into the operating system. As x64 is a long topic, I've a separate post on the matter.

Second: The Processor

Windows Vista has support for multiple processors. Multiple cores are really handy with heavy number crunching tasks, such as video encode/decode/transcode.

Research lead me to Quad-core processors - and specifically, the Intel Q6600 processor. As AMD had yet to release the Phenom in retail, and Intel their 45nm range of processors - this particular beastie fit the bill. And the budget.

Another core reason for choosing the Q6600 was the freedom to overclock. (For the balance record: my Windows Media Center PC runs on AMD Athlon 6400+)

Third: memory

A big question: DDR2 or DDR3 memory? DDR3 memory, whilst faster to read/write - is way expensive at the present time. The speed of the FSB. I have decided to wait for DDR3 to reduce in price, or the smart scientists do wonderous things with DDR2.

As you will see, my initial choice of brand of DDR2 memory set me up with 4Gb but didn't perform to my 5.9 expectations.

Fourth: motherboard

One of the beauties of choosing a motherboard and processor combination is the upgradability of either, and the "chipset" on the motherboard.

A chipset defines the range of processors that can be supported, memory speeds, 'system bus speeds', audio and other hardware enhancements.

As the next processor I will upgrade to on this particular PC will be a reasonably priced 45nm processor with a greater cache and more performance, thinking of the future is extremely important.

In this configration, I have chosen a Gigabyte motherboard due to their x64 drivers, choice and the value of the features; many SATA connections (eight!), ability to RAID up on the motherboard and overclockability.

Another feature, which came in handy when later tuning, is the removable motherboard cooling heatsink on rear of motherboard.

Fifth:Case

The case I chose had two additional physical constraints: width and height. As this workstation was destined for my GeekSpace at home, the desk my wife kindly let me purchase had certain constrains.

Sixth: The bits that are needed to make it work

The power supply is an important choice. I chose a 620W power supply which has enough head-room for additional pieces to be added. A key feature of the Corsair powersupply chosen was its use of modular power cables. Many power supplies provide rats-nest of cables to wire into hard disks, motherboards, fans and the like. There is invariably cables left over, or you run out of SATA power for instance. Modular installations provide a connector on the powersupply and a collection of cables to suit your installation. Highly recommended.

Disk drives: 10,000 RPM 'boot' drive and 2 x 500Gb (mirrored) 7200 PRM data drives. RPM is a measure of the revolutions-per-minute of the hard disk. The higher the RPM, the quicker the data is found, and the quicker the hard drive. As I was going for 5.9s, I chose a Western Digital 10000 RPM drive.

Second choice of memory: Geil 8Gb of RAM (note: originally purchased older RAM that wasn't fast or big enough. this now sits in my self-built Media Center)

Video card: NVidia 8800GT. The first card I purchased was permanently borrowed by my son to play Crysis. Had to purchase a second 8800GT. All the rage at the time of purchase, there was a waiting list for these beasties.

Monitors: In a similar vein as the case, the hutch in the GeekSpace had limited height; and I wanted two monitors exactly the same. Time to go to Dell and check the specifications of their LCD displays. I chose two Dell E228WFP displays.

Keyboard: Microsoft Wireless Entertainment 8000. Highly recommended. As I also use the PC as a Windows Media Center, the keyboard is just brilliant at 4 metres.

Seventh: Sundries

Like all geek houses, there are bits of hardware of unknown vintage lazing around the house. Included in this list is an old DVICO USB digital TV receiver. Also on the new shopping list included an internal USB module for SD/CF media read/write, DVD/CD R/W drive, desk speakers.

Chosen an Australian online vendor that ships within Sydney on the same day. Clear the credit card! Off we go purchasing the bits and pieces.

Total bill: AU$4,351.79

Next episode: the building

Further References

• Tom's Hardware
• ExtremeTech

I visited the Hardware department to take a tour down memory lane and get a peek into the future. Enjoy!

Let’s say you’re building a HTPC (home theater PC) or even a desktop for your office and you want to keep the noise to a bare minimum. Besides fans, your biggest noise culprit is probably going to be your hard drive, which can make anything from a weird whirring noise to a nasty grinding noise when copying files. Samsung has fixed this with a new line of silent hard drives called the SpinPoint S166 Series.

The new drives will be up to 8 decibels quieter than other drives while retaining the same 7200 RPM, 3Gb/sec speeds.

The drives will ship with 8MB caches in SATA and PATA versions.

Microsoft’s Conference Center has been buzzing this week and we’re going to bring you up to speed for all of your weekend dinner party banter. The boffins from MS Research were on campus to peel back the curtain on all of their latest and greatest and they came nowhere near disappointing. Tuesday the show was also open to public press for the first time in the event’s 15 year history.

Rory Blyth published his videos to Channel 9, the first featuring DynaVis and FastDash and the second focusing on technology on the wall. Both videos give you a great idea of the vibe in the room, as well as Rory’s unique style if you haven’t ever sampled it.

Scott Beale of Laughing Squid shot gorgeous photos (as usual), featuring Lego workfolk, Windows Vista soda, and of course kittens. Brady Forrest came down from O’Reilly and was smitten by Asirra (a crowdsource service that helps cats and dogs find new homes) and how some Microsoft Researchers are able to move gigapixel images across the web with their HDView technology. Scoble experienced TechFest by viewing everything through the LCD on his PodTech camera. He also determined that using Twitter to publish updates of Rick Rashid’s keynote, available in webcast and transcript forms, was the right tool for the job--a decision probably best described as, “permalinks schmermalinks.”

Bre Pettis was reporting for Make Magazine and talked to MSR boffins about Personal Audio Spaces (think grooving to Sketches of Spain where you’re sitting, but the person next to you is rocking to Now Here Is Nowhere). And of course Engadget’s Ryan Block was there to photograph his fingers on everything.

All told it was quite a whirlwind tour. We here at the 10 HQ have certainly got ourselves a new list of people and projects to follow as we hunt for the cool inside of Microsoft, in this Year of our Bond.

Photo credit: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid.