Mei Ren 1

Oh god... I usually enjoy building computers, but the case just took away so much of my enjoyment to make it feel a little more menial than anything.

The case is a Raidmax Thunder case, which seemed decent on Newegg for $25, but totally was way cheaper than that. Honestly, I think the case is worth $10-15 max. Three fans are included, and that's probably why it's $25.

The metal used is some really crappy sheet metal and it's quite sad when the plastic parts of the case is much sturdier than the metal.

The side panel window is not clear plastic, but a transparent cyan which is pretty WTF worthy.

The whole back panel is misaligned so the PSU doesn't sit flush against the metal like it should and my PCIe Wifi card sits a smidge crooked in the port (luckily it doesn't affect it too much, just sometimes isn't detected, but easily fixed by a simple reboot).

The front panel is held in by six screws. That's right! Six f*ing screws! Most companies just use clips which work quite well and makes it easy to take off. Not this case. I had to remove the front panel twice, once to get the card reader into the 3.5" bay and the second to reorient the front fan (I think I still need to point that fan to blow in, but I REALLY don't feel like doing it because of how annoying it is).

The tool-less holding things for the hard drives and such weren't really satisfactory. It held my card reader just fine (I still replaced it with screws), but it didn't hold the hard drives securely enough. It did keep them from leaving the hard drive bay, but there was plenty of wiggle room, which doesn't matter when the computer is stationary, but I had to build the computer in a different room, and I don't like my hard drives having a slight wiggle, especially when being transported.

Okay, so in all this negativity, there's got to be something positive right? Well, I suppose so. It DOES hold everything decently enough, so I can't really complain there.

Ok, I think that's enough about the case, I'm sick of talking about it. Well, this upcoming tax season or earlier, I'm gonna get a $50 Cooler Master (or Antec, I can't remember) case that is a lot sturdier from other Newegg reviewers.

Anyway, moving on.

I found that the RAM still crashes openSUSE randomly at full DDR2 800 speeds. Luckily these crashes aren't too bad, one time it force closed Firefox, and not too long after that it crashed Xorg (forced a log-out), and the other couple times after that it caused the package manager within openSUSE to hang... I could've sworn there's a time or two where I had to reboot... Bah, whatever.

Luckily, there's a option in my BIOS to force RAM "compatibility". I don't exactly understand how it works, but I know for one thing is that it halves my ram speed (it brings it to DDR2 400 speeds), and I have no issues with the RAM afterwards.

I've ran Memtest86 4.1 a few times (both with the option on and off), but I can't get a solid answer from it. One of the times when the option was off, and I let it run from test 0 to 7, I got a whole lot of errors within 3 of the modules. Turned the option on, and had no problems in test 7. Turned it off, and got no errors in the first pass of 7 and then got one error in the second pass of 7. WTF?

So I'm torn between emailing Corsair and getting new modules or just running it at half speed since it seems to work just as fine. Not to mention the downtime I'll have, which is not really important. But it's a tough decision, especially when I can't pinpoint the module(s) that are unstable.

Moving on...

So the Phenom II x2 555 BE that's in there.... Yeah... Forgot that AMD stamps out quad-cores and locks two of them and brands them as x2. Actually, when I first read about it, it was before the Phenoms, and was the Athlons. I kinda disregarded it a bit after reading it, since I didn't really care too much about it. But when I was reading a review for an XCLIO case, one of the reviewers posted their specs as an unlocked x2 555 BE, and I stopped and re-read that line again. "Unlocked x2 555 BE? WTF?" Searched it up, and there was the answers. Decided to give it a try since the worst thing that could happen is nothing.

Played with the ACC (Active Core Control, if I remember correctly) setting and in seconds, the core % settings for all 4 cores showed up. It was so quick that I was in disbelief and decided to keep moving by saving and rebooting. Got into openSUSE and verified all four cores. Opened up the system monitor and watched the cores while I was doing my thing (whatever I was doing). Core 4 stayed at 0.0% use and I was concerned, but after watching it a little longer, I saw it jump up to 3% and back down to 0. Luckily, core 4 is being a team member now.

The Zalman 9700 I put on top of it works pretty well, I actually haven't ran the processor any higher than 38C yet. It stays a cozy 34 if I keep the 5.25" bay cover off to allow better airflow into the case. These are all idle temps I'm talking about here. Even after playing 1080p video for 20 minutes, it was still around 34-35, and I'm pretty sure I had the cover off as well. The fan for it stays around 2900-3000 RPM (usually around 2960), and it's audible, but not annoying (like the Vantec Tornado series...) enough to use a fan controller to scale it down.

I originally had a EVGA GTS 450, but I couldn't figure out how to get the second monitor to turn on or enabled or whatever, so I RMA'd it for a Radeon HD 6770. I had thought that nVidia GPUs were a little more Linux friendly, but I suppose I was wrong. I wouldn't mind on a single screen setup, but I need the second monitor. The bottom screen I use for the main video, and the top screen for the controller (VLC with the video split from the main window) to quickly control the video without bringing it out of full screen or using the partially obtrusive full screen controls (also which the seek bar is a bit small for my tastes). I wish I didn't make the mistake of trying something new when I should have stayed with the tried and true method. Oh well, I lost about $10 for the RMA.

Well, I think I feel that this is pretty complete... I really can't think of anything else to say... Oh! The reason whey I named her Mei Ren is because of the crap I went through. Her character in Dance in the Vampire Bund (anime) is kind of sad. She's used as an assassin to (try to) kill the main character (later in the series), but she is unloved/unwanted from what it seemed like. That's kinda how I felt with this build. I want to love what I put into it, but it was hard to with what I had to go through with the case.