So with the launch of Ryzen 3000 series and the X570 chipset, I began to wait for ASUS to release either their X570 mini-ITX board or their X570 mini-DTX board because of the amount of rear USB ports and such. In anticipation, I bought Thermaltake's Core V1 case because I was wanting to use a spare ATX/EPS power supply instead of buying an SFX power supply to keep the case small. I think it was about September when I gave up waiting and went with Gigabyte's X570 mini-ITX board instead and also grabbed a Ryzen 5 3600 since I was planning on doing a CPU upgrade to whatever the last supported high-core count CPU would be. It took me a while to find the motherboard because the local computer store said they had 4 in stock, but I couldn't seem to find it. Why? Because it was on the bottom shelf and practically shoved all the way back (not front-faced). (Captain Picard or Uncle Iroh facepalm here) To make matters worse, no employee was available for help, so it took 10 or so minutes before I found it.
I did a post test at my friend's because he lives much closer, and it posted just fine. At home the following day, I found out the Core V1's standoffs are just bent pieces of the metal tray, so I had to remove the motherboard's backplate. Oh right, I also grabbed 16GB of DDR4 3200 RAM from the computer store since it was the cheaper option than buying online. For the CPU cooler, I went with Noctua's NH-U9S because it was the largest I'd be able to fit in the case and Noctua's site says the cooler would handle the Ryzen 9 3950X (I think they were out and tested by Noctua at that point). Went with a Sapphire Radeon RX570 because it has 5 display outputs (two DisplayPort, two HDMI, one DVI-D) instead of the three that the RX560 has (DisplayPort, HDMI, VGA) because it'd allow a little more flexibility, even though I'd be using adapters.
"Pod 126" came from my deconstruction of the Pod numbers compared to the Yorha units. It took a while to figure out, and I think I had to do it twice because I didn't save the first spreadsheet where I figured it out. 2B's Pod unit is numbered 042 while 9S' Pod unit is numbered 153, and the way I figured it out was that 42 divided by 2 is 21 while 153 divided by 9 is 17. With 6 numbers between 2 and 9, the multipliers would have to be doubled... A table would make this easier...
| Yorha Unit Number |
Pod Unit Number |
Multiplier |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | 42 | 21 |
| 3 | 60 | 20 |
| 4 | 80 | 20 |
| 5 | 95 | 19 |
| 6 | 114 | 19 |
| 7 | 126 | 18 |
| 8 | 144 | 18 |
| 9 | 153 | 17 |
I'm not entirely sure what I did to originally figure it out (I only really remember that the original spreadsheet is larger than the one I have now), but this is pretty much what I came up with. I think when I first did the spreadsheet, I was under the impression that the Threadripper build would be the 8th AMD computer I built for myself, but I think when I was figuring it out again, I ended up with it being the 7th (and consequently, I had to get the corresponding Pod number since I originally was under the 8/144 impression).
Anyway, I had also gotten a couple 3.5 inch drives to replace the 2.5 inch drives from i3rd because the Core V1 case was able to accommodate them (technically, it can handle two 3.5 inch drives and two 2.5 inch drives or four 2.5 inch drives). I also took the ThermalTake badge off the front of the case because I wanted it to look a little cleaner, even if it meant having a weird depression in the front where the badge was. The back of the Core V1 has spots for two 80mm fans, which is a weird decision since there's plenty of space for two 92mm fans instead, but I still filled it out to try to help exhaust the air. I also swapped the stock 200mm fan for Noctua's, but with how the case ended up being, I had positive pressure that ended up exhausting air out of the side intake where the GPU is.
Eventually, SilverStone Technology announced the SUGO 14 case and I was quite interested in it because it allowed installation of one 5.25 inch device, had removable filters on the side panels (the Core V1 has non-removable foam in the front bezel and nothing else for filtration), and had normal motherboard standoffs (or at least much closer to normal compared to the Core V1). After really looking around at it from the images and deciding to replace the Core V1, I preordered it and got it on launch day.
I had to go back to 2.5 inch hard drives since I wouldn't be able to mount any 3.5 inch drives with the optical drive (well, the CPU cooler also prevents this), but it wasn't too big of deal since I also ordered a 2.5 inch 2TB drive for the files and used the old 1TB from Bazett/i3rd for micellany. I had to put the 1TB drive on the front while I finished engineering (and waiting for the MJF 3D print to arrive) the adapter bracket to mount it on the removable side frame next to the CPU cooler since there was enough space to do so.
Unfortunately, after transplanting everyting from the Core V1 to the SUGO 14, Pod didn't boot. I tried borrowing Lie-chan's PSU (which was the same model), reseating the RAM, reseating the CPU, trying one stick of RAM in one slot, but I couldn't get Pod to post. My thoughts were the motherboard, CPU, or PSU since I didn't have any extra on hand, and I decided to head to the computer store with Pod without storage for their diagnosis/repair service. Fortunately, the tech did a basic diagnosis with a different set of RAM and different PSU and Pod booted, confirmed that it was the PSU after the tech put my RAM back in and used a PSU tester on Lie-chan's PSU (I didn't feel like putting Pod's PSU back in when doing my bit of diagnosis). After buying a PSU, I went home and everything was fine, but I didn't think about how the case holds the PSU, so Corsair's PSU was not the best choice because of the large chamfers on the edges. I decided to just make some adapter wedges to make it sturdier, and after a second round, it worked (first sets were bad because I didn't get proper measurements). Also had some of the other employees at the computer store ask about my case, which was kinda cool to incidentally show off a brand new case.
With the new PSU, I decided to try CableMod cables out for the ATX connector because I didn't feel like taking Pod offline to see how Corsair wired their cable to make my own. While the CableMod cable was better than the one from Corsair (in terms of excess length), I ended up figuring out the wiring of it (before using it) and the Corsair cable (after the cable swap) and made my own which would be shorter and less annoying than either. I also did a custom PCIe power cable adapter back when using the Core V1, and then made a custom cable for the Corsair PSU. I also made a custom EPS connector for the Corsair PSU. I think it was sometime after I got the custom 2.5 inch HDD bracket when I made the custom SATA power cables for all the drives, including the two bays in the front.
I only have a 120mm and 140mm fan as the top and rear exhausts so that it's negative pressure, and I was planning on the PSU also be exhaust, but the PSU has a 0RPM mode, so that plan fell through. At least with the airflow being negative pressure instead of positive, the GPU stays cooler now.
I also made a magnetic swivelling cover for the power button that has Pod's name on it because I didn't want to accidentally press it (though I have it set to do nothing in Linux and Windows) and to also be able to have the power on light on because it looks nicer than the power on light on the Core V1.
Without and with magnetic swivelling cover.
Underneath the small hexagon at the top is a 4mm diameter magnet press-fitted into a recess, and another 4mm diameter magnet is double-sided taped (the thin stuff, not the foam stuff) to the inside of the case so it's easy to remove if I decide to remove it for whatever reason.
I also got another NVMe SSD for Windows installation, and GRUB ended up detecting it just fine. One weirdness is that with UEFI/BIOS, I have to have CSM off and not have anything in the boot order because if I choose the Linux SSD, Pod will boot to Windows.
When Ryzen 5000 series was launched, I had the ability to buy the Ryzen 9 5950X that I wanted (since the 5000 series would be the last of the AM4 CPUS), but I didn't and had to wait until mid-February this year before the computer store had enough in stock for me to be able to get one right after work. I was going to run some benchmarks with Phoronix Suite, but I didn't know it needed to download the tests, so I ended up giving up the idea because I wanted the 5950X in ASAP. Though I don't have too much of a comparison, it's still crazy to be able to convert 32 songs at the same time compared to 12. (Song conversion's one of the few things that's multi-threaded that I can use as a loose benchmark.) I was also considering compiling C++abi or something like that for a test comparison (old dependency for FreeFileSync required it before the dependency was changed), but I probably forgot at that point.
I haven't used Pod so much in a way to flex the the CPU that much, besides compiling dependencies when needed, and the "converting my library to OGG" has a bit of a problem. I thought the MP3 gain programme is multi-threaded, but I was sorely wrong when testing it out. The reason for mentioning it is that back in the days where I primarily used Windows, I had used MediaMonkey to apply a permanent volume levelling to all of my songs, and because OGG is gained by adding replay gain info to the tags, I would need to re-gain all the MP3s to "CD loudness" (about 99dB) before converting to OGG. While I don't know how long it would take to do the re-gain of all the MP3s, I do know that the conversion would be quite quick in batches of 32. (I think there's also some weird crashing issue with the gain programme anyway.)
RAM might be the next upgrade later on, but I dunno when that'd be. I could also swap the RX570 for Melty's RX480, but we'll see.
I think that's it, unless I forgot something, to which I'd probably edit this post or something.
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