| Hot Rod PC Specifications |
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Every great product starts by specing out what's gonna get built. The Hot Rod PC is no exception. I want a machine that will crush the Dell Dimension 8100 in a performance contest and look like Ferrari's latest showcar in a beauty contest. Every geek that sees it should be eating his heart out and wishing it was his.
Hey, I got testosterone too, okay? I consider this a harmless outlet for it.
CPU & RAM
Before you can start designing very much of your system, you have to pick a CPU and its attendant RAM architecture.
"Intel or AMD?", that is the question. Actually, this is one of the rare occasions when its a pretty easy decision that involves very little compromise. The AMD seems to beat the Pentium for a given clock speed. Granted, at this time the fastest AMD is the 1.4 GHz Thunderbird and Intel has just released a 2 GHz Pentium, but before the Pentium 2 GHz, the AMD was beating every model Pentium out there. The 2 Gig Pentium runs anywhere from not as fast to a maximum of about 25% faster on specially coded benchmarks. The average looks to be in the 10-15% range faster. Couple that with the likelihood that AMD will have the next performance increment to improve on the Pentium, look at how much cheaper the AMD is than the Pentium (like 1/4 the cost for nearly the same performance), and how much cheaper the RAM is (DDR RAM is awesomely cheaper than RAMBUS) and I see no reason to hesitate.
Actually, I did briefly consider the idea of a dual processor system. Windows XP is shortly going to make 2 CPU systems even more likely to succeed, after all. However, while the Athlon's are cheap, the cost of motherboards goes through the roof with 2 CPU's. Also, if I don't like Windows XP, I'm stuck. I can't run Windows 98 or ME with 2 CPU's. For those of you who crave the ultimate speed, my guess is that adding the second CPU will add on the order of $300-$400 to the project. Considering that this doubles performance for applications that can take advantage, it might be worth it to you. For me, its a little more expense and hair than I need for my first build-it-yourself computer project. Besides, the only thing I'm wasting if I upgrade is the mobo, which costs a lousy $68. I can change my mind later pretty painlessly!
On the subject of RAM, once you choose the AMD route, life is sweet. I can get 1GB (!) of PC2100 DDR superfast RAM for a lousy $200 as I write this. Should you be tempted to skimp, don't. The benchmarkers say life for CPU's over 1GHz begins with 256 MB. Less than that and its hard to see performance advantages on many benchmarks. This is especially true with the more memory-hungry Windows XP.
Bob's Hot Rod PC will use a single 1.4GHz Athlon Thunderbird with 1GB of PC2100 DDR RAM
Motherboard
Once you have the CPU and RAM figured out, its time to choose a mobo. This is a hard choice to make. If you choose the wrong mobo your life is going to be Hell. Some are buggy and unstable. Others are rock solid, but not all that fast. There's the issue of on-board features. I know I don't want sound on the motherboard (or at least I won't use it), but I would love to have a RAID controller, extra USB ports, and a 10/100 LAN connection. Firewire might be interesting too. These are just some of the options. I don't know how much I'd mess with it, but it'd be cool if the board supported overclocking. It'd be cool if I can drop in a new AMD CPU if they start shipping 2 GHz Athlons any time soon. The list goes on.
The way I approached this problem was to break it down by mobo chip sets. For my CPU/RAM choice, the SiS 735 is the hot ticket. There are other AMD chip sets, but this one gave significantly better performance, and seemed the latest thing. This narrowed my search considerably because only one company, ECS, was shipping an SiS-based mobo. Fortunately, it was cheap and getting well reviewed, so I had a winner.
The ECS K7S5A sells for $68, but I got one for $60 using www.pricewatch.com. Incidentally, the ECS PC board is a cool black color instead of the usual green. That'll look good in the Hot Rod PC! I ordered my ECS motherboard from www.micropro.com. Be sure to check www.pricewatch.com for the best prices before ordering. Also, prices on pricewatch are often "promotional", and you have to do something special to get the vendor to honor them. In my case, I had to tell Micropro I got the quote from pricewatch. Doing so got me the board for $60 instead of the $68 they list in their catalog.
Bob's Hot Rod PC will use the cool black ECS K7S5A motherboard...
Cooling System
After the CPU and video card, the CPU cooler seems to be the major bragging point for hot rod PC's. In fact, the cooling system in general is a factor. Having 12 fans on the case and a homebrew water-cooled CPU seems to be the moral equivalent of a 426 Hemi under the hood, dual carburetors, or an add-on turbocharger. Go figure.
Anyway, Bob will not be outdone on this front. I basically want to satisfy the following priorities where cooling is concerned. It has to look cool, not be too noisy, and be effective at keeping the chips cool. Considerable research has led me to conclude that I want to buy a quiet power supply, and two very quiet fans for the rear of the case. I'll have to think about whether to install a fan for the front of the case based on how much more noise it'll make. This PC will be sitting on the table next to my monitor after all.
For the power supply, which has an integral fan, I also need something quiet. The PC Power & Cooling Silencer 400 Quiet Fan supply is perfect for the job and has a great reputation, though it is a tad expensive.
For CPU cooling, its important to go all out because this cooler becomes one of the centerpiece visual attractions for the whole thing, not to mention being a factor in whether overclocking will be feasible. For this chore, I have three choices in mind, and havent' decided which one to settle on. Here we have a dilemma. The German-made Noise Control Silverado is absolutely tops for quiet and efficient cooling, and represents a tour de force in cooling technology. However, I don't really think it looks all that cool. I could probably make it come out okay by painting the fan housing read and detailing it, but there are much cooler looking devices available.
In the looks department, either the Thermaltake "Orbs" or Zalman units win hands down. These are the designs I considered, which would you pick?
Zalman CNPS3100: Best looking, quiet, medium cooling performance...
Thermaltake Dragon Orb: Good looking, medium cooling, lotsa fan noise...
Noise Control Silverado: Best performance and technology...
Bob picked the Zalman, 'cause it just looked too wicked cool for school!
Why the Zalman? I'm not planning to overclock (in fact my mobo barely supports it) so maximum cooling is not a requirement. For looks and quiet, the Zalman is the hands down winner. I ordered mine for $44 from www.coolerstar.com.
Video Card
There's no room for doubt here--the video card has to be a GeForce 3 card. Every one of these cards performs almost the same and has the same features, so its only a question of which one's cosmetics you like better. I'm partial to the all-blue Hercules Prophet III card. My brother, who is building a red and yellow color-combination likes the Gainward card, which is bright red. I've also seen green and bronze cards out there too. A word of warning--the Hercules card seems to be pretty overpriced compared to some of the others. I decided to live with the premium--$325 is what I paid--but there are other cards out there in the mid to low $200's.
The GeForce3 is an incredibly potent computer almost by itself. It has 64MB of video RAM, and its "cpu" has an amazing 57 million transistors. That's somewhat more than Intel's Pentium 4 and almost twice what my AMD Athlon CPU has in it. This is some serious stuff!
Bob likes the Hercules Prophet III video card...
Case
The guts are cool, but you gotta have a hot looking case if you're gonna call it a Hot Rod PC, right? Looking for something a little different, and having always been partial to cubes, I ordered a Yeong Yang Cube Server Case from www.caseoutlet.com. The case is beautifully made, has a huge amount of room inside, and I think it will be perfect. Cost was $150. If you live in the SF Bay Area, just take the regular shipping. I got my case in 2 days.
Bob's YY Cube Server Case...
Hard Drives
After doing a lot of research, I've about decided to go with an IDE RAID configuration. You can buy a Promise Fasttrack 100 controller card for about $75. Couple this card with 2 hard drives and you've got a RAID array. For the drives, I like IBM's 60GXP deskstar family. They're really fast and have been tremendously well reviewed. Since my computer today has 20GB and is only using 12, I'll buy a pair of 40GB drives for the RAID array. These drives are pretty cheap (a little more than $100), and very fast. Together, I'll have a romping stomping 80GB of hard disk space!
Peripherals
The reviews all like Plextor CD/RW drives, so I'll be using the 16x10x40 unit. It's really fast and reliable. At this stage, that's all I'm worried about. This is enough to get the system up and running. I'll add more accessories, such as a sound card and modem, later.
OS
I normally have a rule about new computers. I only upgrade my machine when I can get 2x performance or when a major new OS upgrade is released. Frankly, I find OS upgrades too painful to undertake on a production machine, so I prefer to do them on a virgin machine. In this case, I've hit a double jackpot. My new Hot Rod PC should by much more than 2x as fast as my current Micron 750MHz Pentium, and I'll be running Windows XP on it from the get go. In fact, I'm so optimistic I'll have this all working quickly, I downloaded the trial version ahead of MSFT's gold release to retail to get me started. Several friends are running it and claim its very stable. I think the choice to run a beta operating system together with the RAID array represent the riskiest aspects of this design. If I encounter trouble, that's where I'll expect it to be.
Cooling Strategy
You need to develop a strategy for how you plan to cool your case. This doesn't mean hanging 23 fans on the thing in every possible orifice, but it also doesn't mean relying on the cheezy little fan in the power supply to keep things cool. Manufacturers of off-the-shelf PC's know that good cooling is critical to the reliability and performance of any computer. They test many different configurations to arrive at the lowest cost bang for the buck solution. You probably won't have the option of testing multiple configurations with sensitive measuring devices, but you can opt to do a good job nonetheless.
My goal for this computer was fourfold. First, I wanted to keep it "cool enough". I don't plan on doing much overclocking if at all, which is a major source of unusual heat. I just have to keep this thing stable and happy in a fairly stock configuration. Second, I wanted the system to be as quiet as possible. My computers have always been noisy, and this one goes up on top of the desk where its even closer to the ear. So I want quiet fans. I spent extra money on a PC Power & Cooling "Silencer" power supply, as well as on silent fans to go in the case. Third, I want a CPU cooling fan that doesn't get in the way of seeing the lovely Zalman cooler I've chosen. Given the layout of my mobo and the case, this should be easy to achieve by placing a case fan directly over the heat sink on top of the case. Lastly, I want to be able to filter any fans blowing into the case to keep the dust out. I'm going to a lot of trouble to make the insides of the computer pretty and visible, and a layer of grey dust in there would be a major turn-off.
Some things I learned in my Internet studies about cooling. First, numerous articles suggest that you need more exhaust fan capacity than intake fans. In my case, I will have a 120mm intakes and 3 80mm exhausts, so that base is well covered. Second, try to visualize the path of air through the case. Does it slow smoothly and quickly from intake to exhaust? That's good. Do you have two intakes pointed right at each other? That may create turbulence as the flows fight for dominance. It may not work as well. It's telling that several cooling experts confessed that their systems ran coolest with the side panels off. That implies that quite apart from using the fans to increase flow through the box over ambient, we are fighting just to get enough flow through there that it cools as good as leaving the sides open with no fans! One group hooked up a fog making machine to the intake, slapped a plexiglass side on the box, and watched the smoke patterns inside to see where they had stagnant air and therefore heat buildup. I'm not going that far, but it is easy to try to picture whether that air can follow a direct path from intake to exhaust that flows past all the right heat sinks. BTW, a fan on top of the case, commonly called a "blow how", can be especially helpful as heat rises. Another tidbit is to use round IDE cables. Not only do they look better, but air can get around them more easily than flat ribbons. And be sure to neatly tie off your cables to minimize their impact on airflow.
I plan to check my temps using a DigitalDoc5 fan controller. I'll look at it with case covers off and then on, and strive to make them as similar as possible. Be sure to let things stabilize for a couple of hours when taking these measurements too. I have some thoughts on how to boost my cooling further if I need to. They may involve installing a baffle or two to direct the airflow, and perhaps adding another fan or two, or increasing the size of an existing fan. Remember, you can get 80, 92, and 120mm fans.
The four major fans of the cube. Big one lower right is a 120mm intake. Top is an 80mm exhaust right above cpu. Rears are 80mm exhaust.