I finally uploaded a few pictures of my Goliath project that I upgraded last month.   My network naming standard is based on UnrealTournament vehicles.  My main system is Leviathan (the powerhouse, although not accurate with the 2×300GB Velociraptors), the 5+ TB server is Goliath, laptop is Raptor and the iPhone is Manta.   Scorpion was my media PC but I’ve combined that with Goliath and use the Xbox for streaming media but will probably be back up online once I am able to reduce it down to an extremely small case for my Ubuntu box.

Anyway… I put up 4 images of the hardware and what it looks like finished.  It’s a lot of storage but not a lot of power, it actually runs quite efficient on an Antec 300w PSU that I’ve tested output on.  It has ran rock solid since I brought it up and since I’m using as a media server as well as storage, it’s running Windows Vista x64 w/8GB of RAM.   Still not much of a fan of Vista but XP didn’t do what I wanted for this project, so I had to move to it.

Here’s the images… The installed components are slightly blurry (first image) but it’s the gist that matters.   As you can see from the side view it took some, ummm, pliers to get the SuperMicro enclosure in since it had 5 1/4 rails.  This didn’t turn out to be too bad since it kind of hugs the enclosure and secures it better.  I also did some wire management after I verified things were working.  The case is a simple Thermaltake M9 which is realatively cheap.  I had no intentions of doing the enclosure when I bought it or I would have probably went with another Antec 900.  I may eventually upgrade my main rig to a 1200 and move it into service, but honestly this little Thermaltake is great for $50.  I also have a 650w PSU waiting in the wings but if I can keep things running without peaking out the 300w, it’s going to stay for efficiency.  If I decide to throw in my ATI 3870 I’ll add the 650w but for the moment there’s really no need.

As I said, this has ran quite well other than some of the things I took for granted in Windows XP for speed like simple items of searching for a file and doing a sort after searching, folders remaining after moving the contents to another location with the same folder name (after confirming to move and replace), the speed that folder deletion occurs and a few other things that I find annoying as hell with Vista.  At least Raptor is running well with Windows 7 x64 beta other than the damn start menu and lack of classic, but that’s for another day.

Specs:

Thermaltake M9 Case  |  Antec 300w PSU  |  Asus P5W Deluxe Motherboard  |  Intel E6600 Processor  |  8GB Corsair RAM
3Ware 9650SE-4LPML RAID Controller (4 Port)  |  4 x 1.5TB Seagate Barracudas in RAID5  |  1 x 750GB Seagate Barracuda
ATI 2600XT  |  2xCD/DVD Recorders (no BD yet)  |  SuperMicro Hot-Swappable Mobile Rack 5×3.5 | 5-in-1 Card Reader
Logitech MX5000 Bluetooth Mouse/Keyboard  |  Gateway 2400 24″ LCD  |  Perelian X2040 LCD  |  Antec Veris Remote/IR

Upgrades will be moving to maybe a Q6600 if I find a used one cheap, the 650w PSU and maybe the ATI HD3870 which would make this a decent gaming box as well.

Click an image below for individual images (or click here for the full gallery):

For those, like me, that hate the gamepad for first person shooters on the Xbox, there’s the XFPS.  There’s quite a few reviews out there and I had given up on finding something, but I may end up giving this a try!    My Wolfking Warrior XXtreme may be perfect.  The one item that bothers me with the DriverHeaven review is their bad point (obviously):

Allow some system to adjust the mouse sensitivity as not every 360 game lets you change the thumbstick sensitivity, this can cause issues with games requiring fast 360 degree movement.

Anyway, check out DriverHeaven’s review.

I know that Xbox Live is going to be down this week for a day or so for updates so I assume it’s for the late fall update that they’re calling the New Xbox Experience.  They have a video at Xbox.com talking about it but they really don’t focus too long on what it’s going to look like but I did’t see the familar blades as part of the interface.  I guess we’ll see….

Not sure really what I’ve been up to other than not posting here!   Actually I’ve been busy with my house, the yard and real world stuff.  I’ve been playing UT3 and BF2142 still off and on for my usual 10 or less hours.  I picked up Battlefield Bad Company for the 360 and it’s a fun game that I wish they would have released for the PC and still not sure why they didn’t.  The game has a great story line to it but I’ve really not played it much.

The other thing that I’ve been playing almost religiously is Mob Wars on Facebook.  Never thought I had a need for Facebook but found this game from co-workers and I’m hooked.  Also think Facebook is a great site and that’s something I never thought I’d say after my time on mySpace.  It has a lot of activities if you have friends and is a great time killer to screw around on with the application interface.  Who would have thought text based games would make such a resounding comeback at this point?  It’s kind of funny to see how many men and women of varying ages are into Mob Wars and it’s simple interface.

Still working on the Arena Rock Radio station which I hope will be up next weekend, I’m about 75% through the songs that will be on it (about 600 total tracks).  Once it’s up I’ll start working on Radio Vietnam again and try to start targeting merchandise for both sites under my Wanderlust Networks heading.  myGamerZone is on hold for a bit while I finish those tasks and work on a dog rescue site, a bakery and I have to work on getting Sam the Decider going for Paul on WordPress (sorry for the delay Paul! ).

ATI released new drivers this past week as well, so we’re up to 8.7.  I’m going to see if they help with instabilities I’ve had in UT3 tonight.

I’ve also been using Firefox 3.0 and wondering where my damn spellcheck is half the time!

Until next time….

Here’s some reviews of the recently released ATI RV7700 based cards:

• AnandTech:  The place I actually still enjoy reading the reviews and hasn’t completely sold their soul.
• Ars Technica
• Tom’s Hardware
• FiringSquad

Reviews at sites I don’t frequent as much or ever:

• The Tech Report
• Guru3D
• HotHardware
• ExtremeTech

When I get the chance this weekend, I’ll throw up some comparisons of the reviews.

Before I had everything I picked up 2GB of Crucial Ballistix (at the beginning of March) and when I finally finished building out the Q9450/Asus Maximus Formula I threw them in. As previously mentioned the voltage on these seemed to run high even on stock speed of 800mHz which was some concern and especially after reading all the comments on the NewEgg review page for this memory. I chose it because of the good luck in the past I’ve had with Crucial but I wish I would have taken a look at the reviews first. Right now it stands at about 29% of the reviews on NewEgg give the memory a rating of 1. I don’t typically look very hard at reviews on NewEgg because the issues are typically a DOA module and people immediately rate the item a 1 when there’s always going to be a few bad apples in a batch. This is a different situation and most of the 1 ratings are modules that were fine and died 2 week (as the case for me) and up to 3 months. I dropped NewEgg a note that I personally think they should consider suspending the sale until Crucial gets some quality control in place and stops sending out garbage. Whether it falls on deaf ears or not, who knows but I RMA’d mine today since they do have a 90 day replacement at NewEgg for memory.

In the mean time I received my G.Skill 2×2GB modules which are posting at 1.97v and a ref voltage of 0.99, well below that of the Crucial.

My woes began on Friday. I really haven’t been active because of some house work that I’ve been completing and family stuff for the birthday and Mothers Day. I went to check my mail and the system was sitting at a message that it was unable to boot from the operating system. I rebooted to find that my RAID was failing so I did a hard reboot and the RAID was detected, booted into Windows and life seemed to be happy. I honestly don’t think I checked it again until Sunday and the system was locked and wasn’t responding to the monitor. Powering off/on did nothing on several attempts so I used the CMOS reset button, rebooted and dropped into BIOS and set the RAID and minor changes keeping it at stock “auto” for everything. I powered down/up and immediately saw a blue screen flash (need to disable the auto restart). The system came up from the blue screen and appeared OK but there was no audio, so I disabled/re-enabled the driver (which typically works) and it rebooted while making the change. On reboot it immediately gave me errors that my profile was corrupted and couldn’t load as well as several root files being corrupted. I attempted one more reboot and the same thing. I powered down and left it off until tonight thinking I would need to try the new RAM and rebuild (something I really didn’t want to do). I dropped the G.Skill in, rebooted and the system came up flawlessly with audio and all. I checked voltage and as I said it’s running well and I even bumped the system up to 380FSB and rebooted. I’m currently running 2 Folding@Home GPU2’s on my two 3870s and it’s been up for about 4 hours without a hiccup. We’ll see how it does overnight and into tomorrow night but even some of my temps and other voltage that I thought were a bit high seem to be a better range.

Unfortunately the North Bridge still is registering 50c at idle but seems to only jump to 61c while running the two F@H sessions. Still need to look into that or take a look at changing the voltage on the NB to see if I can get the temps down but my understanding is that concern is when it starts hitting around 70c in full load and I had read (need to find it) where it should be OK as high 90c but I’d rather not see it even reach 70c so I’ll just have to monitor it and see if changing the voltage helps or post some more messages.

Until then…