Inside the media centre. Showing new CPU, Northbridge, and case fans. New hard drive can also be seen.	Slight close up. The single TV card can be clearly seen.	And closer still. The Zalman CPU heatsink & fan combo receives good reviews for it's use in media centre PC's.	Media centre back in place, minus the 2 blue LEDs.	Media centre up and running!

Results

I am very pleased with the results, it now runs much quieter. And it has the added benefit of backing up everything automatically. I run scheduled backups so I don't even have to manually start a backup. I also like keeping all the personal media separate from the business data. And it looks much better without those 2 blue LEDs at the front.

And has the use of fewer fans, running at lower voltage affected the temperatures? Only slightly. I have run temperature diagnostic software, and the idle & load temperatures have risen from 35 & 50 Celsius, to 38-40 & 60 Celsius.

Water Cooled & Overclocked PC Revisited

I wanted to increase the RAM in my water cooled PC from 2 gigabytes to 4 gigabytes (Why? I want to run virtual machines). The water cooling on the existing 2 gigabytes of RAM (in my original Water Cooled PC), led me to decide whether I would water cool the further 2 gigabytes vs active cooling vs passive cooling. I over volt my RAM due to overclocking, so passive cooling was out. I've read good reviews of OCZ's active RAM cooler, and I wasn't too impressed with my existing ThermalTake water cooling setup (the tubes on the RAM cooling units are narrow gauge and I noticed the flow indicator wasn't spinning as fast as I'd like). I decided it was time to revisit my water cooled PC and do the following:

• Strip out the ThermalTake RAM water cooling setup.

• Install an extra 2 Gigabytes of RAM.

• Install OCZ's active RAM cooler.

• Strip out ThermalTake's water level indicator (it kept giving false readings)

• And while I had the water cooling loop emptied, I thought I'd take the opportunity to install an improved water block on the CPU, namely the highly reviewed EK Supreme water block. I might go quad core in the future, and this would be better suited to the task of cooling a 4 core chip rather than the ThermalTake unit. Additionally I'll be able to simply slot in a new CPU without having to drain & refill the water cooling loop.

Photos Showing Finished Water Cooled PC Mark II...

Old CPU Block and Water Level Indicator Removed.	Old RAM Water Cooling Setup Removed. The narrow gauge tubing can clearly be seen in this photo.	New Water Cooling Installed. The new CPU water block and RAM cooler can be seen. There is less tubing overall, and the lack of narrow gauge tubing means that the water flow meter spins noticably quicker.	Close up View of New Water Cooling... If you look closely at the bottom right of the photo, you can see a metal join in the tubing. If I need to drain the loop in the future, I simply take it apart at this point.	...and Closer Still. The CPU water block and RAM cooler are shown up and running.
Photo with Labels Clearly Showing Layout. I've labelled this photo to clearly show the new modifictions.	Front Radiator Exposed... I've received a few emails enquiring about the exact location of the second radiator. I've removed the grills from the front of the computer to show it's location.	...and Front Radiator Hidden. And now it's gone again.

 

Results

 

I have achieved much better cooling. The average temperature has fallen by 10 degrees, from the high 50's to the high 40's. This bodes well if I decide to install a quad core chip. How much of this is down to a higher flow rate, the lack of extra heat input into the loop (from the over volted RAM chips), and/or the new CPU water block isn't known. Research suggests all three play a role.

 

The malfunctioning water level indictor, and lack of RAM were niggling me for a while. Now - now more niggles!

 

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Water Cooled & Overclocked PC

For some time I've wanted a fast pc (as in REALLY fast!). Remastering linux involves long compiling stages, I normally have more than one application open and running at the same time, and I want to play around with virtualisation, so an overclocked, water cooled multi core CPU was needed. I decided on an Intel Core 2 Duo 6600 CPU. Therefore the target was:

• To raise CPU speed from 2.4 GHz (stock speed) to 3.6 GHz while keeping load temperature at 60C or below, and passing ALL ‘torture’ tests, and that includes passing the different temperature measurements found among the different torture applications.

Photos Showing Finished Water Cooled PC...

PC with Side Cover Removed. In this photo you can clearly see all the internal components, and lots of tubing! The tubing runs the anti-freeze around PC to keep everything cool, and is in turn cooled by 2 double length (120mm) radiators.	Second Radiator on Top of PC. The first radiator is internal and is positioned behind the front grill. The second radiator is on top of the PC.	Close up of Internal Components. The CPU, RAM, and Northbridge are water cooled. Both sets of voltage regulators and the Northbridge have upgraded active cooling.	Close up of CPU and Voltage Regulators. In this photo the water cooled CPU and upgraded active cooling on the voltage regulators can be seen.	Photo Showing Side Cover in Place. See through panels are our friend!
Nearly Finished PC. PC in place and running reliably.	Ditto!	Radiator Relocated. I decided 'balancing' the radiator on top of the machine wasn't ideal. And if I lowered it the pump would have less load placed on it. So I relocated the radiator to the back of the PC and mounted it permanently.	Ditto!	Finished PC Version B (with side cover removed). Finished PC with relocated radiator and temperature gauge installed.

Water Cooled & Overclocked PC Specification:

• Intel Core 2 Duo 6600 (overclocked from 2.4 to 3.6 GHz), Asus P5B Deluxe Wi-Fi motherboard, 2 gigabyte RAM (Cellshock), 2 x Samsung Spinpoint 250 gigabyte hard drives, NVidia 8800 GTS 3D card, surround sound (built into motherboard), DVD-Rewriter, 750 watt power supply unit with temperature controlled fan, water cooling & upgraded fan cooling, Thermaltake Armour LCS tower case.

For a more detailed description of the PC (including settings used for overclocking) click here!

 

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Media Centre PC

The media centre pc was built purely as an exercise in self indulgence, but it has since become routinely used. Internet surfing from the sofa, recording an entire TV series at the click of a button, and watching video in formats other than DVD have all now become possible. And I have uploaded all my digital photographs and video, which is more useful than it sounds. I have an ever increasing collection of photos and video taken from my mobile phone (much more convenient than carrying around a separate camera) and it's always nice to look back on these on a nice big screen.

Photos Showing Finished Media Centre...

Before Installation. This photo shows the case (and power supply) before installing other components.	After Installation. This photo shows the (very nearly) finished PC.	Close up Internal View from the Power Supply End.	Close up Internal View from the Expansion Slot End.	Close up of Motherboard.
Extra Cooling for the 2 TV Cards. This photo shows the extra cooling installed to keep the 2 TV cards and Wi-Fi card (which are close together) cool.	Finished PC from Overhead.	PC in Situ. Media Centre in place under television with front flap down to allow access to DVD Re-Writer.	Flap Closed.	Media Centre connected to TV, with other Audio/Visual components.
Media Centre up and running!

Media Centre Specification:

• Athlon 64 (2.8 GHz), 1 gigabyte RAM (Kingston), 200 gigabyte hard drive (for operating system), half terabyte hard drive (for films, music, video clips, etc), ATI Radeon 3D card with TV Out, 2 x Leadtek TV cards, surround sound (built into motherboard), DVD-Rewriter, wireless card (802.11 G), 500 watt power supply unit with temperature controlled fan, soundproofing throughout, upgraded fan cooling, Thermaltake Silverstone media centre case.

Improvements Left to do:

• Although soundproofing helps, I'm going to install a quieter heat sink & fan combo, and substitute all fans for silent fans.

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Brushed Aluminium & Gloss Black PC

My partner (Jane Fairhall) uses a PC daily for typical office tasks, so I made the following PC for her...

Photos Showing Finished Aluminium PC...

Overhead Photo Showing Internal Components.	Close up View of Internal Components. In this photo you can see the wiring loom fixed in place, ready for more hard drives if I ever need to fit them. Jane likes to have her data backed up so I won't use a raid array, but rather a scheduled backup between discs (a lot of people think raid is for backing up data. It isn't. It's for redundancy, and yes there is a difference).	Close up View of Motherboard from Base end of PC.	Photo of PC wih Side Cover Removed.	Side Cover in Place. The Cooler Master case has a deep gloss finish and brushed aluminium throughout. If Jane ever gets bored with this case - I'm going to have it!
And One More from a Different Angle.	Finished PC in Situ.

Alumium PC Specification:

• Pentium 4 (2.8 GHz), 1 gigabyte RAM (Corsair), 250 gigabyte hard drive, old 3D card I had spare, surround sound (built into motherboard), DVD-Rewriter, DVD player, 550 watt power supply unit with manually & temperature controlled fan, 'some' soundproofing, upgraded fan cooling, Cooler Master ATCS case.

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Apple Mac G4

I have wanted to play around with Macs for a while, so I bought one off ebay. I cleaned it up, tidied up the cables with some cable wrap, and put in more RAM.

 

Photo Showing Side Cover Open. Side cover is hinged - makes access to internal components very easy.	Close up Photo showing my Very Mild Modifications. Even the inside of an Apple Mac is well designed.	Ta-Da! I haven't done much to this PC, other than give it a clean up. Apple Macs are very well designed. So much so, that this older Apple still looks nice today.

 

Apple Mac G4 Specificaton:

• 400 MHz CPU, 1 gigabyte RAM, 125 gigabyte hard drive, ATI Radeon 3D graphics card, DVD-ROM drive.

Improvements Left to do:

• Fit a faster CPU, possibly a Sonnet Encore. I might also fit a DVD-Rewriter.

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Silver PC

This PC was my main computer immediately prior to the water cooled PC shown above. It too was built from scratch, but is fan cooled throughout.

Photos Showing Finished 'Silver' PC...

Empty Case Before Installation.	Finished PC.	Close up Internal View.	Finished PC with Side Panel Open...	...and with Panel Closed.
Ta-Da!

Silver PC Specification:

• Pentium 4 (2GHz), 1 gigabyte RAM (Kingston), 125 gigabyte hard drive (plus various other drives added over time), ATI Radeon 3D graphics card. Surround sound (built into motherboard), DVD-Rewriter, upgraded fan cooling, unbranded custom case.

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Alex Neslings 'Server Farm'

As Alex Neslings computing capabilities and network has grown, so have the number of servers. Unlike the PCs shown above, these haven't been custom built, but they have all had RAM installed to their maximum values, have new hard discs installed, and their CPUs reinstalled with improved thermal compound.

Photos Showing Alex Neslings Collection of Servers...

Alex Neslings Ltds Servers.	And again...	Servers in Situ. As is common when using several PCs that are placed closed together, they share a Keyboard, Video & Mouse switch (KVM). Other network infrastructure components can be seen too (routers, etc).	Closer View of Infrastructure Components.

Alex Neslings Server Hardware & Software Specifications:

• All servers are a mix of Intel Pentium II & III CPUs, with large hard drives (all above 250 Gigabytes).

Their software configuration and applications are more noteworthy than their hardware. The 2 servers on the left are the 2 Domain Controllers (DCs) for the Alex Nesling subnet (they also serve as file servers, and they backup from the main file server to the other automatically). The middle server is the Linux based webserver (which is currently (Dec/07) serving this site to your pc). The server second from the right is the Linux based Networked Attached Storage (NAS) and contains backups of the webserver and yet more backups of the files kept on the Alex Nesling DCs/Fileservers. The machine on the extreme right is now redundant. It used to be one (of two) DCs for the Kingston Arms public subnet, but they weren't needed when I remastered PCLinuxOS to become HospitalityMachineKiosk. Why does this make the DCs redundant? Because the public terminals in the Kingston Arms now run entirely from CD and therefore don't need directory services to lock down desktops.