In over my Head

Hackerspace
#1

Hello’ First, 2nd and 3rd respondents!
I hope this is the right place for this It sure feels like it. I have taken on a project of building my wife a computer. I have not built a computer since 2006 and i am starting to get some what nervous with my build.
Build sheet: i7-3770k, Noctua NH-D14 cpu fan, ASRock z77 extreme11, 2x 240gb ssds, M.2 240 gb and M.2 512 gb NVMe with an M.2 pcie adaptor, a wifi card, and a v1200 modular psu Uncessay I know along with 32gbs of 1600mhz ram. (Still researching a (gpu)s
I have down loaded a fresh copy of windows 10 pro and I am looking forward to powering it all up. I feel comfortable getting this far. What has me nervous is the order of operation i need to go through in setting up bios/UEFI as I can still get information from ASRock for the motherboard but I am lost on where i need to start after this point. Any information will help I really want to have plan before sitting down for hours of frustration.

Thank you

#2

Generally, in my experience, the shipping version of bios/UEFI of any hardware whether it is motherboard, GPU, etc will have enough functionality to get you started. It may not have all the latest features and functionality, but it will let you boot a drive, access a resource, etc. After you have gotten your OS installed, you can go back to upgrading bios or other components to get the latest and greatest.

Usually, I make sure I have the compatible hardware as far as cpu, ram, etc, and physically assemble it. In the past, if you had the latest and greatest hard drive, your mobo might not recognize it to boot from. These days, that really isn’t a problem. So you boot, install, and then upgrade components.

If you built a machine in 2006, you can absolutely build a machine now. The mobos understand drives, USB boot, and a host of things that just weren’t available in 2006. The skills you built in 2006 building a machine will serve you well. Most things are plug and play at this point.

1 Like
#3

jottwell,

What a relief! Given some of the hardware I have maybe considered vintage by some. Really wasn’t sure if 2012 was a make or break point for plug and play or if I was missing a potential essential piece of software. (further into the build) I would like to OC the CPU and set up a raid- I will most likely be returning with more questions then, as I have never OC’d any piece of hardware.

Thank you

#4

Do you already have these components available or are you planning on buying them? I would definitely pick other stuff if you’re going to buy them. If you already have them then they’ll work.

Unless you have dozens of hard drives or quadruple GPU then you don’t need 1200 watts. You don’t even need half that much. A good 500 watt is plenty. Go with 600 watts if you’re worried about it. Also beware high wattage PSU like that can trip breakers when they power on from an off state, even if the system isn’t using that many watts while running.

What is the machine going to be used for? If you don’t plan to game or do anything with intensive 3D graphics then I’d get whatever cheap GPU like a used GTX 1060. If you plan to game do you have a budget in mind?

1 Like
#5

I already have the components. The PSU was a freebe from a friend and it is fully modular. The Machine is going to be used for a few different things. It is going to be my wife’s primary computer for work from home. She often has issues with the connection over our home network so i am going to try and make use of the 2x LAN inputs to give her stability. she usually will have 7 to 10 programs and data sheets running at one time. The second use is for me not really a big gamer but i have gotten into 3D design and have noticed that my OOB core i5 leaves a lot to be desired. I have looked at work station gpu’s but i want/need video out puts as the Mobo only offers 1 hdmi out. I am looking at doing a 4 monitor set up so my wife doesn’t have to constantly page through screens. I will be adding a docking station for her to have access through her VPN. I am sure i am walking into a networking nightmare but i will try and work that out with her company. As far as a GPU goes i have primarily been looking for either one nice 4 out put hdmi card or 2 midrange 2-3 hdmi out puts for the same price.

thank you

#6

You actually may have a problem with that CPU and your chosen components.

That CPU has 16 PCIe lanes; you’re way overbudgeting between the NVMes and whatever GPU you get. Some motherboards will handle the PCIe switching well at a performance loss, but some won’t even boot when the lanes are over provisioned. Given the experience I have with my prior ASRocks they choose not to boot.

Dual LAN really won’t help with network performance unless you are running true bonded connections (i.e. the switch upstream supports 802.3ad LAGG or similar), or you are multihoming across carriers and setting QoS per line (like streaming on one, low latency traffic on the other)

#7

hon1nbo,

I was hoping to use the 1 NVMe(s) as my primary boot drive. I was not aware of any kind of bottle-necking between the CPU and the NVMe that is nice to know. The board was chosen for its features as a (rarity) from the 1155 socket era. My methodology for choosing this setup was to try and build a budget friendly performance pc with some ((wiz bangs and ooh awws) multi-tasking several heavy data use programs and side 3d rendering) for the boot side I may have to leave the NVMes to the side. On the same level i was hoping on setting up a RAID since the LSI SAS 2308 will support this(i have read mixed reviews).

Dual LAN- isnt in the budget any time soon. was looking at setting up a (Dispatch proxy) If I was a blooming bud on a tree i would be as green as i am to networking- as for me it is net-noob-working. Trying to learn enough to solve a reliability issue my ignorance shows on this subject. ( I dont even know how to ask the right questions at this time)
I think that may have explained a few things. I will defiantly be researching the recommendations.

Thank you.

#8

dispatch proxy? you mean the SOCKS5/HTTP proxy that balances traffic between multiple internet connections right?

yeah don’t go that route unless one’s on second gen wifi/gsm even then not with a socks5 proxy written in node.js. that’s where haproxy works wonders but If one really wants speed and stability then go with a bonded nic connection.

I know I’ll get flack from our network engineering guys around here for say it like this but Bonding network ports is like RAID 0 for networking. It’s also how one’s cable modem is able to now get 100Gb down when it originally could only do 1Gb then 10Gb. They’re bonding the T1 lines downlink behind the scenes for each extra ~10Gb.

Does require the use of a supporting router but mikrotik is inexpensive and can do these sort of advance things unlike most COTS routers including those “gaming” nighthawk routers. Jim’s also right that there would still be a bottleneck if one is not multihoming across ISP carriers. But that’s not a hard limit either.

The average user who want to dual bond their network can get away with 802.3ad (ie trunking / mode 4 bonding) or even Balance Round Robin (mode 1 bonding) and still use just one isp. The bottleneck at that point becomes one’s modem.

There’s other things that can help speed up one’s networking such as installing a Pi-hole with a good set of blocklists set to deny things like malware, ads, etc. This surprisingly cuts a lot of traffic down since it kills these things before it leaves your network including dns and tcp/udp while also caching within one hop the dns request which is the biggest bottleneck in 99.9% of any network traffic (the other .1% is more complex than the usual web browsing / gaming / daily computing stuff).

Disabling uPNP, DNLA, SMB, using static ip, and cached arp are some others but that’s getting a bit old school. Though some other things one can do is seen in https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Tips_and_Tricks_for_Beginners_and_Experienced_Users_of_RouterOS which may be geared towards Microtik users; do take a high level approach what they’re presenting.

Point being; don’t use software to solve a problem where hardware would work better.