By mid-2016 I wanted to retire Juno, my computer from early 2010. It had received an upgrade in the form of a larger SSD, but all the photos were still on a hard drive, and the 4 GB of memory wasn't sufficient when I was doing heavy photo editing, leading to interminable delays and annoying clicks as programs were swapped on and off the hard drive. It was time for a new computer.
A previous post covers the December 2016 hardware assembly for the new machine.
This post discusses software installation, and the next will describe my performance tuning efforts. Sneak preview: overclocking an i5-6600k in a small case with a 92mm cooler can be a challenge!
I hadn't installed Linux onto a computer for a few years -- I once had to restore the OS on my old computer after a botched upgrade to Ubuntu 15.10 -- so I stumbled a few times. In the rest of this post I'll run through the issues in roughly chronological order.
First I created a bootable USB stick with XUbuntu 16.10 on it, using the unetbootin utility on my old computer. (16.10 is code for 2016/October.) The first ISO image I downloaded didn't work, so I tried another source; that .iso file was larger and booted.
The BIOS/UEFI interface gave me two choices of how to boot from the one USB stick. My first choice didn't work, of course. The other did.
I followed my old procedure of creating a separate root and home partition, but the installs kept bombing out with errors such as "firmware started installer in UEFI mode but it looks like maybe the OS is already installed in BIOS compatibility mode." To make a long story short, I didn't realize I had to create a bootable UEFI partition. I dsicovered this by abandoning my attempt to do a custom install and accepting the installer's defaults, which worked, and then I could examine what it had done.
I decided I wanted to try running without a swap partition on the SSD, having a generous 32GB of RAM, so I disabled the swap partition. The SSD now has a 0.5 GB EFI system partition, a 915 GB main partition, and a 16 GB unused partition.
I tried to copy my files over to the new machine via FTP from the old machine, but the FTP process kept stumbling over odd file names. I finally used grsync to copy my files from a backup HDD.
There was BIOS/UEFI tweaking to be done. By default turbo mode for the CPU was disabled, for example, and the i7z utility was handy to verify the state of the system. Also, I had to enable memory "overclocking" for the RAM to be run at its rated 2400 speed rather than the default 2133. (Another reason for using a Z series motherboard.)
At a certain point the motherboard stopped recognizing DEL at the "Press DEL to enter BIOS" prompt. Mr. Google revealed that many people were forced to reset their motherboard to restore this, which I wasn't crazy about. I have an old PS/2 keyboard, with which the motherboard did recognize the key, but I preferred the modern USB keyboard. Fortunately the GRUB bootloader has an option for "system setup," which takes you back into the UEFI/BIOS.
I also set up a prettier GRUB splash screen (the Orion Nebula). I ended up changing several settings in /etc/default/grub, including GRUB_TIMEOUT, GRUB_BACKGROUND, and GRUB_GFXMODE. After updating /etc/default/grub it's necessary to sudo update-grub for it to take effect.
I encountered a race condition that prevented Dropbox from connecting at system startup. Mr. Google pointed me to a solution, and I added these lines to my startup shell, which stop and restart Dropbox:
# work-around dropbox/dbus bug
#
( sleep 2; dropbox stop && dbus-launch dropbox start) &
Several times I needed to register the new computer with a service (Google and Dropbox come to mind.)
Something odd was happening with the audio. The monitor (also new) was connected to the computer via a DisplayPort connection, but there was no audio unless I fussed with the entirely separate "PC audio" ports, disconnecting and reconnecting them. I eventually discovered that the monitor sensibly was expecting its audio through the DisplayPort cable, but the pulseaudio software on Linux was somehow defaulting to "PC audio" until some external event forced it to reconsider its options. The easiest thing for me to do was to change the monitor settings so that it used the "PC audio" instead.
Eventually I'll write the performance tuning post, discussing overclocking, changing voltages, torture testing, and cooling the CPU. It takes time to collect all that data!
By mid-2016 I wanted to retire Juno, my computer from early 2010. It had received an upgrade in the form of a larger SSD, but all the photos were still on a hard drive, and the 4 GB of memory wasn't sufficient when I was doing heavy photo editing, leading to interminable delays and annoying clicks as programs were swapped on and off the hard drive. A memory upgrade wouldn't have been economical; the six-year-old DDR2 technology was pricey when it could be found. Plus, Juno used a blow-down CPU cooler that blocked access to the memory sticks unless I removed the computer's guts from the case and removed the CPU cooler from the motherboard, a real pain. Not a quick swap. It was time for a new computer.
This post covers assembling the hardware for the new machine; later posts will cover software installation and performance tuning.
Here is a photo of the parts, acquired by mid-December 2016.
The case is a Jonsbo V2, also known as a Coolcube Mini, now discontinued. I'd been keeping my eye on one for a while at QuietPC in the United Kingdom, and snatched one in mid-summer just after the Brexit vote, when the value of the pound fell. It's a very small case; to go smaller I'd have to use a book-sized case that either had no fan or a skinny blow-down cooler.
Here's a lineup with a CD in its case, the Jonsbo V2, and the Lian Li PC-Q03, which, while still small, is larger in each dimension than the Jonsbo.
The other components were purchased as sales came up in late November and early December, which kept the total cost to ~$1,000. (The parts were purchased at either at NewEgg, which doesn't charge sales tax for Ohio, or at Amazon, when the sale price was right.)
- ASRock Z170M-ITX/ac motherboard. Had to have a mini-ITX motherboard to fit this case.
- Intel i5-6600K processor. I wanted to tinker with overclocking and undervolting.
- Noctua NH-U9S CPU cooler. Had to have something short enough to fit this case.
- Samsung 850 EVO 1 TB SSD. Plenty of room for me.
- 32 GB RAM (2x16), DDR4-2400, by GSkill. I thought it might be overkill to have 32GB, but it wasn't.
- PicoPSU 160-XT power supply with 150 watt AC/DC brick.
In this photo, the CPU has been inserted, the red RAM sticks have been inserted, and two golden-colored bars for the CPU cooler assembly are on either side of the CPU. The red heatsinks on the RAM sticks are a bit much, but some folks like computer bling. They were on sale.
A reinforcing backplate is on the underside of the motherboard, connected to the bars on the top side.
For the first time I tried a technique called tinting. I spread a small amount of thermal paste across the mating surface of the CPU cooler, then wiped it off, leaving some "preliminary" thermal paste in any grooves.
I applied two thin lines of thermal paste on the CPU shield in an orientation recommended for the four-core Intel CPUs. But I can't find the link that suggested it. The "best method" of applying thermal paste is a subject of interminable online discussion.
In this photo all parts have been installed/connected, but sit outside the case. This way if the first power-on reveals a problem everything is easily accessible. I didn't install the WiFi/Bluetooth card, because this desktop machine will be hardwired. This saves a few watts of electricity, and room inside the case.
The first power-on went OK, so then I installed the motherboard in the case. Inside my skinny case this demanded some fussing and tilting.
The thick round black cables are part of the case, connecting the USB and audio ports on the side of the case to the motherboard. I have no idea why the manufacturer used such long cables in such a small case, unless the stiffness of the cables required some length to create flexibility. It turned out that to connect the SSD to a SATA port on the motherboard the best (least twisty) option was a left-handed right-angle cable, which I ordered and installed after this test.
It took some experimentation, but I finally arrived at a decent cable routing. Note the flat red cable connecting the SSD; that's the left-handed right-angle one.
Unfortunately this case had the wrong size hole drilled for the PicoPSU connector. It was a bit too small, so I could have drilled it out, but I was too lazy to remove everything from the case to allow drilling, so that connection (the black and while cable combination) just hangs out the back through the large hole that a traditional SFX PSU would have filled.
Those red heatsinks on the memory sticks had a curved profile that created a "hump" in the middle, reaching as high as the CPU fan. To avoid any vibration issues I shaved off a tiny bit of the fan frame.
The Noctua U9S, 125mm tall, was plenty short enough for this case. There was about 22mm to spare, so a larger cooler and fan might have been possible. Checking the geometry of a substitute would be important to avoid interfering with the RAM sticks.
Here is the assembled computer tucked under my standing desktop.
One unfortunate characteristic of this motherboard is that it blinks the power light while the computer is asleep (suspended to RAM). It's not a lethargic, nap-like blink appropriate to being asleep, but a quick, urgent blink that feels like a warning flash. Now I keep a book up against it!
Next step, next post: installing the Linux (XUbuntu 16.10) distribution and copying my files over from the old machine.
