Saturday, November 7, 2009

Computer assembly

I'm starting to assemble the router box. It's basically a collection of leftovers: a KN8 motherboard that turned out not to be needed, a cheap Opteron dual-core CPU, a SATA hard drive I dropped and while it works I'm not comfortable putting it in someone else's computer, a SATA DVD burner that turned out not to work with another computer's motherboard. With a little luck, I should be able by next weekend to be able to replace the ancient K6-3 machine that's currently shuffling packets between my home and the outside world.

So far the Antec 300 case is working well. Fairly easy to work in, bottom-mounted power supply, 5x 120mm fans (2 front and a side intake, top and rear exhaust) and cheap. I'll see how it works once the machine's powered up and all the fans are running.

Outdated as it is, it'll out-power my current desktop. Hopefully not for long.

Addendum: mount the CPU heatsink before installing the motherboard.

Addendum 2: the case is done. All that's left is to get one more fan for the side intake, and get a cheap LCD monitor. Then I have to bring it up without blowing a circuit breaker, and rearrange the network to move the cable-modem drop out to the living room so I don't have all the computers on one electric circuit.

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