Shall we build a system?
Recently, I decided it was time to replace one of the gaming rigs in my office LAN. On most Fridays, my LAN party group gets together for what we affectionately call “Friday Night Follies.” I usually build systems out of older parts for the LAN party systems, which are generally good enough for the games we play.
This time around, though, I wanted to build something a little more current. So I decided to build a compact system based around Gigabyte’s P55-UD4 micro ATX motherboard and a Core i5 750. Part of my rationale was to test long term stability. You can run all the benchmarks in the world, but there’s nothing quite like hammering on a system in a current generation multiplayer game to really test system stability.
Case Imperfect
Gigabyte had sent me a P55M-UDR motherboard, the same micro ATX motherboard I showed off in my recent appearance on Tekzilla. I’d been wanting to build a system around this, as well as push the board a bit. I finally freed up some time, gathered up some component that had been lying around the basement lab, grabbed my electric screwdriver and set to work.
The case, a black NZXT Rogue, was something I’d reviewed at ExtremeTech some time ago. It’s an attractive case that would look comfortable in a Section 8 level. It looks cool, and is a fine case to build a system you plan on just running for awhile. Building a system into it does require a lot of screwdriver work. You need to remove screws to get to the motherboard tray (it’s removable), take out screws to remove the front panel, so you can unscrew the hard drive bay to install the hard drive, which requires more… well, you get the picture.
The NZXT Rogue looks cool, but system building takes a little effort.
The other glitch with this case is that some graphics cards are a tight fit. Actually, it’s long enough to handle long graphics cards. However, the printed circuit board on many high end graphic cards sticks up above the PCI slot plate just a tiny bit. With the Rogue, it means you can’t install the graphics card before sliding the motherboard tray in. What you do is slide the motherboard tray partway in, install the graphics card, then peer into the tiny space between the tray and the case, so you can screw down the graphics card. It’s a minor annoyance, but a little forethought in the design could have prevented this.
Like many compact cases, NZXT got a little creative with the power supply location. The PSU lives above the expansion slots so you need to have all the components installed before installing the PSU. That installation actually works better than you might expect, and NZXT even supplies you with an extension bracket if you use one of the more immense kilowatt PSUs.
Once up and running, the Rogue looks good, keeps the internals reasonably cool and isn’t too noisy. I would have preferred to have fans with 3-pin motherboard connectors (at least as an option.) If you’re not inside the guts of the case, replacing components often, it’s a fine little case.
Other parts consisted of gear I’ve had in the lab forever.
- I’ve had an excellent Antec Signature 650W PSU just sitting on a shelf, which is a tragic waste of a good PSU.
- A 4GB (2 x 2GB) 1600MHz HyperX DDR3 kit from Kingston.
- A Western Digital WD7500 AAYS SATA hard drive (750GB, 7200RPM)
- Lite-On 20x DVD +/- RW optical drive (IDE)
- AMD Radeon HD 4870 1GB graphics card.
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12 comments
Paul says:
September 18, 2009 at 2:51 pm (UTC -7 )
Interesting case! After the build, i bet it was pretty cramped in that little case. That may have something to do with the temps too. More than likely, if you swap out the HSF, I would think that you would get temps in the 35-40C range, depending on the cooler. I am going to be building one after the 1st of the year, so that I can play Aion in 1080p resolution.
Loyd Case says:
September 18, 2009 at 3:26 pm (UTC -7 )
It turned out that one heat sink post was just a tiny bit rotated, so the CPU cooler wasn’t quite fully seated. If you go see that section, you’ll see I’m well under 50 degrees for all four cores — not bad for 3GHz using the standard low profile Intel cooler.
Tim Verry says:
September 18, 2009 at 8:18 pm (UTC -7 )
Interesting, I look forward to the follow-up article. I may be going with an i5 750 or the i7 860 when I upgrade my computer. I’m very tempted to go the 1366 route; however, because the thought of hexacore (and 12 cores w/ hyperthreading
) would simply be awesome and I picture my video encoding going so much quicker! Then again, I would probably start encoding higher bit-rate videos (still more compressed than the HD source but o well, I don’t want to spend a week uploading HD video haha) just because I could so the time decrease may end up not happening, but still! 
For a gaming system; however, an overclocked i5 750 will pack a punch
.
Paul says:
September 19, 2009 at 10:18 pm (UTC -7 )
Ah.. I would say that that would do it. That is pretty good for a stock cooler. making me think twice about getting an aftermarket HSF. Doing that would only drop temps further.
Jeff Z says:
September 20, 2009 at 5:43 pm (UTC -7 )
Loyd-
Would you mind hooking up your Kill-a-Watt (or similar) to the system and post how many watts it runs at during idle? Heck, what about under different loads as well? This is always an important factor for me. I’m sure you have a Kill-a-Watt, right?
Thanks!
Jeff
Chris B. says:
September 21, 2009 at 12:23 pm (UTC -7 )
Yeah, I’m really interested in a follow-up too. I’m about to embark on an upgrade as well. My old Core Duo e6600 just isn’t cutting it anymore.
What I’m really interested in is whether I should go x58 or P55. Considering most of the 58 motherboards are about double the P55′s, I’m not too worried about ‘future proofing’. By the time I’m ready to upgrade again, I’m sure there will be something better than both out.
I really just want good gaming performance without breaking the bank.
Loyd Case says:
September 21, 2009 at 12:31 pm (UTC -7 )
Lynnfield is really the best bang for the buck currently, if you’re willing to live within the dual channel memory configurations.
As for power — I can hook up a Kill-a-Watt later (I’m out of the office most of this week), but all the other reviewers have noted that Lynnfield uses less power than either X58/Core i7 or higher end Core 2 Quads and X38/P35.
Mark says:
September 22, 2009 at 5:36 am (UTC -7 )
Benchmark this!
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/09/22/sgi-releases-persona.html
YS says:
September 23, 2009 at 12:27 am (UTC -7 )
Ugh, it’s hard to find a mATX case that doesn’t require a lot of effort to work on. I bought a Lian Li PC-V300, and while I like the looks and build quality, opening up the case is a pain. There are 6 tiny screws that are meant to sit flush with the side panel, and re-aligning them to fix the panel back perfectly is not easy.
Jeff Z says:
September 23, 2009 at 2:37 pm (UTC -7 )
I’ll be looking forward to the Kill-A-Watt numbers. Thanks! It may be helpful to include the numbers on future reviews as well. What can I say, I’m addicted to the Kill-A-Watt.
Tim Verry says:
September 23, 2009 at 9:12 pm (UTC -7 )
RE: Chris B.
Same here, my e6600 at 3.4ghz proc. is due for an upgrade aswell. The problem for me is the needed new RAM and new motherboard as well as the cpu. It is almost winter here, so I will be able to crank the cpu up a bit more (i can get 3.67ghz stable). Hopefully that will work well enough until i can save for an upgrade to lynnfield.
Jeff Z says:
October 1, 2009 at 10:28 am (UTC -7 )
Loyd-
Get a chance to do those Kill-a-Watt numbers yet?
Thanks!
Jeff