white noise

High performance wireless is important in my house. For one, my desktop is located in a room at the opposite corner of the house from the cable modem and running an ethernet cable between the two is just not going to happen. This is the machine I’m likely to do all my gaming and large downloads on. This machine also runs my streaming media server having to pull media from a NAS and shoot it wirelessly to a media playback component hooked to my living room stereo. Even though the house is small and the locations probably not more than 60 feet apart, the neighborhood is dense with wireless traffic and my wireless performance never been great.

Over the past couple years I’ve gone through a series of upgrades. First, I switched our cordless phones to 5.8 GHz instead of the interference prone 2.4. Then not so long ago I upgraded my wireless router to a new Belkin N1 unit. Although reviews on the unit measure it to have mediocre range, the throughput is pretty respectable, and that’s what I need more than range. Still on the other end (my computer) I’ve been using a cheap D-link USB wireless G adapter. The switch to the new router definitely helped, but music dropouts and high game pings still occured more often than I’d like.

With this configuration I tried various internet speed tests and found about a 25% drop in download speed from being wired to the router to my wireless setup. For example, hitting a server in Chicago (which tends to be about the fastest regionally) I was getting 4.8Mbps down wired (which is about the Roadrunner cap), but only 3.7 wireless. Upload wasn’t affected since it’s capped at about .4 Mbps.

Monday I finally decided to replace the cheap G adapter and spring for an N1 PCI card which is the natural match to the router. I figured this would be as good as it could get for a while so I might as well try it; and if there wasn’t much difference I’d return the card.

After struggling a bit to install the drivers, I finally got it running, and the flood gates opened. Instead of detecting about 5 wireless networks I starting picking up about 22! Great, just more interefence I started thinking. I used Netstumbler to optimize the antenna placement, then went back to try the same online speed tests. This time I got exactly the same results as being wired to the router with a down throughput of 4.7 – 4.8 Mbps! I have yet to try streaming music or video, but things aready seem much improved!

I guess the moral is that unless all your components are on the same playing field you’re missing out on some of the goodness that you’ve paid for. It’s like buying a pretty HD-DVD player, but displaying it on a standard def TV.

So I installed the latest Windows updates and after some consideration I decided to go ahead and switch to IE7. Can’t be worse then IE6 I figure.

Now I’ve only been in it a day and so far I gotta say it seems like a decent but somewhat clunky knockoff of Firefox. For one, I hate the default layout – address bar at the top, no menu bar, stupid favorite icons, etc. Here’s one tip I found to get rid of the lame command bar entirely:

1. regedit
2. HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftInternet ExplorerCommandBar
3. Create a new DWORD called Enabled with Value 0
4. close regedit and oben IE7 –> Commandbar is hidden!

Next I got rid of the search bar (another registry hack) and moved the menu bar above the address bar – the place we’re all more accustomed to. I wish there was a way to move the refresh and stop buttons next to back and forward.

Thumbs up to tabbed browsing (finally), quick tabs view (gimmick), much faster start up, and abilty to save ‘session’ or group of tabs for easy start up next time. Thumbs down on the reasons for tweaks above, the wierd “X” to stop loading instead of a stop sign, and the tabs themselves which seem clunky than the Mozilla equivalent.

Another note from a web development standpoint: IE7 now shows the location bar (in a non edit mode) for all pop up windows. This means (a) URL parameters are no longer ‘hidden’, (b) popup windows are not as clean anymore, and (c) the size of those popup windows may be off now. All this definitely points a developer to use a popup div or iframe as opposed to actual windows now.

I got my highest score yet on the 3DMark06 benchmark today…5298. My previous high was 5100 so this was a nice surprise. I haven’t done much to improve performance. I did dump Norton for AVG, made a couple graphics tweaks (new drivers and OC tweaks), and of course added that new CPU cooler. I’m not the type to turn off every possible service to maximize the benchmark. I test under regular old gaming conditions.

I upgraded the CPU cooler in my machine this past weekend. I went with the Zalman cnps9500led. It’s 530 grams of copper love with a 92mm led fan. It’s cetainly the largest cooler I could have added – just a few millimeters of clearance.

I removed the AMD stock heatsink and fan (which didn’t feel any lighter to me) and cleaned up the old thermal compound with Artic Clean remover and purifier solutions. After appling a new bed of Artic Silver 5, installation was a breeze – probably even easier than the stock heatsink I’d say – just two screws hold it down to the mb retension bracket. From looking at the instructions, installing the cooler on other CPUs would involve siginificantly more effort.

I wasn’t thrilled with the two blue leds built into the fan, so before installing I set off to replace them with a couple red leds. I stripped the fan down as far as I wanted to risk and still couldn’t get to where I could unsolder the existing leds. Deciding not to press my luck with prying anything more apart I decided to leave it as is. Luckily the blue leds are not the usual super bright variety and don’t actually look too bad. The result is a nice purplish glow over the cpu.

So how’s it perform? A bit better – but maybe not drastically different. While encoding/burning DVD with Nero, both cores go to 100% for several minutes (at least a half hour). With the stock cooler the CPU temp rose to 54 degrees celcius. The typical idle temp before the upgrade was 47 degrees depending on ambient. With the new cooler, idle hovers around 42 although the CPU still briefly hits 54 degrees when encoding a DVD at full tilt. I have to say I’m shocked not to see any imporvement on the high end, however I did notice the CPU very quickly cooled to 44 degrees after the load easied off. I also have to keep in mind that (a) the processor is overclocked by 10% and (b) the thermal layer hasn’t really had enough time to optimumly bond yet. Another aspect I must mention is that the new cooler is MUCH quieter. So when you add up the lower temps (at low to moderate usage), the faster thermal recovery (after high usage), and the lower noise I’m still very happy with the upgrade.

So with my Roadrunner connection and my computer at opposite ends of the house and a floor apart, I haven’t been getting the best wireless throughput. After fiddling endlessly with antenna positioning, channel selection, and so on I decided I just needed MORE POWER (cue Tim Allen’s monkey grunt).

So I took down my (damn unique!) Sony router and access point and popped for a brand-freakin-new Belkin N1 router. That’s right N1, baby – none of that pre-N stuff for me. It wasn’t cheap, but nothing I buy is (hey, I’m lamenting here, not bragging!). It’s a slick little unit I must say. I spent nearly a full day hooking it all back up, reconfiguring everything to WPA instead of my previous WEP (that was long overdue), and positioning antennas and such. Netstumbler was a big help in optimizing the setup and in knowing which channels the neighbors are on so I could avoid them.

I went from a “good”, occasional 48/36/24bps to a pretty constant “excellent”, 54bps connection. The lag in online games isn’t entirely gone, but really damn good. My in-game pings are back down to sub-50 for the most part. All this and I didn’t even upgrade the cheap usb wireless adapter on the desktop to a new one with MIMO. Nice to know there’s more room for improvement (if I ever want to spend another $100 that is).

Plus if you want to pop some corn, you only need to hold the bag in the air.

So with Million Man Lan (MML5) fast approaching and figuring I’ll be having case window envy, I thought I’d try making a new transparent top lid to my case. My requirements were (1) it had to be cheap, (2) couldn’t involve modding any of the original case pieces, and most importantly (3) it couldn’t actually make the already sweet case look any worse.

I went to Home Depot and picked up a piece of Lexan (polycarbonate) and some aluminum angle (1″ and .5″). Total cost of materials was about $35. I debated going with something cheaper than Lexan, like arylic, but since my monitor will sit on this, I opted for strength and durabilty. Constuction took about 3 hours with the majoirty of that just for figuring out how to piece it together. A jig saw with a fine metal blade worked very good in cutting both the aluminum and the polycarbonate. I won’t go into gory details of the construction, but the Lexan slides perfectly until the top lip of the front face and it’s held in place with two thumb screws in the back (just like the stock lid).

Meanwhile I do still have the original solid aluminum top in the event I ever want to swtich back (like when it’s eventually rack mounted).

Another case tweak. After seeing my lit case, Mark B had a great suggestion of putting a photo of the case internals on the small LCD. After a few shots with different focal lengths and lighting I had one I liked. Yes, I actually set my camera inside the case, set the auto-timer, and quickly placed the lid on to get the shots. Nvidia’s desktop management feature lets you assign different wallpapers per display, so that was key in keeping my main monitor set to something different. At the right angle and from a couple feet away you can believe you’re actually looking through a case window.

Just made some tweaks to my case. I replaced the stock case fans with a couple quieter chrome ones and cleaned up the wiring a bit. The new fans have 3pin connectors that can be plugged into the mobo for rpm monitoring/control.

I also added two 4″ red cold cathodes to light things up. That makes for a really nice effect.

Even with the lid on, redish-orange light pours from the side grills and leaks from the front slots.

No worries, I mounted a switch for the lights in a PCI blank so it doesn’t need to look like a 16 year-old’s box all the time (I can just hear Lesko commenting on that now).

So, I guess it’s time I add it all up.

All in all that’s a little more than my goal of $2k, but this does include a new monitor and a copy of windows. This post will be updated with any additional purchases.

I’m in the OC now. No, not California, overclocking-land. Since getting the machine together I’ve been researching and tweaking, researching and tweaking. My first 3DMark06 score was 4656. Since then I’ve oc’d the graphics card (gpu from 475 to 525, mem 1360 to 1500), tuned the ram timings to the rated values instead of SPD (now at 2-3-3-6-1T from 3-3-3-8), and last night I started overclocking the cpu and fsb (actually htt for AMD).

I was sad to (re)discover that the cpu multiplier for the X2 cant be changed in the BIOS – it’s stuck at 11. Oddly enough though it can change itself – at one point I had the fsb cranked way up and the multiplier dropped itself to 9. I’m currently at my conservative goal of 2.42GHz (fsb at 220 and multiplier at 11). The is with the RAM still at 2-3-3-6-1T with a speed divider of 12, making the run at 201.7MHz – which isn’t really oc’d, but the timings are tight. The best part right now, is that everything is still at default voltages (1.39 core, 2.6 ram). I know I can take things a little higher with overvolting, but I don’t want to go too much higher (especially while all my cooling is still stock). Now that I’ve matched a stock 4800+ I’m pretty happy.

Latest 3DMark06: 5100 (will post more detailed stats later). I still need to run it through a prime95 test for stability, but gaming is working great.