BlueSmoke - Guide : Project Numenor

		Date	: May 1st, 2002
		Genre	: Various
		Developer	: Various
		Author	: Jin-Wei Tioh

The advent and subsequent popularity of LCD screens highlights a new trend in the PC market - highly integrated, ergonomic systems that take less real estate and run quieter. Recognizing this, several manufacturers have already launched their own solutions; Shuttle with the SV24, and VIA with the Eden platform. Even Dell is catching on with the Optiplex GX50. While typically being less beefy than a "traditional" PC, these compact systems seem to have struck a chord with even the enthusiast crowd, becoming a subject of rabid discussion.

Being enthusiasts however, we are not satisfied to just buy these solutions off the shelf. Hell no, we want to try the DIY route! Besides, it would be an interesting aside from building those huge, obnoxiously loud boxen all the time wouldn't it? Personally, I needed a box which I could stow in my carry-on luggage (NOT check-in) to fly to the US. I'll assume you already have a good, financially justifiable (like that's a priority) reason for building one. Without further ado, let's get busy with the beaver!

The very first step is deciding on which platform do you want to build. There are 3 prevailing standards - MicroATX, FlexATX and VIA's newly introduced ITX, with MicroATX being the largest and ITX being the smallest. However, these labels seem to be somewhat of a misnomer. There are pure solutions, eg. the case, motherboard and power supply are MicroATX compliant, and there are mixed solutions as in the case of our choice. It all comes down to how much are you willing to trade off - size vs. features. MicroATX motherboards typically sport more expansion slots (even standard AGP!) than their FlexATX counterparts, but of course have larger dimensions.

I decided to go with a hybrid solution - MicroATX desktop case with a FlexATX power supply. This baby is a little bigger than most other hybrid cases, but it has 2 internal 3.5" bays! The mounts for the drives swing up to provide easy access, it comes with a thumbscrewed cover and has a small latch out back to keep your goodies inside safe. Construction is solid, with no sharp edges to slice and dice your fingers. There's even a pre-made blowhole right beside the main 3.5" bay to keep the system (and especially your HDD) nice and cool. It also comes with 2 small stands to stack the case vertically. Overall, I'm happy with the case. It looks pretty slick, and the lower front hatch (semi-translucent black plastic) will be modded with a backlit 16x2 or 20x2 LCD sometime in the future. Now that would be sweet! One weird (cool?) thing though is the 5V DC plug beside the power supply. I have no idea why it was placed there, but it wouldn't hurt if you're going to use it to power say an external character LCD (can you say 20x2 VFD?).

Next up is the motherboard. I picked up an ASUS TUSI-M MicroATX motherboard for 3 main reasons; it had integrated C-Media 8738 hardware audio, Tualatin support, and it was the best that was available at the time. Would have preferred the version with an integrated NIC, but the supplier was fresh out and airlines don't wait for you. ;)

The TUSI-M is based on the SiS630ET chipset. Feature-wise, it is sufficient for our purposes. The built-in SiS300 video is nothing to write home about, but it'll get the job done nicely (other than 3D gaming). You have support for 4 USB ports, 2 front and 2 at the rear. The integrated audio does a pretty darned good job (heck it's even A3D compatible), and overclocking niceties (eg. Vcore, FSB adjustments) are there. One nice thing about the SiS630ET chipset is the ability to run the FSB and memory asynchronously. With PC-150 SDRAM strapped in, you could run your FSB at 100MHz while running your memory at 150MHz to get the maximum benefit. Overall, a pretty nice package.

By now you're probably screaming bloody murder - why a Socket-370 platform?!? Two very good reasons - heat and noise. A 1GHz Duron pumps out 45W, while the 1GHz Celeron I chose to go with pumps out just 29W. In this tight a space, cooling becomes an even more serious issue and dumping an additional 16W of heat into the enclosure does not help any. Since the case used is MicroATX-sized, you could probably install a more powerful HS/F unit, but that is also going to increase the noise level. Another option would be to use a VIA C3 instead, but I required the beefier FPU of the Celeron in some applications. It's all about trade-offs.

The HS/F for this setup is the Spire 5P53B3, being the smallest unit I had. While not terribly efficient (0.67 °C/W), it keeps the 1GHz Celeron sufficiently warm and comfy, and has the advantage of not being noisy. Moreover, its super-shiny copper looks kinda groovy.

The SiS630ET takes only SDRAM, so in went 2 256MB sticks of Kingmax PC-150 SDRAM. Inexpensive and excellent as far as SDRAM is concerned, used in all our SDRAM rigs. And in case you're wondering, no Kingmax didn't make us an offer we couldn't refuse - we just like the stuff. Just a couple of parts left and we have a complete system.

Since the TUSI-M doesn't sport an integrated NIC, I decided to go for a D-Link branded RT8139-based NIC. My preferred NIC would be the Intel Pro100+, but the green stuff don't come easy comprende? The D-Link provides decent performance and the RT8139 is supported under a wide range of OSes - I'd venture to say not too far from even 3Com NICs.

Floppy drive is standard issue, although one could opt for a LS120 SuperDrive or a Zip drive. Since there's only one 5.25" bay available, I went for a CDR/W drive since they also read CD-ROMs just dandy anyway. If you want to spend more, look out for those 5.25" DVD + CDR/W combo drives. I've always been partial towards AOpen optical drives, so I went straight for their 16/10/32 unit.

Lastly, the hard drive. Since I plan to put some mods into the secondary HDD bay (probably a 16x2 backlit LCD and a LazerLED), I chose to go for a big single drive - the 80GB Seagate Barracuda IV. You could just as easily have done it with a 10-20GB drive (more than enough for the OS, applications and data), but I needed to bring over a serious amount of data - records of all benchmarks, site dev stuff, MP3s etc. Reason for the 'cuda? It's fast, quiet and runs cool compared to most of the competing 7200RPM HDDs out there.

Now comes the part where you break out the tools. First, gather all the parts together in a nice, neat pile. Well okay, you don't really have to, but I did so for the photo shoot. Next do what every system builder does - slap in the motherboard, and screw that sucker down. Stick in the CPU, RAM, HS/F and connect any wires that you have to (indicator LEDs, ATX, front panel connectors, etc.). Then install the storage devices and any other miscellaneous peripherals.

There are going to be 2 problems you'll immediately notice. You can only use half-height PCI cards due to the reduced height. Not only that, you have to replace the stock brackets with those supplied with the case. Unfortunately, this is far from a universal part - the supplied brackets wouldn't fit the D-Link DFE-538TX. To remedy this, I installed the card sans bracket, and super-glued it to the back faceplate of the case. Ghetto yes, but I didn't have the time to fabricate something to hold the NIC (airlines are evil).

The next headache will be cable routing. Those flat ribbon cables are going to choke up the insides of the case without good cable management. Since no one sells a 5' single-ended ATA-100 cable, I just took 2 regular cables and sliced off the longer end. Be careful that none of the exposed leads get shorted out though. You could just as well shoot for rounded cables, a good idea in this case.

		That finishes the assembly of Numenor. After installing Windows XP and the usual plethora of software, I ran some informal benchmarks on it. As you'd expect, 3D is definitely sub-par compared to even a GeForce2 MX, but for all other intents and purposes, this system ran beautifully. The chunky 512MB RAM coupled with the nimble Barracuda IV makes Photoshop work a breeze even with multiple high-res images. The onboard audio works well, producing no noticeable distortions - not too far from the SBLive! in my main rig although treble and bass controls would have been sweet. After recently adding in an ATI TV Wonder, I can now do without a TV, not to mention do basic video capturing for keeping those episodes of The Man Show ;). About the only things missing are Firewire, TV-out and DVD playback capability. So how thin is my wallet now? Project Numenor Generic MicroATX Case   $40 ASUS TUSI-M   $52 Intel Celeron 1GHz   $55 * Speeze 5P53B3   (Sponsored)  512MB Kingmax PC-150   $70 ATI TV Wonder   $72 D-Link DFE-538TX   $8 Floppy   $5 AOpen 16/10/32 CDR/W   $58  Seagate Barracuda ATA IV (80GB)   $125 TOTAL   $485 For most non-3D gaming applications I'm sold on this noiseless compact system. Hell even this article was written on it! If you're tight on desk space, yet don't want to buy a canned solution, this DIY approach offers you a lot of flexibility to customize the system to suit your individual needs. Slap in a Ricoh MP9200-DP instead (a combined CDR/W and DVD drive), or even a Tualatin, and you'll be pretty hard-pressed to find something which this baby can't do.