The Wizard’s latest build (Windows 7 edition)

As I documented here, my last desktop PC build was in October of 2009. My original intention when I built that system was to eventually upgrade it to Windows 7. However, that upgrade path never materialized (as I have also bemoaned in a number of postings on this site), and so that PC is still running Windows XP. Fortunately, it’s running well and still has a good deal of life left in it, being built from solid mid-range components. I did slip in a CPU upgrade a while back, when the i7 960 CPU came down in price, and I was able to sell the 920 chip on eBay, so I got a 20% performance boost for about $170. Worth it.

But now that Windows 8 is now becoming mainstream, I decided I needed to get off the stick and get myself upgraded. Not to Windows 8. Good heavens, no. I never recommend a new Windows version until it’s been out for a solid year (and in the case of Vista, not even then). I’ve been using Windows 7 on my work laptop and on my living room media PC for long enough now that I’m comfortable making the move on my primary system.

If I wanted to upgrade Windows on my current system, my options were to wipe it and do a scratch Windows 7 install, or to perform a double upgrade (XP to Vista to Windows 7). Either way, my main system would be out of commission during the process, and when complete, I’d still be running on a three year-old PC. So I decided it was time to build a replacement desktop with Windows 7, and then take the time to migrate all my applications and data properly without the pressure of being without a working system. Plus the old PC would still have some resale value once I finished, which would offset part of the cost of new hardware.

I set myself a budget of $1000 for the build, which was doable since I planned to reuse a few components from my existing PC (monitor, keyboard, mouse, video and sound cards). At this price point, I could go for a few higher-end niceties as long as I stayed disciplined. I spent about three months evaluating products, and finally bought everything just before the holidays. Come along for the ride as I build this puppy.

I chose to go with an Asus Z77 motherboard ($155) and Intel Core i7-3770K processor ($250 on sale). I could have gone cheaper on these, but I thought this was the place to put my extra dollars. The P8Z77-V LE motherboard is loaded with features, and the CPU is a 4-core Ivy Bridge model with an unlocked multiplier for easy overclocking (if I choose to do that in the future). The chip also has integrated graphics, but I prefer a discrete video card and will be reusing the AMD Radeon HD 5850 from my existing system. (The HD 5450 card pictured above is temporary and will be swapped with the 5850 later.)

We also have a Seasonic X-Series 750W power supply, a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU cooler, 8GB of Kingston Hyper-X memory (also with headroom for overclocking), a 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda Green hard drive, and a 120GB Intel solid-state drive. SSD prices have finally started to come down below $1 per gigabyte, so I could afford to drop this in without blowing the budget. The motherboard supports Intel’s Smart Response, which uses the fast SSD as a buffer or cache drive for frequently-accessed files, speeding up disk I/O. It’s like a do-it-yourself hybrid drive, or what the marketing geniuses at Apple call “Fusion Drive.”

My apologies for most of these photos being out of focus. I thought the flash was too harsh and apparently didn’t have enough ambient light for the camera’s autofocus. (I also can’t see worth a damn any more and the photos looked fine on the camera’s viewfinder.) Here I’ve started to place components on the motherboard, starting with the CPU.

The CPU cooler is a huge heatsink and fan, as you’ll see below, so it requires additional support. This is the backplate to which the cooler assembly will be attached.

The Hyper 212 came with a tube of thermal grease, but I’d already bought this tube of Arctic Silver. It’s supposed to be the good stuff, so that’s what I used. Just a pea-sized drop, they say.

Here is the Hyper 212 heatsink mounted on the retaining bracket. The copper base rests directly on the CPU with the thermal compound in between. I’ve never installed one of these before and the instructions were awful. Thankfully, I found several helpful videos on the Internet to guide me. That didn’t stop me from originally mounting it facing sideways, which I didn’t realize until I had already installed the motherboard into the case. So I pulled it out and fixed it, then took corrected photos. I didn’t have to tell you that, but I’m honest to a fault.

Now I’ve attached the fan to the heatsink and placed the memory modules. The motherboard is ready to go into the case.

It took me forever to decide on a case. My main concern was that I wanted a quiet system, just like last time, since I do occasional audio recording with a live microphone and don’t want my PC’s fan noise interfering with that. Last time I used a Cooler Master Sileo case, but that model is no longer made. I settled on the Fractal Design Define R4 case shown. My concerns were that it only had two external drive bays and that the reviews said it was kind of big. It may be hard to tell from this photo, but it is definitely a big case, a couple of inches wider than your average mid-tower. However, it’s very well-built, and the extra interior room makes it easy to work in. Note the foam insulation on the front door. Both side panels are also covered in heavy sound-dampening material.

Here we are inside the case, with the side panels removed. Lots of internal drive bays, all with slide-out trays. The case comes with two large quiet fans (front bottom and rear top), and a built-in fan speed controller. The fans are big enough to push a lot of air and keep the case interior cool despite all the acoustic padding, and I could add additional fans if necessary. There are cutouts for mounting water-cooling, but I’m not that ambitious.

I discovered that the middle set of drive bays was removable, so I took it out. More room to work. I’ll only be using two of the bays anyway.

Here I’ve installed the I/O shield for the motherboard’s external connections, and attached the brass standoffs to the motherboard tray for mounting.

The motherboard is now mounted to the tray, using nine screws to secure it to the brass standoffs. Note how the CPU cooler fan is lined up with the case’s rear exhaust fan, as it should be, instead of pointing toward the bottom of the case as I had it originally. Duh.

I’ve placed the video card in the PCI slot, and now I’m starting to attach the case leads to the motherboard. These are the wires that connect to the case’s USB ports, power and reset switches, and power LED. You can see a black cord running diagonally across the motherboard – this is the power connector for the front panel fan, which barely reaches. At this point I was opting to connect the fans to the motherboard rather than the case’s built-in fan controller. I thought I’d let the system BIOS control the fan speed rather than using the case controller to do it manually. I was forced to reconsider later.

I’m mounting the Seagate hard drive into one of the drive trays. The tray is fitted with rubber grommets, and Fractal provided anti-vibration screws for mounting. This is another nice “quiet” feature since hard drive vibration can be a source of additional noise. The “green” drives are also designed to conserve power and run quieter (at the expense of performance, which I’m hoping to compensate for with the SSD).

The hard drive is now installed in the drive bay with the SSD in the bottom bay. No special screws needed here. Flash memory doesn’t vibrate.

Now I have the optical drive installed in the top external bay. I was concerned about only having two external bays since I’m using four in my previous system, which has two optical drives, a card reader, and a USB hub. However, I realized that I never use the second DVD drive, and I don’t need more USB ports since this case has them built into the top panel. So I’ll move the card reader into the second bay when I’m ready to go live with this system. You might also make out the fan controller switch to the right of the optical drive. There are three speed settings.

Okay, now things are getting ugly as I start to connect the power leads. The Seasonic PSU is modular, so I only have to connect the leads I need, but that doesn’t mean that the inside of my PC will be neat and organized. I just don’t roll that way.

With the power connections all made, now I can screw the power supply into place. There is a rubber gasket between the PSU and the case, to absorb vibration from the power supply fan, so it takes a bit of elbow grease to get the screws in. The Seasonic is supposed to be very energy-efficient, and will even run fanless when the power load is low. I know 750W is overkill for this configuration, but experienced system builders will tell you to never cheap out on the power supply. You will usually regret it. And I could add a monster graphics card down the road, if I ever have time for serious gaming.

Another redo. There are two PCI Express slots and I realized the video card should be in the upper (blue) slot, which runs at a higher speed. This was impossible with that fan cable stretched across the motherboard, so once I moved the card, I connected the fans to the case fan controller instead, since the leads were easy to reach.

Here is the completed assembly after making the SATA cable connections to the drives. The R4 case has a lot of options for cable management, with pass-thru slots that can be used to route cables behind the motherboard tray and out of sight. But I found a far easier way to deal with unsightly cable clutter.

This is my solution. A nice, solid black side panel. No case window. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Amazingly, the system started up perfectly the first time I plugged it in. I don’t think I’ve ever had a build go that smoothly, and that’s even with my screw-ups on the CPU cooler and video card. I’ve had some builds that reduced me to tears and/or made me seriously question my career choices. But I think the time I spent on component selection paid off. I had a complete install of Windows 7 done in a couple of hours.

And now the hard work begins. I’ve got to compile a list of the applications and data I need to migrate over and get that process going, starting with low-priority stuff and finishing up with crucial daily-use stuff like Quicken and Outlook databases. As I’ve said here, I never wanted to start an installation over from square one, but I can’t deny the benefits of having a clean Windows install. I’d been having stability issues with my media center PC for months until I finally gave up and reinstalled Windows from scratch. And it’s been rock-solid since then.

It’s unfortunate that it takes such an investment of time and effort to get everything running optimally. I guess that’s why some people use Macs. But then they miss out on that feeling of accomplishment when it finally works right. At least that’s what I tell myself.

Windows 8 upgrade options are crystallizing

This is still unofficial, but Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley reports on ZDNet that some details about Windows 8 upgrade paths are being shared privately by our friends in Redmond.

If this information is correct, Windows 8 will allow an upgrade installation on all versions of Windows going back to XP (Service Pack 3). However, only users upgrading from Windows 7 will be able to keep all their personal data, settings, and applications. Users upgrading from Vista SP1 can preserve personal data and system settings. And Windows XP and pre-SP1 Vista users will be able to preserve personal data only – all applications will have to be reinstalled and Windows system settings reapplied.

I am not happy about this.

My earlier post on this subject detailed my concerns about upgrading old Windows XP installations – both my own and those of my clients. This news does nothing to ameliorate those concerns. I’m still facing a multiple-day reconstruction of my own primary PC, and performing upgrades on my clients’ XP systems just wouldn’t be cost-effective because of the time involved.

I was really hoping that Microsoft would find some way to accommodate the (still) very large base of Windows XP installations. But assuming these reports are true, Microsoft is saying that’s as far as they’re willing to go. Upgrading from XP is not impossible, just difficult. Microsoft could make it easier, but I guess they have their own cost-benefit analyses to consider.

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Windows Update: The XP dilemma
The Wizard’s latest build

Windows Update: The XP dilemma

It’s been quite some time since we discussed the Windows upgrade saga here and we’re long overdue for an update.

You’ll recall that I strongly advised against purchasing Windows Vista or upgrading existing Windows XP installations to Vista. I think it’s fair to say that the general consensus in the technical community backs me up on this. Vista has garnered a reputation as a lemon of an operating system. (It’s not the complete disaster that Windows Me was, but I really don’t want to reflect back on that painful chapter in my life.)

So where are we today? Windows 7 is well-established in the market, with Windows 8 already appearing on the horizon. And Windows 7 is the real deal. It’s a solid OS. That’s a good thing, because if you’re buying a new PC, it’s all you can get.

If you have a PC running Vista, you should absolutely upgrade to Windows 7. Lots of improvements, and the interface changes are relatively minor and easy to adapt to. You can buy the Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade for just over $100.

But what if you are among the one-third of all computer users still running Windows XP? Well, I’m in the same boat. My primary PC still runs XP, and quite frankly, I’m afraid to attempt the upgrade.

The major issue is that while Microsoft allowed you to perform an in-place upgrade from XP to Vista, there is no such installation option for moving from XP to Windows 7. You must wipe out and reload your system from scratch. I have never done that on my own PC. Allow me to quote myself from a previous post:

It’s become a matter of pride that my current software installation has been upgraded from DOS 5 to Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 to Windows 98 to Windows Me to Windows XP Professional, and I have never once reloaded from scratch. I just upgrade the hardware and migrate my disk image over.

Pride aside, I don’t think I could do a full reinstall even if I wanted to. I have a ton of programs on my PC, some of which have been there for many many years, and I’m sure there are several whose installation disks have gone missing. Trying to reconstruct my setup from a fresh Windows install would be a major undertaking, and I’d be dead in the water the whole time.

So now I’ve hit a wall. I thought by now Microsoft would relent and provide a direct upgrade path from XP to Windows 7, but they are holding fast. It’s probably a way to punish everyone who had the audacity to not purchase Vista.

One option that I am seriously considering is to perform a two-step upgrade, from XP to Vista and then to Windows 7. I’m reluctant for two reasons. The first is that I don’t know how much Vista will screw things up, even if it’s only installed briefly. And second, it’s going to take a lot of time.

Upgrade time is a big concern for me, both personally and professionally. I recently performed a Vista to Windows 7 upgrade for a client, and it took more than five hours to complete, not including the time I spent with my client afterward tweaking settings and making sure she could find all the options she needed to use frequently. I wound up discounting my hourly rate and throwing in a few free hours just to keep the project affordable.

I don’t like to charge clients for the idle time I spend waiting for installs and downloads to finish. Of course, this varies from client to client based on the speed of their Internet connection and the horsepower of the PC. I want to give my clients a fair shake – and I suppose that’s a big reason why I get a lot of repeat business (vigorously patting self on back).

So I haven’t attempted an XP to Windows 7 upgrade yet. I just don’t see how it would be cost-effective if you factor in the time required to reload all the client’s applications and data. Geek Squad charges a flat rate ($230) for in-home OS upgrades, not including the cost of the software. I’m certain that’s just a straight reload without application installation and customization.  Nobody wants to spend more on an upgrade than it would cost to get a whole new PC.

That’s where things stand at the moment. I don’t have a good answer for myself or my clients who are still running XP, except to hold tight. In the next few months, we’ll be learning a lot more about Windows 8. It’s too soon to know if there will be a direct upgrade path for XP users, or if it will even be worthwhile. Much of the effort in Windows 8 development seems to be related to the new Metro interface for tablets and touch screens, and we don’t know much yet about what Windows 8 will provide for the traditional desktop/laptop user. So stay tuned. We’ll figure this out sooner or later.

UPDATE (with forehead slap): I just received a reply e-mail from one of my clients. “So what’s the problem if we actually keep XP and don’t want to upgrade?” A good question that I clearly should have anticipated.

Right now, there is no problem staying with XP. Microsoft states that they will continue to support Windows XP SP3 until April 8, 2014. As the installed base of XP users gradually declines, however, we may begin to see a shift away from XP support by hardware and software vendors. That will obviously be an issue if and when it happens. But for now, there is safety in numbers. It wouldn’t be economically prudent for vendors to move away from XP support at this time.

Of course, there are folks (like me) who would like to upgrade not just because we have to, but because there are some legitimately cool features in Windows 7 that we’d like to have. It’s also a more secure platform than Windows XP. So there are benefits to upgrading, if your hardware can support it. We’ll just keep watching.

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The Wizard’s latest build