The new new machine

Being the extremely prolific blogger that I am, I tend to write about all my hardware updates.

My main box was built in 2013 and lasted a surprisingly long while, but I couldn't contain myself once I had put the parts for another sub 800$ build together and saw components go out of stock every half hour due to the impact of COVID 19 on the US supply chain. Hunting instincts and the feeling that I, too, could be a winner if only I pressed buy at the right time got the better of me.

The adventure started out with a satisfyingly quick build experience and a system that just wouldn't post. I was able to narrow it down to the graphics card, which was the one element carried over from the old box. Did I damage it during transfer? Nope, still works back in the old build.

Turns out, if your graphics card is old enough to not have a UEFI BIOS onboard, you won't be able to get output. There is a helpful BIOS option to fall back into legacy mode, but of course you need to be able to boot to set it. I ordered a new card and moved on.

I've since spent a day optimizing BIOS settings for RAM and Processor - turns out, the 3600s sold now are the literal bottom of the barrel after the X and XT versions of the processors have been selected out, so no real overclocking and the RAM improvements made less than a 10% difference on bandwidth. Not really worth the trouble; I've set everything back to stock, with the exception of the CPU supply voltage, which my board feels ought to be 1.45V by default.

While I've not been able to find authoritative statements by AMD, it runs just fine at 1.3V, so that's where it's sitting now.

The new card exposed an issue with the TV I am using as a monitor - 4K60 at 49" look ok, but the VIZIO panel insist on advertising full 10bit RGB and YUV444 support when it only produces a legible picture at 8bit YUV420. The NVIDIA driver handled that just fine under Windows, but not so much Linux.

For the record, a

sudo nvidia-xconfig --force-yuv-420

takes care of that.

Speaking of Windows, I found a beautiful way to install Windows after first installing Linux that'll keep things nicely contained to a vhdx file on a NTFS partition:

Get out your windows installer disk or simply download a VHDX file (Microsoft occasionally publishes timebombed complete install with all the dev tools), and go party.

The main article can be found here, in short, copy (or create and install Windows into) your target vhdx drive on the NFTS partition, then boot into the recovery command line of the install stick and execute

diskpart
select vdisk file=X:\windows.vhdx
attach vdisk

list volume
select volume Y
assign letter=v 

V:\
cd v:\windows\system32
bcdboot v:\windows /s X: /f UEFI

Now you have a UEFI bootable Windows in a containerized file and can install junk and simply fall back onto the original copy to your hearts content.

The other time consuming hardware experiment I struggled with was airflow - I permuted four fans through all the mounting positions in the case and discovered to my chagrin that they are not only all functionally equivalent (ie temps range from the 50s to just under 90), but that I can achieve the same result with just a single case fan.

The benefit of stock settings, I assume.

Getting the fans to be quiet was a struggle, given that my motherboard (the least pleasant of the acquisitions) feels that fans must always have a minimum RPM > 0 and must spin at 100% over 70 degrees celsius. Ugh.