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Recently picked up the Brother HL-3070CW from Best Buy (a great sale at under $200).

I have to say, it’s probably the best printer I’ve ever owned.

I’ll begin by mentioning that I’m not going to focus on speed, color representation, or any of the other stuff that most printer reviews focus on. I’m a pretty regular guy when it comes to my printing needs. I don’t hundreds of pages per day. I’m not an artist. That said, I want a printer that works well and quickly the times I use it, doesn’t cause nightmares when shared over the network, and also isn’t going to cost me an arm and a leg in toner over the course of it’s life.

The Brother HL-3070CW fit the bill perfectly.

I should also mention that I’m the type to pay 3X more for a printer if toner/ink is cheap (or if it can be refilled through generic eBay toner/ink). Naturally, this means I’ve never bought a Lexmark and never will. This also means I used to buy Canon but never do anymore. You want to chip your printers? Have fun. I won’t buy from you. Ever. Brother’s one of the few manufacturer’s left that I’m willing to buy from.

In any case, with the Brother a seemingly good fit on paper, I’ll keep continue reading…

I recently grabbed the Antec 300 for the 6-core AMD machine. I had a pile of fans in the old standard beige case, and it just wasn’t cutting it anymore.

In the past, I’ve used an Antec Sonata III (review here), and I had the Sonata Piano finish before that. Overall, I’ve been pretty pleased with Antec cases.

I skipped out on the Sonata this time around and went with the 300, because massive cooling potential was the goal this time around. While the Sonata’s do cool very well, I was looking for something to push more airflow.

I’ve taken some pictures with the Antec 300 pulled apart, with a few comments attached to each to give you an idea as to my thoughts on this case.

Here you see can see the front panel when removed. It’s fairly easy to get off, although you’ll only need to remove it when adding front case fans (a couple 12cm fans are supported), or when removing the screen filter for cleaning. To remove it, you pop off the side panel, and then push in the black clips that hold it on – basically the same way you’d remove a front panel on a standard case. There aren’t any wires or anything attached (unlike cases that have the buttons/leds integrated with the panel), meaning that once it’s pulled you can bring it to the counter without having it tied to the case.

The filter is a bit of a pain to remove. Looking at the image, there are 4 clips along the left side, and unless you’re fortunate enough to have 4 hands, you have to pull up on the screen’s frame while pushing back each clip. Once the screen’s removed, you can clean it easily enough, although putting it back in is actually tougher than pulling it out – it doesn’t snap in very quickly/easily, and really requires a lot of force, leading to concern that either the frame might crack or the clips may break.

This is in contrast to the Sonata’s filter, where you simply tip the case on it’s side to access the bottom, squeeze 2 clips, and slide the thing right out, and back in again.

Fortunately, you probably won’t be pulling the filter more than once a year or so, but it’s still something that should be easier. Thinking you might break something is never good.

Moving on to the 12cm fan cages, they’re pretty awesome.

You can just make them out, but at continue reading…

This PSU is going on a field trip! To the dump!

Years ago, we learned not to buy no-name PSU’s. They’d die during the summer.

Since then, I’ve read reviews, done research, and attempted to go with good solid name brands. Things have gone much better since then.

Well… until this thing came along.

It was bought years ago to run a system. The system needed about 300-400W worth of power. The 600SXS was bought because it was a 600 watt power supply and… well extra headroom is good!

Surprisingly, one day while the system was running, the thing just cut out. After waiting a short time, I started up the computer again, and not long after it cut out again. Fortunately, I had my 400W Fortron Sparkle PSU sitting around, which worked as a replacement. That’s right. FSP. Fortron Sparkle. The ugly low-cost power supplies that happen to be decent. They beat this thing with their 400W model.

Much later on, I was putting together a system for a writeup here, and tried to give the OCZ another chance. The system used under 200W at load (measured from the wall), plus an ATI HD 4850 video card (which is probably in the neighborhood of 150-200W. The power supply died out again, but this time for good. It wasn’t running games, or even stress testing at the time, it was booting Windows. So maybe 250W power draw coming from the system total.

I’ll note that all my Antec PSU’s and Sparkle/Fortron PSU’s have handled loads well beyond what this thing was ever subjected too, even when they’ve been rated lower (400W/500W levels)

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Pros:

• It was pretty quiet when it worked.
• It shut off safely when cutting out (some no name PSUs will just keep going and start blowing caps until it shorts out or fries your motherboard). This is actually really important – while I’m unhappy the thing died, I’m very pleased it shut off rather than destroying my expensive hardware so I’ll put some gold stars here. —> *****
• I was able to salvage the 12cm fan before throwing it in the trash.

Cons:

• Only lasted a couple months.
• Didn’t handle anywhere close to the max load.

Conclusion:

This thing is not worth buying. To be fair, our house gets pretty hot in the summer, although all the other PSU’s have handled the heat just fine. Fortunately, NCIX doesn’t sell it anymore. There’s a new “version 2″ they now carry – I really hope it’s better than this one was (for the sake of OCZ customers), although I’m not willing to find out for myself.

ASUS M4A785-M installed with AMD Phenom II X6 1055T - Yes, as you'll see, all those fans are necessary!

Preliminary Warning:

Overclocking has the potential to damage/destroy components. Overclock at your own risk. Just because my settings didn’t blow up my machine, doesn’t mean they won’t blow up yours. The writeup below is subject to error and inaccuracy. If your machine dies, your house burns down, or you inadvertantly cause a chain reaction of events resulting in a nuclear power plant exploding due to something you read here, I disclaim all responsibility.

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With that out of the way… the M4A785-M isn’t the newest of boards, and pairing it with one of the best AMD processors might seem a little puzzling. Here’s why it was chosen anyway…

• It’s cheap (under $100).
• It supports DDR2 RAM.

The fact of the matter is, I had perfectly good DDR2 RAM that wasn’t being used, and one of the newer AM3 boards just didn’t make sense. Therefore, I needed an AM2/AM2+ motherboard. Even though the X6 is an AM3 processor, it’s backwards compatible with AM2/AM2+ motherboards, proving the board supports it physically as well as through a BIOS update.

Pre-build concerns:

• The M4A785-M is a budget board. Budget boards and high-end processors often *barely* manage. Adding overclocking to the mix has the potential to spell trouble (heck, budget boards often have difficulty dealing with overclocked low-end chips).
• While it supports the X6 through a BIOS update, this motherboard obviously wasn’t originally designed with the 6-core in mind.
• It supports processors with a maximum of 125W (which most of the current X6′s are). Again, adding overclocking potentially pushes the limit. Note that there are other boards that support 140W processors (the ASUS M3A78-EM being an example of an older DDR2 motherboard that supports the 140W processors). It would be reasonable to assume that a 140W-supporting variant would be better suited to the task.
• 4+1 phase power design. I suppose it could be worse (Gigabyte has a DDR2 motherboard supporting the X6 with only 3+1), but there are AM3  boards out there with 8+2 phase.
• El-cheapo heatsinks. The northbridge heatsink is actually sized very well. However, the southbridge heatsink is as tiny as possible, and there’s no heatsink on the MOSFETs.

Despite these downsides, motherboard options in the DDR2 realm are slim, and this was the best motherboard locally available.

However, the reasons above are largely why the overclock was done at STOCK voltages. Overclocking adds a bit of heat and power consumption. Overvolting increases the heat/power-consumption substantially and I’d be begging for trouble doing it (I wouldn’t expect the board to last more than a year assuming it survived the overvolting process on this processor to begin with).

Hence, stock voltage results only.

Board setup

Before throwing the motherboard in the case, I pulled the northbridge & southbridge heatsinks, and scraped off the old thermal interface junk. It’s silver stuff on the northbridge (similar to the AMD heatsink thermal interface pad), and the gross pink thermal pad on the southbridge. Once those were off, I replaced it with an extremely tiny amount of Arctic Silver.

If you replace the thermal pad with thermal paste, I’d recommend using a NON-CONDUCTIVE paste. The dies on the north/southbridge are so tiny that it would be easy to use too much, and if you conductive stuff you might kill the board.

I also used Arctic Silver on the stock AMD CPU heatsink. The included heatsink is actually pretty decent (heatpipes and everything), but the default thermal pad was too thick for my liking.

The motherboard’s a standard ATX size – if you’re using a medium-sized case, you’ll probably have to yank out your hard drives while you install it.

In terms of layout, the board’s pretty good. The one exception is that the 24-pin power connector hugs the IDE connector – this won’t matter if you’re using SATA, but if you’ve got an IDE drive, getting the cable in will be a little tight.

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Initial set-up

First, the board needed a BIOS update to support the processor. It detected it as an “Unknown Processor” and gave an error message about a CPU not being installed, although it still let me into the BIOS where I could change options and pop into the ASUS Bios Updater.

The BIOS included was version 702. The current X6′s require at least version 906. I used another computer to download the new ROM onto a USB memory stick, popped it in the M4A785-M, and let it flash. After a restart, things were looking good.

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I did some quick testing at stock setttings. Note that I had close to the bare minimum attached to this thing, aside from a pile of fans. 1 hard drive, 1 dvd-rw drive, 2 sticks of DDR2-800 RAM, and that’s it. I was using the onboard video and had nothing else but a keyboard/mouse plugged in.

At idle (Windows 7), the system was using 84 watts at idle (measured from the power outlet), and 172 watts at load (running Prime 95). An average power supply should be able to handle this thing if you’re using onboard video.

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Heat

While Prime was running, I touched the heatsinks. The CPU heatsink was relatively cool. The northbridge was cool (although the RAM cooler was giving it some airflow), but the southbridge was extremely hot. After about 5-10 seconds I had to pull my finger off to keep from cooking my skin. Immediately after shutoff, I felt the MOSFETs and they were hot.

Here’s the concern…

Southbridge – the heatsink is just too thin and tiny. Regular case airflow just doesn’t cut it. The thing’s screaming hot at stock, under load, with good case airflow. I’d hate to think what it would feel like in a stuffy (HTPC) case.

MOSFETs – the CPU fan passes some air over this region, but if you have the silent fan control enabled in the BIOS, at low CPU temps you’re not getting airflow.

I wouldn’t dare to overclock under these conditions. Overclock + a hot day could easily mean motherboard death.

My fixes were as follows:

Southbridge – I used zip ties to hang an 80mm fan over the location (which you can see in the picture), just to get some directed airflow. It worked very well.

MOSFETs – I turned off the setting for the silent fan in the BIOS so that it ran at full-speed all the time for maximum airflow in the area. I also used a dremel on the computer case to cut out the “grill” for the rear exhaust fan, so that the rear fan would pull more air over that general region (and increase total case air flow). This had a helpful effect – the MOSFETs still got very warm, but not as hot as before.

It’s pretty clear that the M4A785-M is marginal at best when it comes to cooling and the ability to deal with heat. I have a RAM cooler, rear exhaust fan, and 80mm fan over the southbridge added to the setup just to keep things comfortable temperature-wise at stock. I would have been very hesitant to risk overclocking without having dealt with the southbridge and MOSFET temps.

What a terrible southbridge heatsink! I'm surprised it doesn't glow red. You'll see part of the orange fan I hung with zip ties in the bottom left. It was either that, or rig something up so that the southbridge would keep my coffee warm.

Those MOSFETs are in dire need of heatsinks. Even with the CPU fan at full speed (blowing air out the sides), the exhaust fan to the left, and the PSU intake fan above, these things stay very warm. This in itself is a huge reason you don't want to crank up the voltage of the CPU. These little guys probably wouldn't be able to take the heat.

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Overclocking (finally!)

Now we get to the good stuff.

For all it’s flaws, the M4A785-M has a very capable continue reading…

I’m fortunate in that I’ve got 2 of these motherboards, so I’m very much certain that doing the BSEL mod on a CPU and then sticking it in this motherboard *won’t* work.

Of course I’m unfortunate in that I’m stuck with 2 of these boards. Oh well.

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The P5KPL-CM is a Socket 775 motherboard, and the biggest problem you’ll come to when overclocking is that the motherboard makes it very easy for the RAM to limit your FSB, particularly with the processors that run at a base of 200Mhz. An example is the E2140 that runs at 1.6Ghz by default (200Mhz x 8).

I’ve got 2 E2140′s, and I tried modding both of them to the 266Mhz boot strap through the pin mod. I used the conductive defroster-repair liquid both times, and tried 3 of the different volt mods to go along with them (in addition to the stock unaltered voltage). At worst, you get a blank screen. At best, you get a screen screaming for a disk with the BIOS and frantically checking your CD-ROM/USB drives for a bios rom.

After the many failed attempts, I did a little searching and found that this is typical of the P5KPL-CM. It just won’t accept a CPU that’s been BSEL modded. My results mirrored what many others have found.

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Why this is a problem…

The big issue is that at the 200Mhz boot strap, you get 2 options for the RAM aside from AUTO – 800 and 667. This is a lie. continue reading…