[BUILDING] The HaswellRise mod

[dj_aris]

Exercise some caution with the new Gigabyte Z97 boards. I was reading a site last evening that said they have decided to use the Qualcom 'Killer' Ethernet chips on quite a few of them, even some of the non-gaming boards.

These ethernet chips would be difficult if not impossible to get working since Apple has never used them and probably never will.

Thanks for the heads up; we'll all have to wait and see the exact specs to confirm this. Surely, if that use an unsupported ethernet chip it will be a bummer but for me this issue isn't a deal breaker. I almost never use a wired connection anyway.

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

Thanks for the heads up; we'll all have to wait and see the exact specs to confirm this. Surely, if that use an unsupported ethernet chip it will be a bummer but for me this issue isn't a deal breaker. I almost never use a wired connection anyway.

Me either, but you must remember to get your network configured properly so that you have an ethernet as en0 otherwise you will have issues with the app store etc.

 

[dj_aris]

Update: more parts!

Now I also have the bluetooth chip, together with it's antenna and the cabling (to be modded with a spare USB header and the voltage transformer). I wonder if I could replace the antenna with a regular wifi antenna cable to make it longer and lead it out of the chassis...



And finally here's is the Zalman CNPS2X. Yes, it's low. Very low!



Somehow I think B85N is still the way to go. With the exception of Asrock's Z97E-ITX, I haven't seen any mini ITX boards with 2 mini PCIe slots planned. Asrock's board is the only one featuring a very tempting M.2 slot but there are some issues:

1) It is fitted under the board and that means that the whole board must be lifted higher in the case, thus leaving much less height for my GPU.

2) The M.2 slot is rated for 10GBps. Now I'm not saying that 10GBps isn't a healthy upgrade from the ancient SATA 3 of 6GBps but I don't know if it's really worth the trouble. Asrock has already announced another board with an "ultra" M.2 port capable of 32BGps (although not an ITX), that's more like it.

3) Finally, there aren't any actual M.2 drives available yet. Yes, you can find some models but these aren't true M.2, they are just mSATA (6GBps) utilizing the sata (rather than the PCIe) port on the M.2 connector. The only M.2 drives available (for pre-order anyway) are one from Plextor and one from Samsung, they can almost saturate the 10GBps bandwidth, but their specs sheets are full of warnings that (with some minor exceptions) these drives aren't bootable.

I think I may leave the M.2 plans aside for a while until my next build...

 

[dj_aris]

Update: even more parts!

Today I received the PSU:


It's a really tight fit!


To be honest, I have serious worries about the airflow... But I'm thinking positive because the PSU is actually rated for 150w while the system should sip only half of that during normal use. We'll see while testing.

Also, I just got some funky low profile antennas (not sure about the reception though; I just bought them for testing):


Still waiting for the motherboard and cpu!

 

[Pauerkraut]

I love tiny builds! That HiRise case looks beautiful..

I've just ordered the parts for my first build and I also chose the B85N. Please keep us updated with the OS installation - I haven't seen any threads on B85N success and have been wondering if I should return it and pick something else or give it a shot. Good luck!

 

[dj_aris]

I love tiny builds! That HiRise case looks beautiful..

I've just ordered the parts for my first build and I also chose the B85N. Please keep us updated with the OS installation - I haven't seen any threads on B85N success and have been wondering if I should return it and pick something else or give it a shot. Good luck!

Thanks! I don't see why B85N would be any different from other Gigabyte 8-series models, I hope everything goes well. Hopefully I'll have the motherboard by next week but the CPU I ordered is a very rare model and it will take a while to get here. So, in the next few weeks I'll mostly focus on fitting the hardware in the case as good as possible.

 

[dj_aris]

Update: CPU just in!


Quite a bit earlier than expected, my CPU arrived today! The star of my mod is i7-4765T:


(stock image: I don't want to open the box, only once to fit it in the motherboard!)

What can I say about this little fellow? 4 cores, 8 threads, 8MB L3 cache, HD4600 graphics and all in a 35w TDP package?! Thank you 22nm!

I'm very close now, before the end of the week I'll have the motherboard, ram and msata drive and hopefully I'll begin building in the weekend! Stay tuned!

 

[dj_aris]

Update: Almost there!

The final parts are here! First, Kingston 2x8GB DDR3 1866MHz CL10 ram:

Note that the heatsink is really thin and that the total hight is also very low.

And the Samsung 840 evo 250GB mSATA drive:

Look at the size of that thing compared to an SD card!

I went with the 250GB model because it's quite a bit faster than the 120GB, but not very much slower than it's larger siblings, the 500GB / 1TB models.

Now I'm only waiting for the motherboard; they promised it would be here mid-week, but eventually I have to wait until Saturday...

 

[JuanLobo]

Which motherboard did you decide to go with? I thought it was the Asrock Z97E-ITX, or was it something else?

 

[dj_aris]

Which motherboard did you decide to go with? I thought it was the Asrock Z97E-ITX, or was it something else?

No, I went with my original choice, GA-B85N because it uses the tested and compatible 8 series chipset and also because in my opinion it's a bit too early for full M.2 functionality, so I'd rather use mSATA (which is btw smaller and placed on the motherboard rather than under it, as in Asrock's implementation).

I know 8 series doesn't support Broadwell CPUs (despite the same 1150 socket) but hey, that's an excuse to build another mod next year, am I right or am I right?