Ah, remember this post about waiting for the perfect casing? The waiting is finally over... it was a hassle getting it out of Customs and Cargo Area, but after 2 days, the Briefcase finally found its new home.
We started assemblying the Armanovus Workstation around 11.30 night time.. wish we'd done it sooner, but we were at Cyber Building IIX until late at night...
Foto 01: Ah, the width of my MacBook Pro 15" and the Briefcase is almost similar.
First to go in the Briefcase was the DVD-RW drive, followed by two hard drives. Then the power, and finally the motherboard. It's been a long time since I put thermal paste on a microchip's backside, so gotta do it carefully.
Foto 02: Standard heatsink from the processor box will do, but 8 Gigs of RAM is a necessity.
At around 3.00am we finally finished putting all the parts in the briefcase, although the power cables haven't been organized neatly with bendable wires.
Foto 03: It's a lot of juice in one clear-through briefcase.
Yeah, notice the handle, it's there to make transporting the machine easy from one place to another (LAN Party anyone?). Anyways, after praying for a while and wishing everything will work perfectly... voila, everything did work perfectly! Off then to install Vista X64... why Vista X64? Well, 1) Windows Server 2008 didn't recognize my 640GB SATA RAID-0 configuration, but Vista X64 did; 2) I still want to make use of my HD3870 GPU to the max; 3) The CD only has drivers for Vista x86 and x64, not sure if they'll work perfectly on Server 2008.
After installing Vista x64, I tested Windows Index Experience and noticed that my Corsair Dual Channel XMMS2 8-Gigs was the slowest component: 5.7, with the others being 5.9.
And according to this Windows Vista Team Blog, 5.9 is currently the highest score you can get. So my baby is at the Top, ooh yeah :)
Foto 04: Windows Experience Index
Ah, time to sleep now... for tomorrow tis time to install VMware Server and Windows 2008 guest.
Foto 05: Goodbye Tall Opaque Dual-Pentium3, hello Short Transparent Quad-Core Pentium4.
Specs:
- Casing: ClearPC Secret Agent Briefcase.
- Processor: Intel QuadCore @ 2.4Ghz each.
- Memory: Corsair XMMS2 Dual-Channel 8GB.
- Hard drive: SATA Seagate Baracuda 7200 rpm @ 320GB each (configured as single 640 GB RAID-0).
- Graphics: Sapphire HD3870 with 512MB VRAM.
- Motherboard: Asus P5Q.
- Power: CoolerMaster Real Power Pro 850watts (just in case I want to buy a second HD3870 and CrossFire them).
- DVD+/- RW: Asus LightScribe.
Why this casing?
- Has a handle at the top like a briefcase, easy to transport.
- Small but creatively enough to fit all (this thing is full-ATX compatible).
- I don't have to explain to security what's in the luggage if I carry this demo machine to Yogyakarta or Surabaya :)