Computer Upgrades

December 10, 2016

It occurred to me last week as I was reading some online news that a new generation of computer motherboards was hitting the markets (just in time for the Christmas spending season, not surprisingly). It's only recently that I've begun to fully understand the release cycle for desktop computer hardware, so I was excited by the news. I have to admit I'm a little slow with some concepts, especially with so much happening in the technology world.

I've learned that it works best to focus on the chipset releases and socket types (how the processor connects to the motherboard), not necessarily the processors themselves. A chipset will use a specific socket type, which will then determine what processor and memory type can be used on a motherboard. Often you see incremental feature and capability improvements with the release of a new chipset. Motherboard makers design everything around the socket type and chipset. I found a good reference here for following these releases. The most recent stuff is clear down at the bottom. You can see that the z270 chipset is due for release right around now. I've had my eye on the z170 for a while, since I've been thinking of putting together a headless (no display) high-end desktop machine for some of the experiments I run. You can see from the table that there is only a modest difference in feature capabilities between the two chipsets, however I do expect there to be a price differential going forward, so it might make sense to put together a z170 machine sometime in the new year.

I performed a quick estimate of prices using parts found on Amazon.com , for a very bare-bones system.

There are some small items, such as CPU heatsink, thermal compound, and power supply, which will add about $100 to the cost, but for a fairly high-end system I would say this is a very reasonable price. No doubt about it though, this machine would be screaming fast. I also learned recently that all current Intel processors have a graphic processor built into the CPU, so for a headless machine that is intended only for offloading tasks, a separate graphics card is not a requirement. With the system described here, one could get by for a while with just the M.2 solid-date disk drive alone, without need for additional hard-drive cost. I picked a micro-ATX case to allow additional working space and greater air-flow, however the motherboard shown in the parts list is a mini-ITX board.

My current desktop machine is shown here.

Chipset Code Name sSpec Number Part numbers Release Date Socket Bus Interface Link Speed[c] PCI Express lanes Intel VT-d support PCI SATA USB FDI support TDP
6 Gbit/s 3 Gbit/s v3.0 v2.0
X793 Patsburg SLJHW (C0),[61]
SLJN7 (C1)[62]		 BD82X79 (PCH)[63] November 14, 2011 LGA 2011 DMI 2.0 4 GB/s 8 PCIe 2.0 Yes No 2 ports 4 ports None 14 ports No 7.8 W
3 For Sandy Bridge enthusiast desktop platform. Sandy Bridge CPUs will provide up to 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes for direct GPU connectivity and additional 4 PCIe 2.0 lanes. NOTE : This reference number 4 is on X79, which is a Sandy bridge -E, not Sandy Bridge, and PCIe 3.0 only is enabled when A Ivy Bridge-E CPU or Xeon E-5 series is used.

It's been a decent system, however it is beginning to show its age. It would have been considered a high-end workstation about 3 years ago, and current systems would feel about 1/3 again faster than this machine. My system does have quite a few USB 3.0 ports, so judging from the Wikipedia specs they must have cannibalized some of the PCIe lanes to create these USB3 ports on my motherboard. My plan, as with most computers I've owned, is to literally run this thing until there is a hardware failure, or until it becomes too grindingly slow to use with current software.

The Home Router

As I've been reviewing my computer system it struck me that my router was state-of-the-art nearly 10 years ago. My DLink Dir-825 router still runs fine, but many consumer routers today run several more processing cores at several times the speed (each core). I decided a router upgrade was probably in order, so I made a short list of important requirements.

The first requirement usually rules out the most cutting-edge products, since firmware releases are done Pro-Bono, by community members, and you almost never see OpenWRT firmware for the very latest routers. Being limited to somewhat aged consumer products took care of the second requirement. To nail down one device which met the last three requirements, I simply stepped through the hardware list on the OpenWRT site, examining each in detail. The USB 3.0 port is desired because most of these routers have so little memory and flash-rom, and a USB stick can be configured as a disk-drive (OpenWRT is a particular Linux micro-kernel distribution). The flash-rom acts like a hard-drive so data may be persisted between boots, and you typically see under 20Mb of flash-rom on these routers, while 64Mb of memory is not uncommon.

Many of the routers have interesting features, but didn't meet all my requirements. Some of the single-board computers listed there are intriguing, since they can function as pentesting drop-boxes and be inserted into a network line. Sadly a large number of routers produced in the past 2 years appear like Arachnid Spaceships just landed from Alpha-Centauri, and these will definitely not stand on their side. I finally arrived at one router from LinkSys, the WRT1900ACS, which I felt would meet my needs. If you remove one of the antennas, and place bumper material along the side, then you can stand this device on it's side. I have several devices positioned upright like this, and my goal is being able to see the lights, but avoid having them take over my desk. The WRT1900ACS has 2 processor cores running at 1600 MHz each, which is nicely fast, and a 32Gb USB3 stick allows me to add as much extra software to OpenWRT as I desire (and the USB3 connection is nicely fast as well).

Flashing OpenWRT onto my new LinkSys was trivially easy. Other people in the OpenWRT community are doing all the hard work in creating and testing these firmware images, while I just have to follow instructions. Configuring the USB3 stick as a hard-disk was only slightly more difficult. There are instructions for all of this on the OpenWRT website, and the router software setup took less than an hour to complete.

Permanent Storage and Memory

I am probably like most people in that I download lots of things from the cloud, the Internet. I hate throwing things away, and I hate running out of space to store downloaded files (and I routinely download large binaries or multimedia files). For these reasons, in my situation it makes sense to spend enough on mass storage so that I never run into space limitations. I made the decision to pick up a couple large disk drives. I purchased one internal 10TeraByte drive, the Seagate Skyhawk, and another external 8TeraByte USB3 drive, a Western Digital MyBook. These obviously don't have the speed of solid-state disks (the Skyhawk spins at 7200rpm and the MyBook I believe rotates at 5400rpm), but we do pay a price for high capacity. My current total hard-disk capacity is right around 23TeraBytes.

Another area where I occasionally run into limitations is computer memory. Even though 32GigaBytes is a lot, I don't like using a swap file, so it is possible to turn a MS Windows7 system into jelly after a few days of use. Again, I bit the bullet and purchased enough additional RAM to max out my current desktop system. I'm sure I will use this computer for another 5+ years, but this will undoubtedly be the last upgrade I do with this system, since I am already running into other kinds of limitations (such as no available PCIe lanes).

 

-R. Foreman