Nels Lindahl — Functional Journal

A weblog created by Dr. Nels Lindahl featuring writings and thoughts…

Tag: hardware

  • 20250222

    This week we have entered a new desktop computer technology era with a mostly new computer build this year. I ended up selecting a motherboard and after that it was easy enough to select a CPU, RAM, and a CPU cooler. Honestly, I had meant to make a YouTube video about the build. Strangely enough, I was excited enough about the arrival of the new parts that I just built the system, engaged in some troubleshooting, and started enjoying the new computer build. No actual video was shot during that whole process. It was something that happened pretty quickly and now the system is built and sitting under my desk.

    Requisitioned and received new hardware for this build:

    • be quiet! Dark Base PRO 901 Black – 3 Silent Wings 4 PWM computer case
    • MSI MPG Z890 CARBON WIFI LGA 1851 Intel Z890 SATA 6Gb/s ATX Motherboard
    • Intel Core Ultra 7 265K – Core Ultra 7 (Series 2) Arrow Lake 20-Core (8P+12E)
    • be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5 (this fan purchase included the thermal paste used in this build)
    • CORSAIR Vengeance 64GB (2 x 32GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR5 6600 (PC5 52800) Desktop memory model kit
    • 2x SAMSUNG 990 PRO 2TB SSD, PCIe Gen4 M.2 2280

    Reused hardware:Reused hardware:

    • CORSAIR RMx Series (2021) RM1000x CP-9020201-NA power supply
    • ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 8GB GDDR6X PCI Express 4.0 Video Card TUF-RTX3070TI-O8G-GAMING
    • LG Black 12X BD-ROM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-ROM SATA Internal Blu-ray Burner
    • 3x WD Blue 2TB Desktop Hard Disk Drive – 5400 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch
    • WD Black 1TB SN850 NVMe SSD M.2 (My operating system was and still is on this drive and working fine after the motherboard transplant)
    • Corsair gaming mouse wired
    • K65 RGB MINI 60% Mechanical Gaming Keyboard — CHERRY MX SPEED
    • Rybozen USB 3.0 Switch Selector, KM Switch Adapter 4 Port 2 Computers
    • ATDEC monitor stand
    • 38 inch Dell computer monitors
    • External Audioengine speakers 

    Where are we going next with this computer build? I’m considering doubling the RAM with another vengeance kit to 128GB and maxing out my motherboard m.2 slots by purchasing 2 more of the Samsung 2TB drives. That is where things end up and unless some amazing CPU breakthrough happens this will be my main desktop computer until some type of hardware failure occurs and something has to be replaced.

    Dark Base Pro 901 computer case

  • 20250216

    A little bit of writing happened today. A lot more writing should have happened. It was a day where writing could have been the priority. Instead of working on some epic writing I ended up tearing down my previous computer build and started staging parts into the new computer case. So far I’m pretty happy with the selection of the Be quiet! Dark Base Pro 901 computer case. Right now one is sitting mostly disassembled in my office. I ended up having to order some of the HDD Case 2 drive bays they sell from some eBay listing. Even after spending some time trying to buy them somewhere else it seemed they were all sold out from retailers and eBay was the place to find them with a few Google searches. I wanted to put 5 classic spinning hard drives in the case. Modern motherboards now hold so many m.2 drives that you could just keep installing those and hope for the best. Some motherboards can even hold 5 of these drives which is really interesting. My last motherboard purchase only held one m.2 drive and that one has worked out well enough for the last few years. It held my Windows operating system and it worked well enough.