Last Piece of the Puzzle

Embedded graphics, or what I understand about them, are related to the CPU that you install in the motherboard, and the T1700 socket, named LGA 1150, can house many different CPU variants, and the model I chose was the i5-4570 which is an Intel Core i5-4570, Haswell, Quad core processor with integrated Intel HD Graphics 4600.

There is a benchmark for those graphics and that can boil it all down to a single number, the average G3D mark, for the Intel HD Graphics 4600 that number is 715. I have a few spare graphics cards around, so I chose a compatible card that would run within the constraints of the power supply and the PCI express port, that card is the Quadro 2000 and it has a G3D mark of 1316.

The maximum TDP of the Quadro 2000 is 62 watts, so it can be powered by the PCI express slot and does not need any external connection, it may be considered as a step back by some as it is reported as Direct X 11.0 and not 12.0 like the Intel HD 4600 but it has it's own memory (does not share) and a higher core and memory clock.

So the last piece of the puzzle, after installation of the operating system, was the installation of the Quadro 2000 graphics card.

Getting ready for an Operating System

I do have a video card that I will be adding to the build, but the time has come to tidy all those wires up, mount the SSD and install Windows 10 Pro.

A couple of light duty bulldog clips are good enough to mount the 240 GB Kingston solid state drive and five or six zip ties are used to make those proprietary cables look tidy, fix the SATA cables to stop them flaying about, secure the thermal sensor and finish off the internals.

Overall, the project has cost under two-hundred and fifty Canadian dollars, which is actually quite expensive when compared with buying a full system from the Asset recovery centre for about a hundred less, however, this entire project has been fun to plan, research and build.

Cable Management Two

The Dell T1700 motherboard uses a five pin power switch connection, if you go online to solve this for a classic two pin momentary switch solution (as with all third-party cases on the market) you will see numerous discussions, some possible solutions, wiring diagrams and a lot of almost correct information relating to other Dell products and not necessarily the T1700 fix.

The motherboard socket on my switch assembly, from the original Precision T1700 Workstation, the wiring colors and what I did with them :

Using the black and yellow wire from the 5/6 pin harness as a momentary switch worked, however, the Dell system on startup would report "Alert! Power Button Cable Failure" so the solution in this case was to splice the red and yellow cables together as power switch A, this resulted in the case momentary switch working as expected without the log error. I am going to ignore the blue and orange wires. 

This made my OCD very happy as now the system has no startup alert messages, except for the missing boot drive one, which I will fix soon by adding an SSD (Solid State Drive). 

This iteration of cable management also meant I added the cable (SATA channel 1) to the optical drive, I then used a couple of twist ties to tidy other things up and of course, I was happy to use some of my shrink fit tubing on the cable splice which you can see just to the left of the optical drive

The machine is starting to look like someone cares about it.

The Work Zone

In the last decade if I was setting up a computer I would always take command of the kitchen table for a short period of time, something that Karen was used to, but I was wanting a more permanent bench to keep stuff going for an extended geek session.

This bench has been in the garage for years, but mostly used as a recycling centre, so when I reconstructed our recycle area in the Summer, using the base of an old bed, the metal bench became available. I think this was originally one of those door crashers at Canadian Tire, too inexpensive to ignore but without a purpose.

It now has one.

Cable Management One

The process to tidy the inside of the case has started and the first order of business was to mounted the Dell internal speaker securely in a little cubby, away from other things that may touch it, or damage the little circuit board.

I mounted the speaker to a plastic disk and then used a zip tie to mount at the side of the lower drive bay, to the right of it you will see the Antec 120mm fan for scale. You can see how things are not all as they should be with Dell items, four wires for basically a mono speaker?

The speaker does have a printed circuit attached that is a little amplifier, and logically there is a common ground wire, power wire and mono audio, so the puzzle was the fourth wire, which I will assume is the speaker detection wire, relaying information back to the motherboard.

Front Panel

This computer may be the last one I build with an internal optical drive, as essentially one is not really needed any more, although I still find them useful and this LG model was sitting in a cupboard for a while, seemed lonely and unwanted, so it too will find a new home.

The DVD drive needs to be mounted flush with the front panel, so the front panel needs to go back on again, along with the additional wires connected to USB 3.0, USB 2.0, Power Switch, Reset Switch, Power LED, hard drive LED and High definition audio. All those wires are fed in around the DVD drive and this is now my enhanced bowl of spaghetti.

It's Alive!!!

The hoops have been jumped through, albeit on a temporary basis, and the computer shows signs of life, an error free POST log (except for a missing boot drive) and the alternate CPU is happily married to the server board.

When power is turned on, POST (Power-On Self-Test) is the diagnostic testing sequence that a computer's basic input/output system (or "starting program") runs to determine if the computer keyboard, random access memory, disk drives, and other hardware are working correctly. In the case of Dell and similar proprietary systems from Lenovo and HP etc, the POST also checks for various unique sensors and gizmos that should be present. The additional wiring items I bought serve to provide that information to the system, although I aim to circumvent one or two during this build.

Thermal Considerations.

I mentioned thermal paste there and I'd like to discuss a few things about computer building that should not be overlooked.

The T1700 motherboard is a Micro-ATX sized board which means that it's maximum size is 9.60 inches square, therefore it can fit into a smaller case than it's big brother, the ATX, which is usually about 12.00 inches by 9.60 inches. The smaller mATX case is better for desk space, but presents challenges for keeping the system cool.

The LGA 1150 socket on this board supports the i5-4570 CPU that I installed and as you can see, I mounted a heatsink and fan to the CPU with a layer of thermal paste. The lower face of the heatsink had a smooth, polished finish, the upper part of the CPU is similar, but regardless, as I learned at trade school, to a high powered microscope these surfaces resemble a mountain range of grooves and scratches, anything but smooth and polished.

The thermal paste fills in the irregularities between the two surfaces so that heat will transfer more efficiently. When I tightened the four corner screws of the heatsink, it squeezed the thermal paste into a tight, even layer. The heat generated by the CPU transfers into the multi-finned heatsink and then the top mounted fan pulls the hot air away from the assembly. Yje speed of this fan is controlled by logic built into the motherboard.

The foward mounted, constant flow, Antec 120mm fan and the rear Dell 80mm fan will help to circulate the warm air from the inside of the case, the heat generated by this system will also increase if I decide to install a graphics card, instead of relying on the integrated graphics. Cool air is pulled into the case at the front and extracted at the back, again the rear mounted fan is monitored by the system and the speed adjusted according to temperature.

Heat is something I should monitor, and adjust as I proceed with the build, both with the case open and especially so when the sides of the case are re-installed.I may need to install another chassis fan in the process, hopefully not as I don't want this machine to sound like a freight train.

Proprietary Fun

When I ordered the Dell T1700 motherboard I asked the seller to include several items, which he kindly did for free. I had researched that I needed them to make this motherboard work correctly.

The items, a metal box, which has front audio and USB connectors, the black power switch assembly and not shown, a chassis thermal sensor. In addition there is an intrusion switch and internal speaker that may also be needed, but I have those from the Dell GX620 I took apart recently.

The power switch has an LED built in and connects to a 5 pin socket on the motherboard, there are ways to use a conventional 2 pin power switch (from the case) which I will be working on, but if the pins that power the LED are not considered, there will possibly be a startup error.

The front I/O panel also is checked by the startup process and the motherboard will not POST without the connection, I think it has standard USB connection which I may modify, but I will keep the panel inside the case and report back with the progress of the build.

Spaghetti Junction

The power supply for the project is an older ATX 300 watt power supply, from a HP computer, and the original label credits the manufacturer as LITEON. This should have enough power for the intended use, of course, time will tell.

It has many connectors, but at this stage the important two represent motherboard and CPU power.

The yellow and black 4 pin cable on the left attaches to the ATX 12 volt CPU power connector on the motherboard, the primary purpose of this power connector is to power the VRM that supplies power to the CPU. The P1 connector on the right is a 24 pin and would usually connect to a corresponding socket on the motherboard, however, as the T1700 motherboard has many proprietary connectors, I needed that 24 pin to 8 pin adapter cable.

This is a bone of contention in the tech world, but HP, Dell and Lenovo all build in proprietary features to their systems, and I am of the opinion that those manufacturers do a great job at building solid, long lasting machines that are easy to maintain, so if they want to customize some parts, I have no objection.

The MOLEX 4 pin connector at the top of the picture is probably the one I will use to power the variable speed Antec fan I mounted at the front of the case.

Next, I installed 8GB of Crucial DDR3 memory.

As you see, there are 4 slots available, so as there is a pecking order I needed to consult the Dell technical manual once again to ensure I installed the memory correctly. It is odd that the owners manual does not have this information.

If you look at the slots above the first black slot is number 4, followed by number 1 then 3 and then 2. The correct slots for my 8GB of memory are 1 and 2. the information is also on the motherboard, but once installed it is often difficult to read the printed titles.

Motherboard and CPU

The next stage was to install the CPU onto the motherboard, the LGA 1150 socket is very different than the sockets I am used to (considering the last true PC I built was back in 2002) and they have reversed things since the P4 days, the pins are now in the socket, and the CPU has copper pads that connect. The LGA 1150 also known as Socket H3, is a microprocessor socket used by Intel's central processing units built on the Haswell microarchitecture.

I see numerous motherboards on sale that have bent pins, so installing the CPU was a bit of a concern, but I reflected that it always has been, especially in the days of the Intel 486 when the CPU alone would cost four ot five hundred dollars and breaking off just one of the tiny pins meant that it was destroyed.

The i5-4570 safe in the socket and the motherboard installed in the case.

The next step was to add a little thermal paste on the top of the CPU and then install the heatsink and fan, one of the other original items from the T1700 computer.

The rear case (chassis) fan and the CPU fan are connected to the motherboard. In addition, on the right hand side the cable with the shrink fit tubing is a special 24 pin to 8 pin power connector, another proprietary feature of the Dell T1700 motherboard,

Dell T1700 Project

The year has shown a resurgence for me of desktop computing, and the T1700 is the project of the moment. The core of the build is a Dell precision T1700 motherboard from a workstation, bought from eBay for $60 including a few other essential items I will discuss later. The motherboard had no cpu (because it is more lucrative for sellers to split systems) so I bought an i5-4570 quad core processor for $70 which, according to the Dell technical manual, is compatible with their LGA 1150 mobo.

Black Friday arrived and I picked up a mATX case from Amazon, $30 and there were also a couple of unique items I needed for the build winging their way from various sources.

When all parts arrived, the first stage was to replace the cheap 3-pin fan from the back of the case with a genuine Dell fan from an "ancient" GX620 system :

The Dell fan has been attached with it's original rubber mounts, they work to isolate the fan noise, tricky little items through, so a simple attachment to the case took about ten minutes. The 80mm Rosewill fan will be repurposed at some point.

This is a good moment to state why I needed to do that, and it's not only that the Dell fan is a better unit, but also, the motherboard has a sensor for the rear case fan and the connection is 5 pin, not the 3 of the generic Rosewill fan, so installing a Dell fan will give compatibility and one less error message when booting the machine.

The next step was to install a 120mm front fan, which took a few minutes via 4 screws. The Antec fan has a switch so that it can run at various speeds and it will be powered via a 4 pin molex connector from the main power supply.