Snow on the ground, so what is on the bench today?

It is already the end of February, and winter is still clinging on by delivering a few centimetres of snow and a wicked wind that means shorts and sandals are out of the question, so a marginally warmer option is to hang around my bench in the garage and tinker with the compute thingies.

This was part of a lot I picked up at the weekend for what is becoming the usual amount of cash that tempts people to part with stuff they spent thousands on seven or eight years ago, the one hundred dollar bill.This post will be about the "not working" motherboard, cpu and ram, and the next blog entry maybe we will take a look at the magnificent Corsair ATX tempered glass case that came with this lot.

The computer had been stripped apart and the seller said the motherboard was probably the only thing not working and he also said there was no guarantee on anything, fair enough, I haggled him down and we agreed on that enormous amount of cash that won't even buy a decent pair of sandals nowadays.

The motherboard is an ASUS Maximus VI Hero Z87 and I was hoping it could be debugged as I expect it has a Windows 10 Pro licence in the UEFI and of course, proving something works when someone insists it does not is always a satisfying occupation. The motherboard has an Intel i7-4790k cpu installed, probably the best cpu for the era on this architecture with the Z87 chipset, and if I pair it up with a reasonable video card, this can be the basis of a good gaming machine for medium settings, 1080p.

I installed a stock cooling fan, reset the CMOS and used some known good ram, and it posted first time, then when I installed the Corsair ram that you see in the photo, initially it failed on post and subsequently after seating the ram correctly, it made it to the BIOS screen. This is my issue with the bulky ram that has aesthtic heat sinks attached, they are often difficult to seat correctly in the slots.

The next step was to test the EVGA 750W 80 plus bronze power supply that was bought as part of the lot, and yes, that too was good and the conclusion was that all the components bought at the weekend are working. The final step was to see if Windows 10 Pro was registered in the UEFI so I attached an SSD and installed the operating system, which always takes a little time.

I fully expected that a Z87 motherboard with an i7-4790k would have Win10pro, and that was correct and it was added to my online account, activated, and now it is time to take the assembly off my bench and file it away until needed. I have a case that I could install it in, however, there is currently no IO shield, so I need to buy one of those from the distant lands, to be loaded on a camel or donkey and for it to traverse the mountains and fiords before there can be any progress on the build.

I look out the window, the snow is still on the ground, perhaps when that IO shield arrives, spring will have sprung.