The first week of March has vanished...
I originally bought this case about 18 months ago, time indeed has been vanishing at an alarming rate. I blogged about an ASRock B450M build that had many issues because of the motherboard and incompatible or dodgy ram, so for that time the case was shelved, unwashed, unwanted, a case without a heart, but with promise.
The ASUS Z270M mATX motherboard that I bought a couple of weeks ago, but not told you about, was the perfect size for this little case, it included a seventh generation Intel i5-7500 processor and stock fan. The level of processor, nickname Kaby Lake, inhabits the same LGA1151 socket as the previous Skylake generation, so this motherboard allows for both generations and supports DDR4 memory. The differences between the Skylake and the Kaby Lake are probably important to Intel, but performance wise for the rest of us, let us just assume that with typical tick-tock shenanigans, the newer generation processor will be about ten percent faster.
I heard you ask "faster that what?" so I will reply "Yes, exactly"
It matters not, because all I want to do is have some fun, and you know, oddly, I have a feeling that I'm not the only one. The only fly in the ointment on the motherboard deal was that it did not have an IO shield, so a few weeks back I ordered one from eBay and the postman brought it yesterday.
Although this case was thirty-four dollars, which by todays post-plague standards is an absolute bargain, it is however a little flawed in design for building a classic computer. That front panel is not a door, there is no provision whatsoever for an optical drive, the top of the case has a magnetic dust mesh, which struggles to stay in place, and the second mesh, below the power supply, wriggles like a dachshund in a sausage factory whenever the case is moved. The other issue is that the motherboard standoffs have slight tolerance issues, so not all mounting screws could be used.
However, it is a case to store stuff in and occupy my time here in the laboratory.
You will see to the left of the CPU cooler fan there that I installed a 128GB M.2 NVMe boot drive onto which I stuffed the (free) Windows 10 Home that was registered to the motherboard, at some point in the past, someone installed Windows 10 home and it is carried along through time, tied to the hardware. I have sort of badly explained this before I expect, but the hundred bucks I paid for the motherbaord, cpu and cooler, included a free operating system that will last a couple of years, at least.
The sad thing about the current state of affairs with that free operating system is that Microsoft are pushing the underwhelming Windows 11 and although the ASUS Z270M is supposedly "Windows 11 Ready" it isn't. Kaby Lake being the seventh generation of the Intel core series is not officially supported, sure the motherboard has a connector for a TPM 2.0 module, a twenty dollar part, but Microsoft are currently insisting that they will only support eighth generation processors or newer, we will see if that position changes by October 2025.
That is why I titled this piece "a bridge not far enough" because by the standards and requirements that Microsoft (and Intel) are currently setting for OS compatibility, TPM and processor generation, millions upon millions of Kaby Lake and older machines will end up recycled, landfill, or unintentionally those tech giants will push more users away from Windows as linux becomes more mainstream.
But what do I care?
Week two of March is about to start and once again, I am looking for something to do....
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