After I tested some open source operating systems I've decided not to play to long and started to assemble the main configuration for the desktop PC. It consists of EPIA-M900 motherboard, eH-1 graphics card, 2xKingston KVR1333D3S9/4G RAM (I am not really that Kingston fan but lately all RAM comes from them and I can't complain, they have very good compatibility with most boards), Samsung HD161HJ 160GB hard drive and In Win BM-639 case. Initially I planned to add CD-ROM too but some modifications disallowed that (later on that). RAM works at 1066MHz effective speed because it is the maximum VX900 supports.
The main purpose was to replace that annoying small CPU fan. So I perforated one side of the case above the CPU/chipset heatsink and installed 120mm fan. This "project" went ok and I was able to remove default fan. CPU cores temperature goes from 43
°C on idle to 63-66°C max on load (speedfan show 5 degrees less than AIDA64 at the same time). CPU temperature is ~55°C by AIDA64. System temperature never rises above 31°C. The downside of this solution was that the fan blocked ability to add CD-ROM as original case design placed construction for 5.25'' drive just a little bit below that side of the case. GPU temperature range starts from 41.3°C on idle to 46-48°C on load. I firstly made one mistake during assembling because one wire stuck between GPU heatsink preventing fan from rotating. This lead to temperature from 81°C on idle to more than 126°C on load. You can understand from this that eH1 can work without fan :). Graphics card fan is surprisingly silent. I've read a lot of angry comments about active cooling solution in this card but it seems that they aren't reasonable this time (I know that fans tends to fail after some time but on the other hand you need to keep good airflow with passive cooling solution and need fans somewhere anyway). Unfortunately, the PCI-E riser was only 1.1 compatible so I needed to turn on the switch on graphics card to support slower PCI-E version. I tested that motherboard supports 2.0 version actually (at least graphics card worked switch in off mode). Finally, PCI-E slot is x16 physically only. x8 is effective speed of that slot.
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| AIDA64 CPUID |
The other task was to fasten graphics card because I bought not suitable riser (I needed right angle one but I bought straight one. It lead to the problem that riser raised graphics card much above case panel for cards bracket fastening). The solution was simple. I inserted graphics card upside down (fan is on the top now). I needed to cut the bracket a little bit and make one hole in the it and the case for the screw but this solution needed minimal effort and almost no sacrifice for the future use of the case or graphics card (yes, the original bracket will not be suitable for normal insertion any more but I have replacements and you probably will find them at various IT stores too). Unfortunately my camera is broken now because of that I couldn't to make photos of these modifications but I'll try to do them in the future.
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| GPU-Z (some information inaccurate) |
The last thing I wanted to do before Windows installation was BIOS update. I found the newer version on viaembedded web page and I made an upgrade. Firstly, it seemed that everything went ok. However, after I loaded system defaults, motherboard just didn't boot anymore. It was very unpleasant moment because I though that motherboard just died because of unsuitable BIOS version. Fortunately it booted after I changed RAM to some spares I had had at home. BIOS showed incorrect checksum error on boot but I was very happy nevertheless as motherboard was alive at least. I downgraded BIOS back to old version (fortunately I made a backup of it because you couldn't download it from viaembedded web page). I don't know why VIA decided to add this BIOS version without any release notes and description but they will gain lots of unsatisfied users with such irresponsible move. These days BIOS upgrades are simple and painless process usually, because of this users will try to do this from time to time. Such surprises should be avoided and BIOS purpose and suitability for particular model stated clearly. Anyway I recommend to use original BIOS versions with VIA motherboards :)...
After all preparations I was able to try Windows 7 (64-bit) finally. I wasn't installing them cleanly, just tried to boot into installed system from previous computer. This process went smoothly... almost. Every time I tried to connect to the network, Windows was hanging up and rebooting with good, old BSOD in the end. Solution was simple yet again, I needed to install network drivers from CD or web page. It seems that Windows update provided faulty drivers for some reason. I also installed the newest 500 series Chrome drivers from s3graphics web page instead of the ones from CD or viaembedded eH1 web page. All other devices were recognized by Windows and successfully installed into the system. Due to system resources requirement for physical memory addresses Windows sees 7.25GB of RAM instead of 8GB. I will discuss some performance results and power usage in the next article.
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| Windows 7 rating |
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