Aside from ACS I’ve been working franticly to get StickyThemes up and running. After a tough week it’s finally there! The design was done a while ago, it was always a case of getting around to coding the design and integrating a shopping cart. Go ahead and check it out. My plans is to release any WordPress or templates that I create, either for free or a small fee. StickyThemes will also review blogs and recommend them to visitors – this is a free service that we will be offering.

Working on StickyThemes gave me a chance to work with some different scripts. Namely Greybox, which is a ‘popup window that doesn’t suck!’. Also, I undertook some minor Flash work to give the site a lift. Although the overall look and feel was designed a while ago, it doesn’t look out of place with today’s web-design trends, which is good as it has bought me some time.

With StickyThemes.com complete I’m going to start a new theme that I will be offering through the site to compliment the launch, and possibly listing for auction. This will be aside from development on ACS of course.
Last time I wrote about picking up ‘Just Cause’ for the Xbox 360 for a bargain price – was it any good? Well, I wouldn’t have been happy if I had paid the full price, however for a quick sandbox which has a comedy flavour to the storyline, it’s well worth a blast! However, I just couldn’t help but feel that it tried to do too much for a first release. You can do a great amount of cool things, just, not very well! Whereas in the early GTA’s you could do not as much, very well. I mean, maybe they could have left out the flying of planes (of any size) and helicopters and focussed more on the driving, which would have made the game feel a bit better. Oh, and I’m not going to mention the endless amounts of bugs, but again – not surprising for a game of this size!

I will however recommend all 360 owners to pickup Splinter Cell – Double Agent if they haven’t played it! Its only three pounds from Game UK, and it’s a good play through. I’ve also recently picked up Virtua Tennis 3 and Fifa 08 after experiencing the Euro 2008 demo – it looks like they have finally surpassed the game play of Pro Evolution Soccer!

Between the time of buying these parts and completing this build log, times have changed and I’m sure people will question the title ‘Performance PC’ with only a DX9 card featuring in the build. At the time of purchase, DX10 was underperforming, was grossly overpriced and the problems that came with the backward compatibility were not worth the risk. That is why I decided to opt with a high performing DX9 card which was proven to be a good all round performer and great ‘bang for buck’. The Radeon X1950 Pro is a great card, and as I own an Xbox 360 for pretty much all of my gaming needs, I needed a card with dual outputs, a large amount of memory for rendering and large screens, and HDCP – which could still perform well in games if the need arises.

The card provided by Sapphire, came with everything you could possibly need (even DVI-VGA adapters). It’s a good looking unit, and is double sized, so it does take up a considerable amount of space in the case. The installation is straightforward and hassle free too!

To install the card, it’s a ‘simple clip-in and screw-in’ to secure. As the card needs more power to function, the PCI-E power cable was attached from the PSU, which I will cover next.

The Power Supply Unit

With the motherboard secured in the case the next step is to install the PSU. In this build I’ve allowed for plenty of headroom by opting for a 520W Corsair PSU. As the pictures show, the product comes well packaged, and installing this into a Lian-Li PC7 case is trivial. A back plate is simply affixed to the PSU, and the unit is slid into the case, to be secured with thumb screws. This is demonstrated in the pictures as best as possible. Now, as the PSU is modular, it means we only have the power cables that we need, so as the pictures show, there is minimum clutter (albeit they are quite thick and ‘difficult-to-manage’ cables).

The Optical Drive

This is a simple install, so I’ll leave out the details! Simply slide and secure the drive in place, and run the power from the PSU and the SATA to the motherboard. For those interested, the drive is a Samsung SATA LightScribe Writer (20×20) and is highly recommended. I also purchase a black front place which sits over the drive on the Lian-Li case. This brushed aluminium cover will allow the case to maintain its sleek and minimum look; again this is easy enough to install with just two screws.

The IMON Ultra Bay

I picked up the IMON Ultra Bay for a bargain price, and thought it would be a nice addition as the PC is going to have a media use. I aim to have it connected to a large TV on a second output, so the remote controlled aspect would be a beneficial one. You can get this product in black, so it looks good in the case, the only thing that is slightly disappointing, is the matte black finish. Brushed aluminium would have been preferable or even a slight Samsung-esq black gloss would have looked better. Anyway, this takes up 2 bays in your case and is fairly easy to install. I would make sure you’ve got a decent sized case for this as the cables are again very difficult to manage. As the pictures show, there are connections to the power cables and the motherboard. If you are installing one of these, a nice cable management tip is to run the thinner cables down the outside of the drive bay, as shown in the pictures.

The Hard Drives

I wanted to have sufficient storage in this PC to prevent multiple external hard drives, and with only two spaces for drives I opted for what (at the time) was the best possible option. Two 500GB Western Digital AAKS SATA Hard Drives. These obviously arrived as OEM and are highly recommended, reliable hard drives. This would provide me with 1TB of storage. The plan? One will be partitioned 250GB / 250GB with dual boot operating systems, Vista Home Premium (x64) and XP SP2 respectively. The remaining 500GB would be for storing all important projects, university work and of course my ever growing music collection!

To install the drives, it’s a simple slide and screw in procedure. I was slightly concerned that they would be noisy as there is no shock proofing in the case; as it’s purely a metal hard drive caddy. However, after using the computer this was not an issue and the hard drives operate very quietly.

Tower Complete!

At this point in time, all of the necessary components have been installed in the case. In the next part of the series, I’ll post some pictures of peripherals and some comments about their performance, and any recommendations I have. Also, there is still the process of installing the software to get this machine up and running, all of which will be covered in Part 5 – the final part of the build log.

Finally, the AjaxControlToolkit is a wonderful download which provides many controls that you can simply add into your applications, so I decided to install these too. Unfortunately this isn’t an automated installer, however it is very straightforward (usually) unzipping the files and then adding the .dll to the Toolbox and Voila, we have our controls ready to use. Although this wasn’t the case, when I tried to add the .dll to the Toolbox the controls wouldn’t show up, despite being ‘succesfully added’. After selecting “View All” it appeared that although they had been added, they were grayed out! So why was this? As anyone would do in this situation, I headed over to Google and found some possible fixes. This led to me deleting all of the .tbd files relating to the Toolbox, thus rebuilding it within Visual Studio 2008, which was to no avail.

Then I stumbled upon this blog post which expressed the same problem, one of the posters pointed out that some people solved the problem by unplugging their wireless Microsoft keyboard and/or mouse. (What?!). As I use a Logitech MX Revolution and a wired Microsoft Ergonomic keyboard, this couldn’t have applied to me could it? After an hour had past investigating this problem, I was willing to try anything, so believe it or not I went ahead and unplugged the keyboard and mouse dongle. Did it work? Of course not!

So just before accepting defeat, I resorted to randomly clicking through menus and property dialogs in the search of something which may enable the Ajax Control Toolkit. Then as luck has it, I looked in the property pages of my solution. (Right Click > Property Pages in Solution Viewer), and saw a Target Framework drop down menu. Now, my solution was originally targeting 2.0 as I was unsure if my deployment server could handle any newer. As an experiment I selected to target the new 3.5 Framework, and voila! The Ajax Control Toolkit was instantly available.

Now switching back to target the 2.0 or 3.0 Framework will gray the controls out. So where did the misconception occur? Well, when creating a new project you will notice the Framework drop down box in the top right hand corner, this was set to 3.5. This means that the templates are for that particular framework. However the template displayed under 3.5 was actually to create a 2.0 application (confused?), hence making the downloaded 3.5 version of the toolkit unavailable (grayed out). The solution is to make sure your web application targets the 3.5 Framework if you are using the latest Ajax Control Toolkit. I’ve attached a screenshot of the dialog box to change this in your solutions!

Firstly – the new project, dubbed ACS. I cannot disclose too many details for obvious reasons at this stage; however I will say that it is in light of the ‘green’ age that we’re experiencing at the moment. It’s a web site which I think allot of people my age will use to generate a bit of cash from unused gadgets. The project itself is the full package – logo design, site aesthetics and dynamic scripts, login facilities, checkouts and administrator backend. Luckily, the client has given me scope to select the technology and design as I see fit. (At the moment I’m leaning towards ASP.NET as I need an excuse to try out my new Visual Studio 2008 install!). At the time of writing, the logo is complete as well as the site design – I have attached a teaser image to this post, more will follow as the launch gets closer!

WebSME is also in play at the moment, with ongoing conversations with JCK Joinery, I have a mock design for the sales page on paper and will look at transforming this into Photoshop when I have a break from other work. This shouldn’t be to much of a task, a simple xHTML set of pages. The main feature of the sales site will be the online ‘live’ demonstration which I used in a presentation to the original clients and professors of the university at the end of the academic year.

It does seem like forever since I was designing and developing, however I seem to have slipped back into the swing of things quite quickly and I am more than impressed with the design for ACS. Granted, I could have worked faster on the design, but this was mainly due to losing all of my custom Photoshop patterns (doh!) on my Vista partition of this new setup (Part 4 of the build log will follow soon). I also have finally found the time to construct an ‘About’ page on CarlMason.net, check it out!

Aside from designing I have been giving my Xbox 360 a workout, as it took a back seat towards the end of University. I’ve recently completed both Bioshock and The Darkness. Both of these games are great and highly recommended, I will definitely be playing Bioshock through again to pick up all of the achievements, which is a rarity for me in FPS’s. This is added to recent completions Halo 3 and GTA:IV the later of  which is still my favourite game in my ever-growing collection. I’ve also picked up ‘Just Cause’ for a small fee, so I shall be trying out this old sandbox game and posting my opinions in here.

Finally, I seem to have developed a bit of an obsession to classic titles from the Xbox Live Arcade (honestly, what a genius idea it was to charge people for these old gems!). Sonic 1, Sonic 2, TMNT, not to mention Streets of Rage 2! These old games, with slightly spruced up visuals are great to play through and the achievements offer a challenge which you didn’t have in the good old days. The ability to save makes them a bit easier too! I also purchased Sudoku and N+ off the XBL arcade this week. Sudoku is mainly for Sunday mornings in bed and N+ is ridiculously addictive yet very frustrating, I recommend both!

Installing the Processor

The processor selected for the build is a Q6600 SLACR (G0 Stepping) Quad-Core Processor from Intel. This will give good performance all round and will eventually be running at 3.0 Ghz + with a slight overclock. In order to install the processor onto the motherboard, the pins are simply lined up and dropped into place, it is important that no force is applied at this point. With the processor in place, the latch is placed down and locked into place.

The Tuniq Tower 120 

This cooler should allow us to overclock the Quad Core to 3.0 Ghz + with ease, as the pictures demonstrate, the cooler is huge, and boasts a 120mm fan. The copper heat pipe design is captured in the pictures and demonstrates how well made this cooler really is. Due to the shear size of the cooler, a back plate is needed to be installed onto the motherboard. As shown in the pictures, this is a simple procedure and includes merely ‘sticking’ the backplate to the board and lining up the screw holes. With this in place, the tower can be placed over the CPU which has the thermal paste applied. The Tuniq Tower comes with an array of brackets to fit different boards, the standard ‘H-Plate’ is used in this installation, and the large thumb screws keep it in place. When the tower was placed over the CPU, I moved the base slightly, to ensure that the paste was spread equally and that the best contact is made, improving the heat dispersion.

It should be noted that the processor comes complete with thermal paste as well as a stock cooler, however we are using a custom cooler (Tuniq Tower) and Arctic Silver thermal paste. There is much debate on how much thermal paste to apply and where to place it, I believe that a small line across the cores is what is required (as instructed by Arctic Silvers own website). The pictures illustrate the thermal paste applied to the CPU on the motherboard. With the cooler installed, I progressed onto installing the optional fan speed controller which comes with the TT120, as shown in the picture, this is installed with ease and occupies one of the PCI slots.

Installing the Memory

Crucial Ballistix 8500 RAM was selected for this build. This was only purchased due to the price at the time being less than the 6400 RAM. This should provide more than enough headroom for our overclock. Installing memory is easy, the 4 sticks were installed into the DDR2 slots, as demonstrated in the pictures. The heat spreaders certainly look the part, only time will tell whether these sticks perform as well as their reputation.

With the RAM, CPU and cooler installe  d, the motherboard was ready to be mounted into the case. This is simply a case of lifting the board in and securing various screws. It is at this point that the machine seems to be taking shape, and as the pictures demonstrate, its starting to look more like a PC. With the motherboard inside the case, the front panel headers were connected as shown in the photographs. Sufficient care is taken to ensure that these are inserted the correct way around!

To be Continued..

Preparing the Case:

I mentioned the choice of case being the Lian Li PC-7 in black. From these pictures you can see that it’s a quality made case finished in black brushed aluminium. From the pictures you can see the case comes with all of the screws that you need. Our first step is to examine the case, make sure that all the fans are in order and not broken in transit. Once I had checked for any damage I was ready to fit an additional 80mm fan. This will sit in the top of the case and exhaust warm air of the top in the form of a chimney. For the job I have found a Zalman silent fan which should shift a good amount of air. In total this means we now have a case with two 120mm shifting the air through the case as well as an exhaust fan to blow air out of the top.

Pictures after the jump.

Pictures:

Next up, we have to install the stand-offs which raise the motherboard off the case chassis. The case came with a tool which allowed me to easily install the stand offs that were required to mount an ATX motherboard. Also included with the motherboard is an I/O plate which you can install into the back of your case which will allow you to connect your devices to the tower when the motherboard has been installed. This is a simple push in installation, no screws or extra tools are required! I also placed the motherboard inside the case to check I had all of the mounts in place and that the jacks on the back of the board line up correctly with the I/O plate that I had slotted in place. It is important that you inspect the motherboard at this point for any defects before proceeding any further with the build.

Pictures:

With the Motherboard mounts in place and the case ready for the components we are ready to start the more delicate building procedures. In the next part of this series I will be installing the CPU, applying the thermal paste and adding aftermarket cooler we purchased – the Tuniq Tower 120.

Microsoft did informed me on the phone that the average turnaround on a defective console stood at 25 days which was quite a hard pill to swallow as I had only just picked up Lost Planet as my latest game purchase. However, I was shocked to find out that my replacement console arrived just two weeks later (Pictures after the break). The replacement service I experienced was very swift and I was more than happy with what I received back from Microsoft.

Along with the console, I also received a questionnaire to comment on the service, a 1 month free Xbox Live Gold card and an info sheet reminding me to re-sync my wireless controllers. I wasted no time in firing up the Xbox 360 and giving it a spin; it worked flawlessly and seemed somewhat quieter than my previous box I purchased almost a year ago. I think this was down to the lottery I played when Microsoft was using two different disc drives in their console.

The 1 Month Xbox Live card was a nice touch but as a Live subscriber anyway it only equates as an extra two weeks free, however if you had a RROD and you didn’t subscribe to Live you would no doubt be more appreciative of the gesture from Microsoft – who knows you might get hooked on Xbox live during this month and shell out for a whole 12 month subscription!

All in all my replacement was quick and very well handled by Microsoft with free shipping, great customer service on the phone and a more then adequate replacement Xbox 360.

So all in all a big thumbs up to Microsoft for how they are handling the Red Ring of Death replacements in the UK!

I will be documenting the build on here in parts, with pictures and any problems that I encounter. Hopefully some people may find it useful if they are looking at building their very own computer, or are just interested in some real-life pictures of some hardware!

What are the System Requirements?
I am seeking high end desktop performance, a PC that can handle masses of intensive applications without any problem. I will require Windows Vista Home Premium, as well as XP Professional so a dual boot system is required, with lots of storage for backing up work.

I’d like a future proof system so I won’t need to upgrade for a fair while. High end graphics are not a priority but I’d like a good performing DX9 card as I think I will move to DX10 when it starts performing better than DX9! I will need all peripherals (Mouse, Keyboard, and Monitor) with an important factor being ergonomic design as this will become my main work station.

What parts have I selected?

Here are the parts that I have selected for the build and a brief description why.

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (SLACR Stepping)
This is without doubt the best processor for the money at the time of writing. With four cores this is a multi-tasking monster and easily overclockable to reach Q6700 speeds saving you over £100.

CPU Cooler: Tuniq Tower 120
If you’re overclocking an aftermarket cooler is the preferred option. The Tuniq Tower is a great performer and should allow the Q6600 (G0 Stepping) to reach 3.2Ghz quite easily.

Motherboard: Gigabyte P35C-DS3R
The P35 Chipset is a great choice when opting for a quad core CPU. This board offers both DDR2 and DDR3, and great overclocking potential.

RAM: Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500 1066mhz (4GB)
I’ve gone with high end Crucial Ballistix memory for this build. Crucial provide a great service to their customers and this memory is the cream of the crop. I would have opted for slower memory (from Crucial) and overclocked to these speeds, however I picked up the high end 1066mhz for a bargain price. Also note that I’ve gone for 4GB, meaning I will have to go for the 64Bit version of Windows Vista to utilise the full 4GB of virtual memory.

GPU: ATI Radeon x1950 Pro 512MB
A great ‘bang-for-buck card’ which will provide me with all of the performance that I need for this computer, including dual DVI and HDCP.

PSU: Corsair 520W
This was a simple choice, Corsair has a rock solid reputation when it comes to PSU’s – I have opted for the 520W version. If you are running SLI then the 620W would be a sensible choice; however 520W will be more than sufficient for this build.

Storage: 2 x 500GB SATA Western Digital Caviars (1TB)
1TB of storage should be more than enough for a dual boot system with plenty of elbow room for storage. These drives have a great reputation and perform very well.

Case: Lian-Li Black PC-7 Plus II
I’m a fan of black hardware, as well as brushed aluminium; the Lian-Li PC7 is the best case in its price range and will provide an excellent home for all of the components.

Monitor: Dell 24” Ultrasharp A04 Revision.
A big monitor will be required with lots of connectivity as I would like to connect my laptop as well as my Xbox 360 simultaneously. The Dell 24” with its Full 1080 HD resolution and 1:1 Pixel Mapping will do this setup justice.

Other bits and pieces:
Windows Vista Home Premium 64Bit
Windows XP Professional
IMON Ultra Bay
Samsung SATA LightScribe Writer (20×20)
Microsoft 4000 Ergonomic Keyboard
Logitech MX Revolution Mouse
Arctic Silver Thermal Compound

That’s all for now! Here’s a picture of most of the parts that have arrived:

So there I was; happily playing away on Lost Planet when my beloved console froze. It wouldn’t respond to any operations – not even the guide button, forcing me to hit the power button on and off. I thought nothing of it and proceeded to load up my saved game and continue playing Mission 3 of Lost Planet. (The game is great by the way, lots of action packed battles!). The game froze again, and again, and again. I touched the console as there has been much talk about overheating Xbox’s on the internet – to my surprise the console was only slightly warm. I had all of my windows open so the air circulation was fairly good. I proceeded to turn the console on again after five or so crashes, and that’s when I saw it – the 3 red lights on the Xbox’s usually green ring.

I’ve had my console since November of 2006 where it was purchased for the pretty penny of £280 (the premium model), and apart from its noisy disc drive at times I’ve been delighted with it. Great games, amazing online play and Xbox Live have completely swayed me from my once loyal following of Sony’s PlayStation offering.

So why did it break? Old age? (It’s under a year since it was manufactured) I then thought – I do move my console around allot as when I visit home I generally take it with me, although it’s always well packed so it’s doubtful I damaged it. As I previously said – It didn’t seem too hot when I encountered the numerous crashes. So what else could it be? The only difference I made is plug it into my surround sound system via the optical cable, surely this couldn’t have something to do with it? Or could it? I guess I will never know.

Minutes after seeing the red ring of death I headed over to the Xbox website and obtained the number for their UK support department. I rang them up (on a Sunday) I was instantly greeted with the message that the ‘maximum turnaround’ for a replacement console is currently 25 days. I followed the recorded prompts and got through to a customer service spokeswoman (Very quickly with next to no waiting time). I informed her of seeing 3 red lights on my Xbox, to which I was told to disconnect all extras such as the hard drive and wireless adapter and then try powering up. I got the red ring of death again, and pointed out to the woman that the power supply light was green – (this indicates that I need a replacement). After handing over all of my details and serial number, I was told that I would be sent pre-paid shipping labels to stick on my packaged Xbox (What! No coffin?!), and I should call the couriers to come and get it. That was all; she wished me a good (Xbox-free) day and ended the call.

After the conversation I decided to boot the Xbox up to see if it would have fixed itself – to my surprise it loaded! And I proceeded to play 2 full games of Pro Evolution Soccer 6 before it froze again. After this, the console would not boot up again. I looked at the clock, time of death – 3:28pm.

So off I went to find a box – luckily I had an old Amazon one lying around which fit perfectly. After 8 hours I had my UPS shipping labels in my email inbox. I packaged the Xbox in bubble wrap, stuck the prepaid label on the outside of the package. The following morning I rang UPS which happened to be a bank holiday. Fortunately they were open and we arranged for them to come tomorrow (Tuesday) to get my package.

The following day a massive UPS van turns up to collect my tiny 4kg dead Xbox 360. The delivery man scanned it, and told me it would be at its destination on Thursday.

Update: It’s now Thursday and indeed the UPS tracking tool indicates that the package has been delivered and signed for. So let the waiting game begin.

So what can you expect to see at CarlMason.net?
That is a difficult question. I would generally expect posts with a technology inspired background – I am a Web Developer by trade so I will be talking about my latest projects and developments as well as recommending any upcoming websites that i come across in the vast open space that we call the Internet. As an avid purchaser of gadgetry and hardware I will most likely provide my 2 cents about any latest acquisitions along with pictures that may aid people who are interested in purchasing the items themselves.

I will also blog about any event in my life which I think has some interest or significance to which someone may find interesting or even amusing to read. Lastly I will use CarlMason.net to distribute any widgets or themes that people can use on their very own blogs or use as examples to aid them in their coding.

How can i keep in the loop?
You can bookmark this page (CTRL+B) and check back at your own convenience, or the most effective way would be to subscribe to my RSS feed and use this in your favorite reader. I personally recommend BlogLines to aggregate your on-line feeds. Why? – Its simple and concise, plus if you your like me and your read allot of entries every day – you will find the shortcut keys very useful.

Your link here?
I’m in the process of gathering a set of useful links to feature in the footer of CarlMason.net, if you have a website that you think would be suitable to list on a blog of this kin, or alternatively you run your own blog and wish to exchange links – then please contact me. I’m always keen to find new bloggers in the same sphere as myself to exchange thoughts and opinions.