ocaholic presents: The Office Spider meets Duke Nukem

Category : Articles

Published by Marc Büchel on 29.02.12

During my work I do a lot of testing and benchmarking. Day after day I'm analyzing benchmark results and the furrows on my face keep getting deeper and deeper. Today I decided to do something completely different. For quite a while I've had a Lian Li T1 spider case, well packed in a box under my table and I didn't really know what to do with it. But today was the day to make a very decent office PC out of some components I've had here.

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Page 2 - Lian Li T1 Spider	Page 5 - Work must be fun
Page 3 - Components

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Lian Li T1 Spider

As expected Lian Lis spider is a beautifully crafted piece of hardware. There are no sharp edges on which you could cut your finger during the assembly. Assembly is a good cue because the spider needs to be built from scratch. All you get is about 20 pieces of aluminium in a very small box. You should really take some time to put the spider up on its legs. In my case it took me about an hour until I had everything the way I wanted it.

In the above picture on the right you can see that the legs can be fixed in different angles. For each leg there are two thumb screws which allow good flexibility. I decided to choose a very steep angle. Like this the spider doesn't need to much space on my desktop. The only thing you need to do therefore is untightening the screws, adjusting the angle and then tighten them again.

On these pictures you can see that Lian Li also thought about some neat features. Yes, true, you can't install a lot of drives. In fact there is space for only one 3.5 inch hard drive and a slim DVD/CD drive. This is also a reason why I chose this "case" for a desktop system. In this case I personally only needed to find some space for an SSD. To do some more or less clean cable routing you find a plastic clamping on the bottom of the motherbaord and drive tray, which does its job quite well.

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Page 3 - Components

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Components

Motherboard - ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe

At this point I had to look for a mini ITX motherboard because you cannot put anything else on the spiders head. I went for an ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe which I found somewhere in a shelf. This board offers two USB 3.0 ports via the backpanel as well as wireless LAN, just to mention two of its features. Unfortunately with the H67 chipset I can't overclock my CPU via the multiplyer which is quite a pity but at least it's really not necessary to have a heavily overclocked desktop PC. Hmm, but never the less, it would have been fun. Also because it's "only" a desktop PC I chose to use the integrated graphics of the CPU, which is really enough as long as I don't play games. Furthermore using the integrated graphics is very energy efficient. What's also quite nice is that there are three display connectors (HDMI, DVI and VGA) out of which I use the DVI and VGA to power a dual screen setup at two times 1920 x 1200.

Processor - Intel Core i7-2600K

For an office PC that is used for "heavily multi tabbed" browsing, picture and video editing there aren't a lot of CPUs which are better than a Core i7-2600K. Ok, yes, true! I admit, it's useless to put a 2600K in an H67 board where you can't adjust the multiplyer. In fact it was the only Socket LGA1155 CPU I had lying around for this setup. If it was my own money I spend, I would go and buy a non "K" version of the same CPU.

RAM - Corsair DDR3-1066 CL7 2 x 4 Gigabyte

Concerning the memory there aren't many options. The reason that the P8H67-I Deluxe needs SO-DIMMs narrows the market down by quite a margin. So there will be no fancy heatspreader and overclocking action at this point either. I went for some more or less boring standard modules, which do their job nicely.

SSD - Intel 520 Series 180 Gigabyte

This is a big one! I mean there is one component in recent computers that can really conjure a smile on your face when you start all your applications and that's a quick SSD. In this case I went for an Intel 520 Series drive with 180 Gigabyte of NAND flash. But there is also another reason why I chose this drive. In a lot of forum thread you can read these days, that SandFroce SSDs tend to cause blue screens. I even had to experience this quite a few times myself, which is why I was really surprised that Intel chose to make SandForce based SSDs. Therefore I'm curious if I'll see bluescreens in a long term test using this drive.

Cooling - Intel (Asetek) Wasserkühler

The cooler might be another strange choice. I mean the backplate didn't even fit to the motherboard. I had to cut off a bit of it that it didn't interfere with an IC which is stupidly close to socket holes. But a least demolishing the backplate is the better idea then unsoldering the IC. But yes, why did I choose this cooler? I'm mean it mostly because of the looks. It's just cooler to have a watercooler than a standard boxed cooler. And furthermore it was utter luck that I could tightend the radiator to the case using screws. It really seems like Lian Li has thought about me installing this cooler.

Power Supply - ADATA 850 Watt

The choice of the power supply is another turn of my chair and a short look at the shelf. And there it was: the 850 Watt, needlessly over proportioned ADATA power supply. I mean from an efficiency point of view it's nonsense but unfortunately I didn't have anything more suitable. But sure, one day I'll go get a decent gold or platinum certified unit which is a bit more tree hugging. But hey, the ADATA comes with a green LED, so my spider has a green bottom, and that's really cool.

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Page 2 - Lian Li T1 Spider	Page 5 - Work must be fun
Page 3 - Components

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Impressions

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Work must be fun!

In my opinion it's been a good descision to build this sweet little office PC. Now my desktop is quite a bit more exciting than it was before. I really like to sit down at the table and hit the power button and eventually start working. Ok, sometimes it's not too efficient to just look at my computer instead of working, that's ture but on the other hand it's also proven, that motivated people are much more productive. Furhtermore it's important for me to have a PC which performs well. I really hate waiting until the computer finishes a task, this really is something that drives me mental. Therefore, as I have the possibility, it would have been kind of stupid to not build this thing.

At last something completely different. When I put all the parts together, I thought that the spider will be very big in the end and therefore need a lot of space on my desk. But the fact that the legs can be put in almost a 90 degree angle makes almost compact again. And then there is another thing worth mentioning: there is quite some space below the spider, which means you can put stuff under it. I chose to put my Duke Nukem action figure under the spider. I'm asking myself what he's thinking right now. I'm sure that under this hardware monster it must be something like: "Hmm convenient."

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 4 - ImpressionsGiant
Page 2 - Lian Li T1 Spider	Page 5 - Work must be fun!
Page 3 - Components

Discuss this article in the forums.