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deruberhanyok
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build log: the Pumpkinator (i5, B85, ISK 300)

Wed Jun 18, 2014 8:46 pm

[edit]current specs, minus video card:

Core i5-4590S with Xigamtek Praeton LD963 HSF
Crucial Ballistix Tactical LP DDR3L-1600 16GB (2x8GB)
Gigabyte GA-B85N Phoenix Wifi (Azurewave mPCIe card with Broadcom wifi replaced with Intel 7260AC)
Crucial M500 480GB mSATA SSD
Samsung 1TB 2.5" (M8 HN-M101MBB)
Samsung slim DVDRW SN208FB/BEBE
Antec ISK 300-150 with Pico PSU 160XT PSU (stock PSU removed)
2x Antec Tricool 80mm (clear versions without LED lights)

I've tested a few different video cards in it but haven't settled on a final model. Right now there's an R7 250E in it, but I'm hoping that when the rest of the 900 series cards launch I'll find something that matches the black and orange scheme.

[edit] It has been given a name: the pumpkinator. Because orange!

TLDR version: I'm building a tiny system and wanted to share. It will be black and orange. I will be posting pictures and talking about stuff when the last parts come in next week.

It's been a little over 4 years since I put together a PC of my own. The last one I built was a Core i3-530 and Intel DH57JG ITX motherboard in an Antec ISK 300-65, and it ran Ubuntu and was used almost exclusively for listening to my music collection and browsing the web. I tossed in some Noctua fans and a thicker heatsink than the one that came with the 530 (I think it was from a Core 2 Duo, as I recall they used the same dimensions / retention mechanism) to keep fan speed (and thus, noise) to a minimum.

Years later I find myself wanting to put together another PC, this time with a little more power in case I wanted to break out some games. It will probably run Ubuntu with Steam. I still want it to be quiet, and I don't want it to take up a lot of space. Here's the list of parts that are going to be used:

Case and power supply

Antec ISK 300-150 with Pico PSU 160XT and 2x80mm Vantec Stealth SF8025L - I really liked the ISK 300-65, and I wanted to go low profile and keep the system's physical volume to a minimum, so the same case with better ventilation was an obvious choice. The Stealth fans have always worked well for me in the past, and while Noctua and Scythe's fans are highly regarded, they're also more expensive.

I'd planned on just using the ISK 300-150's stock power supply, but a few things stopped me. First - it takes up a lot of space in the system, and I was concerned that cable routing would be an issue. Antec thankfully doesn't load it up with a dozen molex power connectors - no room in the case for them anyhow - but there's still a pretty large bundle of cables that would need to get crammed somewhere and a power cable strung along the top of the case that would get in the way of a taller CPU heatsink or make video card installation a bit difficult. Second, from what I've read, it isn't particularly efficient, so it generates more waste heat than I'd like.

While I could have used a larger case and different power supply, I really wanted to stick to something with a small footprint, so the obvious choice was to replace the power supply with something more efficient. The Pico PSU (from Mini Box) is perfect for this configuration, taking up practically no space at all, and since it uses an external power brick for AC-DC conversion, is very efficient and generates little heat. Plus, no fans, so no added noise internally.

I've gone with the top-end kit version, capable of 160W sustained output with a 200W peak, in case I end up needing a little more power than I expected. I've added the additional peripheral cable they offer on their website, so I've got a 24 pin ATX power connector, 4 pin aux 12v for the motherboard, 2 PATA style 4-pin power connectors and 2 SATA power connectors. That's perfect for the rest of the system:

CPU

Core i3-4130T - Picked solely for the low TDP, with the thinking that I'd like to fit a video card in the system that could potentially pull the max 75W from the PCIe slot. Given the space constraints for a video card, that's probably unlikely. The regular i3 power draw isn't hugely different, and for another $15 or so I could have gotten something that ran ~500MHz faster, but the lower power use appeals muchly, as it enables me to "run silent" when not doing heavy lifting.

I'll be cooling it with the stock heatsink from an i5-4670K that I bought for a beefier Steam Engine (which I'll post about whenever I get around to putting that one together, heh). Several years ago the heatsink from that C2D cooled my i3 effectively and kept noise to a minimum, so I'm hoping to repeat that success. The heatsink that comes with the i3-4130T is positively tiny and appears to be all aluminum; the i5-4670K's stock heatsink is taller and seems to have a copper core. Should be more effective by far.

Memory

Crucial Ballistix Tactical LP DDR3L-1600 8GB (2x4GB) - Low voltage, low profile RAM that reportedly overclocks like crazy. I don't plan on overclocking the RAM here - not sure it would do me much good - but I stick to a few familiar brands for things like RAM and storage, and Crucial has always been at the top of my list, even though they sometimes cost more than other options. I freely admit that this is because I had such a good experience with them way back in the day when I was doing freelance hardware reviews.

Motherboard

Gigabyte B85N Phoenix Wifi That system I put together years ago didn't need to have onboard wifi - I don't recall if we even had onboard wifi back then - but this time around it was a necessity. I didn't want to have any USB dongles connected to this system and have to keep the PCIe slot available for a video card, so I turned to Newegg's handy search to find a mini ITX something with onboard 802.11ac (because future!).

I was pleasantly surprised to stumble across this thing. Black and Orange make for a nice color scheme - reminds me of DFI's old Lanparty boards, plus, you know, Valve, Steam Engine, Half Life, etc. It's got the 802.11ac onboard (mine came with an Azurewave card, though I've seen pictures that appear to show an Intel card installed, so they may be shipping with both), has decent onboard audio (Realtek ALC898) and, bonus, has an mSATA slot. I like that. There's also glowy orange lights, which I admit haven't ever really been my thing, but when it is all assembled, if the glow is nice, I might try to carve a lambda into it or something.

B85 chipset might be a showstopper for some, but RAID support wasn't ever in my plans. If you need teh RAIDs, Asrock's H97 ITX board (which wasn't available at the time I made this purchase) has wifi, but lacks the mSATA slot (and has the somewhat less impressive Realtek ALC892 audio, but if you've got a digital output, the analog output capabilities of the onboard audio may not be a concern for you).

Storage

Samsung PM851 256GB mSATA, 1TB 2.5" (M8 HN-M101MBB), slim DVDRW SN208FB/BEBE - Samsung takes all three storage spots for this. The 1TB drive was cheap, the DVDRW was cheap, and the mSATA was cheap. I would normally have gone with a Crucial M500 for this, but if you watch ebay for these things you can sometimes get a really, really good deal. The DVDRW, I'd wanted to get a slot load drive but couldn't justify the added cost. It just needs to rip audio from my CDs (yes, I still have CDs) and probably won't get used much past that.

and some form of video card!

This is the million hundred dollar question. The ISK 300 is a low profile case, so that limits the options. There also isn't room for a double-wide heatsink/fan on the video card, so that further limits options.

A GeForce 750 would be ideal, and there are already a few low profile GeForce 750 cards out there - Zotac makes one, as does Galaxy (who I believe also sell cards under the KFA brand) - but they all have heatsink/fan units too wide to fit into the ISK. The Kepler-based GeForce 740 with GDDR5 would also be a good option, though the improved performance and efficiency of Maxwell is preferred (and, if I can be crazy about color coordination, Zotac's colors are black and orange, so...).

Single slot and low profile will be a bit noisier when running at full tilt, given the size of their heatsinks and tiny fans, but the ISK 300 is well ventilated along the edge where the video card lives, so I'm hoping that whatever I choose, there will be sufficient airflow to keep it from getting annoying while gaming.

The power draw on the 750 cards is very similar to AMD's R7 250 GPU. There are a few single slot low profile versions of those (and R740 with GDDR5, too). This is tempting, as I could just go and get one of those right now and be plenty happy with the mid-range gaming capabilities it has. But it's hard to ignore the additional oomph that Maxwell provides in the same power envelope. Thankfully, with an onboard GPU, I have the luxury of getting the system running and deciding on the video card later.

Maybe we'll see a Maxwell refresh "GeForce 740 version 2", or maybe someone will get a single slot, low profile 750 out there. Or AMD could scale Bonaire down a bit and give us an R7 255 that fits in the same form factor. Either works for me, as long as it's 75W or less.

Total system cost, sans video card: a little under $700.

I'm still waiting on the Pico PSU (scheduled for delivery on Monday), and that's going to require a minor modification of the back of the case - doing a tiny bit of dremel work to make sure the 4-pin DIN connector will fit. Once I've got that done I'll start posting some pictures of the assembly. I've got a different motherboard I'm going to pop in the case with a Zalman CNPS8900, just to see if it would actually fit. A higher power processor could benefit from that and I'm sure someone would want to know.
Last edited by deruberhanyok on Tue Jun 23, 2015 8:42 pm, edited 9 times in total.
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Thu Jun 19, 2014 11:08 am

You won't be disappointed by the T-series low voltage i3's. They easily run 20c cooler than their non-T counterparts under heavy load (ie prime95/mprime), and that's including the low(er) profile heat sink they come with. With a full-sized heat sink I wouldn't expect much noise at all from one.
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Thu Jun 19, 2014 11:32 am

Does the B85 board's BIOS give you any tweaking options at all? How about chipset drivers under Ubuntu? I would think the more mainstream chipsets will be better supported.
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Thu Jun 19, 2014 11:56 am

Out of my own curiosity I looked at the available low-profile cards, and the offerings are pretty sad. The best current-gen card looks to be an R7 250 GDDR5 (make sure it's not a DDR3), which is roughly equivilant to an old 7750 (which is about like a 5770 or 4870). What's worse is that all the GDDR5 models appear to only have 1GB right now. I would wait until someone makes a 750 variant for sure.
 
deruberhanyok
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Thu Jun 19, 2014 12:06 pm

Fox - Well, the B85 chipset should be properly supported in Ubuntu. I haven't had issues with any of the Intel chipsets under Linux in a long time. There should also be good support for the onboard audio and wifi. The Azurewave card is likely using an Atheros chip, and those have good open source drivers. But I'm not sure what particular model it is, so it might be something new where support has just recently been added, in which case support may not be "out of the box" until 14.04.1 in July.

I'm not sure about sensor integration, though - that's always a sticking point, since there are always new sensor chips coming out and I don't know how fast support for them makes it into the kernel. Thankfully it's unlikely to be something oddly configured (I've got a Dell laptop running Ubuntu that refuses to cooperate for simple things like fan speed control). And, they're doing kernel updates in LTS versions of Ubuntu now, so new hardware support is being easily added into the LTS flavors.

The manual claims the BIOS it has options for adjusting the speed of the onboard GPU, CPU frequency, core ratios, turbo power limits, all sorts of stuff. But it also has a note saying some options are only configurable on certain processors. They may have gone and included support for it for K series chips, but I'm curious what will be available on the 4130T. I do have that i5-4670k I could put in it, maybe run it on an open bench for a little while just to see what other options could appear, but I'm not sure I want to swap the processors in and out like that. All those tiny pins and contact pads!

There's also a ton of options listed in the manual for adjusting memory timings, including XMP support, voltage adjustment and "sub timings", by which I'm assuming they mean things like CAS and RAS timings.

Once I get the pico PSU in I'll be able to start assembling it and I'll check on the BIOS options. I'll try to get some screenshots of the relevant menus posted, and when all is said and done I'll have some experiences regarding Ubuntu installation to post.

Superspy - yep, that was my experience a while back with the i3-530, and that wasn't even a low power chip (I don't recall if they even had low power desktop variants of 1st gen core procs). Hoping to duplicate the success this time. :)

Egg - for sure. It's much better than it was a few card generations back - the R7 250 paired with GDDR5 would make for a pretty nice setup in this form factor, but with "new generation" cards slowly being introduced right now, I figure there's no rush to buy, especially if you look at the release dates of some of the existing cards:

The refreshed low-end Kepler (GK208) have all come out post-Maxwell, so it's probably not likely we'll see Maxwell slide into the low end of the GTX 700 series. The high end, though... the 780 and Titan are both coming up on 1.5 years since introduction, so it's possible a refresh could be coming this fall.

AMD's mid-range stuff is a little older - R7 240 and 250 were last October, alongside the rest of the R7/R9 launch, but R7 265 just came around when Maxwell launched. So I suppose they could be due for a refresh on the low-end this fall, and maybe we'll see the revised GCN in Bonaire trickle down a bit.
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Sat Jun 21, 2014 10:28 pm

I had a little free time this afternoon so I decided to do some work on the case ahead of the Pico PSU arriving (should be Monday that it comes in). Thought I'd share some "WIP" pictures.

First shot here, I've already installed the optical drive and hard drive. There's lots of pictures of the installation for the ISK 300/310 case out there, so I'll spare you all the extreme detail. But one thing that I don't recall from when I used the ISK 300-65 a few years back: they've included a pair of 2.5" drive sized red "cards" for lack of a better term. They fit underneath the drive and I suspect they're included to reduce vibration that might transfer to the drive cage.

Image

Last time I had a 60GB Vertex and a 500GB laptop drive in the case; this time it's a 256GB mSATA drive and a 1TB laptop drive. If you've found yourself thinking that you might want to do mini-ITX but want to RAID some spinning drives and keep a separate boot drive, mSATA (or m.2) will be a big help. I believe Antec's ISK 110 also has room for two 2.5" drives. I was considering getting that case (likely could have avoided getting the Pico PSU if I had), but since I wanted to be able to install a video card, the 110 wouldn't have worked. Too bad, too, because it'd make for a great setup if it was a little taller.

Anyways, the fans are set so the one closer to the front is an intake, and the one in the back is an exhaust. They're right next to each other, yes, but I did the same configuration before and it worked well. Flipping them is trivial - they slot in to the bracket there and the whole thing can be lifted out. It's very easy to replace them if needed.

The blank spot in the front is where the stock PSU's exhaust fan was. It's a sort of weird custom fform factor PSU - I'll post a picture in the next update. Removing that saved a lot of space.

And yes, that's an orange SATA cable. I'm sticking with this color scheme! I actually found it iin my parts box. It probably came with an older abit board (I miss abit, though I think ASrock has proven to be their spiritual successor) or something.

Image

Here you can see where I've widened the hole for the power plug. The ISK 300-65 used this for its barrel plug that went to the DC-DC power board, but looking at the 4-pin DIN connector that the Pico PSU kit I ordered will use, I figured it might not be large enough to just fit. So I widened it with a Dremel. Note: always use safety glasses when doing that sort of thing!

I recall seeing a thread somewhere where someone altered a piece of metal to fit in a spot on the back of the case where the power plug had been, buit I can't find it now. Anyways, I'll know when the kit gets here if it worked. :)

Image

This is the spot where the PSU lives, and also where the DC-DC board is on the ISK 300-65. The 65's DC-DC board didn't take up too much space, but the 150's PSU was pretty chunky and it needed to go. I might have left it in had it been rated higher for efficiency -( know some people scoff at the 80plus badges, but I'd liked to have seen a bronze rating on it) but both bulky and inefficient = not gonna use it.

As you can see, there's a lot of room down there, which will come in handy for stuffing the front panel cables somewhere out of the way where they won't block airflow. In the foregrouned (kind of blurry) are the standoffs for the motherboard - there really isn't a lot of available space with the stock PSU in there.

Image

Image

Last, I wanted to get a lambda in there somewhere - because STEAM ENGINE - and since the motherboard has amber lights on it, I thought a carved one might look nice. The case only ships with one 80mm fan and there's a "plate" in the second spot. Since I was installing both fans, I didn't need it, and I thought I might carve the logo into it to see how it looked. Plus, this way if it's screwed up, I didn't damage the case's shell. :) It's a little scratched up, but with a glow behind it that won't be visible (I hope).

Carved with a dremel pretty easily; it''s a soft plastic and the dremel practically melted right through it. And it was just the right size to fit in that opening where the PSU's exhaust fan had been. I have some tiny magnets that I use for craft projects which I glued to the sides (two on the side against the fan bracket, one against the edge on the front of the case), so it slides right in to that spot and stays securely in place.

I'll get a few shots of the stock PSU in place. some test fits with that CNPS8900 (figure that might be useful if anyone is thinking of using something similar), and a few quick shots of the motherboard posted tomorrow or Monday, before the PSU shows up and I can actually put it together.
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deruberhanyok
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Tue Jun 24, 2014 5:44 am

A few extra shots of the stock PSU:

Image

It's really small, but the ISK 300 has such low volume it takes up a lot of space.

Image

Image

There's not much room for cable routing or hiding them anywhere when the stock PSU is installed and the drive cage is in place. I really think Antec could benefit from a partnership with Mini-box here. I may just be talking nonsense, but the 300-65's DC-DC board was perfectly sized for the case, it just didn't provide a lot of power. But the Pico PSU really is a fantastic solution for small cases like this - there's so much saved space, that I feel like there's no reason to waste the space that an internal AC-DC supply requires. Not to mention the extra heat it generates!

Speaking of the Pico PSU, it fits!

Image

Dunno how many of you have seen one in person before, but even after seeing a ton of pictures I wasn't prepared for how tiny it is:

Image

Image

With the extra peripheral cable I ordered I've got enough power for everything I'm installing; I even have one spare PATA-style connector... two if you count the pass-through from one of the fan's 3-pin to 4-pin adapter. Total internal dimension savings: the entire space taken up the PSU. Really. I'm serious Antec, you guys need to talk to the folks at mini-box about getting these put in a line of ITX cases.
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Tue Jun 24, 2014 6:33 am

I've never used a pico PSU but since a 65W APU and an SSD are enough for 90% of the people that ask me for a custom build, I want to know more.
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deruberhanyok
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Tue Jun 24, 2014 7:28 am

They make a few different models capable of different levels of power delivery. The 160XT and 150XT have 24 pin connectors on them, a 12v 4-pin aux connector for the motherboard, and they're perfect for a build of this size. I could have gone with a higher speed i3 (55W TDP) and still have enough headroom for a video card drawing 75W of power from the PCIe slot using just the 150XT - unless I'm stress-testing the CPU and GPU at full load there's enough juice left over for the motherboard, storage, etc. Ultimately I thought this would provide me a little extra flexibility - this PSU and case could last me through several iterations of systems.

The lower power rated ones are 20-pin ATX connectors, and a few of them have the 4-pin 12v aux connector.

They even offer a kit of the 150xt with a 102W DC brick which ought to provide enough juice for a system with a 65W APU and an SSD. I would recommend if you decide to pick one up that you buy from them directly - apparently some resellers sell these (or cheap knockoff versions of them) that look almost exactly the same.

Jonnyguru did a review of a few different models here: http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?na ... y&reid=207
SPCR's review of the original unit: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article601-page1.html

I don't know if there are reviews of the XT models out there - I thought I saw some a while back, but I can't find them now. It may have been discussion on SPCR's forums.

The biggest downside to them is the addition of a power brick, really. It's not unsightly, although the large one that mini-box ships in their 160XT kit is definitely large (12V, 16A, measures approx 175x75x40mm, or 7x3x1.75") and I expect it will get a bit warm. The 150W one in the 150xt kit looks to be smaller, and the 102W / 150xt kit's brick is smaller still.

Note the higher power adapters require a 4-pin DIN connector (see the picture I posted above) and can't get enough power through the regular barrel style connector. The 102W kit there has the barrel connector, the 150W and 160W kits have the 4-pin adapter included.

I actually did get the system assembled and powered on last night, briefly, just to make sure all of the connections were good. Tonight I'm going to get it all tidied (I tried routing some cables under and along the edge of the motherboard and that just blocked the LED glow) and maybe experiment with fan configurations, but if you like I'll hook up my multimeter to get a few readings of the system idling in the BIOS. I can get some load measurements once I have an operating system installed and can load up a game or two. Unfortunately I don't have a wattsup or similar wall power meter, but I'm tempted to pick one up.
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Tue Jun 24, 2014 11:48 am

Looks pretty cool. JG doesn't really explain how you get SATA power connectors running off a PicoPSU, could you comfortably run, say, four 3.5" mechanical SATA drives alongside a 65W CPU? Makes it a viable NAS option too then....
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Tue Jun 24, 2014 1:04 pm

Well, that depends on how comfortable you are using splitter cables to connect the drives. :)

The 150/160 units provide 1 SATA power cable and 1 PATA power cable, and they have a $2 peripheral cable which provides another of each (that's what I have connected to the camera-facing side in the picture of the PSU by itself).

If you could hang your fans off of your motherboard, and maybe do a USB flash drive or mSATA or something for booting, you've got enough connectors already to connect four drives, you'd just need a pair of PATA->SATA power adapter cables. That could make for a very slick low-noise NAS environment, something perfect for freenas, nas4free, unraid, that sort of thing.

If you need to connect the fans to the power leads from the PSU, you'd need either a splitter or one of those pass-through thingers that have a 3-pin fan adapter on them. So if you don't mind using them (personally, I've always found them to be a bit flaky, wiggle them the wrong way and the drive might power flicker), as long as you've got a unit that can output enough juice to run the drives, I don't see why it wouldn't work.
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Tue Jun 24, 2014 10:22 pm

A couple of quick shots of the board, and some test shots with the Zalman CNPS8900 quiet. I'm not using the CNPS8900 in this system - I have it for a system that's going to be primarily for games, in a taller case (Silverstone SG05), but I was curious to see if it would fit.

FIrst, the omgxboxhueg (is that still a thing? do we still say that?) heatsink pictures:

Image

The CNPS8900 is wide, but not very tall - which is why I bought it. But I was curious if it would fit into this case, you know, in case I'd gotten a higher power processor, or an AMD APU rated for 95W. So I just sat it on top of the processor in the location it would be if I actually installed it, to see if it would clear the rest of the stuff in the case. As you can see, it covers a significant portion of the motherboard.

Image

There's clearance for low profile RAM - regular height DIMMs might fit but it would be really close. It also doesn't block the PCIe slot, which is nice.

Image

Image

Yoikes. It's a really, really tight fit. The edge near the system fans is just a few mm from them, and a right angle SATA cable is definitely needed for any 2.5" drives that may be installed. There's a little bit of space between the top of the heatsink and the bracket for the drive cage, so overall, it would fit. With an A10-7850K or A8-7600 / A10-7800 (if they ever get released), and the right motherboard, this could make for quiet cooling in a pretty nice AMD-powered Steam Engine.

Sadly, those parts aren't available nearly 6 months after the A8-7600 was reviewed by so many sites (it's the worst kind of paper launch), which is why I went with this setup instead. I may still wind up with a Radeon GPU, though.

Anyways, motherboard shots:

Image

Image

So I tried to get this done so you could see measurements, but it seems perspective has foiled my plans. And I didn't notice this until after I'd put the heatsink on and put the motherboard in the case. The important measurements? There's about 40mm between the "null space" Intel specifies for the CPU socket (90x90mm) and the edge of the PCIe slot - really about 35mm to the edge of the chipset heatsink to be safe. There's about 20mm beyond the null space to the edge of the board by the fan headers, also nothing tall there. Maybe 10mm on the side going towards the rear ports, and the DIMM slots are right up against the edge of it (as you could see in the picture with the Zalman above). So there's a decent amount of clearance for a large heatsink here, as long as the longer edge of it can be oriented parallel to the DIMM slots.

I'll get the MB and final assembly shots posted tomorrow, then it's on to the BIOS settings and OS installation. Which, I mean, I'm going to be running Ubuntu on it, but I might do a Windows install just to see what the "out of the box" experience is like.

Fox, since you asked, I glanced at the tweaking settings on the board when I had it running last night for a bit, just to make sure everything functioned, and I saw a lot of tweaking options. It looks like gigabyte has set so that this board, despite using the B85 chipset, can handle overclocking of the unlocked processors. I'll post some pictures of those screens once I have a chance to spend a little more time with it.

I had an amusing thought when I opened the motherboard box. There's two driver CDs included, one with a bunch of gigabyte utilities and another specifically labeled as a wifi driver disc. Way, way back in the early days of the internet we used to joke about 3com and US robotics selling modems without a driver disk. This happened more frequently about the time companies discovered they could post drivers on the internet, so occasionally you'd get a modem or a network card (motherboards didn't have integrated networking back then) with a slip of paper in the box that said "you can download the drivers from our website!" Obviously, if you were buying a modem or network card because you didn't have an internet connection yet, you couldn't go and download drivers. :/

So a lot of systems now don't have CD drives, especially mini ITX systems. How do you get drivers for a wifi card to someone who might not have an internet connection and doesn't have a CD drive? At least floppies were replaced with optical media. Now there isn't a standard thing replacing it that you can count on being present in every PC. It's a conundrum, I guess.
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Wed Jun 25, 2014 6:12 am

No internet connection? Whoa! What would you need a PC for without internet? ;)

I've been in a situation like that before though (no spare machine, network drivers on a CD and no CD drive). You just download it on your phone and plug your phone in via USB.
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Wed Jun 25, 2014 7:20 am

Huh. You know, I probably would have thought of that eventually, but I had visions in my head of calling gigabyte tech support and asking if I can mail them a flash drive. :) Granted, I could also just walk across the street and borrow a friend's internet connection, too.

Sometimes I'm still surprised by how connected we are, even when we think we aren't.

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I really like this color scheme. I'm glad I went with the LP memory, but I was browsing newegg and it looks like GSkill's Ares and Team's Vulcan lines have orange heatspreaders on them. I wonder if they'd be a closer match for the orange on the board?

Unrelated, I noticed Kingston has RAM with a white heatspreader. I bet that would look striking against a black PCB, but it would only work if there were other white highlights. I don't think the few white SATA ports on this board would be enough. Anyone remember Sapphire's white PCB motherboards from the early days of AMD's chipsets?
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Wed Jun 25, 2014 9:14 am

deruberhanyok wrote:
I noticed Kingston has RAM with a white heatspreader. I bet that would look striking against a black PCB, but it would only work if there were other white highlights.

I'm thinking Gigabyte's grey/black color scheme would fit nicely with white RAM (notice I didn't recommend ECS). Or you could go all white with an Asus Sabranco. You could add other components to tie it all together like white fans and/or a white CPU cooler. Seagate 600 SSD has a white stripe, white cases, and Sapphire uses white highlights on some of their GPUs. The list goes on...

PS, I wonder if you attach some (orange?) translucent film/sheet/paper to the inside of your lambda logo, it might help even out the lighting behind it. Also, some art/craft/modeling/jewelry stores have laser cutters or small/precision CNC mills that can cut plastic. If I were making a cutout that was going to really stand out, I'd probably fork over the $20 or so (estimated for that size) to get it cut with nice crisp straight edges....just saying.

PPS: Why didn't you go with the orange G.Skill Ares RAM? I know they're not "low profile" like the Ballistix you have, but the heat spreaders don't protrude past the PCB much at all.
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Wed Jun 25, 2014 4:46 pm

It actually hadn't occurred to me to look for RAM with an oranger... more orange? heatspreader - I figured the Ballistix would be close enough when I looked at them in-store at a Microcenter. And when I was searching on newegg I was looking for 1.35v DDR3. I saw the G.Skill Ares after the fact, when I was looking for 16GB kits for the other system I'm putting together. I'm thinking I could sell the Crucial stuff and buy the Ares just to have a closer match.

I hadn't thought to look for a small mill that could do more accurate cutting. I actually find myself in craft stores fairly often because of some other hobbies - I'll have to look next time I'm in one, because that could be real useful to me. Usually the plastic I work with can be cut easily with an xacto knife, so working with the thicker plastic was a new one for me.

I like the idea of using a plastic film. It would also enable me to direct light right at it - I could get a white LED and point it there, and have a brighter orange glow come out as a result. I've got a directional blue one I picked up somewhere or other, and I bet I could find a simple 5v or USB-powered one at Microcenter. Definitely going to try that, thanks for the idea!

Also, those Sabranco boards are wild! There's no contrast on them - kind of disorienting to look at it at first, but I dig the overall look. Black PCIe slots and expansion headers (USB, etc) would stand out really well.
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Thu Jun 26, 2014 7:11 am

A few shots of installation:

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All of that open space would have been taken up by the PSU - very glad I removed it.

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PCIe slot is kept clear so I can add a video card in there later. I was looking on EVGA's website and saw that a couple months back they said they were "looking into this" regarding a single slot, low profile solution. Maybe in another month or two we'll see something. I think the 750 would be a perfect candidate for a setup like this. Although if we see Maxwell extend across NVIDIA's entire range that wouldn't be bad, either. I guess the GeForce 800 series for desktops is probably coming later this year?

The case uses Blue LEDs for the power light and drive activity light. Obviously that's going to clash (well, not really clash, just google "blue and orange movie posters") with the black and orange, so they'll have to go.

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The power light is a simple LED glued to a strip of plastic that snaps in place inside the front panel, so you get a glowy strip of light in the front instead of a glaring power indicator. The 300-65 had the same setup, as I recall, which was a nice change from the phasers that some cases have.

The drive indicator light (which I forgot to take a picture of) is also pretty easy to reach, but looks as though it is embedded in a plastic piece. That's much brighter, and I may need to come up with a quick and dirty modification to it to get a replacement LED in there. It isn't as bright as I remember - on my 300-65 it was so bright I left it disconnected, so it wasn't constantly flashing a blue frickin' laser in my face.

Fortunately, FrozenCPU has a selection of LEDs with 2-pin motherboard connectors, so I'll be buying a few of those soon here. They also have paired LEDs coming off of a 4-pin lead; might pick up one of those sets to brighten up the lambda. Possibly in white, because I'm thinking an orange film would disperse the light better than directed LEDs would.

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It isn't bad if you see it at the right angle, but I was hoping for a glow bright enough to light up the letter.

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The lighting effect actually isn't that bad. It's not overly bright, it's not flashing lights everywhere, just a nice orange glow. The BIOS has two settings for the lights: "always on" and "pulse" (well, three modes, I guess, if you count "off"). The "always on" mode just has them at full brightness at all times. "Pulse" fades them in and out, slowly, almost like the system is breathing. It looks pretty good in a dark room, and it's subtle but visible in regular light.

Also, I'm not sure if it was intentional on their part, but extremely cool bonus: the system's power LED is also controlled by the setting for the motherboard LEDs. So with it set to "pulse" the front case light also fades in and out. Nice one, Gigabyte.

I took some screenshots of tweaking screens in the UEFI - I'll get those posted later today. Then it's on to testing some OS installs while I wait for the LEDs in the mail. :)
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Thu Jun 26, 2014 8:36 am

Oh jeez, I didn't realize there were THAT many LEDs on the mobo! And on the backside also? That's incredible. Who'd a thunk? (I obviously didn't read the product page you linked in your OP) Now I want to put together an orange system with that mobo. I've got a couple orange Cougar Vortex fans lying around that would look good in the front of a Cooler Master Elite 130 or Silverstone SG05.

deruberhanyok wrote:
The power light is a simple LED glued to a strip of plastic

That sucks. In just about every case I can remember working with, the power/hdd LEDs clip into plastic clips. They're super easy to replace, which I typically do because I despise blue LEDs/lighting (red is my favorite, followed by green). I want something unique, not like the 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 other electrical components these days that have blue lighting. Can you bust the blue LEDs off with a needle nosed pliers and superglue the new ones back on?

How about an orange CPU cooler?
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Thu Jun 26, 2014 9:16 am

For the lambda logo get a thin piece of clear perspex (you can probably reuse some packaging) and sand it opaque with some fine-grit wet 'n dry paper.
Hot melt glue that sumbitch in place and you're done, or graft an orange LED onto the same cable as the power LED and have it shine at the back of the perspex if you want something brighter.
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Thu Jun 26, 2014 9:19 am

They do sell frosted perspex.... (aka frosted plexiglass)
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Thu Jun 26, 2014 11:25 am

Dpete, Yeah, they line the 3 edges of the motherboard. None along the back edge, which, I guess since the ATX backplate is back there, you wouldn't be able to see them anyways. It looks really, really good in person. And with the tweaking options in the BIOS I have the impression they intended this to be a more gamer-oriented board than the B85 chipset would normally lead one to believe.

That's the exact plan I have for the LEDs - the power one, at least. I should be able to pop it out where it has been glued into place, and I've got some liquid superglue that dries clear I can use to replace it. The drive indicator LED will be a little trickier, but I might be able to use a drill and a small bit to hollow enough space for a 3mm one in place of the one there now (I really should have taken a picture of it, it's hard to explain how it's in place).

Also, hey, the Xigmatek Apache! I couldn't find it on Amazon when I searched a month or so ago, but for less than $20, you can't go wrong. That'll look much nicer than the stock Intel one on there. Thanks for the link, I'll be buying one this week. :) [edit - I'm confused. I was looking for the Praeton before, not the Apache. The only ones I could find were much more than I wanted to pay. I'm not sure how I missed a black and orange heatsink/fan.]

I'm hoping Zotac pulls a single slot, low profile GeForce 740 or 750 out of their hats, because they've got the orange and black going already. If not, I'll go with EVGA - mostly black on their cards, maybe with some silver or something, but it'll work and I can point an orange LED at it if needed (though with the glow from that edge of the motherboard, I might not need it). Plus, they're my preferred brand of NVIDIA cards - I've bought many a card from them over the years.

Chrispy, I was thinking of doing almost exactly that. I have some clear plastic I can use and point an orange LED at it, and I think I'd prefer doing that to orange plastic with a white LED behind it. The paired ones I linked would be perfect for sitting inside the case and providing extra glow - I could also easily permanently mount them into the case' frame.

Thanks for all the suggestions so far, guys - I feel like it's going to be even nicer than I'd originally intended because of them. :)
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Fri Jun 27, 2014 8:12 am

All the BIOS pictues I took came out blurry and unreadable. :(

I'll try to take another set tonight, this time with the camera on a mount.

Also- LEDs and that Xigmatek Apache were ordered. Hooray!
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Fri Jun 27, 2014 4:41 pm

My experience with LED's and coloured filters is that usually the original colour of the LED wins the fight.
The simplest explanation is that there are different types of light; white can be actually white (all wavelengths) or equal amounts of any three 'primary' wavelengths. Our three-colour eyes are too primitive to tell the difference, unless you start filtering.
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Sun Jun 29, 2014 5:01 pm

The Xigmatek heatsink came in this morning (Sunday delivery is really weird), so I took the opportunity of a lazy afternoon to install it and clean up some cabling.

First, I forgot to post these earlier: this is a comparison shot of the Intel stock heatsink from the i5-4670K and the i3-4130T:

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I tried to get the angle of the shot as straight-on as I could - the i3-4130T's heatsink is about 40mm tall, and the i5-4670K's about 55mm.

The Apache that came is not, as expected, the Apache III, but was instead an Apache II.

According to Xigmatek, there's a few minor differences:

1) the fan on the older version uses a "hydarumatic" bearing, whereas the newer one used a "long life" bearing. Whatever that means.
2) the older version's dimensions are 112x110x57mm, the new one's are 110x110x52mm. So it's slightly taller than the new version (but, I'll point out, within clearance for the ISK 300).
3) the Apache II is 285g, vs 265g for the Apache III
4) Thermal resistance on the Apache II is .23C/W, vs .22C/W for the Apache III
5) The Apache III supports LGA1150, whereas the Apache II does not (except it does!)

Given these extremely tiny differences, I expect the 85W TDP max listed for the Apache III also applies to the Apache II. Or at least, very close to it. Also, while the Apache II doesn't list support for LGA 1150, since the retention mechanism hasn't changed in, uh, several years, nor have the dimensions of the hole clip things, it fits just fine. Note for anyone installing this heatsink: the white pins that go into the retention clip first can be oriented in two different ways - they're oval shaped, not circular. Make sure they are all pointing "out" for LGA1150 installation.

Here's the Apache:

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And, been a while since I've seen a heatsink that didn't have the fins soldered to some sort of base, or using some heatpipes or whatnot, so I thought this was interesting:

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The base is all of the fins, sandwiched together, with some extra metal on the end where I'm assuming they're bolted through to stay in place.

Installation was easy:

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It fits the color scheme perfectly and looks far more at home than the stock Intel cooler. The blades are transparent but they don't light up. I wasn't expecting them to do so, but it would have been a nice touch. This seems to be a lot of value for a $15 heatsink.

Also, you may have noticed from the last picture, I moved he HDD to the other side of the tray. When I had the system apart I thought I'd try to clean up the cabling more than I had previously, so I shuffled it over to the right and was able to tie the SATA cables and the optical drive's power cable to the top of the drive cage. It's less cabling mess in the system and still really easy to remove:

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The LEDs ought to be here tomorrow - though one set was on backorder, so they may not all be here at once - so hoping to have time to get those blue ones replaced this week. This one is just about done - now someone just needs to get on that single slot, low profile GeForce 750 thing so I can call it a day! :D
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Thu Jul 03, 2014 7:45 am

LEDs came in on Tuesday. After a couple evenings of poking around the system trying to figure out the best way to do cable routing to keep airflow unimpeded and to ensure that the lights aren't blocked, I replaced the power and drive activity LEDs.

It was actually a lot easier than I expected. The funky plastic piece for the drive LED wasn't a custom job at all, it just looked like it. Once I got some of the hot glue off of there the LED just popped right out, and, happily, it turned out to be a standard 3mm LED. So I just popped the one I bought into there and it fit very snugly - no glue required.

The power LED plastic strip was the same way, although there was more glue that I needed to remove there. Again, a standard 3mm LED. So I'd bought two of these 3mm "amber" LEDs, which seem to be nearly an exact match for the orange glow coming from the motherboard, and fit in place easily. I also bought some 2-pin 5mm "orange" LEDs, which seem to be more "amber" than the "amber" ones (which were more "orange", so I guess that worked out), which I think are going to wind up in another system.

I took the opportunity of having the front part of the case disassembled to tie some cables along the front, so they're securely underneath the port cluster when the front piece is back in place.

The last piece of the puzzle (well, aside from a video card) is the dual orange LEDs. I'm going to get a piece of clear plastic behind the lambda and then test it with one or both LEDs shining at it to see how the glow looks. I'm hoping one pointed at the symbol will be sufficient, because it frees up the other to point at the eventual video card. Either way I should be able to secure them to the drive cage for ease of installation, just have to find out the best spot to place them.

I'll try to get a few more pictures up tonight.
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Thu Jul 03, 2014 8:42 am

deruberhanyok wrote:
I'm going to get a piece of clear plastic behind the lambda and then test it with one or both LEDs shining at it to see how the glow looks.

I really think clear plastic is going to look the same as having nothing behind the lambda. Maybe try this inexpensive orange colored transparent sheet, or even better, something that's translucent. Translucent plastic will disperse the light better and create a more uniform glow. Having the orange color will enhance the glow of the LEDs.
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Thu Jul 03, 2014 9:39 am

Hmm. I might stop by one of the local crafty shops and see if they've got something similar that I can use.
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Sat Jul 05, 2014 10:50 am

Before I get into the update update, a few pictures. First, the front cables were tidied up, and they fit nicely under the front panel bump-in thing:

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I've got some fan cables with resistors for the Stealths in there. I have a few, some that drop it to 9v, some to 7v and some that are wired to connect to 5v instead of 12v. I'm using the 7v ones now and they seem to be working with the right mix of airflow and low "whoosh" noise, so I'll probably stick with those.

And here are some screenshots of some of the BIOS tweaking settings, since Fox asked about that earlier and some of you might be curious:

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It really looks like Gigabyte put a lot of nice tweaking options in here. I remember reading that some vendors had unlocked overclocking of the K-series chips on non Z-series motherboards, but I was very surprised to see this on something with the B85 chipset. I was tempted to take the i5-4670k I have for another build and put it in this system to see what sort of speeds I could hit, but after all this time I just wanted to get the system up and running. Also, I have that proc installed in a motherboard already, so I'd have to take two systems apart to do that.

However, this did make me think: man, how great would it be if Intel released an unlocked K-series i3? The Pentium Anniversary Edition is sorta that, though hyper-threading would have been nice.

I had the system running for an extended period last night while I was playing with LED positioning and found, to my dismay, that the Xigmatek's fan was making quite a ruckus. It seemed to running near full tilt even while just idling in the EFI interface, no matter what settings I used for the fan control. So there was the regular "whoosh" of air that you get from a fan running at high speed, and much to its credit, when at high speed, that whoosh was the only noise it made - no whirring sound of whine that I could hear.

However, the PWM controls seemed to be running it around 80%, and there was a high-pitched rapid chirping noise coming from the fan. Doing a simple experiment (put your finger on the fan hub to slow down the rotation) I was able to determine that it actually got louder the slower the fan moved. Since I'm trying to keep noise to a minimum, I've switched back in the stock Intel heatsink for now.

The BIOS has three presets for fan speed control for both the CPU FAN and SYS FAN - only two headers on the motherboard, both PWM. I tried different combinations of connections to see how the fan speeds and noise might be affected:

(numbers reported are RPM reported by BIOS when I took a screen grab)

"Full Speed" preset:
Intel on CPU: 2020
Intel on SYS: 1979
Xigmatek on CPU: 2428
Xigmatek on SYS: 2360

"Normal" preset:
Intel on CPU: 1400
Intel on SYS: 896
Xigmatek on CPU: 1950
Xigmatek on SYS: 1125

"Silent" preset:
Intel on CPU: 1331
Intel on SYS: 771
Xigmatek on CPU: 1839
Xigmatek on SYS: 979

Now, I'm not sure of the specs on the Intel heatsink's fan, and Xigmatek's website lists the Apache II fan's range going from 1200-2500 rpm. But a few things were glaringly obvious here.

1) The "sys" header spins the fans at much lower speeds than the "cpu" header when using the "normal" and "silent" presets
2) The Xigmatek fan doesn't get anywhere near 1200RPM on the "cpu" header - the lowest I could get it to go was about 1800
3) Strangely, the weird noise coming from the Xigmatek wasn't noticeable when connected to the "sys" header - only the "cpu" header

This leads me to believe the problem is in the Gigabyte board's fan controls and not with the Xigmatek's fan. I'm considering putting the Xigmatek back in the system and running it off of the SYS header, but I just wanted to get it up and running right now, so I swapped heatsinks.

Gigabyte has two BIOS versions posted - F5, which I think is the shipping release (I'll have to double-check when the system reboots, it's installing Windows right now) and F6a, listed as "beta", with "improves K-series CPU performance" marked as a change. Whatever that means. I think I'll e-mail Gigabyte support and ask about the noise, see if they have any ideas.

I'll be back later today with Windows/Ubuntu compatibility infos. I plan to just run Ubuntu on both systems I'm putting together, but I bought a retail Win8 in case Wine isn't up to handling a few games that don't have native Linux versions. So I'm putting the Windows 8 Enterprise trial on it right now (so I don't have to open the retail copy I bought, makes it easier to return if I end up not needing it), and I'll get an Ubuntu live environment running later to see how the hardware is recognized.
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Mon Jul 07, 2014 8:32 am

I wouldn't worry too much about fans running at 100% in the UEFI. Most mobos will activate fan controls in the UEFI/BIOS, but some don't. IMO, as long as it spins down when you're in the OS..no big deal.
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Re: build log: low profile ITX steam engine (i3, B85, ISK 30

Mon Jul 07, 2014 9:09 am

Hmm. I'll swap the power connectors this evening and see if it changes now that I've got an installed OS on it. I figured it would adjust accordingly in the UEFI since the different presets had an effect, but it's possible it was running them at "max" speed for each preset. I wonder if it might do something about the chirping noise coming from the Xigmatek?

The Windows 8 install went just fine, though the wifi driver wasn't built-in to the Enterprise trial ISO I had. Fortunately, the aforementioned driver CD came to the rescue and I was online. Interestingly it listed the card as using a Broadcom chip, which I wasn't expecting - as I mentioned way earlier, with it being Azurewave, I expected to see an Atheros chip in there.

I also booted to an Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64 bit disc to see if it saw everything correctly. Happily, it did. Here's the usual tool outputs:

From LSHW:
H/W path        Device      Class          Description
======================================================
                            system         B85N PHOENIX WIFI (To be filled by O.E.M.)
/0                          bus            B85N PHOENIX-CF
/0/0                        memory         64KiB BIOS
/0/4                        memory         128KiB L1 cache
/0/5                        memory         512KiB L2 cache
/0/6                        memory         3MiB L3 cache
/0/7                        memory         8GiB System Memory
/0/7/0                      memory         4GiB DIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1600 MHz (0.6 ns)
/0/7/1                      memory         DIMM [empty]
/0/7/2                      memory         4GiB DIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1600 MHz (0.6 ns)
/0/7/3                      memory         DIMM [empty]
/0/41                       processor      Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-4130T CPU @ 2.90GHz
/0/100                      bridge         4th Gen Core Processor DRAM Controller
/0/100/2                    display        Intel Corporation
/0/100/3                    multimedia     Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio Controller
/0/100/14                   bus            8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI
/0/100/16                   communication  8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1
/0/100/16.3                 communication  8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family KT Controller
/0/100/19       eth0        network        Ethernet Connection I217-V
/0/100/1a                   bus            8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI #2
/0/100/1b                   multimedia     8 Series/C220 Series Chipset High Definition Audio Controller
/0/100/1c                   bridge         8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #1
/0/100/1c.4                 bridge         8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #5
/0/100/1c.4/0   wlan0       network        BCM4352 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter
/0/100/1d                   bus            8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI #1
/0/100/1f                   bridge         B85 Express LPC Controller
/0/100/1f.2                 storage        8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family 6-port SATA Controller 1 [AHCI mode]
/0/100/1f.3                 bus            8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller
/0/1            scsi2       storage       
/0/1/0.0.0      /dev/sda    disk           1TB ST1000LM024 HN-M
/0/2            scsi3       storage       
/0/2/0.0.0      /dev/sdb    disk           256GB SAMSUNG SSD PM85
/0/3            scsi4       storage       
/0/3/0.0.0      /dev/cdrom  disk           CDDVDW SN-208FB
/0/3/0.0.0/0    /dev/cdrom  disk           
/0/3/0.0.0/0/2              volume         15EiB Windows FAT volume
/0/8            scsi6       storage       
/0/8/0.0.0      /dev/sdc    volume         975MiB Windows FAT volume
/1                          power          To Be Filled By O.E.M.


From LSPCI:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 4th Gen Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 06)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 041e (rev 06)
00:03.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio Controller (rev 06)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI (rev 05)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:16.3 Serial controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family KT Controller (rev 04)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection I217-V (rev 05)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI #2 (rev 05)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #1 (rev d5)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #5 (rev d5)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI #1 (rev 05)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation B85 Express LPC Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family 6-port SATA Controller 1 [AHCI mode] (rev 05)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 05)
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4352 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 03)


And from LSUSB:
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:8000 Intel Corp. 
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:8008 Intel Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 004: ID 1516:8628 CompUSA Pen Drive
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 046d:c52b Logitech, Inc. Unifying Receiver
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 13d3:3404 IMC Networks
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub


Thankfully, getting the wifi driver activated in Ubuntu's LiveCD environment was as easy as clicking "use this driver" and "apply":

Image

Though I'd have preferred to see an Atheros chip with an open-source driver in use. :evil:

I put up a post regarding low profile video cards here, if anyone is interested.
<3 TR

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