Wesley's Tool-Box

It's already been more than a month since a new system had taken place of the Portable Athlon. It was replaced by none other than its descendant, XPPort-II, a.k.a. Portable Athlon II. I still have some improvements planned for the machine, but I decided that it deserved its own article since it has already reached stable operating conditions. As the technological advance of 18 months show, the new version is faster, more powerful and especially, beautiful in the dark. Go ahead and enjoy!

• The Night Glow

The system is busy running MadOnion 3DMark2001 benchmark. It's quite a performer, actually, currently ranked at #1 in its class, defined as the group of systems using Athlon XP 1800+ (1500 ~ 1567MHz) CPU and GeForce4 MX440 based video card. It's also the 2nd fastest MX440 based system that uses Athlon XP 1900+ or under as the CPU. The results are uploaded in MadOnion's Online Result Browser database here, with the 3DMark score of 6628. Average score for the same configuration is around 5300 3DMarks.



The side view of the system in the dark. The glow is pleasant to look at.

• Summary of the System

Here are the specifications of the main system:

CPU:	AMD Athlon XP 1700+(1467MHz, 1.75V) AGOIA  @ 1537MHz, 1.525V
Cooler:	Zalman CNPS5100-Cu, fan @ 5V (silent mode, ~20dB)
Chipset / FSB:	VIA KT333 AGPset / 170.8MHz (341.6MHz DDR)
Memory:	512MB (KingMax PC2700 DDR 256MB x 2) @ 341.6MHz DDR
Video Card:	Garnet GeForce4 MX440 Pro @ 320MHz core / 595MHz memory
Sound Card:	Creative SoundBlaster Audigy
LAN Card:	Realtek RTL8139C based 100Mbps Ethernet
Expansion:	IEEE-1394(FireWire) x 4, USB 2.0 x 4
CD-ROM:	LG CRN-8245B (24x CD-ROM Read)
Floppy:	1.44MB x 1
Power Supply:	Matrix Power MB300-VA (300W, PFC)
Total Fans:	System x 3, CPU x 1, Video x 1 (all 60mm, 5V operation, ~3000rpm)
OS:	Microsoft Windows 2000 SP2
Total Weight:	5.44kg (12.0Lb)

With this much functionality and performance, it will probably surpass the power of any computer system packed in twelve pounds. Well, that's it for now! The system will be continually upgraded, of course. I will try to post another article as dramatic developments take place. Until, then, see you around!

• XPPort-II in Action!

The Portable Athlon II's official name is, as mentioned earlier, XPPort-II. This is to signify that it uses Athlon XP, and that it's the second portable unit I've built. The monitor has not been integrated to the system yet, so I need to use the portable monitor that I made earlier instead when I need to carry the whole system around. Most of the peripherals were carried over from the original system, as you can see.



The front and the top view, respectively. The yellow button is the power button and it lights up when the system is operational. The red button is the reset button, and it lights up when the hard disk is being accessed. You can see the front case fan pulling the hot air from the CPU cooler and exhausting it (it's a good thing to avoid facing it directly), as well as the slim size CD-ROM and floppy drive combo. To facilitate connection of the peripherals, I made all the connectors to face up, so I can simply plug stuff from top. By doing this, I do not need to face back to connect, nor do I have to create a front bay. There isn't much space for that in front anyway.



The view from the side. The LED lights liven up the mood of the computer system effectively, with distinctive green-blue-green spotlights. I think it looks far better than using the neon light tubes, which was the initial plan.

• Adding PCI Cards

By using a PCI riser card, I was able to put three PCI expansion cards in addition to the PCI LAN card next to the video card, for a total of four possible PCI expansion cards in the system. The original Portable Athlon system had PCI slots occupied by the power supply, so this is a great improvement, and now I became free from reliance of on-board subsystems. Here is a picture of Sound Blaster Audigy sound card on the PCI riser card after it was separated from the mainboard.



This is how it looks like when all four possible PCI slots are occupied. Three cards on the PCI riser card comfortably fit into the space. The cards are secured into place by bolts and/or L-shape brackets. The leftmost card is the 100Mbps Ethernet LAN card, and the cards on the riser are SB Audigy sound card, OnAir TV II television card, and FireWire-USB2.0 combo card, from top to bottom. The television card was temporarily installed for watching FIFA World Cup 2002 Korea/Japan broadcasts.

• Temperature Sensor Install

Monitoring ambient air temperature is necessary to properly measure and predict the performance characteristics of the air-cooling system. It's like measuring the water temperature at the radiator or reservoir in the water-cooling system. I attached the temperature sensor on the air hole above the CPU cooler, so that I can see what the exact temperature of the air the CPU cooler is taking in. This way I can properly measure the temperature delta of the cooler and predict how much temperature change was occurred in various clockspeed settings. The measured temperature is visible from the front of the case via the LCD readout, seen at the rightmost side of the picture.

• Let There Be Light (cont.)

This is how the case logo looked like when it lit up. You can see the official name of the system, 'XPPort-II'. It didn't look as good as I had wanted, and the adhesive didn't hold the logo and the light together properly, however. So I took it off after a day. I'm going to try EL lighting instead someday.



I didn't like how the exposed wires looked, so I planned to wrap them up. I created a sheet of patterns from Paint Shop Pro and printed them out.



This is how it looks like after the wires were properly wrapped. Notice that the LED lights that were used for the case logo now lights up the middle of the case, located near the central case fan.