I decided to build a new PC dedicated to Linux and to playing Games on XP a couple of weeks back. I know Linux can be tricky to install on certain hardware as I have Linux running on another PC with an Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard and it took a while before I was able to solve the lockup problems I was encountering intermittently. It turns out I had to disable APIC (noapic, nolapic) on the Linux' bootloader which minimized but not completely eliminated the lockups.
So I did a lot of research which made me finally decide that I was going to use an Intel motherboard for my next Linux / Gaming PC. Initially, I was thinking whether I should get the Intel D875 but I decided to save a bit and go with the Intel D865 PERLK which has the highly regarded onboard Analog Devices AD1985 sound chip.
Noteworthy Features
1. Gigabit LAN, SATA, USB 2.0 (total of 8 ports), Firewire support via the Intel ICH5 Southbridge chip.
2. Latest versions support Prescott CPUs.
3. 3 fan headers (in addition to another one to connect the CPU fan) which are BIOS Controlled. The speed of the fans connected to these headers depend on how hot the temperature of the motherboard/cpu is. There are 3 temperature sensors, 1 monitoring the CPU temp and the other 2 the motherboard and their reading affect the speed of the fans connected to the fan headers on the motherboard, both in Linux and XP.
4. Onboard Analog Devices AD1985 which supports 6 channels (5.1 Dolby sound) and Soundblasters' EAX 2.0 standard for playing games.
5. This motherboard will accommodate the Zalman 7000 AlCu heatsink which I installed to further minimize the sound coming from the PC.
6. Motherboard has built in IC2 sensors that can give both Windows (using the Intel monitor software) and Linux (using the open source GKrellm frontend mated to open source lm_sensors monitoring the motherboard) feedback on various motherboard parameters such as Temperature (CPU and 2 motherboard temperature sensors are monitored), Fan Speed (a total of 4 fans including that of the CPU can be monitored), and 12, 5, and 3.3 PSU output voltages.
Setup
Obviously this was going to be a dual boot machine (Linux / XP) and from my experience the best way to go about doing this is to have 2 hardrives... one dedicated to XP and another to Linux. I bought 2 120 GB Seagate Barracudas notable for their quiet operation. I decided to play it safe by going with the tried and proven IDE interface instead of SATA. Linux sometimes has trouble recognizing SATA drives during install.
Other hardware I mated to the D865 PERLK are an Intel 3.0 Ghz Northwood CPU (with Hyperthreading), 2 x 512MB DDR400 PC3200 RAM (Kingston Value rated 3-3-3-8 latency), an MSI GeForce FX 5900XT video card with 128MB RAM, a Liteon DVD reader, and a Plextor 708A DVD Burner. Note that I decided to go with an nVidia powered video card instead of ATI even though it might have been better for gaming and the 9800 PRO 128 MB is currently just slightly more expensive than the 5900XT. Why? Because nVidia drivers are easier to install in Linux than ATI's which can be a pain to configure.
After assembling the PC, I fired it up and was surprised at how quiet the whole rig was despite my PC having a total of 5 fans (7 if you include the Zalman CPU fan and the second 90 mm fan of the Enermax PSU). I am using a Lian Li PC65 case (check my review of the PC65B) with 2 front fans which is controlled by a front mounted controller which I set to low. The 3 other fans (blowhole on top of the case, rear fan, and the second fan of the Power Supply Unit (PSU), I decided to attach to the motherboard supplied fan headers. When the CPU is not being stressed and temps are low, most of these fans rotate at less than 1300 RPM making for an ultra quiet PC. I have 2 other PCs enclosed in the same Lian Li PC65 case and these are very loud by comparison.
PERLK in action - Windows
Before going any further, let me comment on the Intel bundled software for this board. They are pretty good, notably the Windows based BIOS flasher. There is no need to download and create a bootable diskette with the BIOS in it. Just upgrade the BIOS from Windows... this works as I flashed the BIOS twice using this utility. Other motherboard software available are the "SoundMax" control center for the integrated audio, the sensors monitoring tool which places an icon on the system tray for easy access, and the Intel Desktop Control Center (IDCC) which is not in the bundle but is free for download off Intel's website. IDCC allows you to set temperatures at which the fans start spinning faster. IDCC also enables overclocking the CPU (max of 4%) via what is known as "burn-in" mode, and lets you change memory latencies. In short you can update BIOS parameters using a GUI tool in Windows... pretty neat.
A 4% increase in CPU speed is probably not enough for an avid overclocker but at least Intel is trying to please more folks with this board. In my case, I prefer stability over raw speed which means I don't overclock my boards.
I installed XP, applied the patches, flashed the BIOS to version P13 (later to P15) using Intel's Windows based utility, then installed 2 Games: me and my kids favorite Warcraft 3 and Far Cry. I downloaded the patches for the games and started playing. Warcraft was very smooth even if I had it serving the game and running a bot to make it so me and my 2 kids can play 2 vs 2 on the LAN.
I then fired up Far Cry... I decided to use "high" in all the quality settings and proceeded to play the game... WOW... these are the best graphics I have ever seen. The foilage in the jungle, the water, insects and birds flying around, not to mention fish under water, it's remarkable. Oftentimes I would just wander around savoring the high quality 3D environments. On my 2 other PCs (the aforementioned AMD powered A7N8X Deluxe, and an Intel 2.4 Ghz 533 Mhz FSB powered MSI PC, both with a Geforce 4200 Ti video cards), I can only set the quality to "medium" for Far Cry to be playable. At this setting, the quality is nowhere near, and the gameplay nowhere as smooth as what I can achieve with the PERLK. Obviously this is also due to the faster processor and faster video card but still...
Through out all these games, I noticed that the onboard sound was excellent (I have an Logitech Z-560 4.1 system hooked up to it)... at least as good as the Audigy 1 OEM card I had on my other Intel box. As I mentioned before, it supports EAX 2.0 which is what I used in the in-game sound settings.
I noted that the CPU would hit a maximum of 51 degrees Celcius while playing this game and that the fans would speed up to around 2000 RPM (compared to around 1300 RPM when the CPU is not under stress).
PERLK in action - Linux
After a few days of "burning in" the PC by playing games, I decided it was time to install Linux... Specifically the Mandrake 10 Powerpack distribution on the second hard drive. The install went smoothly and I was able to get to KDE (Mandrake's default GUI) with no problems at all. Most of the stuff I had connected/integrated to the motherboard including the Gigabit LAN was detected by Mandrake. Right away though I noticed that I was getting no sound. To make a long story short (and after a few hours of fiddling and googling for answers), I was not able to get the onboard sound working using Mandrake's default ALSA drivers. I also tried Intel's ALSA sound driver off their website but this too won't work.
Finally I decided to use Open Sound Systems (OSS) drivers from www.opensound.com. I finally got sound using these drivers after some trial and error. Whew, I really did not want to install a discrete sound card on this PC as I was very happy with the onboard sound when using it to play MP3 and OGG files and when playing games in Windows.
The sound coming from OSS was comparable in quality to the sound I was getting when inside XP. It only supports 2 channels though which is not a big problem for me as I don't usually play games in Linux... at least my MP3 and OGG files sound great.
Once I sorted out the sound problems, running Mandrake 10 which features the latest and greatest Linux 2.6 kernel was problem free. No lockups whatsoever and everything was very smooth and refined... much better than my experience with Mandrake 9.2 on my AMD/ASUS A7N8X Deluxe powered PC. Note that I am running the Symmetric Multi Processor (SMP) version of the kernel and this detects that I have hyperthreading enabled and shows 2 CPUs on the monitors. Within a few hours I was burning CDs and DVDs using the excellent K3B (www.k3b.org), watching DVDs using Totem, streaming video from the web using Real Player, and was even playing the 3D Open GL game TuxRacer. Note that the Mandrake 10 Powerpack edition bundles hundreds of Open Source applications and drivers including the nVidia 3D Accelerator driver, Real Player, Macromedia Flash, Adobe Acrobat reader, Java 2 Runtime Environment (J2RE), SpamAssasin, Apache, MySQL, PostgrSQL, etc. All these can be selected during the install so I did not have to go and hunt for them and install them separately.
I am so happy with this board that I am going to buy one more to replace the MSI board on my other P4 2.4 Ghz powered rig. With regards to the sound problems I initially encountered, I now think there is a way to enable ALSA sound on this board... basically completely un-install the old ALSA drivers (using Mandrake's Remove Package utility) and install the latest ones from ALSA itself (http://www.alsa-project.org).
Final Words
Newer and faster boards may be out but the D865 PERLK has had about a year to mature now making this a good choice for those looking to build a stable, solid PC to run Linux and/or Windows. The sensor controlled motherboard fan headers are an added bonus to those of us whose ears have grown weary of the constant drone of cooling fans for far too long.
Updates Aug 07, 2004 ======================================
Just installed and played Doom 3 on this PC. First of all, despite some negative comments about this game from certain sites and newsgroups, I must say this game is awesome. The graphics are even better than that of FarCry in my opinion.
The D865 PERLK with a 3 Ghz CPU coupled with the nVidia powered FX 5900XT video card handled Doom 3 just fine. I set the game to play at a resolution of 1024 X 768 with the graphics set to "High Quality" (one notch below the highest - Ultra). Game was definitely playable at this setting. I ran timedemo demo1 on the Doom 3 console and got a 32 fps on the first attempt, 36 fps on the second. Note that I am using the latest nVidia drivers (61.77) as older drivers (56.72) could only get me 24 fps.
The integrated (AD1985) sound using 5.1 surround setting via the SoundMax applet, was excellent. Note that Doom 3 does not use EAX and will play 5.1 audio only if you have it set to 5.1 via Windows (via SoundMax if you are using the integrated audio on a PERL motherboard). Even if you only have a 4.1 setup (like I do), you still need to set SoundMax to use 5.1 surround to enable the 5.1 audio in Doom 3. The sound coming from the rear speakers in Doom 3 helps you isolate the location of the enemy even if they can barely be seen in the perpetually dark environment.
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