MicroReview - BitFenix Prodigy Mini Tower

Disclaimer / warning: This review contains opinions. Also, if you're looking for a technical specification or unbiased information on how this piece of hardware actually fulfills it's duty, you won't likely find it here. But, if you are a system builder and would like a second opinion or hints on what to keep in mind when working with this specific component, look no further. :)

The BitFenix Prodigy is a case that comes in many colors. Including white, as was mine.

It is a mini-ITX case which looks a bit like a micro-ATX case with an eating disorder, but the real reason for its chubby look is that it actually houses the motherboard in a horizontal position. Which can be quite convenient in some situations. There are no usual rubbery legs on this one, but rather both the top and the bottom of the case have "handles" - soft plastic design elements. These make the case a bit wobbly and slidey on its legs, and probably don't function that well as lifting handles when the case is full of hardware. But from design perspective, the arches are "meh" enough to like the case.

From the back-side of the case you can see that the motherboard is positioned somewhere in the middle of the case vertically, with the power supply mounted below it. This leaves enough breathing space for the processor and the graphics card - and with a large back-mounted case fan, provides a reasonably good cooling solution. On the top of the case there's a removable grill for better cooling (and noise-making).

Besides the user guide, this is what you find in the package:

The case comes with a handful of screws and a USB 2.0 to USB 3.0 cable included. Just in case your motherboard does not have the modern USB 3.0 connector available. On the inside, there are several places where you can mount your HDDs and SSDs. Not only in the drive rack, but there are special mounting areas for 2.5'' drives on the "other" side panel.

When assembling (or finding suitable components for) the case, be aware that the power supply area might not suit that well for every PSU out there. Had some minor trouble fitting the cables of a Chieftec 450W power supply, for example. Luckily, there's enough room for bending and storing extra cabling, if needed.

Horizontal mounting of the motherboard can make it a bit easier to work with the case without having to turn it sideways, but with a case that small, getting access to the motherboard screw can be a bit difficult. So, either find a short screwdriver or one that can bend around corners.

Although the front panel for the case can be removed easily, be aware of the bezel for the optical drive. To remove it you HAVE to remove the whole front panel, as the bezel is attached with screws - rather than with pressure-fitted plastic pieces or any other non-breaky fixtures.

All in all, a cool and a bit unusual case to work with. Requires some fiddling and possibly some slightly fancier tools, but the end result looks really nice and clean.

Renaming multiple files in Windows Explorer

I've been a Windows user for 10+ years by now and only today seemed to accidentally want to rename a selection of multiple files in Windows Explorer. And, as it turns out, it's actually a feature. Known from ages ago. Fun.

MicroReview - Cooler Master Elite 343 Mini Tower Case

Disclaimer / warning: This review contains opinions. Also, if you're looking for a technical specification or unbiased information on how this piece of hardware actually fulfills it's duty, you won't likely find it here. But, if you are a system builder and would like a second opinion or hints on what to keep in mind when working with this specific component, look no further. :)

The Cooler Master Elite 343 is a lightweight aluminum mini-tower case that fits a microATX motherboard, all up to the maximum 244 mm depth. When unpacked, this is what the case looks like:

As additional packaging material, there are three small bags of screws included: 

• M3 screws (the ones with a tighter thread) - 16 pcs,
• 6-32 screws (round head) - 16 pcs, and
• 6-32-6 screws (hex head) - 17 pcs, 

plus a handful of cable ties and nine motherboard stand-offs. Also, a small buzzer (PC speaker) and a manual are included.

The front panel fingerprint-magnets are nicely covered with thin transparent film. The film is not in one piece, but rather in separate bits for each (re)movable surface it covers. This means that you can avoid removing the film until the last moment when your system is finished.

From behind, the case looks like this:

Pretty much a standard case layout, with a top-mounted power supply (not included). Both side panels are fixed with thumbscrews that are easy to remove. The side panels themselves are a bit tricky to fasten to the sides - as is often the case with softer panels - need to take care to make sure both the top and the bottom edge are properly fastened from each fastening point. On the back and the left side panel, there are mounting points for additional fans. Only the topmost cover for extension cards (the main PCIe slot, usually) is removable and re-attachable using a screw.

On the inside (at least in my case), the wiring for the front panel fan was really well hidden. Had to remove the motherboard-side panel to get to the wiring. Also, there's an interesting thumbscrew to fix the drive bay. As it turns out, the drive bay is removable - but to remove it, you would also need to unscrew four additional screws on the bottom of the case. Wouldn't recommend keeping them unscrewed though for convenience, since the drive bay adds a reasonable amount of strength to the otherwise soft aluminum case.

The front panel wiring does not have a universal plug and is provided as separate wires. In addition to the usual LEDs and switches, there are also a plug for HD audio, an AC'97 connector and one USB connector for the front-panel USB ports.

As mentioned before, the front panel features a case fan, with both a 4-pin HDD connector and a 3-pin fan connector available.

Installing the motherboard and a PSU to the case was a breeze, no problems encountered. The 5.25'' drives are made especially simple to install, with quick fasteners.

Installing a graphics card required a little bit of additional effort - some physical force was needed to fasten the metal panel of the extension card to the back-panel of the case. This was mostly due to the motherboard being mounted very closely to the edge of the case, which left not much room for maneuvering with the card itself.

All-in-all, a solid case with a reasonably small price tag. Not much to look at, but also not something you would need to hide from your friends and family. Easy to use and assemble if you're looking to build a simple microATX system.

MicroReview - Tacens RADIX ECO 500W PSU

Disclaimer / warning: This review contains opinions. Also, if you're looking for a technical specification or unbiased information on how this piece of hardware actually fulfills it's duty, you won't likely find it here. But, if you are a system builder and would like a second opinion or hints on what to keep in mind when working with this specific component, look no further. :)

From entry-level power supplies I considered for Machine #1, the Tacens RADIX ECO 500W PSU seemed to be the most interesting, promising to be quiet and eco-friendly, while being promoted on a Spanish-only website. What's not to like, eh?
Packaged in a pretty white box, you can find a black PSU with a large white fan:

Mounting this PSU into the case went as expected, size- and screw-wise a standard ATX PSU.

When mounting the unit to the top of a case, as you can see from the image above, the wire bundle exits the PSU from the open side of the case. For a person who's more familiar with Cooler Master or Corsair brands, this might seem a bit unorthodox. If you actually plan your cable management ahead, be aware of the fact.

The on-off switch for the unit has a really comfortable placement, especially when top-mounting the PSU. It can, however, make you a bit nervous while assembling, since the switch is really close to the top edge of the case.

The set of connectors provided with the PSU is decent enough if you're building a small system and are not planning to have a large number of hard drives, or high-end PCI(e) cards that require additional power. What you get with the 500W unit, are:

• a 20+4 pin motherboard connector,
• one 4-pin CPU power connector,
• two SATA power connectors,
• two 4-pin HDD connectors and
• one 4-pin FDD connector.

And this is what the unit looks like installed, including the fair warning: "Hazardous voltages contained within this power supply."

Detect file leaks in Java - the quick way

Sometimes you just can't be bothered to install a JVM profiler only to trace the files that have been opened by the piece of code you're debugging. As it turns out, there's a really nifty agent library available for tracing where, when and by which thread your JVM file descriptors have been opened - the File Leak Detector by Kohsuke Kawaguchi.
I've found it to be easiest to use the built-in HTTP server option:

java -javaagent:path/to/file-leak-detector.jar=http=19999 ...

... and then pointing your browser to 

http://[the machine's hostname or IP]:19999

You get a report that shows the file name, the thread responsible for opening the file (accompanied by the stack trace of the open call) and the timestamp of when the file was opened. Just lovely. 

MicroReview - MSI B75MA-E31 Motherboard

Disclaimer / warning: This review contains opinions. Also, if you're looking for a technical specification or unbiased information on how this piece of hardware actually fulfills it's duty, you won't likely find it here. But, if you are a system builder and would like a second opinion or hints on what to keep in mind when working with this specific component, look no further. :)

MSI B75MA-E31, it's the one with solid capacitors. A micro-ATX motherboard, with an LGA1155 socket for your Intel CPUs. This is what it looks like fully clothed:

(1) - Friendly GUI should really be named "awesome GUI". Essentially, it has an old-school Phoenix BIOS - looking tabbed GUI interface, with tons of options to configure and mouse support. Fun!

The box contains just the motherboard, a disc with chipset drivers on it, a back-panel for an ATX case, an installation guide and two SATA cables, which also makes the box surprisingly small, even for a micro-ATX board.

When unpacked, this is what the board looks like:

... and with some additional views:

A few things to note here:

• There's just one SATA III connector. This is stated in the tech specs as well, but if you're planning on building a fast software RAID array on top of this board (and you like to do it eyes closed), you might be out of luck.
• There's a good-old PCI socket available, which means you can hook some older hardware on the board as well.
• The auxiliary CPU power input and the main power supply socket are quite far away from each other. There's likely a good technical reason for that in terms of electrical engineering, but just make sure that the power cables from the PSU can bend that way.
• The pin set for front-panel connectors might not exactly match what's described in the "quick installation guide". Although the main pins, such as HDD LED, power switch, reset switch and power LED work fine, pins for SLED and PLED did not seem to be where shown in the guide.

When installing the motherboard, take note of the screw hole layout on this board. The bottom ones are not aligned into a rectangle, but rather with a wider distance between the front holes (H and R, in terms of the microATX standard). Or don't, and end up like I did:

The rear panel looks simple and clear, probably just a bit hard to see in low light, because of embossed markings.

Just try to make sure that all of the thin metal edges around the sockets have been bent properly before installing the board. Otherwise, you'll end up with this:

All in all, MSI B75MA-E31 is a lovely little motherboard to work with, as long as you're satisfied with a basic set of features and a small price tag.

MicroReviews on hardware

As an attempt to reboot the blog, I will attempt to create a few tiny reviews a month on different computer hardware I like to play around with. Since for every piece there are probably metric tons of performance-, price- and other important-things-related-reviews available, I will most likely be focusing on how the pieces might impact someone who's building a computer (i.e. before the PC is booted up for the first time).