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).

A well-written book on producing Open Source

Due to a recently found interest in applying open source project management ideas in a closed commercial software development environment, I started reading a great (and free!) online book - Producing Open Source Software by Karl Fogel. Although not exactly a "new" book, it still contains a lot of fresh ideas and field experience on producing OSS.

Rubber duck debugging revisited

I have always enjoyed thinking out loud - especially when thinking about complex technical problems, but have never given much attention to this process until a colleague of mine pointed out a catchy term (which for some unknown reason I wasn't aware of) for this process - Rubber Duck Debugging. Other (common?) variations of this are the Cardboard Programmer and the Cone of Answers. Here are a few more patterns I thought of naming (haven't tried them all in real life, though):

Preschool debugging

Goal: To have a more interactive communication experience as compared to a cutout or a ducky.
Method: You need to have really good relations with a colleague's preschool kid for this. Or better yet, to have your own offspring ready for action. Take a 3-5 year old kid to your computer and start explaining the piece of software you're working on. Use domain-specific language as you please. Continue until you get tired of the why-questions or one of you gets cranky. Don't be surprised if it is you - the little devils can be quite persistent.

Grandmother debugging

Goal: To explain the software details in non-domain specific terminology.

Method: Similar to preschool debugging, but "use" a foreigner to the domain of your software solution. Bonus points for actually employing a grandmother. Try to explain the software in terms that the foreigner would understand. Use analogies, if needed - extra bonus points for applying sewing or knitting terminology in case of thread management issues.

Blind man debugging

Goal: To find lack of coherence in a user interface design.

Method: Take a "blind" subject - a person that has never seen the user interface you have designed, give the subject a piece of paper and a pen. Take a usage scenario to be executed on the interface and describe the user interface elements to the subject. Let the subject draw the UI elements in the execution order of the flow, eyes closed. Take the drawing and compare it to the described design - UI elements that are most inaccurately positioned compared to the original are probably the hardest to find for a regular user. (Haven't tried this one - just based on a hunch)