Build a low budget computer meant for 24/7 operation.

Sometimes you need a machine you can trust to be on for many days at a time. But you're not looking to invest into a server grade build, nor do you need exceptional performance. Let's say it's supposed to run a script or a process, constantly. For example - a DVR server.
In this case you need to optimize your configuration for durability. So to start - we need a nice ventilated chassis. If budget is not unlimited, then a basic well ventilated chassis will do.

Motherboard - We need the motherboard as cheap and as durable for the price as possible. So a good idea is to look through motherboard vendor lineups - go to the cheapest model and then raise the bar till you reach a model with all solid capacitors. For example - currently (end of 2014) Asus has the H81 series motherboards, and one of the cheapest is H81M-K. It however does not have all solid capacitors, so if we take the next model, right above this one - it will be H81M-A - which does offer an all solid capacitor configuration, and is only slightly more expensive.

CPU - if you're not looking for high performance, I would suggest a simple Intel CPU, such as currently Haswell based Pentium Dual core series. They are cheap and bear the Intel quality standard.
You can also go with a T series Intel CPU which consumes the least power.

RAM - again something that is of acceptable quality but not gamer grade. A built in heat-sink is always a plus. As an example - Corsair CMV4GX3M1A1600C11

Hard Drive - This is where you need to invest a bit more into a drive made for 24/7 operation, such as Western Digital Caviar Red made for RAID, NAS and 24 hour operation. Similar models from other manufacturers include Seagate Surveillance HDD or Toshiba High Durability Specialty drives.

PSU - A great way to provide stable power to a long running machine is to go with a good power supply unit that you can trust. Some even come with a built in surge protector. Also make sure you get a PSU with an 80Plus rating, which means it wastes less power. A good example of an affordable 80Plus PSU is Corsair VS350

Asus H81M-K network disconnections - solved.

You are experiencing random Ethernet problems on a machine based on this motherboard, i.e - disconnections (cable unplugged even though it's plugged in, cable not detected as plugged in), limited connectivity, or sometimes even the connection seems stable (network cable recognized, IP address is correct) - there are still internet connection or LAN connection issues. The reason may be related the faulty NIC driver that comes with this motherboard.

The best way to stabilize your on-board NIC (Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller) performance is to downloaded the latest driver from Asus, and after it's installed do the following:

• Go into Device Manager and double click your NIC card in the list of devices.
• In the Power Management tab - untick the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" option.
• In the Advanced tab - Disable "Energy Effecient Ethernet" and "Green Ethernet"

This works for other motherboards that share the Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller.

Optimize QNAP NAS security

In this post I will talk about tweaking your QNAP NAS device to be more secure than it's configured by default.
I'm going to assume that the main settings of user and folder structure have been configured at this point, and you're good to go, but you'd like to maximize security for the NAS using the built in features.

As a side note - I am using QOS firmware version 4.1.0 to demonstrate the features depicted in this post.

Let's start by enabling SSL for the web management console of the NAS.

You can force secure connection so there would be no other way but to connect securely to the web console, but if something goes wrong (with the SSL certificate) - you may not be able to log onto the web console. So pick the right option for yourself.
By default, the NAS will use a self generated SSL certificate, it is also possible to upload and utilize a third party SSL certificate, which can come from a verified provider.
The certificate and the private key both can be uploaded inside the Security > Certificate & Private Key tab.

Now we can set up email alerting. I believe that email alerts are a very practical way of staying up to date on server's health and security issues. This can be done under the Notification section, First set up the SMTP server, I suggest using Gmail, as its configuration is already built into the console, and Gmail provides a very stable and free email service, so if you don't already use Gmail, you may want to create an account specifically for this server alerting system. Put in your Gmail address and password, and hit the "Send a Test Email" button to see if you can receive email alerts from the server. If you can't - your network hardware maybe blocking it. so it's something you should look into. Open outbound SMTP SSL ports in your router/gateway, for example.
Once the test email arrives, you need to set the server to send you email alerts to your preferred email address, this is done in the Alert Notification tab.
Check the "Send system error alert by: Email" and "Send system warning alert by: Email", and make sure to enter your target email address(es) under "Email Notification Settings". If you don't set this up - you will not receive alerts to your email address.
Once done, hit the Apply All button on the bottom of the page.

Now, I should mention that if your NAS server is planned to be accessible remotely - be it via VPN, FTP, or you would simply like to remotely administer it using the web console - there will be constant hack attempts coming from the Internet. Most of the time these are not targeted at your server specifically but rather automated by certain malicious machines online to try and guess the username and password of a NAS or any other protected machine that is accessible remotely. So to get rid of that potential threat to the data and stability of your NAS we need to set the server to automatically ban or block IPs that are trying to hack your device. The feature that controls this is located under Network Access Protection inside the Security section of the web console.

First tick the box "Enable Network Access Protection", and then configure protocols for which the server will monitor access attempts and react accordingly.
I usually prefer setting the connection methods shown in the screen-grab. Note that SAMBA and AFP are not monitored as they are local connection types and may interfere with your users' access stability. You don't have to block the offending IPs forever, you can just ban their access temporarily, but I see no reason to do that as they will continue right on trying to penetrate your network after they are unblocked.
Once done, make sure to hit Apply or Apply All.
This feature was introduced after version 3.8.0 so if your NAS is running an older firmware version - maybe it is time to update.

Another important issue to consider is evaluating the connection methods that are open in your NAS.
If you don't plan to administer the NAS via SSH - do turn it off, because a lot of hack attempts will come via SSH. SSH is enabled by default, so it may be a good idea to turn it off to raise the level of security.
To disable SSH and/or FTP, go into the Network Services section and disable the unnecessary connection methods.

Finally, you may want to enable logging of file usage on your NAS. This can also tell you about internal users' actions in detail, as well as log incoming hack attempts. This is done in System Connection Logs under System Logs. Click the Options button and check all of the connection methods relevant to your situation. Make sure to check SAMBA to monitor the local users' connections. Once your log fills up to 10,000 events - you can automatically dump it into a CSV file onto one of the shared folders. You can create a protected log folder that only you as the admin have the access to, and point the CSV file creation there.

It is worth mentioning that QNAP NAS comes with an internal antivirus feature that is disabled by default, so if you want the NAS to scan the files that it hosts you can enable the Antivirus application (located under the Applications section on the bottom of the console), you can schedule scan jobs and automatic definition updates here as well.

New USB devices or existing devices stop working in Windows 7/8

Recently I started noticing a widespread problem with certain machines not being able to accept new USB devices or they would have certain existing devices stop working (driver-wise). This may be related to a certain PUP called SafetyNut that is a subapplication that comes with Ask.fm toolbar.

If you are unable to use any new USB devices that your computer hasn't recognized before, or suddenly things like your lan or w-lan card stop working and have a driver problem inside the device manager - it may be due to the aforementioned problem.

The simple way to resolve this is to uninstall the Ask.fm toolbar.

A more thorough solution would be to run a malware cleaner, and disable the SafetyNut service (yes it actually runs as a service, which is recognized as a malicious service), clean the discovered PUPs and uninstall the Ask.fm toolbar.

Build an energy efficient computer

Here I will show a sample configuration of an energy efficient workstation.

This build, in my view, will provide power efficiency and stability as well as good performance.

PSU - Any 80 Plus (and up - such as Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Titanium)
Top brands include: Corsair, Seasonic, Cooler Master, Thermaltake, Antec and others.
I would recommend Corsair AX series power supply (rated 80 Plus Platinum) as it would waste the least power.

CPU - Any Intel 4th Generation CPU which model ends on T.
I recommend i7-4765T as its TDP is at 35W. So at its full power it won't go beyond 35 watts.

Motherboard - Leading low watt brands include Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte and Asrock. A gaming motherboard will typically consume much more power than a mini-ITX motherboard.
I recommend Asus Z87i-PRO - good performance and low power.

RAM - There is a low voltage type of DDR3 called DDR3L which uses less power, also emits less heat. Brands include Kingston HyperX Lovo or Genesis and Adata XPG, among others.
I recommend Kingston HyperX LoVo - Kingston's special line of low voltage ram.

Hard Drive - Western Digital Caviar Green or Seagate Barracuda LP for HDD, Samsung 840 Series for SSD.
I would recommend a Samsung 840 EVO or PRO series drive.

Optical Drive - most optical disc drives are the same power, however a slim drive version will consume less power than the standard version.

Monitor - Any LED backlit LCD monitor, preferably with high Energy Star compliance. The smaller the size of the screen - the lower the power consumption. Here's a list of 18-22 inch monitors and their wattage.

Turn an IBM X3100 M4 Server into a workstation.

This is a neat little server that comes from IBM that officially doesn't support Windows 7. In this post I will guide you through making it run Windows 7 using the built in LSI Raid controller and a RAID mode.
If you decide to use AHCI mode however, it becomes easier (as it is supported by Windows 7), but you will be missing a performance (or stability) increase you'll get with the RAID.

The LSI raid controller on this server does not have drivers that support Windows 7 - only Windows Server 2008 (R2). There's also a great many driver packages available from IBM for this controller, so choosing the right one is quite time consuming. After 4 different failed driver packages I finally found the right one that would enable the RAID controller inside the Windows 7 installation PE. I have uploaded it HERE.
Just unrar and copy it onto a flash drive and browse to it during the installation (when it fails to find any hard disks).

Once the system finishes installing - most of the drivers will be installed, the only ones that won't be are the Chipset and the onboard video (Matrox G200ER2). Download the driver for it here.
Chipset drivers are available here.

How to optimize Windows 7 for an SSD drive

As some of you may know, an SSD drive has a limited lifespan of around 100-1000 written terabytes (here's an interesting link that shows some statistics on SSD lifespans). Therefore it is best practice to minimize the amount of data written daily onto it, especially if it's a system disk.

Here I will show how to move the most data intensive system folders to another drive, and to tweak the system to write less onto your SSD operating system drive, under Windows 7.

It is important to note that if you care about the lifespan of your SSD drive, it is always a good idea to have an additional drive in your configuration (another (less valuable) SSD or another HDD drive) to store your user files and to minimize the load on the main SSD drive.

First we start by moving the default pagefile to your other drive's partition by going into Start > right click on Computer > Properties > Advanced System Settings > Advanced (tab) > Under "Performance" click on Settings > Advanced (tab) >  Click on "Change" under Virtual Memory. This will open a new window called "virtual memory" where "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" will be checked. Uncheck the box near that sentence and click on your system partition shown in the list of all partitions. Now click on "No Paging File" radio button and click on "Set". This will remove the pagefile from your system partition. Now, some people who have 16GB RAM or more in their machine leave Windows running without a pagefile, but I do not recommend it because some problems may happen, such as when explorer.exe suddenly bloats to over 15GB of RAM.
Now click on a different partition (located on your other drive) and click on "System managed size" radio button, and click on "Set" to enable it. Click OK and restart your system. Once you boot back, you will see that your system partition has more free space than before, on the account of us moving the pagefile to another partition.

Next we should disable Hibernation, which also create a temp file on your system partition (which CANNOT be moved) called hiberfil.sys. We do this by going into command prompt in elevated mode and running:

powercfg.exe /hibernate off

This will immediately disable hibernation and erase the hiberfil.sys file. If you must put the computer to sleep - use sleep mode if your motherboard supports it correctly, or simply turn off your machine. Your SSD is fast enough to boot real quick with no need for sleep mode.

Next - we move on to the system's temp folder, user's temp folder and temporary internet files.

First off, we should create a main temp folder on the secondary hard drive. Let's call it MainTemp. Inside it - create a folder for the system's temp files, let's call it SysTemp. Now for the user's temp files - UserTemp.

To change the system's and user's default temp folder location go into Start > right click on Computer > Properties > Advanced System Settings > Advanced (tab) > Environment Variables...
Here you will see two fields that show User Variables and System Variables. User variables will usually only cover TMP and TEMP entries, which you should both change to the path you crated on that other drive to the user's temp folder that we called UserTemp.
In the system variables, scroll down to the same TEMP and TMP entries, and change their paths both to the new folder we've created on the other drive, called SysTemp.
So if the other drive's partition is D, then the user's TMP and TEMP should point to D:\MainTemp\UserTemp
And the system's TMP and TEMP should point to D:\MainTemp\SysTemp.

After restarting, these changes should be enacted.

Now, we move on to the Temporary Internet Files.

With Internet Explorer it's quite easy to change the temp folder location.
First we should add another folder under our MainTemp folder on the secondary drive, let's call it IETemp.

Then, go into IE, click on the Alt button on the keyboard, this will bring up the menus. Click on Tools, Internet Options, under Browsing History click on Settings, click on Move Folder and navigate to the newly created temp folder on that other drive. Click on OK, it will ask you to save new location and reboot, click on Yes, and the computer will reboot.

Google Chrome however does not let the user easily change the location of the temp folder.
Let's again create a new temp folder for Chrome on our secondary drive, let's call it ChromeTemp under Maintemp.

What we have to do is create a shortcut to Chrome on the desktop (if it's not already there), and right click it and choose Properties. This will bring up a window with the shortcut settings. In the "Target" field we have to add a command that will point Chrome to the new temp folder we created earlier.
The existing path is something like this:

"C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"

We want to change it to:

"C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.e­xe" --disk-cache-dir="D:\MainTemp\ChromeTemp"

Click OK to save the new shortcut changes.

So now using this new shortcut - Chrome will store all the temporary files on the secondary drive.

Hopefully these tweaks should free up more space on your SSD and let it live longer.

How much power does my computer consume?

This is a very interesting question that is becoming more current with all the green power awareness nowadays.

In average, an office desktop workstation will consume 130 to 175 watts per hour. That includes the PC (with a 65w based CPU, HDD drive and a basic video card) and a 40 watt LCD monitor.
The consumption is quite variable because the CPU consumes power based on its load, so at near 95% of CPU load this kind of station will consume around 175 watts, and when idle - it goes down to 130 watts. The monitor also varies in power consumption based on the backlight luminance, so at max luminance this monitor will consume 40 watts.

But does the station consume any power when in sleep mode or powered off completely? Yes it does. The PC itself may consume around 6-7 watts when turned off but plugged in (some motherboards power off completely, while others still provide +5V to USB ports). Same goes for the monitor in standby mode (3-6 watts).

Now, what is important when choosing or building a computer that is energy efficient?

First we start with the CPU, which are currently Haswell based CPUs by Intel, or Piledriver based Richland CPUs by AMD.
The lowest power consuming models of these CPUs (35-45watts) will have the letter T at the end of the model name (i.e. Pentium G3420T by Intel or A10-6700T by AMD).

Power Supply Unit - Power supply quality matters when we're talking about power efficiency, because a lot of energy is wasted when the PSU converts AC to DC necessary to power the computer.  So the better the PSU quality - the less power will be consumed. A good indication of power supply quality is the 80 Plus certification.

Motherboards - regular motherboards usually consume less power than high-end ones because they have less features (slots, ports, etc). Some motherboard manufacturers provide power saving technology built into their products such as Gigabyte's Dynamic Energy Saver or Asus' EPU technology.

Video cards - a video card is usually necessary for gaming or advanced image processing (CAD, 3D or video editing), and usually is power consuming, so unless there's a specific need for it - it may not be used.

Hard Drive - SSD drives consume about 70% less power than HDD drives. However, some energy efficient HDD drives will spin down when idle (such as the Green drives by WD), so that is a plus when building an energy efficient workstation.

Optical Drive - DVD drives generally consume a bit less power than Blu-Ray drives. An external USB optical drive may be used when necessary.

Cooling - A low power CPU will require less cooling, however cooling fans are not very power consuming, generally 1-6 watts.

Monitor - LED backlight based monitors generally consume less power (over 50%) than conventional LCD monitors, so replacing an older LCD monitor with a new LED based LCD monitor may be a good idea.

Speakers - Unless sound quality is of high importance, it might be quite efficient to use USB powered speakers, not only to use one less power socket, but also to save power by having small speakers that do not have their own power supply that wastes power.

So, to summarize - the most energy efficient component replacements are CPU, PSU, hard disk (SSD), and the monitor.

Click HERE for a sample configuration of an energy efficient station.