Replacing Fans Core i5 vs. Core i7 OwnCloud Woes

Cooler Fans

Zak’s piece on his upgrade build had me reading it at least six times to make sure I learned all there was to be learned (“The Ultimate Upgrade,” Feb 2017, pg. 68). There was one confusing part, though: I could not tell if he replaced the very good stock fans on the new NZXT Kraken cooler with Corsair MLs, or if he added them to the inside of the radiator, meaning the radiator would have four fans in push- pull. I can’t tell if the two stock fans are there on the front of the case, or if he discarded them and replaced them with the Corsair MLs.

For a new builder, fan placement and control is very confusing.

My first build is about to be the Kaby Lake i7-7700K, Be Quiet! Dark Base Pro 900, and I just switched the cooler from the Corsair H115 to the NZXT Kraken X62, which he loved in his build ( you used the 52, but also said 240 radiators now had less appeal, and suggested 280 radiators, with 140 fans). I’m also using the MSI GeForce 1080 Seahawk X GPU, which has a radiator and included Corsair fan.

That means I have three brands of new PWM LED fans to deal with: the three Be Quiet! fans on the case, the Corsair fan on the GPU radiator, and two NZXT fans on the Kraken cooler. All of these stock fans are LED and PWM. I was tempted to change them for matching Corsair MLs with white LEDs, but decided not to. Zak added two Corsair fans to the inside of the Kraken radiator. Did he replace the two stock fans on the Kraken radiator with the two Corsair MLs, or are there four fans in push- pull? REVIEWS EDITOR ZAK STOREY RESPONDS: The fan situation was a mixed bag. I knew I wanted to use Corsair’s ML120s, because I wasn’t massively fond of Corsair’s old- school SP series, due to the excessive noise they produced. The ML120s drop well below 500rpm, and produce Noctua- rivaling figures, so they were definitely my preference.

Originally, due to the lack of available airflow in the S340 Elite, I intended to run the Kraken X52 in a push- pull configuration, like you said. I actually went out and bought another two ML120 Pros—but just the standard ones. Theory being, I could place them in push configuration, at the front of the radiator, out of sight, and then have the LED variants pulling air through, while on display.

Unfortunately, the cable tidy bar NZXT includes stops you from installing an additional pair of fans inside the chassis, because the bar sticks out at an odd angle at the top, preventing the radiator or fans coming back any further. On top of that, you can’t mount them outside the chassis in the inch of space given by the front panel for airflow, as you’ll suffocate them, and there’s also the magnetic dust filter in the way, too.

I’m a bit particular when it comes to cooling, and prefer all the fans to be the same model, as (I like to tell myself) it gives me a greater understanding of the noise and airflow I’m passing through the system. I also love consistency when it comes to aesthetic decisions like that. So, I’m not actually using push- pull, but if I could, I would.

Apples and Oranges

On page 53 of the February issue, the table says the Core i5-7600 is 31 percent faster than the Core i7-7700T (3.8 versus 2.9Hz). This surprised me. A few years ago, I got a Core i7 with a Lenovo T440P, and was never that impressed with the speed. I just assumed it would be faster and better than any Core i5. Now I’m confused about what to buy when I next upgrade in a year or two. I’m a business user, with some heavy computing with Visio plugins, running semantic web inference engines, and I use Lightroom a fair bit, but no video editing. I’m not a gamer. The last game I played was Q-Bert at a grocery store in 1980. I got addicted and quit, cold turkey. EXECUTIVE EDITOR ALAN DEXTER RESPONDS: The frequency of a processor shouldn’t be confused with its performance. A singlecore CPU running at 5GHz will be thrashed in most metrics by a quad- core chip running at 2.5GHz. Generational improvements can also be a factor— a modern chip running at the same frequency as an older model will outperform it, especially with laptops— a lot of Intel’s advances have focused on mobile.

As far as your specific comparison goes, it is a bit

more complex, because you’re pitching a fullfledged desktop Core i5 (the 7600K has a TDP of 91W) against a low- power Core i7 (the 7700T has a TDP of just 35W). So while the Core i57600K does run at 3.8GHz, and the Core i7-7700T runs at 2.9GHz, they’re designed with very different uses in mind—the Core i7 can be found in tiny NUC- sized machines, while the 7600K is for more bullish systems.

Given what you use your machine for, though, I’d recommend a top- end Core i7, although which particular model you go for depends on what machine you’re looking to buy—your options for laptops are more limited by thermals than what you’ll see in desktops, and some of Intel’s naming conditions can be confusing (the Core i7- 6500U, for instance, only has two cores), so it pays to look at the details.

Raspberry Cloud

I am having trouble with the “Create a Pi Cloud with OwnCloud” feature from the November issue, and have spent hours trying to figure out issues on my own. I am having trouble installing OwnCloud (the current version is now 9.1.3). Yes, I did read the update in the “Letters” of the magazine’s Holiday 2016 issue.

Here is where I am stuck: sudo chown -R www-data: /var/www/ html/owncloud/ {apps, config, themes, updater, .user.ini} chown: cannot access ‘/ var/ www/ html/owncloud/apps’: No such file or directory EXECUTIVE EDITOR ALAN DEXTER RESPONDS: There’s no doubting the appeal of running your own cloud server, but getting a server up and running isn’t always easy. Even with a detailed tutorial that runs through the main installation, there’s going to be problems—in order for it to work, there are certain dependencies that need to be sorted, such as a working database to operate from, a web server to integrate with, and a whole host of permissions to sort out.

While it looks like it’s file ownership that has tripped you up, the fact that you’re getting a “No such file or directory” error suggests it’s the previous step that has failed. Just to recap the process: You need to download the latest version of OwnCloud from https:// owncloud.org/install, making sure you get the OwnCloud server build, the one that has the “tar. bz2” extension. Next, go into a terminal window, and make your way to wherever you’ve downloaded it, then unpack that tarball with:

Make sure the files are unpacked by browsing to / var/ www/ html/, and making sure there is an “owncloud” directory, and $ sudo tar -C /var/www/ html -xf owncloud-9.1.3.tar.bz2 there are files inside it. Only then can you change the ownership of those files.

We ran through the whole tutorial again, just to make sure (using a laptop running Ubuntu 16.04, which forced us to do a few things differently), but it definitely does work. So keep going, and good luck!

Not an Upgrade

I do not agree with the fuss Alan Dexter made about Windows 10 activation, and, based on Windows 10 licensing, I don’t believe he was eligible for activation of Windows 10 on his computer.

What he describes as an upgrade is really a new PC. So, to expect Microsoft to recognize that he had done a simple upgrade to his PC is ridiculous. There was nothing left in the machine to identify the old computer.

It is also obvious that he was basing his complaint on an OEM license, which is not transferable to a new computer. The idea that he considered this an upgrade is baffling. I have done upgrades with a fresh install of Win 10 without a key, and Win 10 activated automatically because it recognized the computer.

Your magazine caters to advanced computer users, and your readers expect advanced technical info and advice. EXECUTIVE EDITOR ALAN DEXTER RESPONDS: We’ve upgraded lots of machines without issue here on MaximumPC, but that wasn’t the point of my rant— it was the fact that the process can go wrong, and when it does, it’s frustrating. For instance, when you say, “there was nothing in the machine to identify the old computer,” I assume we have to ignore the SSD? Or the fact that said installation was tied to a Microsoft Live account?

Just to reiterate why I had to upgrade in the first place, it wasn’t on a whim; it was because the motherboard had failed. And as a seasoned upgrader, you’ll know that when your motherboard dies, it isn’t always easy to find direct replacements, so before you know it, you’re looking at a major overhaul. There’s nothing in the Microsoft licensing agreement that prevents this, at least on a full or upgrade license. As you say, an OEM license does prevent certain upgrades (and, indeed, direct technical support), but that wasn’t the case here—something underlined by fact that the machine was activated after talking to a support engineer.

While you may not agree with the fuss I made, and it may not line up with your experiences, highlighting problems where they exist, and making our readers aware of potential problems (and their solutions) is part of what we do here on MaximumPC.