oO.o’s Workstation Build

oO.o · July 23, 2018, 4:32am

My Workstation

I recently got my workstation to a nice point and thought I would provide a detailed account of the parts I used to put it all together.

I have 2 earlier posts about this. One on how to mount the racks under the desk, and one speculating on the 1U workstation build.

Purpose

This workstation is mainly intended for IT admin and programming. I wanted something that was nice to look at (and listen to) and completely self-contained. I feel I have accomplished this with minimal compromise.

This is not a budget build by any means. I’d say it strikes a balance between form and function, possibly erring on the side of form.

Parts

Structural

Desk: Evo Desk

30x63" Dark Bamboo Top
Silver legs
Programmable Memory
Silver Cable Management Tray
Casters

Standing Mat: Imprint CulumusPro

Racks: StarTech Vertical Racks

2x 4U
1x 6U
See earlier post for mounting hardware and instructions

Speaker Stands

Rack Components (Left)

Surge Protector: CyberPower CPS1215RMS

UPS: CyberPower OR500LCDRM1U

Drawer: NavePoint Lockable Deep Drawer 2U

Rack Components (Middle)

Receiver: Denon AVR-3313CI

Headphones: Mediocre Ones from 10 Years Ago

Rack Components (Right)

Shelf: 1U Rack Shelf (Permanently Borrowed from Job Site)

KVM: Level1Techs Dual Monitor KVM

Keystone Patch Panel: Tripp Lite 16-Port Keystone Blank Patch Panel

7x USB 3.0 Keystone Jacks: Poyiccot Female to Female USB 3.0 Adapters
1x USB 2.0 Keystone Jack: Poyiccot Female to Female USB 2.0 Adapters
1x USB C Keystone Jack: Poyiccot Female to Female USB C 3.1 Adapters
2x HDMI 2.0 Keystone Jacks: RiteAV Female to Female HDMI 2.0 Keystone Adapters
2x Cat6A Keystone Jacks: Monoprice Cat6A Keystone Jack
2x Mini Displayport Keystone Jacks: Tripp Lite Female to Femaile Mini Displayport Adapters
1x 1/8"/Minijack Keystone Jack (I can’t find where I purchased this, but I paid much less for it than this listing)

1/3rd U Rack Vent: AllMetalParts.com

1U Workstation

Case: Supermicro SuperChassis 510-203B
Motherboard: Supermicro X11SSL-F
Additional Intake Fan: Supermicro FAN-0100L4
Additional Exhaust Fan: Noctua NF-A4x20 FLX (I bought the 3-pin on accident, meant to get the 4-pin)
CPU: Intel E3-1230v6
Heatsink: Dynatron K129
2x 8GB 2400 ECC UDIMM: 1CA79AA-MB
PCI-E Riser: Supermicro RSC-RR1U-E16
GPU: Radeon Pro WX 5100
2x SATA DOMs: Supermicro 128GB SuperDOM
Dust Filter: PVCM-30

Misc Desk

USB 3 Hub: StarTech 4-Port Industrial USB 3.0 Hub

Managed Gigabit Switch: Ubiquiti Unifi Switch 8

Peripherals

Monitor: LG 43UD79-B

Monitor Arm: Humanscale M8 (Dual Mount Clamp & Bolt-Through, Black, Fixed Angled/Dynamic, Standard Ball Joint, Drop-Down Vesa Plate)
Vesa Mount: Mount World 1056 Vesa 200 x 200 Adapter
Backlight: Solmore LED Grow Light Strips

Keyboard: Lenovo SK-8855

Mouse: 3Dconnexion CadMouse

Mouse Pad: 3Dconnexion CadMouse Pad

Speakers: JBL S38s (1st Production Run, Made in USA)

USB to SPDIF Converter: Phiree U2S

Desk Light: OttLite (~10 Years old)

iPad 2: Old

Laptop

Macbook Air: Who cares?

Stand: Rain Design mStand 360
Dock: Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock

Cable Management

Lots of Velcro

Challenges

Heat/Sound

Going into this, I knew that the 1U form factor would involve noticeable fan noise. I live on a busy street and I have a window A/C unit directly behind the desk, so complete silence is pointless, but I did want to minimize the fan noise as much as possible. I did 2 things to accomplish this.

Fans

I added 2 fans. The case came with 2 intake fans and a blank space for a third. I added the third and also hot-glued a Noctua to exhaust in the back. The primary purpose of the noctua was not to increase raw airflow, but to direct more airflow to the GPU, as the 3 intake fans only targeted the CPU and RAM.

Delid/Liquid Metal

I thought that delidding the CPU and adding liquid metal would mitigate fan noise by increasing the rate at which heat was dissipated. I used Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut and the Der8auer delidding tool.

CPU delidded and ready for liquid metal

CPU with liquid metal in the socket.

This was also why I purchased the copper heatsink instead of using the stock aluminum one from Supermicro (liquid metal is incompatible with aluminum heatsinks).

I had initially intended to leave the IHS off completely, but unfortunately, one of the capacitors on the board was too tall to allow this. I applied some thermal compound to it to see if it was making contact with the heat sink. You can see where it touched.

I re-attached the IHS, but with liquid metal both between the die and IHS and between the IHS and heat sink.

Fan noise was noticeably lower. Even under synthetic loads, the fans never reached full speed. During regular use, the fans remain at or near idle.

Dust

I cut a piece of dust filter for the intake to reduce cat hair/sawdust from getting into the system. Based on how much it has caught, I’d say this was a good precaution to take.

Future Plans

“Brand New Model F Keyboard” has been paid for and is eagerly awaited
Additional monitor?
Have heatsink drilled to allow for IHS removal?
Decent headphones + bracket?
Balance board?

Misc

Old Components

Several components are things I already had and may or may not be ideal if you were building this from scratch. These include:

iPad
Speakers
Receiver
Drawer
Shelf
Power Strip
Thunderbolt Dock

All questions welcome! All this required a good amount of research and trial/error, so if my efforts can be of help, please let me know.

Justatree · July 23, 2018, 10:07am

How do you live with this at your knees? Unless you only stand when at your desk

anon79053375 · July 23, 2018, 11:27am

The greatest detail left a mystery…

What distro?

Looks like a badass setup. Is the KVM to go between the Apple and your workstation or is there something else there?

oO.o · July 23, 2018, 1:59pm

I stand 99% of the time, but the desk is deep enough that my knees don’t hit the receiver when sitting.

I also generally use the IR remote when I want to control the receiver. The only reason I ever have to reach down there is to plug in headphones.

The mini jack plug in the keystone panel originally was an extension for the headphones but the receiver shuts off the power amps completely when anything is plugged into the headphone jack, so I changed it to just be an Aux input.

Distro is Solus. Not suitable for everyone, but I like the edge kernel, rolling release and custom gnome without customizing gnome.

KVM switches between the Supermicro and the laptop via thunderbolt dock. There are also 2 sets of inputs in the keystone panel (Mini DisplayPort + USB). All are 4k60hz, except the thunderbolt dock is gen 1 so it goes at 30hz.

The dock was not an original part of the plan, but the DisplayPort over thunderbolt on Macs is out of spec and has issues with the KVM. Whenever I upgrade the laptop, I’ll get a t3 dock to fix this.

anon79053375 · July 23, 2018, 2:02pm

If you’re going to do rolling, that’s the way to go

Incredible setup. I am definitely reconsidering my build at the moment. I’ve been eying that L1T KVM for a while, and I think you’ve convinced me the true way. Currently I swivel between two sets of monitors/keyboards/and mouse units.

Great write up! Looks incredibly productive. Glad to see you got the books, too (Can’t remember if I confirmed with you or not)

oO.o · July 23, 2018, 3:03pm

Had some growing pains in 4.15 (and even 4.16) kernel with all the AMDGPU overhaul stuff, but it’s solid now. Used to have noticeable tearing, but now it’s as smooth as the mac.

I like it a lot. Don’t under estimate the bulk of cables involved though. I couldn’t really find a good way to photograph it, but the sheer volume of cables velcro’d under that desk is insane.

Also, that 3Dconnexion mouse is the best mouse I’ve ever used for productivity. Great control. Not the best for gaming, but very smooth for general use (nice in Blender for instance).

Thanks! I did get the books, thanks for sending them. I intended to reach out, but you were MIA at the time.

Token · July 23, 2018, 4:12pm

Come to the dark side! I had some growing pains with adapters, windows resizing and such, but I’m liking it- can’t knock it (have $2K ones at work that are POSs).

@oO.o, whats the story with the keyboard?

Justatree · July 23, 2018, 4:18pm

Oh wow. It looks as though it’s right at the edge in the picture

oO.o · July 23, 2018, 4:23pm

I got it on eBay. There are a lot of variations. Here’s one. I think they’re intended for server closets or like a KVM cart in a datacenter.

Pay attention when shopping for them. The first one I bought was in German because I wasn’t paying attention. Also, there are IBM branded ones, but they lack Windows key (as you’d expect, I guess).

Oh yeah, It’s just the angle I guess. That middle rack is a 6U where the other 2 are 4U. It is recessed into the table as far as it would go.

SgtAwesomesauce · July 23, 2018, 4:59pm

Still rocking Solus? Glad to hear it. How have things been going with them in the last few months? I’ve been full time Fedora because there were things Solus couldn’t do smoothly for me.

How does the thunderbolt dock work with the KVM? I’ve had issues with mine in the past.

I’m curious how heavy the total desk load is. My desk motor is rated for 140lbs, and you look like you may be pretty close to that.

aLilBabyOtter · July 23, 2018, 5:06pm

BOOOO APPLE BOOOOO

jk, I like it. Especially since there’s no Magic Keyboard or Magic Mouse. I don’t understand how anyone sticks with that mouse.

Mmmmm. Solus is my favorite. Works flawlessly with my GTX 970.

SgtAwesomesauce · July 23, 2018, 5:36pm

I don’t like the mouse, but I have to say, they’ve got one of the best trackpads out there.

Token · July 23, 2018, 5:44pm

After talking with the OP about the limited LG 43" mounting options, here is the one I went with which was pretty low drama:

Combine it with your 100 to 200mm vesa adapter of choice, stiffen up all the adjustable bits to about max and you should be good.

aLilBabyOtter · July 23, 2018, 6:18pm

I agree. It’s much smoother and more responsive than any other that I’ve felt.

oO.o · July 23, 2018, 7:03pm

Been great, especially since 4.17. I’ve learned to rely more on snaps for some random things. My needs are pretty simple though. Most of my work is done in terminal emulator (I don’t even remember which one it is), Atom, GitKracken, Chrome and Remmina.

So far so good. Plugging in directly was very problematic.

Not an issue in my case. EvoDesk capacity is 355lbs: http://www.evodesk.com/compare

The tabletop is bowing very slightly in the front though. I wish I could reinforce it with a long piece of steel just to spread out the weight distribution a bit.

I did end up adding wood glue to all of the threaded inserts that hold the racks on.

Yeah I know. My work and my IT clients are 100% Macs, so I gotta have something macOS around.

Most notable is that this is less than half the price of the HumanScale M8, which required some hacky stuff to get right anyway (I plan to add this to the post soon).

SgtAwesomesauce · July 23, 2018, 8:23pm

Ah, that definitely explains it. I really don’t have the need for that much weight, so I’m very satisfied with a 1.2a motor (15a circuit with an AC unit and two PCs really constrains my power options) that has half the limit.

Glad to hear it! Is it an Apple dock?

My needs are a bit more exotic. I need resolve and some other RHEL world packages, so I enjoy having the ability to just rpm -ivh things.

What do you use kracken for? I’m still a command-line junky.

oO.o · July 23, 2018, 10:21pm

Belkin. It was one of the first thunderbolt docks made.

My git chops are virtually nonexistent. I haven’t collaborated on a software project since college so I just use git to transport my code from one place to another. It’s something I want to improve over the next year. That said, GitKracken does have some nice visualization features…

SgtAwesomesauce · July 23, 2018, 11:47pm

I’ve got to have a cheetsheet somewhere…

Might have to check it out then.

oO.o · July 25, 2018, 2:12am

Here’s a view of the back of the monitor.

The ~~vesa adapter~~ quick-release plate is upside down to add height to the monitor.

You can see that for the quick release to slide on from the bottom, the ~~vesa adapter~~ quick release plate needed to have washers added so that it could clear the monitor chassis. This also tilted the monitor up (which was a good thing).

Token · July 25, 2018, 3:32pm

Wait, what? I do not remember seeing 100mm vesa mount holes on my LG- I could have avoided the 100mm to 200mm adapter? BTW, quick release on my setup would have been nice.