holoz0r attempts to build a witness node - Part 1

This is a very special computer. It looks unremarkable on the outside, but it will be what is inside (and what's on it) - that will be remarkable. Even since @liberosist made the post "Running Steemd: How low can you go?" I have felt very itchy.

Itchy in a way that makes me want to experiment, and at the same time, if I'm successful, give back even more to the STEEM community.

The other reason I want to do this is due to the alarming number of witnesses that host their nodes or servers with privex, a provider with two separate data centers. I also want to be the first person running a node that is geographically located in their house, in Australia. I don't think anyone has that claim to fame.

I don't expect to be a top 20 witness. I know I won't cut the mustard with guys who are running full nodes, have IT and cyber-security expertise, and are also developers. I want to run this node as a learning exercise, and as an everyman - to help further increase the decentralisation of STEEM, and to hold it as close to home, and under the same roof where I sleep.

You see, this little box of wonders is going to be a witness server that I can touch. It won't be housed in some far flung data center - it won't be leased hardware. It will be on my desk, with me, secure, in my own home, with my own Internet connection.

The hardware specs:

• Intel Core i7 4770
• 16GB 1600DDR3
• 1x 240GB Boot SSD
• 1x 1TB "Chain SSD"
• 1 x nVidia Quadro K600
• 2 Fans
• A bit of dust
• Fresh Thermal Paste where it counts

So for those of you who enjoy tech support gore - here's the underlying process of getting a machine to be witness ready, from a hardware perspective. What I lack in programming ability, I certainly have in computer hardware "refurbishness-eagerness."

The Rebuild

This is the machine out of hte box. There's a bit of dust, and not a lot of space. There's a 250W power supply, which will be more than ample (CPU + GPU combined won't draw any more than 150W, and the SSDs will use <15W ) - meaning there's plenty of headroom in the PSU as the system ages and the power supply becomes less efficient. Entropy applies to the physical universe.

The CPU cooler has a shroud to direct airflow out through the vented back of the case, but I'm sure there's some crusty thermal paste under there that will need replacing. So what's next? Taking it apart, bit by bit.

The hard drive cage looks like the first thing to start with. It's got a lock on it. So secure! The case is pretty cramped, and as a result, large hands are likely to become increasingly bloodied as this post / breakdown continues.

Underneath the optical drive and hard drive bay, there's the memory, CMOS battery, the main power supply for the motherboard, and a whole bunch of capacitors and other chips. You'll observe that there's an additional two DIMM slots that are not populated, meaning that this machine can expand to 32GB of RAM in the future if required.

It is some mighty fine RAM too, with it being from SAMSUNG.

This image can serve as a future reminder of what I will need to obtain should an upgrade be done on the box at a later point in time.

Time to take a look at the CPU, and see what lurks under neath that cooler, and shroud.

A pretty basic HSF, it seems, with some additional CPU power going into the motherboard. There's also a simple fan connector. There's a tiny bit of dust underneath this area, and I'll clean that out as I go. First, I'm keen to see what that thermal paste is like...

Look away now if you like well applied thermal paste

Look how they massacred my boy. There's some thermal paste that has solidified ontop of the CPU chip itself, ignoring the uneven spread of paste over the IHS. It's also completely dried, and peeling off! Time to get cleaning, but first, let's take a look at the bottom of heatsink..

Absolute gore. Disgusting, but nothing that isopropyl alcohol, and a whole bunch of paper towel can't fix.

This is upside down because I am in AUSTRALIA

Time for a fresh blob of paste:

I used Arctic Cooling MX-4, because that's what I had lying around. I dropped idle temperatures on the CPU by ten degrees simply by changing the thermal paste. Outstanding. 44C -> 33C at ambient. 60C at load to 45C at load. This series of CPU doesn't start throttling until it is well beyond 80C - so I have plenty of thermal headroom to play with.

Time to look at storage devices. I will have the capability of installing three drives. The intention is to have one boot drive, one main "block chain drive", and one "spare" - since the optical drive is already installed, that "spare" will remain to be the optical drive until there is a requirement to use the third SATA slot.

It isn't that simple, though. There's only two power connectors - and one of them is a slimline power connector for the optical drive.

This has necessitated the purchase of this gadget:

That will max out the theorotical hard disks this machine can take. There's just one problem to contend with...

Mounting them somewhere which isn't on top of the CPU. I'll throw them in the harddrive cage as I won't need the drive that the machine came with:

In the next episode of "@holoz0r struggles to get a witness node up and running" - there'll be drama, catastrophe, and more interesting words.

Can it be done? Can I get it running on hardware that is this old? (And probably underspecced?)

Stay tuned to find out. I really want to be a witness for my local #mallsballers community, and anyone else who deems my mildly ambitious dreams something that could be possible.