My new ~ £700 build. Comments and thoughts please :)

[shrek101]

Thanks Mike. I appreciate your help over last week and others too

[staffsMike]

Did a ninja edit on that, just about the motherboard. There is nothing wrong with the Asus.. just the Abit might get my money. It's hard to tell without being in your position lol

[SiM]

Abit motherboards will soon RIP. Get Asus/Gigabyte/DFI now

[staffsMike]

Well the P35 has got the best BIOS it's going to get by now and it will still be under warranty as it ever would. And it will be a nice send off for abit

Otherwise go with the Asus as the DFI P45 is over £100 and the P35 I know very little about so don't feel comfortable recommending it lol

[cptwhite_uk]

So here's the pudding people:

This was probably the hardest PC I've ever put together. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong (at least that's how it felt during assembly!). However once the physical construction was complete I haven't had one single problem since. Booted first time, it hasn't crashed once, idling about 40C and overclocked off-the-bat to 3Ghz where I've left it to burn in for a while before nudging it up a little more (3.6Ghz would be nice so it's running 400FSB -native for MB and RAM)

Anyway here we go:

First pics of my new gear as they arrived





Here's the Xigmatek heatsink and fan. It's a big mother and is very very nice. Low RPM, silent and keeps my CPU idling at 40ish and load no higher than 50ish. Thanks for the tips on this one, much better than a Freezer 7 Pro (and much bigger).





There's the first job, get the PSU into its mounting bracket and screw fix into the case. Simple huh? No way. The mounting bracket was way too tight (it has rubber strips on all three inside edges to cushion the PSU and providing dampening. Unfortunately it looks like they didn't take the thickness of the rubber strips into account when working back the dimensions of the bracket as the sides literally splayed out like this:



...once it was fitted onto the PSU. The second problem was when positioned back in the case the screw holes barely aligned (again due to the thickness of the rubber strips, now underneath and above the PSU which pushed the holes outof alignment by about 1.5mm. Sounds nothing on paper but when you're using about M3 screws (or smaller) it's relatively a huge offset and I had to press down on top of the PSU case as hard as I could to try and get the screws aligned. Not easy, but I got there in the end, just, and I really mean that.


Tip: Buy a modular PSU for the little extra monies. The amount of times I re-routed the PSU wires was into double digits and the holes allowed for in the P182 were barely big enough, sure it would be be neat when done but **** me it was frustrating and time consuming feeding them



Getting there:



Now this next pic shows the motherboard and and drives installed. What it doesn't show you is the completely noob thinking I had when inserting the DVD drive (I was sure I'd fixed the side brackets on the right way around as the 3.5" bays which were pre-fitted in the case had the mechanism working from the inside of the case. It took me 20 minutes to figure out what I was doing wrong.

However the more soul destroying experience was fitting the motherboard into the case only to realise I couldn't get all the pins to locate and fix the heatsink and fan. The whole lot had to come out and then the fan had to be removed from the heatsink as I hadn't noticed it blocked two of the push pins. By the way mounting that fan on the heatsink was also incredibly hard. You are given these 4 rubber pins which you're meant to squeeze through the screw holes in the corners of the plastic fan casing. However the fit is incredibly tight. Pushing the rubber through simply doesn't work as the fit it to tight and the rubber too flexible (it just squashes). It the end I resorted to a pull from behind while pushing in with a tip of a pen from the front to force them through. I had to apply so much pressure I thought I was going to break the mounts. Stressful!

Anyway back to the motherboard:

Tip: Make sure all four of the plasic push pin feet are located into the motherboard's holes before you lock any of them off. One of them hadn't to my dismay and simply bent to the side. This meant undoing the other three (which were incredibly hard to lock off and thus it meant undoing my hard work). The only method that seemed to work here was supporting the motherboard directly in my hard and pushing the pin through with my other hand (pushing up with the hand that's holding the motherboard) and checking visually that the pin has fully locked before twisting it anti-clockwise to lock the pin into position. This had me sweating like a pig and took over an hour to finally sus. Eurgh!



This shows the clearance between the top of the Xigmatek heatsink and the top of the case (about 5-10mm)



Tada, the completed case. AS hard and frustrating as it was I was very pleased with the final result and the thinking time for the cable routing really paid off.





Hope you enjoyed my little diary


Let me know if you have any questions about any of the components used.

[staffsMike]

Tip: Buy a modular PSU for the little extra monies. The amount of times I re-routed the PSU wires was into double digits and the holes allowed for in the P182 were barely big enough, sure it would be be neat when done but **** me it was frustrating and time consuming feeding them

Oh did I forget to warn you about that? Whoops.

I always find it easier to fit the PSU from the motherboard side, that way all the cables are where they need to be from the off. How come you didn't cable them around the back of the mobo tray, makes things much easier, aids cooling and looks a lot better

Looks very nice though

[cptwhite_uk]

There wasn't enough room for the main power cable (in terms of depth - the cable is too thick) and the access points from behind the MB to allow the cable back to the front were limited in size, number and placement. It just wasn't feasible as far as I could see.

Remember you have cables overlapping behind the MB tray and it's in these areas it just becomes too deep to be able to fit the side panel on again without it bowing due to the cables pushing it out.

[staffsMike]

I certainly thought the same as you but it does work, even if you only use a couple of cables that way. It works anyway so it doesn't matter but it's shame when you can't use that feature of the P182.

[cptwhite_uk]

O well, lesson learnt for the next build

[Will404]

Dose the cooler require any kind of cross bar, or attachment system on the back of the mobo, or does it just use the push pins like the intel coolers.

Also would it fit in a 900???

[staffsMike]

Push pins as standard, you can buy a bolt through kit though.

Yeah it will fit pretty much anything with a 120mm fan on the back.