New system build journal/pics [i7, HAF912 etc]

I mentioned to some people I'd do a write up of the build so they could see more about things like the case etc.

Old system
AMD X2 4400+
Artic Cooling Freezer 7 64
3gb DDR400
AMD HD4870
ASRock dual sata2 939
Samsung F1 1TB
XClio 480W (CWT unit)
Creative SB Audigy 2ZS
Coolermaster Centurion 5
Sony DVDRW
Windows 7 Pro x64

New system
Intel i7 950
Corsair A50
Corsair 6gb DDR3 1600 7-8-7-20
AMD HD4870 (retained)
Gigabyte X58A UD3R
Samsung F1 1TB (retained)
XFX Pro 650W
Asus Xonar Xense
Coolermaster HAF912
Samsung DVDRW
Windows 7 Pro x64 (retained)

There wasn't anything wrong with the 5 year old system, and it still kept up for the most part.. but I was running out of card slots on the motherboard and when the 950 halved in price my decision was made for me pretty easily :p (Okay, someone needed my old computer as well).

So out of the box.. the case size compared to my old computer. A little larger in all dimensions, but not by a lot. (excuse the mess!)

http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/5215/build1.jpg

And from the top it looks like this:

http://img264.imageshack.us/img264/8666/build2.jpg

Which is well and good, but you want to see the inside!
http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/4521/build3.jpg

And you can already see quite a few nice touches - black interior, partly toolless design etc.

So onto the building. PSU in first - took a bit of a gamble with XFX, but the reviews for the pro series are looking good, and it has enough power and connectors should I ever win that Ares card Hexus had in competition.. Lack of modular cables is a bit annoying but modular supplies were out of budget. Cable length is good, but only just enough for the 4+4pin EPS at the top of the board. Don't think it would make it in a larger tower case. You can also see I've removed the other side panel, revealing the cut outs for CPU backmount and cable routing.

http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/1176/build4.jpg

Added more components for the next shot. While it's well and good having cable routing options, it gives you a bit of a headache trying to work out the optimal placements for the cables and which order to add things in - sorting out a plan for the cables before the motherboard went in was a good idea, but there was still the nightmare of front panel connectors and other PSU cables to sort..

http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/1091/build5.jpg

Then..

http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/9896/build6.jpg

Ow. Actually I didn't notice it at first, but was a bit of a pourer.. It wasn't the case, which I can report has no sharp edges, but infact the fins of the A50. I'd had to take the fan off the front and rotate it 180 to get the fan cable to reach. Ah well - the build was properly christened at least.. :p

Finally, get fed up of cable routing and just sort of plonk everything else in, vowing to sort it all out next time I replace a component..

http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/9149/build7.jpg

And observant people will notice I've swapped some of the drive bays around - it was getting fiddly to plug in the graphics card power so you can quite easily remove extra bays, and then I also moved the 2.5" bays from infront of the PSU to ontop of the remaining 3.5" bays. This flexbility was another reason I went for this case.

In terms of build quality the case is absolutely solid - even with all the sides off you could pick it up by any surface and it remained absolutely rigid. Very impressive.

Amazingly it all fired up first time. The only change I made in Bios was to select XMP profile for the RAM and it was good to go at full speed and perfect dividers. I've ranted about the front panel connectors elsewhere so I won't do it again here. Likewise the case instructions were poor, however the motherboard instructions from Gigabyte were very good.

It was also a lot louder than my old computer, which was disappointing. A large portion of that is the A50 CPU cooler fan. I've now used the supplied resistor to lower the speed and it's bearable now, but I'm not impressed for the money.

http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/3198/build8.jpg

Temperatures seem good - I've been loading all 8 threads for a while and the max reported with RealTemp is 68C on one core. Gigabytes dynamic energy saver software also works a treat, undervolting the CPU a tiny amount.

I had a quick play with some BIOS settings to see how it would react, and it seems as if the auto settings are quite quick to change things to maintain absolute stability. For example, increasing BCLK by more than 5mhz or so caused the default CPU voltage to increase to 1.28 (from a normal 1.24, or 1.21 with DES) and disable the more aggressive down volting on idle. Likewise increasing memory frequency instantly caused timings to relax massively. Switching some of the settings to 'normal' rather than 'auto' soon cured this and and voltages are back down to 1.21 under load, and 0.something small on idle, and manually specifying memory timings has locked things down there as well. Interestingly, it jumps to the turbo mutliplier even when all threads are fully loaded, so it's basically running x24 any time it's loaded so even quite small increases in BCLK result in fairly large speed increases.

http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/6897/build9.jpg

I can't remember the exact benchmark figures, maybe I'll add them to this thread later, but rough tests indicated that superpi (which I think is single threaded?) is almost 3x faster, and the CPU portion of 3dMark Vantage is 5.5x faster (definitely multi-threaded). GPU score on High preset is up a little, but not a lot (<10%), so I wasn't hugely CPU limited before and I don't expect game performance to have increased massively, however for photo work and toolset usage I think it's going to be a beast!

Nice build. You got one of the new XFX Pro series PSUs which are made by Seasonic. How quiet is it??

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Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH

Nice build. You got one of the new XFX Pro series PSUs which are made by Seasonic. How quiet is it??

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Yes. I can't tell exactly, but it's certainly not in the top two audible fans of the computer. From the scientific 'stick my ear in different places (carefully) while the case is open' it appears to be completely silent, but it could be being masked by another fan's noise.

They had 3 of those XFX PSU's on Aria for £45 - i knew i should snapped one up :P

It may also be worth mentioning that your RAM timings may not be correctly configured. I bought the 4GB DIMM equivalents (same timings, speed) but when i used the XMP settings it was setting TRAS too 24 - not 20.

I don't know whether that was down to my motherboard or what but just check it voer to make sure you're getting 100%, if you haven't already :D

What size si that top fan grill as well? It looks bigger than 140mm!

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Originally Posted by Terbinator

It may also be worth mentioning that your RAM timings may not be correctly configured. I bought the 4GB DIMM equivalents (same timings, speed) but when i used the XMP settings it was setting TRAS too 24 - not 20.

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Thanks, but verified 7-8-7-20 2T with CPUZ, I've manually set tRTP to 4 as well for optimal timing. Might try 1T for a later test - will finish today's stability testing with current settings first though.

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What size si that top fan grill as well? It looks bigger than 140mm!

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200mm, same as the one in the front of the case. Or can use 2x120 for either.

If you want to work out which fans are noisiest you can always stop individual fans by putting a pencil in them ... I wouldn't do it myself but the die hards on spcr stand by it lol.

Very nice build ... do you think the case and psu could handle another HD4870 in xfire!? That would be godly lol.

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Originally Posted by c.ruel

If you want to work out which fans are noisiest you can always stop individual fans by putting a pencil in them ... I wouldn't do it myself but the die hards on spcr stand by it lol.

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It's also a great way of dislodging built up piles of dust :p But I don't need to do that in this case.

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Very nice build ... do you think the case and psu could handle another HD4870 in xfire!? That would be godly lol.

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It could easily handle it, and I have the PCIe lanes for it too. The PSU is massively overspecced for most uses, I just couldn't get a quality one much cheaper anyway with the connectors I wanted.

RE: "It was only a matter of time"
Happens to me every single build. And it's always Heatsinks or the case, and it's almost alwasy completely painless and you only realise once you've bled everywhere.

Nice Build!

You missed out a component from your original list though. Should of read;

Massive amount of dust (retained over a 2-4 week period)! :laugh:

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Originally Posted by maverick77_uk

Nice Build!

You missed out a component from your original list though. Should of read;

Massive amount of dust (retained over a 2-4 week period)! :laugh:

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Cheek!

It wasn't my computer that I had to clear out 1/4 inch of felt-like material from the CPU cooler... (was the one further to the left of the picture, out of frame)... ;)

Convinced I want one of those now, thanks the pics has helped me make my mind up :)

Think I might have to get a modular PSU with mine when I can next month/month after am getting really teasy with the fixed cables on my OCZ stealth stream.

Nice! Awsome spec. and a very nice case.
If I hang about this forum, I'll end up re-mortgaging the house... :)

Thanks for the comments. Yes, modular would be good. There's no airflow problem with the cables down there as it's just space between the hdd and PSU and with this PSU the air's coming up the bottom, but it doesn't look tidy!

I've now enabled smart fan control in the BIOS, which works even with 3 pin fans and the CPU fan is now effectively silent and only barely audible on load. Case fans are probably the loud things now, maybe GPU fan also. Unfortunately there's no smart fan control in BIOS for the case fans, presumably I'd have to use speedfan or other software for that (or a fan speed expansion slot controller I guess, which I've got lying around somewhere).

Enabling the maximum DES settings brings my load CPU voltage down to 1.184v and supposedly enables more powersaving for the chipset, memory and GPU. Idle is 0.864v, and enabled advanced C states (3/6/7) in BIOS :) Currently testing stability and I've not tried higher than 154 BLCK yet, for a load CPU speed of 3.7ghz. But it's stable so far after trying everything I can think of to test. Also using 1T for the RAM now. I'm hoping it'll go up to a nice 160 so I can run the RAM entirely at spec with a x10 multi.

I have noticed some quiet clicking in the headset when playing some games though, normally it isn't present, and it doesn't start right away, so not sure if that's a fan control stepping up and creating noise on the molex input for the audio card. More testing needed to isolate the cause of that I think.

I'm really likeing the new HAF 912

The front bezel is even growing on me.

The one thing that is really putting me off, apart from "do I really need a new case?", is the lump on top where the front connectors are.

Is it just the camera but it looks like the top lump is a slightly different colour from the rest of the bezel.

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Originally Posted by Pob255

Is it just the camera but it looks like the top lump is a slightly different colour from the rest of the bezel.

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Shadowing. It's the same colour.

Did it come with those red LED fans as standard ?