Following on from the £100 CPU and motherboard - last night I put it all together! Here are some pics for you lovely Hexus people to laugh at what I've cobbled together :)
First up, a dusty old Antec Fusion case taken out of the loft. This was purchased from someone on Hexus about 10 years ago I think - a little bit chipped on some edges but still a nice case:
http://mcampbell.me.uk/hexus/nms_case.jpg
Notice the extra sexy Papst case fan with a molex connector! Inside an equally ancient 480W Antec PSU, don't think it's original but it certainly isn't new!
New, second hand and swiped from my main rig components:
http://mcampbell.me.uk/hexus/nms_components.jpg
It may be a mATX motherboard, but dang it's tiny! I remember having a bit of trouble fitting a proper mATX motherboard into the case and having to take care with PATA cable routing as there wasn't much clearance round the edges of the board - no worries this time!
Basics installed:
http://mcampbell.me.uk/hexus/nms_cpu+mobo.jpg
I really didn't enjoy fitting the CPU into the motherboard, those Intel sockets do not seem very robust. Next up, the stupidly large GPU:
http://mcampbell.me.uk/hexus/nms_gpu_in.jpg
I had done a dry-run before spending more money, pretty tight top and back! Having previously stuck an oversized graphics card in this case (and not thrown out useful things) I had 2 right angles GPU power extension cables in a box ready to fit - something coming straight out would have fouled the case lid. The PSU only had one GPU lead, fortunately I had a spare molex to PCI-E 6pin adapter so it all cobbled together fine!
http://mcampbell.me.uk/hexus/nms_gpu_power.jpg
A couple of cable ties later to neaten things up and she was good to go! Booted up first time with a few worrying twitches of the CPU fan and we were away. Nothing installed yet as we're going to take the SSD from her all-in-one, currently a old hdd spinning away to itself for cable length.
Issues: I'm not sure I have enough leads for all the case goodies. There's a molex and a floppy disk power adapter from the case, and only one spare molex on the power supply. I can do one or the other (with an adapter) at the moment, will see if it works with one otherwise I'll be looking for a molex pass-though to floppy power adapter (or doing some soldering at work).
The CPU is idling in bios around 37 degrees, I assume this is ok on the stock heatsink & fan. It is tempting to get a couple of decent case fans and a after-market cooler for the CPU...
First things first though, I should manage a Windows 8 install on the weekend and we'll see how she games :rockon: