The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

OK i finally got my new red locking clip sata cables. these are much heavier than the yellow ones that came with the mobo, plus the fittings are a nice snug fit once plugged into the mobo. nice and tight.(hmm that brings other thoughts to mind..lol)
her are some pics with the new paint job and new red sata cable installed with the red led fans glowing.









yes i need to take out the black non red led fan on top and replace it with the red led fan or just get a red cathode and install along the top nicely... this is about as neat as it gets..lol
yes im very proud of this puppy..ok enough sentiment now, going to the top bidder..

 

That's really nice Rob, I'm very impressed!
It's such a shame you haven't got the older HX 620W PSU though, as that was red, not blue!

 

yea but the blue in the GPU and mobo dont make it look to bad..
i know you haven the HAF932 you know how big it is, the 922 is just to big for only 2 fans with LEDs to really light it up. i do need that top fan to have the led.

 

I actually quite like the subtle effect of minimalistic lighting in my case. I wish I could tone down the fan controllers a bit.

 

good job Rob. Not a red person really, but thats totally worthy of praise LOL! This coming from a guy with a cherry red car...

 

Ok, now this is just wrong LOL! What a waste! LOL!

 

No case fan positions by the looks of things, so it's no real waste

 

Rob, very nice. I generally don't like lighting but yours looks good.

I really wish I could tidy up my cables like that, it that MB tray in the HAF removable?

 

Sam,
Probably more useful than it was as a case! LOL!!

That's probably because it doesn't get near as hot where you are than it does here! Rick's in Florida, and it get's pretty hot there as well. The older AMD CPUs, particularly the 6000+ Windsor, run quite warm. It's not uncommon to see one idling at 50C or more. When the room temp gets up to about 30C, they get quite warm, very fast! When I first got Oxi, at about 30C, the CPU used to idle at 60-65C, and the NB would hit 57C. There was no exhaust fan at all, just the PSU for removing all the heat from a stock AMD Aluminum cooler. Add the constant dust, and it compounds the problem! I probably replace 20 CPUs a year, because people burn them up! The coolers get packed solid with dust and dirt, and the CPU overheats. It's not a worst case scenario either, and very common here. Fans so choked with dust that they won't run, are also very common. Take a look at the area around San Bernardino on Google Earth, and you can see why! It's a very old town, and a lot of the area is just empty lots, all surrounded by mountains. I live in a Dust Bowl! LOL!!

Russ

 

LOL! Dust bowl. Thats a good one. I live in fairly flat lands though. 200 feet from the columbia river. But very dusty!

 

That's true, though I suspect there's usually A/C going on in Florida. Hot days are never frequent enough to justify A/C in the UK, thus hot days can be very hot!

 

Well now I feel foolish for jumping to conclusion about the MB being faulty. Further testing on the new MB reveals that one of the RAM sticks won't pass memtest in any slot. I'm hoping that bad memory is the problem and not the cpu. If I return the memory I lose the rebate (I think), but an rma will take much longer lol.

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Ambient temps can be a real killer in Southern California for those without A/C. I can see 80-90F for a good amount of time in the summer.

 

Actually this is a 7600GS and yes the GeForce 7 series was the first to get DXVA. AFAIK they support it fully and are listed in the official Microsoft requirements for DXVA.

There is a driver hack to use it on older cards, but it only works with certain types of files and doesn't work reliably.

I've used it on my sister's netbook with Nvidia ION and it works flawlessly. Full quality 1080p works a treat. On my parents' GMA4500 laptop, it gets laggy sometimes with high quality 1080p. It's actually faster to use the CPU, a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo.

 

Very Nice Mr.Eglian indeed Good Job. I would get these puppies here over at micro center they have them there a wall full
http://www.coolerguys.com/840556011057.html
then you have the option of turning them off or on if need be plus there cheaper that buying a led fan,Plus you can hide them at the top corners and let the RED lights drap down over the motherboard like neon's under a car...Handle your business.I like the out come of your new build clean and neat

 

VERY VERY VERY sexy build rob.

jizz worth, in the least

 

Turns out the RAM wasn't faulty, just wouldn't run stable until I put the voltage up to 1.8v (specification is 1.7-1.8). There might be room to drop it down a bit but I don't want to cause any instability down the line, even though I dislike having it so high. The fact it wasn't working at 1.5v, or even 1.7v, like it should have (according to SPD) bothers me a lot, but I'm not sure it's worth RMA'ing the ram for. Does anyone think I should replace the ram?

 

I don't understand why you would be against running the RAM at its manufacturer recommended voltage? RMA'ing ram sticks because they won't undervolt would be like a return because my CPU wont overclock or my PSU wont pump out 50W more than its rated...Manufacturer probably won't authorize return for such thing.

 

Jeff: My point exactly, the ion can handle it as nvidia's IGPs aren't as shockingly bad as Intel's. As expected, the Intel DXVA is so bad you're better off with the CPU...
Rob/Will: I'd be careful about using red cold cathodes. Due to the way they work, the colour they produce is actually pink. We're not talking crazy barbie pink, but pure red like the rest of your case, they ain't. If you want extra lighting, perhaps find some point source LEDs, having different areas of light scattered around rather than one long bar of it can also create a better lighting effect.
Maw: DDR2? I'm amazed you didn't have more grief if you were looking at less than 1.8V. Standard for DDR2 is 1.8, for high-end DDR2, you should be using 1.9-2.1! Don't be afraid to turn the voltage up, you should already have done so!

 

As usual I was too vague, sorry (going make an effort to stop that bad habit). The ram in question is the DDR3 Mushkin for the i3 system. It should work at 9-9-9-24 at 1.5v according to SPD, but even at such loose timings it wasn't stable at 1.7v (although it would pass over an hour of memtest). Moving from 1.7v to 1.8v made it stable, but why it's only [potentially] stable in the 1.7+-1.8 range doesn't seem right to me. Currently it's running 7-7-7-20 at 1.8v and doing fine from the looks of it. Thanks for the help guys.

While I'm talking about the i3 build I might as well mention a few other things that took me by surprise. The HSF overlaps the first two ram slots on the MB so I needed to cut part of the coolers fan enclosure away to get two sticks of ram in. Not really a big deal since I doubt that rig will ever need to upgraded to 4GB's of ram but still surprised to see how tight of a fit the stuff is on a u-ATX board.
I'm a bit disappointed in Gigabyte for only giving me 2 sata cables, especially since the MB had 8 sata ports. Would have had to buy some if my Asus MB hadn't come with a proper amount of sata cables
The case, CM 534+, was probably the one component I was really satisfied with. It looks far better in real life than it does in pictures and finish is quite nice. It's much better then my NZXT and also a lot easier (in some respects) to work with. My only gripe about the case is not all of the holes for the MB are labeled requiring you to guess at the majority of them.

 

Red_Maw,
You must have had an ASUS P7P55 WS motherboard then, because it's the only Asus Intel MB that comes with 6 Sata cables that I could find. most of the highest priced motherboards from Asus come with 3 Sata cables, and the vast majority from pretty much all the manufacturers, come with only 2 Sata cables. As far as the holes in the case for mounting the motherboard standoffs go, you are kidding, right? I can't ever remember in over 20 years of building computers, anyone with that complaint. I just lay the MB in the case and mark the ones I need to use with a magic marker, the same as I've done with every build, over the last 20 years. Couldn't be any easier than that! LOL!!

I agree totally, that the CM 534+ case is a lot nicer looking than what you see in the pictures from Newegg. I think it's a very classy looking case!

Best Regards,
Russ