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August 24 PC updateJust a quick update on how the PC is running.
Well I finally got my Vists 64bit disk from MS, so thats all been installed & set up. I truely hate having to do an OS install, it takes so long to get everything re-installed & updated. but now its all set up its running like a dream.
I did a few small mods to my case after all, lol. The back vent where the 120mm fan is attatched has had the grill cut out. This basically leaves a huge hole in the back of the case & means there is nothing restricting the out-flowing air. I also completely dis-assembled my PC & strayed the inside black. Looks much better now too. I do have a grill that may fit the back & not restrict the air flow too much. Just need to have a play around & see if I can get it to fit.
Also had a play around with the fans & managed to scrouungeup another fan for the front of th case. Fan layout is now, 2 front fans set as intakes, side pannel & top fan also as intakes. These are all on the case speed controller & set between low & medium depending on what I'm doing/abient temps in room. The rear fan stayed the same, so that is now sucking out all of the air in the case.
I've gone back to using my old CRT monitor on my PC. the missus is now dual screening her PC & she doesn't have room for the CRT. So I let her have my LCD back.
Run some stress testing software on the PC & everything is a go for overclocking. The system is totally stable at stock speeds & the load temps are well within normal levels, giving me plenty of room to run it hotter as it gets clocked. I just need to actually pluck up the bottle to try clocking it further, last thing I want to do is cock it up.
Biggest news for the PC is I now have managed to get hold of another Sapphire HD 3650 card, identical to the one I already have. So that has been installed & both cards have been set up in CrossFire. This was surprisingly easy to get setup & has lead to a decent performance improvement in the games I've tried so far. Lost planet got a boost of 15-20 fps, Crysis will actually run with decent settings & Age of conan runs with the same fps but I have doubled the view distance.
Haven't had much chance to play with it though as I only got the other card this afternoon & we have been out to see Hellboy 2 tonight. Excellent film btw, go see it.
So thats all for now really. Will try & get some new pics of y modded PC case up & will also try & tidy up a bit for some games room photos July 26 PC Building - the blog part 3This will be the last instalment of my PC building adventures.
So the fan re-organisation is next, But before I get on to that I thinks its worth going through my motherboard troubles.
The driver disk that comes with my motherboard came with a BIOS upgrade tool. All you need to do is download the latest BIOS files from the Abit website & run the program, apparently. Unfortunately when I did this it completely bricked my board. Wouldn't get past the first stage of the POST process, no access to the BIOS setup screen etc. So had to RMA it with overclockers. So that took a week out of the time I have had with the PC. This also lead to me having to practically rebuild the PC. It was during this time I re-organised the fans. Thankfully I had access to the missus PC so could still get online late at night when she was in bed.
My case has the capability to handle the following fans,
! rear mounted fan, can be 90, 100 or 120mm.
side mounted 90mm fan
top mounted 90mm fan
2 front mounted 90mm fans. These mounts are at the bottom of the front side by side.
As previously mentioned the case has its own fan control system, which has the capacity for 5 fans to be linked in.
The system already has fans on the CPU, PSU & GPU & I had 3 90mm fans (2 blue LEDs & 1 plain black) & 1 120mm fan. The 120mm fan needed some work as this was scavenged out of an old Dell pc & had an odd 4 pin connector on it. I managed to get help to convert it to a 3 pin connector that would plug into the system fan slot on the MB. The other 3 fit the cases manual controller.
Due to wanting to cool my graphics card a bit more I had to rework the side pannel of PC. This entailed removing the clear plasic side from the frame, flipping it 180 degrees & remounting it. The only problem being that I would have to remount it from the outside, this meant I had to do some chopping with the screw mounts. This wasn't as hard as I had originally thought & took a lot less time to do. I was taking a bit of a gamble with this though as the edge o the clear pannel was now on the outside of the case & looked a little untidy. I was gambling that once the system was switched on the LED fan that was being mounted would spred its light through the side pannel & light the edges. Not only did this gamble pay off, but it looks a lot better than I originally thought it would.
So with the mod of the side pannel done, I fixed one of the LED fans as an intake fan. This also had a dust filter fitted to stop it dragging in all the airbourne crap floating about. I managed to make some neat little bits of cable management for the fan cable from a couple of bits of masking tap.These hold the cable to the screw points for the clear side & stop the cable poping up.
Next I mounted the 120mm fan as an out-take fan on the back of the case. This was a no brainer really as it was the only place in the case that this fan would fit. Making it an out-take fan was a given too, it sits directly behind the CPU cooler, which is blowing air in that direction already. this gives it a little boost. This fan is a bit on the noisey side, so it took a fair bit of tweeking with the BIOS settings to get the fan to run at something other than full whack. The photo below was taken during the re-build & I hadn't refitted the PCI cards yet.
Next fan to be fitted was the case top fan. As this lead directly to a whole in the top of the case the second LEd fan was being placed here an an out-take fan. Due to the fairly big distance from any components & the ones that are closest are my memory sticks I decided I would add the duct that was removed from the side pannel. this would make the fan draw the air from directly above the mem sticks, hopefully reducing their temp.
The added bonus of this is the duct is made from the same clear blue plastic as the fans, so the light from the fan should travel down a bit.
Only Fan left is the plain black fan. This was mounted on the front as an intake fan. This would blow air in over the hard drives & towards the graphics card.
So the fans are all fitted, the replacement motherboard is in & everything is connected. Get the side pannels on (remembering to connect the pannel mounted fan in to the manual loop of course) & this is what you get
Spectacular.
So Jobs done & its a good 'un, right?????
Well not exactly. I currently have a Vista 64 bit disk on order from MS. Its taken them over a month to deliver it so far & I'm annoyed as hell that I don't have it yet.
In further mods to come I'm planning on drilling out the outer cover for the rear fan. This should improve air flow a little & also reduce the noise from the fan. In a slightly more radical mod, I'm planning at some point in the future on completely disassembling the whole thing & painting the inside of the case black. I've seen pics of a PC with simalar blue lighting that has had this done. the black helps the blue glow & makes the cas elook neater.
But I'm in no hurry to get any further modding done. The same with overclocking really. the step up from my old PC was such a big one that I don't need to overclock at the moment. Well the graphics card has been overclocked using the CCC software, but thats just a case of clicking a few buttons & letting it run.
So thats it, the story of my PC upgrade. Hopefully someone fopund it interesting, possiblky even inspired to something simalar. If so then please visit www.overclockers.co.uk for your parts (no this isn't a referal link either - hate them). They were very helpful when had aproblem, the original order was delivered quickly & the forum community is one of the most helpful I have seen on the web.
new pics of how the games room is layed out will be forth coming over the next few days. I just need to have a tidy up first July 25 PC Building - the blog part 2So were was I????
Ah yes, Bugger, first problem.
The damn motherboard plate won't actually fit in to the case with the CPU fan fitted. Feck, Feck, Feck, Feck. I spent ages fiddling round with the cable for the CPU fan, got it neatly cable tied to the fan mounts to stop it flapping around. So off comes the fan, although I leave the cable ties in place & just hold the fan in one hand. So with one arm reaching through the case I use the other hand to move the plate into place & slot it all in. I then lay the case on its side so I can sit the fan in place & fit the retaining bracket. I now realise just how much dexterity I've lost in my fingers as this takes ages & involves lots of swearing, a gash next to my nail on my right thumb (caught it on one of the fan fins) & a coffee & smoke break.
Next job is to fit all the motherboard cables. I start with the case attachments (power button, HDD light etc) as these tend to be the most fiddly, or so I thought. Yep, could not have been more wrong about that, the hardest to fit was actually the CPU power connector. Fitting inbetween the back of the case & the CPU fan this proved to be a complete arse to plug in. When I finally got that connected I took a few moments to take stock of everything. AT this point I discovered the gash I had managed to put in the back of my left hand (those damn CPU fan fins again!!!).
I fitted the cables for the disk drives & then remembered to put in the screw that holds the motherboard plate in. Ironically I could have made the job of fitting the CPU power connector so much easier if I had just moved the plate along by 1/2cm. A bit of cable tidying later & this is what my PC now looked like
Well ok thats close enough to how it looked. This photo was actually re-taken when I fitted my replacement motherboard so there are a few things in there that I haven't mentioned so far. Namely the big ass black fan on the left hand side. originally there was a Blue LED fan fitted there. Also the big blue vent dut in the top right wasn't there either. This was originally on the side pannel, but I'll get to that later.
Anywho, I was quite pleased with how it was all coming together, the cables were tidy (well tidyish anyway) & there wasn't much left to do. Well so I thought..........
next came the fitting of the various cards. I have a habbit of starting at the bottom & working my way up, so in goes the TV tuner card, followed by a spare network port. Graphincs card goes in next, the cards are all screwed in place & cover strips are mounted over any gaps left over. So now the PC looks like this
& a picture of the drives all fitted
All thats left to do is fit the side back on & boot it up.Well that was the theory anyway & how wrong it was. Upon attempting to fit the side cover with the window in it & encounter a small problem. The air vent duct slaps straight into my CPU cooler. Its obviously designd to sit directly over a normal sized cooler & draw the heat straight out of the case. So out comes the screw driver & the duct is removed. Now I have a new problem, a great big hole in the side of my case. So pondering the solution to this problem I pop off for a smoke, armed with a couple of sheets of paper & a pencil. A few minutes later with a fresh cup of coffee in hand (Thanks to Violet for that) & return with a few rough scetches in hand.
What I had to work with in the case was 2 90mm fans, both of which contain blue LEDS. these are not plgged in to the motherboard, but are instead linked to a little dial on the front of the case. This allows me to manually control the speed of these 2 fans. The case also has a temp sensor, which I attatched close to the CPU (see pic below), & on the front pannel there is a small screen with the temp readout.
The temp sensor is the little plastic tube with the green wire leading out the bottom. Incidentally this has since been remounted between the CPU fan & the blue heat sink you can see at the bottom left of the pic. This pretty much puts it in the middle of the PC.
So anyway, back to the fans. I left the top mounted fan & removed the one from the back of my case. I used this to plug the hole left in the side when I removed the duct. A quick test fit, little bit of rewiring to get the cables tidy & jobs done. Time to boot it up.
The first thing I notice is how quiet the thing is. It makes almost no noise, turning up the manual contrl on the fans generates some noise, but even then its still quieter than my old dell system. A quick play with the BIOS settings & off we go with the windows install. Now its worth mentioning that if there is one thing I loathe, its installing Windows from scratch. Well no, thats not true, what I hate is the hours spent once its installed getting all the updates on there. Once this is out of the way, the first thing I do is get Age of Conan installed, which takes over an hour with the patches too. then its off to marvel at just how damn pretyt the world of Hyboria looks compared to my old system.
Over the next couple of days I get some more games installed, dawn of war, halo 2 etc & test them all out. During this time I decide to move my desk around a bit which entails a quick bit of DIY to extend a shelf for the PC to sit on. I also speak to some friends & get some advise about fan placement etc. I also manage to scavenge a couple of fans from old PCS, one of which is the big 120mm fan now at the back of my case.
I was of course monitoring the various temps within the PC as I was runnig various programs. I was advised that my CPU was running at very cool temps, but my graphics card was a little hot. nothing major, but it would be happier if it was a little cooler. Having already decided that I wanted to use the GPU overclocking feature in CCC I decided to have a little re-organisation of the fans etc
(last part to follow on Friday night) July 24 PC Building - the blog part 1Ok, here goes. the blog about my ups & downs designing & building my new PC. This will most likely end up being a long blog so forgive me & feel free to just stop reading if you get bored.
Anyway, The Begining.
Not being a big PC gamer I had survived for a few years now with a Dell media centre PC. Truely average in specs, only cost £400ish when I bought it. But with some great games coming out on PC over the last few months & a fair few on the horizon I decided I should see if there was anything I could do to beef up my PC a bit.
First upgrade was a Graphics card. Went from an old ATI with only 128Mb RAm to a RADEON HD 3650 made by Saphire. Granted not the best card out there, but it was cheap & certainly better than what I had before.
Next was a RAM upgrade, from 1GB to 3GB.
But then I hit a wall. My motherboard was so old I couldn't get a new CPU for it. Well I could, but for a few £££ extra I could have got myself a cheap dual core.
Now at this point I hit the age old problem of £££. Where was I going to get the cash to pay for anymore PC bits? Bah, minor details like this don't stop me. I worked out what sort of bonus I could expect from work for the next 2 quarters (taking me up to xmas) & planned my upgrade around that. My logic being, if I do all the research about the components now, come bonus time I could just do a little tweeking around the price changes & order away.
The next couple of weeks were spent browsing forums, review sites & online stores looking at what was currently available.
now way back when I used to work for a PC manufacturer I always had a love of all things AMD. A quick look at some prices, comparing intel to AMD & I found that I could get a decent quad core AMD chip for the same price as an Intel core-duo. Biggest problem solved, I now knew which CPU manufacturer I wanted to go with. This then allowed me to set about choosing my motherboard. Once that was done I could decide on a case, then look at PSU's if needed.
Totaling things all up, I had a bit of cash left over from my budget, so I opted to get a slightly better CPU than I planned & an after-market CPU cooling fan. This would allow me a bit more play for overclocking in the future if I decide to go down that route.
Anywho, the final part list I had plannd from OCUK was
AMD Phenom 9600 Black Edition
Asus Silent Knight AL CPU Cooler
OCZ GameXStream 700W PSU
Abit AX-78 motherboard
Apevia X-Plorer tower case
Microsoft Sidewinder gaming mouse (ok this last one was pure indulgence, I could have got a cheaper mouse, but this one is so pretty)
Add in the parts I kept over from my old system
3GB DDR2 RAM
Saphire RADEON HD3650 graphics card
2 X 160GB SATA Hard Drives
DVD Re-Writable drive
TV Tuner Card
Network Crds (have 3 spare if I need them)
Monitor
Z-Board keyboard
So Thats pretty much a new system designed. no chance of me getting it anytime soon I thought, but I had had some fun designing it. Met a few new people on forums I had signed up for to ask advise etc, so its all good.
Then Friday june 27th rolls around. My Birthday, had a great day, good laugh with the missus. Then on the evening as we have just finished eating, she tells me to total up how much my PC will cost & send her the links to the parts so she can have a look. The bonus of planning this upgrade was that I would put exactly the same parts in the missus PC when we come to upgrade that. I just thought she wanted to have a look at what I had settled on in the end.
The links were being an arse to send over, MSN wasn't playing ball, hotmail was being crap so we gave up on that idea. She then told me to order the stuff. A bit shocked she explained where the £££ was coming from to pay for it all (hey I ain't disclosing our £££ agreement here though). So off I toddle & get to ordering.
Everything is in stock, always a bonus & delivery was set for the following tuesday. Great as I was on holiday that week.
Tuesday comes around far too slowly in some respects. I had a great weekend with the missus, but when left to my own devises all I could think about was all the new shiney toys coming (big kid at heart, but you knew that already). The stuff is delivered just after mid-day, I've barely shut the door before I'm tearing into the boxes. One quick smoke later, & a chance to calm down a little I set about checking things off the invoice & making sure its all intact.
The components all layed out. There are a few things missing from the photo though, hard drives etc, but they were in plain brown boxes & the piccie looked a bit crap with them in, lol. So I set about starting the build.
& where should all PC builds begin????? anyone................. no! well I'll tell you. The case is where it should all begin. no good sorting out the motherboard if you don't have the case ready to bolt it too. So I set about unboxing the case, taking the side pannels off & planning what will go where in terms of the drives. I had put the sid pannels back in the box to keep them safe, paying no attention to them. I consider this a leason learnt, but I'll get to that later.
Having planned what drives would go where, I set about fixing the motherboard to the mounting plate, which is thankfully removeable in this case. I had already been warned about sorting out the CPU cooler mounting bracket before fixing the MB to anything, so this was the first MB task. So now I have a MB mounted to the backplate, with the CPU installed & the mounting bracket fitted. Time to test fit it to the case & see how the cabling will match up to the drive placement. Everything looks good, so Iset about installing the RAM & CPU Cooler. Next job is to go back to the case & fit the drives & PSU. IMPORTANT, this is done before the motherboard is actually fitted into the case. I've had bad experiences before where you couldn't get to the drive bays properly with the MB fitted, so all drives go in first. That quick job done, time to fit the motherboard. Bugger, first major snag is now hit. ..........................................
(I'm tired & going to bed, will finish this Thursday night) July 22 PC Sneak PeakJust thought I would give you a little sneak peak at my up comming blog on my recent PC upgrade.
Here is a pic of all the new components that went into my PC
As you can probably tell there are a few key components missing, such as hard drives & optical drives. I kept the ones from my old PC as there is nothing wrong with them.
& here is a pic of the completed thing switched on
As you can see its very blue. When I get chance I'll take a photo of it so you see the lengths I went to in the name of cable management. Having the window in the side made me think a bit more about how all the cables are routed etc, I wanted it to look as neat as possible & having all the cables out the way helps the air flow inside.
Anyway thats enough for now. The building blog will probably go up on wednesday as it gives me dsomething to do whilst the missus is off playing city of heroes/villans
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