After build

After the build I installed Windows Vista Business 64-bit. That was simple enough. Then installed the EVGA video drivers, and the motherboard drivers. Then I installed my mouse and set up my speakers to work properly inside Windows. Loaded Firefox and Thunderbird fine, along with Trillian. I have even been able to play Company of Heroes on it and it looks great. I turned all of the settings up and it looks good. Now I'm just stripping down all of the extra Windows applications that I don't want and I should be ready. I doubt I will miss Windows Mail too much.
I also put in an old desktop wireless card as well as a 200GB hard drive (IDE) I was using as an external but decided to put it in the case for backups now. That all went pretty smoothly.
Vista 64-bit seems fine for now, everything I have has installed without any problems. The Aero interface looks pretty cool and I'm going to continue to play with these little graphical things that make my new OS look so pretty.
I still don't know much about overclocking and frame rates and stuff, but I'll get into that after I move (I still need to move back onto campus soon). My next post will probably be about that stuff.

|:^)

The Build

Well the time has arrived to begin the build. Overall it went pretty smoothly, but I somehow got a small cut on my index finger (an extremely shallow paper cut-like scratch really). I have no idea how it got it, but its nothing more than a nuisance. Onto the build. I took pictures when I remembered to, but I was mostly concentrated on the build, and not necessarily my camera. I apologize in advance for the low quality pics.

First I did the easiest part of the setup. I installed the 80x80x15mm fan on the backside of the motherboard tray.
Again, just click on the image to see the full picture.

The 80mm fan that sits right behind the motherboard on the right side of the case

This procedure was pretty simple because the motherboard tray had these two little slots that I just had to push the corners of the fan into. These were pretty snug, with no screws needed. Seems to hold well.

Detail of the two slots I was talking about

I then screwed in the standoffs for the motherboard. There are plenty of holes into which the standoffs can go, but which ones you actually use depend on the motherboard itself. I also installed to two 120mm top fans into the case. Just four screws per fan, and that was it.

The inside of the case, showing the standoffs and the two top fans (click to get full picture)

The outside top part of the case, showing my two new fans

Next was to install the power supply. This was also a simple procedure. I made sure the fan was facing the bottom, and just screwed it into my case using the screws provided.

The power supply sitting at the bottom of my case

The rear of the case, showing the attached power supply

Then the two intake fans on the left hand side of the case were installed to the lid. Again a very simple procedure.

I made the wires run together down the middle of the panel

Here is what the outside of the panel looks like.
Maybe I should have gotten black fans, but the clear ones were cheaper.

Next I connected all of the fans' power connectors to the power supply. I'm glad the Cooler Master fans came with splitters or else I would not have enough connectors on my power supply for all of my fans. Hiper should look into that. I strung as many wires as possible around behind the motherboard tray to have more room to work inside the case.

My mess of wires behind the motherboard tray

My next step was to install the drives. The hard drive cage came out pretty easily, and the side screws just fit into the case just as if it were 3 5.25" drives stacked on top of one another. The hard drive just slides into any of the 4 slots, and installs using screws. Pretty simple. It's nice that the hard drive screw holes on the cage have these rubber feet. Hopefully that will dampen the vibrations.

The hard drive cage

The rubber screw holes

The hard drive installed

And now for the DVD drive. It's a similar procedure; the tool-less side is simple enough. I just wanted to use screws on the other side because it just made me feel safer.

The DVD drive installed in the slot

The redundant screws for my own sake

Both drives finally installed

Attached SATA power connectors

The second front fan that I planned to put at the top of the front panel was a little tricky. I had seen someone online use zip-ties so I decided to try that out. I just lined up the fan in the general location that I wanted it and searched the case for appropriate holes. I pretty much got what I wanted, but of course this is not as ideal as having an extra cage. If I was not going to have my DVD drive in the middle, I would have considered attaching the bottom of one fan to the top of the hard drive cage and and another to the bottom of the hard drive cage, leaving the other edges free to hang. I think that would be secure enough, but just not my ideal configuration.

The fan positioned right where I wanted it (almost)

The zip ties on the right side holding the fan in place

Prepping the motherboard was not as daunting of a task as I thought it would be. Installing the CPU was simple. Just switch the lever, open the lid, place the processor in, close the lid and the lever. Just make sure you don't touch any of the pins on the processor. The notches of the processor only match up one way with the motherboard socket, so there was no need to worry about it being backwards.

The open motherboard socket

It's hard to believe that something this small can do so much

Processor installed

Next step was the heatsink. I completely forgot to take pictures of these next steps because I was so scared of messing it up. It's not that difficult though. Just be careful. I applied a very thin line of thermal compound (about 1 inch in length) down the center of the processor. Next I mad sure I had my heatsink fan pointing toward my top exhaust fan, lined up the holes on the motherboard and the backplate, and tightened the screws. It seemed pretty secure when I was finished with it. After that, I screwed in the motherboard to the motherbaord tray. Six holes were provided on the board that matched up with the tray and that seemed fine. I plugged the CPU cooler fan into the motherboard, plugged in the CPU power (which I would've forgotten had my friends not told me to), and plugged in the motherboard power. The front panel connections from the case were also plugged into the motherboard. These are a little hard to figure out, but if you read the motherboard and read the wires, you should be fine. The print is just a little tough to make out on the motherboard when you have bad lighting.
After that I installed the RAM, which is a simple process (just make sure the pins match up and connect). Since I had two sticks of RAM, I was told by my friends (who have built before) to use two slots of the same color because of reasons that are still unclear to me.

The motherboard installed, showing the power connector, CPU fan connection, and RAM

Next up was the video card, which again, was simple enough. My board only had one PCI Express x16 slot so I just plugged it in. The tool-less design of the expansion slots made this very easy. Don't forget to power your video card or else it will scream at you when you turn it on without plugging in the power (literally, it will shriek). My friend told me this when he did this on his own machine a while ago. I tested that, and sure enough, it's true. Then I plugged the SATA cables in; connecting the DVD drive, Hard drive and motherboard.

Video card, and SATA cables

The inside of my complete case (look at that wire management!)

I tied up a few wires in the case with zip-ties so there is more room for airflow, and routed as many extra wires as possible behind the back of the motherboard tray. After organizing the cables, I was ready to close up and boot.

More wire management where nobody will be looking

Everything in place, ready to close up

My desk setup, ready to go

Lookat the pretty lights!

I booted up, and looked through the BIOS. Changed a few things around and was ready to go. The monitor worked fine, and so did the keyboard. I'm going to install Windows Vista Business (64-bit) soon and see what happens. After I have all of the settings ready I'll probably experiment with some overclocking.

My final setup, with my old VX Nano mouse and Creative I-triuge L3800 speakers.

|:^)

Unboxing

Everything arrived within two business days (I ordered Wednesday morning and received everything either Thursday or Friday). Here it all is just sitting in my room waiting to be opened and assembled:
Just click on any picture to see the full image.

Top Row: GPU, Cooler, CPU, RAM
2nd Row: PSU, Motherboard, DVD drive, Hard Drive, Keyboard
3rd Row: Monitor, Chassis
Bottom: Case fans

Here I will show some pictures of each part that I bought, with a short review of what came in the box. I'm not going to do a full product review because that can all be found online.

Let's start again with the case:

Cooler Master Centurion 590

The lovely box showing plenty of photos of the case

The mesh front of the case with I/O panel

The left side and top with fan vents

Right side and rear of case

Inside of the case, with all items included

Instructions, along with zip-ties and plenty of screws

The hard drive cage, which converts 3 5.25" drive bays to 4 3.5" bays

The rear inside with the included 120mm Fan, and tool-less expansion slots

The front with mesh panel removed, revealing up to 9 drive bays

The front intake 120mm blue LED fan attached to the hard drive cage

Next up, the Power Supply:
Corsair VX550W

The Box

The bottom of the box

The instructions, with the PSU inside a sweet Corsair drawstring bag

The cables, connectors, zip-ties and screws

The power supply unit

The top of the PSU, showing the specs

And onto the Motherboard:
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775

The box

The contents: Setup guide, IDE and SATA cables, sticker, CD, I/O pate, instructions

The motherboard wrapped in a static-free bag

Free from the bag

Here we have my new processor:
Intel Core 2 Q6600 Kentsfield

The lovely box

A small window showing off the most powerful square inch I've ever seen

Instructions along with the crap stock cooler

The processor again, with the sticker

This is what I bought to replace that crap stock cooler:
Masscool 8WA741 92mm

The packaging (looked like a spindle of DVDs at first)

The backplate, thermal compound and the cooler itself

There are arrows on the top of the cooler to tell you which way the fan moves
(I heard of a few people having trouble with this)

And here is arguably the best video card available for under $200:
EVGA 512-P3-N801-AR GeForce 8800GT 512MB

The wonderful box

The contents of said box: Instructions, 2x DVI/VGA adaptor, S-Video cable, power chords, HDTV adaptor,
and of course the card itself

Another one of the most powerful small objects I've ever owned

Next up, the memory:
G Skill 4 GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM 1000

The pretty box

It flips open to show off the RAM!

The contents: Decal, paper thing with websites on it, sticker, and the RAM

4GBs

Now for the Hard Drive:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250410AS 250GB

It came in a static bag, this is what it looks like (yea its SATA)

The optical drive:
Pioneer DVR-215DBK 20x SATA

The only packaging were these two foam blocks and the instructions
Not even a plastic bag or anything. I'm glad the box had plenty of packing peanuts

The drive in all of its glory (I'm glad its black)

Finally my case fans:
Cooler Master 120 Blue LED
4x Hiper HFF-1N12N 120mm Transparent
Hiper HFF-1N08N 80mm Transparent

6 fans plus my included 2 in the case make 8!

I'm too lazy to rotate this picture (it's just the blue LED fan's packaging)

Here is the blue LED fan along with the screws and 3-4pin power adapter. This adapter has an extension section, so this fan will not take up one of my 4pin molex connectors (nice touch). It's going to go in the front of the case as well. Hope to get to see it light up soon.

Again too lazy. The packaging for the 80mm and 120mm were the same.

The 120mm fan along with rubber sticky washer things, screws, and 3-4pin power adapter
(it would have been nice for them to make the 4-pin end an extension like Cooler Master did, but I can't expect too much when I pay 5 bucks for a 19dB fan.)

The thin (15mm) 80mm fan with screws and power adapter (again, no extension)

Now one of the best looking parts of this system:
KDS K-2237MDWB Black 22"

The box, showing off the nice screen

The contents: instructions, stand, VGA cable, audio cable, power cable
(no DVI cable, sadly, but I found one online for $5, and it was a Monster cable)

The screen itself, all 21.6 inches of it

Finally, my new keyboard:
Logitech UltraX

The keyboard box

As you can see, I kept it simple with only a few hotkeys, and a nice simiple layout

That concludes the unboxing part of this build. I'm going to go build now. I'll take pleny of pictures. Tomorrow I should be done building and I'll find time to make the post with step by step of what I did. Hope I don't mess it up too bad.

|:^)