Permabanned
- Joined
- 13 Jan 2010
- Posts
- 242
- Location
- UK
Hey just built a neat i5 system for my grandfather, he loves burning films, photography, going online . . . but his last computer was a Packard Bell from the purple shirt place that must be about 6 years old, terrible company. It was noisy, overheating and just a complete waste of money, took him over an hour to convert one avi to dvd without even burning so he decided to get a new pc for about £500, here's what I bought for him:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3
Processor:Intel Core i5 750 2.66Ghz (Lynnfield/Stock Cooler)
RAM: Corsair Dominator 4GB DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz
Graphics:Gigabyte Ati Radeon HD 4550 (Heatsink/Low Profile)
Hard Drive: Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB SATA-II
Optical Drive:Sony Optiarc AD-7241S 24x DVD±RW SATA Lightscribe
PSU: Corsair CX 400W ATX Power Supply
Case: Akasa Rev.4 Zen Case
To start, the build pics:
Extra wire, hid away easily.
Finished
I must start by saying that my worse two worries were the noise and quality of case, the overall noise of the system is great ! I never dealt with Akasa before but let me just say, I am now a fan. The build quality of the case was excellent, might have been a little light in weight but for the price with plenty of ventilation, its awesome and the motherboard fit in snug without any problems Also the fans are great, very quiet and good quality with braided cable.
This was the calm before the storm, after the build I installed the operating system, drivers, tweaked BIOS . . . it left the system hanging on boot ! two minute start up, then 5, then it just didn't start coming on at all. So I made sure all the parts were connected etc, loaded optimised defaults in BIOS restarted still nothing. So I had to reformat again, only installing basic drivers and not changing much in the not so friendly BIOS and everything seemed to work well, 15-20 second start up and convert takes around 20 minutes. Only thing I wasn't happy with although it started I can activate XMP in the corsair RAM and BIOS, this is not the case, the setting is totally disabled due to RAM :/ but set Gigabytes' c.i.a. 2 to cruise in the set up which dragged the CPU to 2.8 at 25-32C, which ain't bad, he don't need an overclocked system, just a quiet, stable one that has plenty of life in it.
*One big pain though, the Sony Optiarc AD-7241S 24x is supposedly quiet in all the reviews, this is bull****. This is one noisy mofo when formatting, burning or installing, so I can't imagine what some of the reviewers used to just, maybe a v8 engine system or something, this overtakes the sound of all the fans including stock, beware, although its still very fast when burning and light-scribe.
So overall, very happy, heres the finished system, please feel free to ask any questions
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3
Processor:Intel Core i5 750 2.66Ghz (Lynnfield/Stock Cooler)
RAM: Corsair Dominator 4GB DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz
Graphics:Gigabyte Ati Radeon HD 4550 (Heatsink/Low Profile)
Hard Drive: Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB SATA-II
Optical Drive:Sony Optiarc AD-7241S 24x DVD±RW SATA Lightscribe
PSU: Corsair CX 400W ATX Power Supply
Case: Akasa Rev.4 Zen Case
To start, the build pics:
Extra wire, hid away easily.
Finished
I must start by saying that my worse two worries were the noise and quality of case, the overall noise of the system is great ! I never dealt with Akasa before but let me just say, I am now a fan. The build quality of the case was excellent, might have been a little light in weight but for the price with plenty of ventilation, its awesome and the motherboard fit in snug without any problems
Also the fans are great, very quiet and good quality with braided cable.This was the calm before the storm, after the build I installed the operating system, drivers, tweaked BIOS . . . it left the system hanging on boot ! two minute start up, then 5, then it just didn't start coming on at all. So I made sure all the parts were connected etc, loaded optimised defaults in BIOS restarted still nothing. So I had to reformat again, only installing basic drivers and not changing much in the not so friendly BIOS and everything seemed to work well, 15-20 second start up and convert takes around 20 minutes. Only thing I wasn't happy with although it started I can activate XMP in the corsair RAM and BIOS, this is not the case, the setting is totally disabled due to RAM :/ but set Gigabytes' c.i.a. 2 to cruise in the set up which dragged the CPU to 2.8 at 25-32C, which ain't bad, he don't need an overclocked system, just a quiet, stable one that has plenty of life in it.
*One big pain though, the Sony Optiarc AD-7241S 24x is supposedly quiet in all the reviews, this is bull****. This is one noisy mofo when formatting, burning or installing, so I can't imagine what some of the reviewers used to just, maybe a v8 engine system or something, this overtakes the sound of all the fans including stock, beware, although its still very fast when burning and light-scribe.
So overall, very happy, heres the finished system, please feel free to ask any questions
Last edited:
