1st Project £700 Gaming Build for a friend! (photos)

buchtis · 6 Jan 2012 at 20:55

Unfortunately the seller of the i5 didn't clean the old TIM paste off, it spread all over in the bag and got on the edges of the CPU:

No big deal though, just got some nail varnish remover and bog roll and it came out good as new:

buchtis · 6 Jan 2012 at 21:01

Now it was time to fit the backplate of the Antec Khuler. Did this a while ago on my Phenom and it was a breeze:

But I nearly soiled myself when I saw the back. Followed all the instructions, put all the bits in the correct and this is what it looked like:

Then I noticed all the holes actually line up, it's just how they positioned them on the plastic bracket!

Took off the TIM Antec put on and put on some proper stuff:

SMed · 6 Jan 2012 at 21:03

I hope no paste got on the pins of the CPU!

buchtis · 6 Jan 2012 at 21:05

Sorted some of the wires and went ahead with fitting the PSU:

The 1 5850 for an coming test run:

Result:

buchtis · 6 Jan 2012 at 21:11

Booted fine, I breathed a sigh of relief then I realised I had to tidy all the cables and felt like crying.

Super tight fit, but managed to squeeze it in.

Before:

After:

I think I could have done a better job round the back to be honest, but with the amount of cables and all of them being quite thick it was hard to organize properly but I did my best.

The BIOS on this mobo is amazing, all new motherboards should come with this:

buchtis · 6 Jan 2012 at 21:15

Just a head up to anyone wishing to purchase this case, it's been excellent throughout but there's 1 or 2 minor niggles I have with it.

1) The HDD bay thing, or rather the rubber are horrible to use and don't really feel secure at all.

Ended up taking them off and just screwing it in manually.

2) The 5.25 bays have a clicky lock thing which is an excellent idea if you want to removed your DVD/BluRay drives quickly. The problem is, it's only on one side of the case which defeats the whole point of it. Again, ended up taking it off and putting screws in.

3) I put a push/pull system in with the Antec Khuler. When you do this there is absolutely no space to mount a 140/120mm fan on the top of the outside of the case so i've had to put only 1 fan on the bottom.

And that's it. Currently testing under Prime95 on 4.8Ghz @ 1.35. Been running about an hour without fail and temps were 70c max.

buchtis · 6 Jan 2012 at 21:18

SMed said:
I hope no paste got on the pins of the CPU!

Got to the edge but not on the pins, thank God. General rule of thumb is to clean the CPU before you send it to a customer but unfortunately this didn't seem to be the case here.

SMed · 6 Jan 2012 at 21:34

Looks great.

Scryus · 6 Jan 2012 at 22:15

Looking mighty fine, can't believe they sent the CPU to you like that. Nice job.

SkidMarkKing · 6 Jan 2012 at 22:22

Nice build there bud. Bit silly of them to send the CPU like that as mentioned above

L0stpr0phet · 6 Jan 2012 at 22:48

nice build! the mobo bios looks pretty snazzy

beefybarn · 6 Jan 2012 at 23:11

Yeah i do like the look of the msi bios always been my favourite boards.

Stinger53 · 7 Jan 2012 at 10:48

nice build

spenncerr · 9 Jan 2012 at 19:59

Lovely build mate. Wish I had gone with a Kuhler now, can you provide us with temps? Your build is almost identical to mine.

buchtis · 9 Jan 2012 at 22:59

Hi mate he's already picked the PC up so it's in his possession now. Will ask him tomorrow to try and get some reading but can't promise anything as he's constantly on it now playing games!