Hi Everyone,
Decided to take the plunge and move to a SFF PC (read girlfriend friendly) PC.
Could not live with a Mac so decided on the following spec:
1 x Intel Core E2140 1.6GHZ Retail
1 x GIGABYTE GA-G33-DS3R Motherboard
1 x XFX 256MB 8600GT FATAILITY
1 x SST SUGO SG03S SILVER uATX
2 x Crucial Ballistix 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 667MHz/PC2-5300 CL3 2.1 V unbuffered non-ECC
1 x Microsoft Silver Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000 - USB/Bluetooth
2 x Samsung SpinPoint HD501LJ 500GB SATAII Hard Drive 16MB Cache
1 x Pioneer BDC-202 5x BluRay OEM beige
1 x Seasonic M12 PSU 500W
1 x MS Win Vista Home Prem 64Bit
2 x Noctua NF-S12-800 120MM 800rpm
1 x Arctic Silver5 THERMAL PASTE
3 x SATA 45CM BLUE UV Cables
1 x ESATA Cable 1.8M
1 x DATAWRITE 1.8M HDMI Cable
1 x Akasa SILVER External HDD Caddy with eSATA support
The build was pretty eventful as the original PSU i purchased (the Silverstone short cable model) did not appear to be able to give the Motherboard enough juice. A trip to Tottenham Court Rd. later (and £100 lighter) i acquired and fitted a Seasonic PSU which has not only a 24-pin connector but also a 4-Pin connector for the CPU Power Feed.
Having replaced the Silverstone and then did some additional reasearch it appears that in some circumstances there appears to be a power supply problem to the CPU Fan header on these motherboards and i would recommend that you use the System Fan header to avoid a very frustrating time as a standard 20-pin power connector with a 4-pin feed plugged into the CPU connector should be sufficient.
The rest of the construction was straightforward, as you can see in the photographs the 8600GT card squeezes in quite tightly to the PSU but it all seems to be fine.
Getting VISTA x64 onto the RAID group was an interesting experience to say the least. Make sure you have a USB key for the motherboard drivers and a printed example to hand on how to use the DiskPart.exe command line utility.
HDTach reports about 300mb/s out of the Samsung RAID pair. CPU clocks to 2.3GHZ using stock volts and stock HSF.
Blu-ray works a treat using PowerDVD but you will need a 50 inch screen to tell the difference
One further item of interest is that eSATA hot-plug functionality will not function at all with the Intel controller as ACHI support cannot be enabled when using RAID. A bit of a kick in the teeth considering i invested in an external eSATA HDD caddy
Good old USB2 eh
Build Slideshow: http://www.flickr.com/gp/10694228@N08/7747rA
Decided to take the plunge and move to a SFF PC (read girlfriend friendly) PC.
Could not live with a Mac so decided on the following spec:
1 x Intel Core E2140 1.6GHZ Retail
1 x GIGABYTE GA-G33-DS3R Motherboard
1 x XFX 256MB 8600GT FATAILITY
1 x SST SUGO SG03S SILVER uATX
2 x Crucial Ballistix 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 667MHz/PC2-5300 CL3 2.1 V unbuffered non-ECC
1 x Microsoft Silver Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000 - USB/Bluetooth
2 x Samsung SpinPoint HD501LJ 500GB SATAII Hard Drive 16MB Cache
1 x Pioneer BDC-202 5x BluRay OEM beige
1 x Seasonic M12 PSU 500W
1 x MS Win Vista Home Prem 64Bit
2 x Noctua NF-S12-800 120MM 800rpm
1 x Arctic Silver5 THERMAL PASTE
3 x SATA 45CM BLUE UV Cables
1 x ESATA Cable 1.8M
1 x DATAWRITE 1.8M HDMI Cable
1 x Akasa SILVER External HDD Caddy with eSATA support
The build was pretty eventful as the original PSU i purchased (the Silverstone short cable model) did not appear to be able to give the Motherboard enough juice. A trip to Tottenham Court Rd. later (and £100 lighter) i acquired and fitted a Seasonic PSU which has not only a 24-pin connector but also a 4-Pin connector for the CPU Power Feed.
Having replaced the Silverstone and then did some additional reasearch it appears that in some circumstances there appears to be a power supply problem to the CPU Fan header on these motherboards and i would recommend that you use the System Fan header to avoid a very frustrating time as a standard 20-pin power connector with a 4-pin feed plugged into the CPU connector should be sufficient.
The rest of the construction was straightforward, as you can see in the photographs the 8600GT card squeezes in quite tightly to the PSU but it all seems to be fine.
Getting VISTA x64 onto the RAID group was an interesting experience to say the least. Make sure you have a USB key for the motherboard drivers and a printed example to hand on how to use the DiskPart.exe command line utility.
HDTach reports about 300mb/s out of the Samsung RAID pair. CPU clocks to 2.3GHZ using stock volts and stock HSF.
Blu-ray works a treat using PowerDVD but you will need a 50 inch screen to tell the difference
One further item of interest is that eSATA hot-plug functionality will not function at all with the Intel controller as ACHI support cannot be enabled when using RAID. A bit of a kick in the teeth considering i invested in an external eSATA HDD caddy
Good old USB2 eh
Build Slideshow: http://www.flickr.com/gp/10694228@N08/7747rA