Every Cloud has a Silver Lining

misterPK

misterPK

misterPK

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18 Apr 2007
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A couple of weeks ago, just after I'd bought 2 new hard drives for it, my shuttle motherboard died. Rather than spend the 140 euros that shuttle offered to sell me a replacement for, I decided to go back to a full size machine. Well, not quite full size, a Lian-Li G50 is one of the smallest full ATX towers you can get!

Here's the new stuff:
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The stock cooler looks even cheaper that I was expecting, especially for a black edition!
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Everything on the board. I went for the GA-MA770-UD3 because it fits with the mid-range-ish budget I was going for, and seems to be one of the few without the unwanted onboard graphics.
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From the other side, showing off the 4GB of kingston ram. You can also just make out the dead shuttle board looking all lonely in the distance.
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Everything in the G50. A bit cramped I know, and if I'm honest I wouldnt have gone for this case if I was buying today.
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But it does look good from the outside!
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Everything in the build went surprisingly smoothly. I was expecting to have to flash the BIOS to get the X3 to work, but it already had the F4 revision and worked from the go. I also managed to setup my first RAID 0 array without too much trouble. I've even got windows 7 (64-bit) working perfectly, and I'm about to try out TF2 on it!

It's not the most impressive build ever on here, but there you go. All comments and questions welcome!

PK!
 
Your case looks identically similar to mine. Only I have the very older PC60 with the same CD bezels and the three performance guages.

Not a bad buy at all. How much did it set you back?
 
The only new bits were the motherboard, RAM and CPU, all from OcUK last week which came to around £230. The other bits I've had for a while. The graphics card is only a 3650, so that's the next thing I'm saving up to replace.

The gauges are a Cooler Master Musketeer, bought ages ago because I liked the look of them. They show CPU temp from a probe, sound pressure and the voltage over the two case fans.

PK!
 
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Seems like a shame the PSU has to go that way up, cable management would have been easier otherwise. What are the temps like though? Could it benefit from some shorter cables maybe and a bit more routing?

Think I prefer the design of the A05 with the front PSU, but otherwise a nice case. Seems like a good spec for the price, though i'm sure some of the hardcore overclockers on here will cry when they see that stock heatsink!
 
Never Built an AMD system, but I know on Intels you dont put the 2 sticks of RAM next to each other, either put them in 1 and 3 or 2 and 4... Is this different for you then? Just never seen it before :)
 
To me it looks like the first memory channel is the first two slots, hence the colour coding on the board. I think this is just dependant on the board layout and not an intel/AMD thing, but I could be wrong. It does make more sense to have them staggered due to heat etc if you've only got two sticks, but only if you're overclocking really, can't see it being an issue.
 
alexhull24 said:
Seems like a shame the PSU has to go that way up, cable management would have been easier otherwise. What are the temps like though? Could it benefit from some shorter cables maybe and a bit more routing?
Click to expand...

Yeah it is a bit of a shame, and if I turn it round then the fan on the PSU will be working against the CPU fan, so it would probably make the airflow even worse. The CPU temp hover's around 30 according to the gauge on the case, but that's just from a probe I've attached to the heatsink so I'm not sure how accurate it is.

alexhull24 said:
Think I prefer the design of the A05 with the front PSU, but otherwise a nice case. Seems like a good spec for the price, though i'm sure some of the hardcore overclockers on here will cry when they see that stock heatsink!
Click to expand...

I agree it's not the perfect case, but 3 years ago when I got it I wasn't really thinking of big CPU coolers and overcocking, and I wanted the extra front panel bays the G50 offered. There were also stories of PSU's overheating in the A05.

I'm not gonna overclock it just yet, because at the moment it would still be limited by the graphics card (512MB 3650), so until I change that I decided to make do with the stock cooler.

Ducky Spud said:
Never Built an AMD system, but I know on Intels you dont put the 2 sticks of RAM next to each other, either put them in 1 and 3 or 2 and 4... Is this different for you then? Just never seen it before :)
Click to expand...

It's just down to the board, I've no idea why. I didn't notice this when I picked it to be honest, and you're right, alternating would be better for keeping the RAM cool.

PK!
 
Cool, well either way it's a lot of PC for not many notes. Plus you can easily swap out components when the time comes. I bet you get fairly good gaming performance from that too on most stuff. That's the terrible thing about spending loads on PC hardware, it very often gives little extra benefit for a lot more money. Though i'm sure everyone here already knows that!
 
Spooter said:
Looks nice any other plans for the build?
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As I've said, a new graphics card and a new CPU cooler are next on the wish list, but that won't be for at least a couple of months.

I've got an iMon LCD I might put in it, and I might have a go at tidying the cables up a bit more if I can. I've also got to decide if it's worth putting a fan in the top 80mm mount.

And just maybe, if I get tempted by some cheap parts on the MM, I might move the hard drives a bit and see if I can fit a single 120 radiator in the front, and hook that up to the CPU so the lack of space wouldn't be an issue.

PK!
 
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