Soldato
- Joined
- 16 Nov 2010
- Posts
- 16,513
- Location
- Swimming in a lake
Ok, so it's finally done 
After months of planning parts, then buying them for another couple of months, then waiting for them until I get them all home to build them, today I finally got to build my first ever PC 
Hopefully, this is the beginning of a long and happy friendship
There were a couple of hitches along the way, however I'm guessing everyone wants pictures!
So here's a little walk-through my day today!
I must admit there aren't as many pictures as I'd like, because I got a bit carried away with building!
So here goes!
The Parts:
The Case: Lancool K62
This is having both side panels off, as I was about to change all the fans in the case! Without a doubt this is probably the part that required the most screwdriver use! Over the whole experience of the build, only the fans really required a screwdriver!
Top and Bottom off, revealing old fans!
New Fans to go in!
An Enermax T.B. Silence 120mm for the rear, and 3 Xigmatek CLF's with purple LED's (140mm). I must say, I tested these out before I put them in the case, and the Enermax really is silent. It's rated at 11db, and having only it plugged in, I could hear my PSU over it! The Xigmatek's are slightly nosier, at 16db, however are really quiet for LED fans. Saying that I'm slightly disappointed with the LED's having put them in. They're not very bright, but we'll see this in later pictures!
New Fans In!
Not much to say here, they went in fairly easy, so long as you knew how to use a screwdriver and weren't stupid enough to put the front fan in back to front and then realise your mistake *cough*.... Removing the HDD cage to get the front fan in was a requirement, but this was simply only 3 screws, and really wasn't much of an issue.
Motherboard out, and CPU in.
Asus P8P67 and an i5 2500k. This was fairly simple, and in all honesty, I must say I do like the little things done with the Asus motherboard. Simple things like the ASUS section being highly metallic and stuff, you can just feel the quality really....
Heatsink on
Corsair A70, got a good price on this on the MM. It was surprisingly heavy, creating some bend in the motherboard, before I mounted it in the case. However it was dead easy to install! Just with thumb screws Oh and RAM went on before I mounted the Heatsink. 4GB of XMS3.
Into the Case
Motherboard goes into the case and the standard Corsair fans go onto the heatsink, Got it in Push Pull Expelling out the back. This was again a nice simple operation with the K62. They even give you thumbscrews to install the motherboard!
PSU in.
In goes the Corsair HX650W. Again this was a dream to install. The case has a fantastic clip system, so you simply have to put the bracket on, pull it down, and the PSU is in rock solid. I should say I did screw it in as well however, as they recommend it for if you're moving the case, but to be honest I don't think you need to.
Hard Drives, Optical Drive, and Graphics Card go in.
A Corsair P3 64GB, an F3 1TB and an ASUS GTX480. Originally I mounted the SSD in the bracket it comes with and then into the case, however I discovered that this way the SATA power cable hadn't to be bent a bit too much, so in the end I decided to mount it into the screw holes on the HDD Cage (This is why it's moved in later pictures. The F3 was literally just stick it in, toolless again! The optical drive is the one in the picture at the beginning, the £14 Samsung one, however once everything was up and running, I ended up switching it out for the one in an old computer as that has Blu-Ray (pictures later). Finally the GPU. The 480 is a beast I must say, having had it next to me, the noise isn't really as bad as people say. It took up two pci brackets on the back of the case, however again, this is toolless due to the fantastic design. It was really simple getting it in to be honest. It does hang slightly, due to the weight, which caused minor issues plugging in the DVI cable, however that wasn't a real issue!
Some wiring up:
Just some minor things here really, as you can see I've plugged in the power for the Harddrives, and the SSD has been moved as mentioned earlier.
IT LIVES!
This is just a photo of installing Windows (something we ended up doing 3 times as I kept trying to sort out the Secondary drive and folder locations and killing the install) In the end I gave up trying to junction it and just redirected the folders.
The monitor by the way is an HP 2310ti, 23 inches of touchscreen heavenliness!
Soundcard.
Well everything went in, and it came upstairs into my bedroom so that it could plug into the internet! (Hence the change of background). Once I'd installed all the drivers etc.. for Graphics/Motherboard the sound card went in! As seen here. Absolutely fantastic soundcard though, it has some nice small things that make the difference (e.g. lights in all the audio out connectors at the back colour coded to the cable so you can easily change them, or see them at night) I should point out that the fans are purple, my camera just doesn't seem to like the colour.
Couple of Close ups of the Heatsink
DVD Drive switched. Switched the DVD drive out from the case with the one from my old pc which has blu-ray
So the cable management begins!
After all of this, I couldn't actually get the side back on the case (non-windowed side) because of all the cables out the back. However, considering this is a first build, I think it ended up ok on both sides, with a reasonable compromise! Here's a couple of pictures to show the end result (a good hour of extra cable management after building) I should mention as well getting the 8 pin motherboard power cable through the top of the case and out the hole, was a complete PIG! Took a good 10 minutes of swearing to get that through!
A couple more finishing shots!
The compulsory night time shot:
Again the lights are purple, just camera's a bit :S To be honest, I'm still a bit disappointed in the brightness of the LED's...
Conclusions:
Overall, I'm pretty damn happy with the whole thing!
The case, despite a couple of niggles was a complete dream to build in, and all in all great fun
It really is quite easy doing your first build, software was probably the biggest issue for me, and even that wasn't too bad!
Oh, and the touchscreen is SO awesome
As a testimony to the success, it was in pieces this morning, and now I'm posting this whole topic whilst on the pc it's about!
Another thing that I do like, is SSD's! No longer do I have to go, 'oh I'm turning the computer on, let's go make a drink...' (On my old computer I had time to shower before it had finished booting up...) Now I think the slowest part of loading the computer, is me typing in my password....
As for what's going to happen next, I'll update this as and when I get some Benchmarks up, what do people recommend? Reckon I should do?
I doubt I'll overclock it for now, as I don't really have the need for it, if I feel it's getting slower, I'll do so for that extra bit of oomph, but right now, it's not needed so I doubt I'm going to.
For now however here's a pic of idle temps:
Frankly I'm a bit unsure about the temperature difference across the cores! So might have to reseat the heatsink at some point :S
kd
After months of planning parts, then buying them for another couple of months, then waiting for them until I get them all home to build them, today I finally got to build my first ever PC Hopefully, this is the beginning of a long and happy friendship
There were a couple of hitches along the way, however I'm guessing everyone wants pictures!
So here's a little walk-through my day today!
I must admit there aren't as many pictures as I'd like, because I got a bit carried away with building!
So here goes!
The Parts:
The Case: Lancool K62
This is having both side panels off, as I was about to change all the fans in the case! Without a doubt this is probably the part that required the most screwdriver use! Over the whole experience of the build, only the fans really required a screwdriver!
Top and Bottom off, revealing old fans!
New Fans to go in!
An Enermax T.B. Silence 120mm for the rear, and 3 Xigmatek CLF's with purple LED's (140mm). I must say, I tested these out before I put them in the case, and the Enermax really is silent. It's rated at 11db, and having only it plugged in, I could hear my PSU over it! The Xigmatek's are slightly nosier, at 16db, however are really quiet for LED fans. Saying that I'm slightly disappointed with the LED's having put them in. They're not very bright, but we'll see this in later pictures!
New Fans In!
Not much to say here, they went in fairly easy, so long as you knew how to use a screwdriver and weren't stupid enough to put the front fan in back to front and then realise your mistake *cough*.... Removing the HDD cage to get the front fan in was a requirement, but this was simply only 3 screws, and really wasn't much of an issue.
Motherboard out, and CPU in.
Asus P8P67 and an i5 2500k. This was fairly simple, and in all honesty, I must say I do like the little things done with the Asus motherboard. Simple things like the ASUS section being highly metallic and stuff, you can just feel the quality really....
Heatsink on
Corsair A70, got a good price on this on the MM. It was surprisingly heavy, creating some bend in the motherboard, before I mounted it in the case. However it was dead easy to install! Just with thumb screws
Oh and RAM went on before I mounted the Heatsink. 4GB of XMS3.
Into the Case
Motherboard goes into the case and the standard Corsair fans go onto the heatsink, Got it in Push Pull Expelling out the back. This was again a nice simple operation with the K62. They even give you thumbscrews to install the motherboard!
PSU in.
In goes the Corsair HX650W. Again this was a dream to install. The case has a fantastic clip system, so you simply have to put the bracket on, pull it down, and the PSU is in rock solid. I should say I did screw it in as well however, as they recommend it for if you're moving the case, but to be honest I don't think you need to.
Hard Drives, Optical Drive, and Graphics Card go in.
A Corsair P3 64GB, an F3 1TB and an ASUS GTX480. Originally I mounted the SSD in the bracket it comes with and then into the case, however I discovered that this way the SATA power cable hadn't to be bent a bit too much, so in the end I decided to mount it into the screw holes on the HDD Cage (This is why it's moved in later pictures. The F3 was literally just stick it in, toolless again! The optical drive is the one in the picture at the beginning, the £14 Samsung one, however once everything was up and running, I ended up switching it out for the one in an old computer as that has Blu-Ray (pictures later). Finally the GPU. The 480 is a beast
I must say, having had it next to me, the noise isn't really as bad as people say. It took up two pci brackets on the back of the case, however again, this is toolless due to the fantastic design. It was really simple getting it in to be honest. It does hang slightly, due to the weight, which caused minor issues plugging in the DVI cable, however that wasn't a real issue!
Some wiring up:
Just some minor things here really, as you can see I've plugged in the power for the Harddrives, and the SSD has been moved as mentioned earlier.
IT LIVES!
This is just a photo of installing Windows (something we ended up doing 3 times as I kept trying to sort out the Secondary drive and folder locations and killing the install) In the end I gave up trying to junction it and just redirected the folders.
The monitor by the way is an HP 2310ti, 23 inches of touchscreen heavenliness!
Soundcard.
Well everything went in, and it came upstairs into my bedroom so that it could plug into the internet! (Hence the change of background). Once I'd installed all the drivers etc.. for Graphics/Motherboard the sound card went in! As seen here. Absolutely fantastic soundcard though, it has some nice small things that make the difference (e.g. lights in all the audio out connectors at the back colour coded to the cable so you can easily change them, or see them at night) I should point out that the fans are purple, my camera just doesn't seem to like the colour.
Couple of Close ups of the Heatsink
DVD Drive switched. Switched the DVD drive out from the case with the one from my old pc which has blu-ray
So the cable management begins!
After all of this, I couldn't actually get the side back on the case (non-windowed side) because of all the cables out the back. However, considering this is a first build, I think it ended up ok on both sides, with a reasonable compromise! Here's a couple of pictures to show the end result (a good hour of extra cable management after building) I should mention as well getting the 8 pin motherboard power cable through the top of the case and out the hole, was a complete PIG! Took a good 10 minutes of swearing to get that through!
A couple more finishing shots!
The compulsory night time shot:
Again the lights are purple, just camera's a bit :S To be honest, I'm still a bit disappointed in the brightness of the LED's...
Conclusions:
Overall, I'm pretty damn happy with the whole thing!
The case, despite a couple of niggles was a complete dream to build in, and all in all great fun
It really is quite easy doing your first build, software was probably the biggest issue for me, and even that wasn't too bad!
Oh, and the touchscreen is SO awesome
As a testimony to the success, it was in pieces this morning, and now I'm posting this whole topic whilst on the pc it's about!
Another thing that I do like, is SSD's! No longer do I have to go, 'oh I'm turning the computer on, let's go make a drink...' (On my old computer I had time to shower before it had finished booting up...) Now I think the slowest part of loading the computer, is me typing in my password....
As for what's going to happen next, I'll update this as and when I get some Benchmarks up, what do people recommend? Reckon I should do?
I doubt I'll overclock it for now, as I don't really have the need for it, if I feel it's getting slower, I'll do so for that extra bit of oomph, but right now, it's not needed so I doubt I'm going to.
For now however here's a pic of idle temps:
Frankly I'm a bit unsure about the temperature difference across the cores! So might have to reseat the heatsink at some point :S
kd
