My slow year long upgrade (project bodge it and bash it)

skippy2421 · 21 May 2009 at 03:02

I have been planning to do the next part of my upgrade for a while and figured i'd start a thread to show how it goes plus i was getting requests by other forum members (yes you siumatfung) The following stuff turned up on wednesday but haven't had chance to do anything with them yet.

Just so you know what i'm working with already:

Well that's all my gear pictured for you lot to look over, apologies for poor pictures, i only have a phone camera available at my disposal.

Now to the upgrade, i have recently purchased the following:

Gigabyte X48-DS4
Sunbeam Core Contact Freezer
WD Caviar Black 500gb HDD
Zalman fan controller
2x coolermaster silent blue led fans (120mm)
1x xilence black fan (120mm)
and some cable management stuff

I have been slowly replacing the parts of a dell system i bought about 10 months ago which performed admirably but as i started to play more games it began to struggle. So far i have replaced the GPU (which was a 2600XT) with a sapphire 4850, the PSU (which was an awful 325w) with an antec earthwatts 650w and the case with a cm 690 dominator case. the components i'm still using from the inspiron 530 i started with is the HDD, DVD drive, CPU(Q6600), mobo and ram

my plan is to install all these new toys and finally overclock that q6600 as that nasty dell board wouldn't let me

and tidy it up whilst in the process.

I should be starting work on it tomorrow at some point however it may take some time to finish as i have a rather busy schedule of partying to stick to with it being the end of the uni year. I also may be asking for some help when it comes to overclocking as it's going to be my first attempt at it.

Any tips you wish to share would be appreciated, i'll keep you guys updated with piccies as and when i do stuff.

siumatfung · 21 May 2009 at 04:25

nice setup buddy

like the speakers

Pulse · 21 May 2009 at 05:12

The only thing that worries me is that you don't state that you've bought any new ram and that you're going to be using the sticks that came from Dell.

I just think this may hinder your overclock so what.

skippy2421 · 21 May 2009 at 16:38

Yea, i'm going to see what i get with the 4x1gig sticks of dell ram (ddr2 800mhz). If it does hinder me quite a lot i'll get some of the new OCZ gold stuff however i'm just a little reluctant to spend any more money if i can get away with what i have, on a budget you see.

coupe69 · 21 May 2009 at 18:49

skippy2421 said:
(ddr2 800mhz)

Will be fine up to 3.6Ghz (1600 fsb) using the x9 multiplier as the memory won't need to be overclocked at all. That's providing the memory will actually run at spec.

skippy2421 · 22 May 2009 at 03:32

a little progress report, i've been flat out on it pretty much all day (actually from about 5 as i didn't wake up until 3) and i'm nowhere near finished. It's been disaster after disaster and i actually am going to have to resort to what the project title says, bodge it and bash it. After an enormous battle with the sunbeam cooler which now has to blow upwards as oppose to out the back i have now run into a bigger problem. The top of the case will not go back on again, i'm supposed to be able to fit 2 120mm fans on the top of it but clearly not, its not even close to shutting. In the morning before sorting stuff for our house party i'm going to attempt to try and cut out some of the plastic that is catching on the new fans.

I was hoping to have it all together by tonight. I made a big deal with cable management and neatness, but if i can't get the top to fit i'm going to have to take it all out again to get the top fans off. I'm p****d off and now going to bed, night all.

Chris1712 · 22 May 2009 at 04:20

skippy2421 said:
a little progress report, i've been flat out on it pretty much all day (actually from about 5 as i didn't wake up until 3) and i'm nowhere near finished. It's been disaster after disaster and i actually am going to have to resort to what the project title says, bodge it and bash it. After an enormous battle with the sunbeam cooler which now has to blow upwards as oppose to out the back i have now run into a bigger problem. The top of the case will not go back on again, i'm supposed to be able to fit 2 120mm fans on the top of it but clearly not, its not even close to shutting. In the morning before sorting stuff for our house party i'm going to attempt to try and cut out some of the plastic that is catching on the new fans. I was hoping to have it all together by tonight. I made a big deal with cable management and neatness, but if i can't get the top to fit i'm going to have to take it all out again to get the top fans off. I'm p****d off and now going to bed, night all.

The fans (presumably) go on the inside of the case, they wont touch the outer plastic.

siumatfung · 22 May 2009 at 11:19

ouch buddy

i feel for you

skippy2421 · 22 May 2009 at 16:59

right top's back on, reason it didn't go on before is because i was being a retard. However work has come to a halt as my room has become a storage facility for my housemates stuff. PARTY PARTY!!!!!!!

siumatfung · 22 May 2009 at 18:19

nice one mate its always good to leave it and come back later

just had my tooth out and omg what a horrific experience the dentists

skippy2421 · 22 May 2009 at 18:39

ouch!!! unlucky mate. Just been setting up a massive PA system

(well massive for a house party anyways). Yea think it was because i was attempting to put it all back together at 3 in the morning that the case wouldn't go back together. I'll probably finish it off on sunday as i'm going to be very dead tomorrow.

skippy2421 · 23 May 2009 at 23:15

It's all together now, just doing a few other little things and flicking through the manual to understand my BIOS and i'll see if it works. Fingers crossed. Give me a couple hours and i'll sort out some more piccies for you all.

**edit

As promised i have some pictures for you, the system is up and running and i am now taking a crash course in overclocking

The new inside of my case

the front with new fan controller

siumatfung · 24 May 2009 at 20:03

looks sweet how is the overclocking going? i should be posting some build pics in the next week or so

skippy2421 · 24 May 2009 at 23:07

well i'm at 3ghz quite easily, now 3 hours prime stable, so much for having 4 sticks of ram holding me back, i have a feeling i could get a lot more out of it, however i'm content to sit at 3 for now until something comes along to warrant an increase in speed. I was a little disappointed tho at the sunbeam cooler, turned up quite mangled but i refused to send it back due to the cost of doing so when i could just bend the fins back to straight.

ooooooooooooooo! what you getting? come on spill the news

siumatfung · 25 May 2009 at 00:22

not me im building my bro a new PC

heres the specs

Antec Mini P180 Black MATX Case
Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB Hard Drive SATAII
ASUS M3N78-EM GeForce 8300 Socket AM2+
AMD Athlon X2 7750 Black Edition 2.7GHz Socket AM2+ 2MB (2x1MB) L3 Cache Retail Boxed Processor
Corsair 400W CX PSU
Corsair 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2
Sony AD-7200S 20X DVD±RW/DL/RAM Internal SATA
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro PWM CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2)

BTW what temps and volts are you getting?

skippy2421 · 25 May 2009 at 01:20

temps are sitting at 52 under load, and CPU volts are at 1.248 i believe.

Very nice, general sort of internet browsing/office sort of machine i take it? I quite like them p180 style cases, they look very discrete and packed full of nice little features however not sure i would get on with the door, each to their own i suppose (or maybe i'm just that lazy i can't deal with a door lol). Piccies are a must! seeing as you made me take some

.

siumatfung · 25 May 2009 at 18:26

very nice matey your temps that is

but yes i will take pics he doesnt play games at and he wants to be able to use his tv aswell

so its all good

anyways i am looking forward to using this case aswell looks sweet

siumatfung · 28 May 2009 at 13:53

just for skippy

apologies about the length

skippy2421 · 28 May 2009 at 16:35

Hold on let me get my glasses

lol, nice work mate, have fun? how'd you find the case? Reason i ask is my brother was moaning bout his computer over easter and hinted he may get a new one and this case (or one of a similar style) is kind of a contender as its not too big and looks nice.

siumatfung · 28 May 2009 at 18:26

the case was really impressive very nice touches here and there.
the side panels were solid!!! like nice and heavy so was the front door

the cable management compared to my 900 was a dream so easy to work with, a tip remove the rear fan before placing the motherboard it as because it only fits mATX boards its a wee tight squeeze

anyways the only issue i have with this case is the lack of intake fans

i have one installed but it must be me amd x2 7750BE even though i have an arctic cooling freezer pro 64 it idles at 45c

but i will check with core temp later overclocking was easy as on that AMD chip tho

just changed the multiplier to 15x and bumped the vocre slightly and it ran fine

would you like some higher res pics skippy? sorry