Project Haswell

platypus · 31 Jan 2014 at 09:22

Nothing super fancy like some of these awesome projects, but a build aiming for silence and performance around a Haswell i7.

Intel i7 (Haswell) 3.50Ghz
Gigabyte Sniper Z87
Antec Kuhler 1220
Corsair 500R
8GB Team Extreme Ram
Seasonic Platinum 850W PSU
Samsung 840 Evo

I'm not particularly great at building systems, don't know much about overclocking, but the aim is silence, speed and neatness

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platypus · 31 Jan 2014 at 09:30

Fitted the backplate for the cooler, it was a bit wonky which had me slightly concerned but it turned out fine in the end.

Motherboard and CPU fitted easily:

It's a great case to work inside of, tons of room.

platypus · 31 Jan 2014 at 09:40

Fitting the cooler was a little trickier than I'd hoped for.

The supplied screws were not long enough to set it up as I wanted, until I removed the rubber grommets from the case. You can see the grommets here on the left hand side on the screws I was using to place the radiator.

Got it fitted in the end, and connected up. Remains to be seen how much the orientation of the Kuhler logo will irritate me (probably a lot!), but since I don't have a window it doesn't matter too much..

Now maybe I'm just an idiot, but the supplied instructions were sparse at best. It simply said "connect up to fan header". Now, there were two (well four in total but I'm only using two fans) on the same cable which is fine, then there was a usb cable and another one for the pump which in the end I connected to the PSU fan header. Which I hope is right...still, seems to be working..

platypus · 31 Jan 2014 at 09:43

PSU cables starting to be routed, graphics card in and connected up..

platypus · 31 Jan 2014 at 09:48

So everything connected up, seriously unimpressed with the quality of some of the case cabling (the front panel connectors are pretty flimsy and don't connect well at all).

Moment of truth, and....

Phew. Nothing goes pop, it boots fine

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platypus · 31 Jan 2014 at 09:53

And so an (almost) finished picture.

Going away today so it'll be a while before I can put it through its paces. I need to do a fair bit of tidying of cabling behind the motherboard tray, if I can work out how to do it.

And I'm a bit annoyed by some of the cables inside the case but I'm not sure how else I can route them. Will have to do some working out to see if I can get the front panel cables behind the tray sooner, but they are pretty stiff and I don't want to damage them! I think I'm going to replace the white led fans (not keen on them), and (yes I know its not got a window) maybe try and find some matching memory for the motherboard.

Still, pretty chuffed with that for 2 hours work.