[s4nup]

Hi all

I'm a newbie to the forums and to overclocking in general. I've owned a pc since the old Amiga days (much to my dissapointment back when i was 12!) and have grown up with owning i386's, i486's (DX's and DX2's) Pentiums etc. apart from my first 2 pc's i have helped or have solely built all my other pc's but thats as far as it got. My current pc is a bit of a hodgepodge of performance...its an AMD Athlon 64 x2 4200 with 8gb of ddr2, 6TB's of Hard drive, a 64gb SSD, with an Nvidia GT240 graphics card. obviously this has been upgraded over the years to its current configuration and now, especially as i feel the CPU is now bottlenecking, i've decided to rebuild.

I actually wanted to buy an Apple iMAc but given the cost and weighing up the options decided to go for a pc build. Saved myself £1200 (oh i'm from the UK so most things are in british pounds where i reference a price) and It really was meant to be a bit of a budget build...but that kinda fell out the window. I can always partition a hard-drive and give it the hackintosh treatment if i need to (Intel Core goodness!!)

I'm not sure if you guys like build threads, but heres one anyway. I'm totally open to suggestion, (although most of the parts have been bought anyway)...so on to the build.

I'm trying to use some parts from the old pc, but given its age there is a limit to what can be brought over. All i'm really expecting to use from the build is the Hard Drives and the SSD.

So here are the new parts that i have bought:


This is made up of:

MSI Z77A-G45 Mainboard - £65 / $105 (thought i'd be nice and convert the costs for ya!)


The brand new Intel i5 3570K (box says unlocked and unleashed!!) - processor £150 / $240


8gb Corsair Vengeance DDR3 Ram - £35 / $56


OCZ ZT650 650 watt modular PSU - £70 / $110


Antec Kuhler H2O 620 Cooler - £45 / $70


and the MSI N560GTX-448 Twin Frozr III Power Edition Graphics Card (£150 / $242)


I ordered a budget case (A Revoltec Sixty 6) but am still awaiting delivery of that (will be here between 1:45 & 2:45pm, its now 10am...man such a long wait!)
Cant rally do much till then so i'll pick up a bit later.

Hope you guys enjoy the build

[s4nup]

Ok...Apologies for the delay in getting an update...once these things are built, its hard to concentrate on updating the build log, sleeping, eating, interacting with the family etc etc!!

So Onwards and upwards...so the computer case arrived. it was a budget case that cost me £30 / $45


My requirements for the case were (in order of importance:
i) long enough to support the video card (10" long)
ii)Bottom PSU mounting
iii) CPU Cutout
iv) Tooless 5.25 and 3.5 Drive Bays
v) Cable management of some sort
after much searching and setting a budget of £35 / $52 this one pretty much fit the bill. Has one big fan in the front and slots for another 5 (2 on the sidepanel 1 on the top of the case and another 2 on the back) so should satisfy any cooling requirements.

So first of all was to mount the motherboard, very straightforward:


then mounting the Fan and the Radiator for the CPU Cooler


I then mounted the CPU:


added some Antec Silver thermal compound and mounted the pump on the CPU. (there was a bit of a bigger job for this as you have to assemble the mounting bracket and affix it to the back of the motherboard for the pump to attach to. A common issue with the mounting that other people have complained about is the support of 1155 chipsets. Its a one kit fits all and whilst on the back of the MB the bracket is a little off centre, from the front, its perfectly straight, so no biggie):


One of the big things for me in this build was neatness. I wanted to keep the case nice and neat and had neve actually paid any attention to neat wiring in any of my last builds...it was a case of getting it all in and get it running. This time i wanted to assist as much as i could in keeping the case cool and neat, so I used braided wire tidy where i could.:


Installed the RAM. (I "boobood" a bit on this and i hadn't realsied that i hadn't actually seated Slot 1 properly until i booted up):


PSU In - This was my first point of some concern because when i first put it in, the mounting holes didn't line up. I gave it a bit of a push and had to bend the retaining panel to get it to sit in and the tighten the screws:


Installed the GTX560 TI. This is actually the biggest card I have ever worked with. The weight is immense and as the PCI slots run along the first 1/3rd of the card i was conscious of not putting too much pressure on the back incase i damaged the card or the MoBo:


I removed the front Panel and decided to tidy up the inevitable mess that was hiding behind there and rerouted the cabling round the back of the chassis than the default front.


Attached a few of the power cables, routed round the back where i could and slotted in my 2x2tb Sata Drives.


Mounted my SSD in the provided 2.5" adapter tray, plugged all the cables in (zip tied them where necessary) and then put the MB side cover on the case. Et Voila:

I'm happy with the way the build came out. Need to neaten some of the cables, but all in all, a fairly straightforward build.

[s4nup]

reserved for build part 3

[s4nup]

reserved for build part 4

[Adak]

Looks like a lot of fun!

You WILL need a stress test to see if everything works OK, won't you?

We have a folding race coming up in 10 days - perfect timing, and lots of fun - all for a good cause (medical research).

I'd love to see what that new baby can really do!

All the details are here, and please post up in the folding forum and let us know you'll be racing with us.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/s...d.php?t=706551

[s4nup]

Originally Posted by Adak

Looks like a lot of fun!

You WILL need a stress test to see if everything works OK, won't you?

We have a folding race coming up in 10 days - perfect timing, and lots of fun - all for a good cause (medical research).

I'd love to see what that new baby can really do!

All the details are here, and please post up in the folding forum and let us know you'll be racing with us.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/s...d.php?t=706551

Hey...that sounds like an excellent idea...I hadn't thought of stress testing yet, but this seems an optimum way to do this.

I'm building today, and will try to overclock today...what are some good stress testing applications that i can run?

Thanks

[s4nup]

Updated the build thread

[EarthDog]

First, nice little build you have there.. good job! Next, there is a Project Log section that this may have been better suited for (but no matter really).

As far as overclocking/stress testing. I would use AIDA64 for Ivybridge as it will use more/all of the instruction sets that Ivybridge has.

[s4nup]

Originally Posted by EarthDog

First, nice little build you have there.. good job! Next, there is a Project Log section that this may have been better suited for (but no matter really).

As far as overclocking/stress testing. I would use AIDA64 for Ivybridge as it will use more/all of the instruction sets that Ivybridge has.

Thanks EarthDog...want to abide by the rules, can a mod move this into the Project Log Section for me?

I'm going to give AIDA64 a go tonight when i get home from work and leave it running for 24 hours. what's a good stats application (Something that shows the peak performance of my setup?)

thanks

[EarthDog]

You can report your own post by pressing the "!" button in the first post and request it be moved.

As far as 'stats' application, We use Super Pi, or Wprime to see the differences in CPU speeds. Cinebench is another one.

[diaz]

Nice build, you can OC the CPU and see what you can reach with decent temps... maybe around 4.5Ghz..