Andre's X58 Personal Build

andrevautour

andrevautour

New member
Hello everyone,

I already have a rig gallery for this build, but I wanted to create a log to cover the entire build process in more depth through each step, and cover some other things not mentioned in the rig gallery post, like overclocking and benchmarks.



Update

These are the original specifications for this build:

Case: Cooler Master HAF 932
Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth X58
Processor: Intel Core i7-920
Graphics: Gigabyte Radeon HD 6950 Windforce
SSD: Crucial M4 128GB
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 500GB X4
Memory: 6GB OCZ Gold Series 1066 MHz XMP 1600 MHz
PSU: Ultra XConnect X3 800W
Fans: Cooler Master stock case fans
Cooler: Intel stock cooler







These are the specifications as of December 3, 2012

Case: Corsair Obsidian Series 650D
Motherboard: MSI Big Bang Z77 MPOWER
Processor: Intel Core i7 3770K
Graphics: MSI Radeon HD 7950 TwinFrozr III
SSD: Crucial M4 256GB
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB
Memory: 16GB G.Skill RipjawsZ 2133 MHz
PSU: Corsair AX850
Cooler: Noctua NH-D14
Fans: Noctua NF-F12
Fan Control: Lamptron FC6





Note

Thank you very much to everyone who followed this build as it took shape. Since this is no longer an X58 build, I will no longer be updating this thread. If you would like to continue to follow my personal build moving forward, please visit my Z77 Personal Rig thread

I hope to see you there!​
 
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Okay, so, I will start right at the beginning.
This whole build started back in around the beginning of February this year when my dad decided that he was going to build a new system for himself. This meant that he would have some hardware left over that would not be used anymore. He told me I could have the X58 CPU (an i7-920) and kit of triple channel memory to use for a new build of my own.
His motherboard had died (due to a faulty power supply) (see my build throughout the years for more info on that) and the graphics cards he had in that build were dated (2X HD4890s) so I would be getting the rest of my hardware for this build new.
I had a Cooler Master HAF 932 at the time, which is what my old computer was built in. I never liked the look of that case, even back when I bought it in 2009. I knew I would be getting a new soon, but I used the HAF 932 case to build this system the first time. I like doing builds so that was just an excuse to build the system twice, which I would enjoy.

Here is the i7 processor i got from my dad

IMG_0478 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

The kit of memory, which was OCZ gold series 1600mhz:

IMG_0473 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

And my HAF 932 case, a picture from when it was new:

IMG_0508 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

I wasn't entirely confident that the OCZ memory was good quality, or that it would last for very long. My dad's old system was getting errors in prime 95, but I wasn't sure if it was the processor or the memory. I would find out later.
 
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Graphics Card

One of the primary things I use my PC for is gaming. I also had a dated graphics card in my old computer, an XFX Radeon HD 4870, so the first thing I bought for the new build was a new graphics card. I had a look online and I saw some cards I liked, one of the was the Gigabyte Windforce cooler cards. I had seen Tom's review of a Windforce card, so I knew that they were good coolers. A local computer shop had an Gigabyte Radeon 6950 Windforce edition with an 870MHz overclock on the core on sale for $249. I had a look at everything else that was there, but I decided to get this one.

Here are some pictures of that:

IMG_0695 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0696 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0697 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0698 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0699 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0704 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0710 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0709 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0708 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0706 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0703 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr
 
Motherboard

Next was choosing a motherboard. I had seen some motherboards around that I definitely did not like the look for, for example the g1 assassin from gigabyte. I am really not a fan of having fake guns on heatsinks and that sort of stuff.
One motherboard I had seen that I really liked the look of was the Asus Sabertooth. I really like the black PCB, the military green, and the taupe and brown on the slots. I also really like the color scheme of Noctua, and I think the Sabertooth matches with that well.
I went to a local computer shop again and picked up a Sabertooth X58 board from there.


IMG_0263 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0671 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0674 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr
.

IMG_0675 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0679 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


Back in the very early stages of the build, when it was still in the HAF 932 case with no cable management and a temporary PSU, I used the board for one night with the stock CPU cooler. The temperatures were low to mid 80s with no overclock at all when running prime 95!

IMG_1002 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr
 
Case, Part 1: HAF 932

As I mentioned this build was only housed in the Cooler Master HAF 932 case for a couple of months, but for the sake of being thorough I will post a few pictures of the HAF when it was new and talk a little about the things I liked and disliked about it.

First, the things I liked about it. The HAF was a very solid and well built case for the price (around $179 CAD in 2009 I believe) It had incredible airflow, fairly quiet fans, and It came with 3X 230mm fans and 1X 140mm fans. There was loads of mesh all over the case including the entire front, most of the top, a large portion of the side panel, and some mesh at the back around the PCI slots for graphics card exhaust. It had a really nice little tray area at the top of the case with a rubber mat in it, and I used that for my keys, change, and various other small things the entire time I used the case. It had loads of space above the motherboard for water cooling if you were going to be putting a radiator there. Functionally I think it was extremely good for it's time, and it still holds up fairly well today in my opinion.
Things I didn't like about it. The looks, I hate tacky designs and decals, that sort of thing, and I never liked the design of the HAF with the tacky HAF decal on the side panel, and the design of the front and just the overall look I never liked. It definitely isn't as bad as sum stuff out there, but still I don't like the look of it. The entire inside was unpainted, which didn't bother me too much, as it actually matched my Asus Sabertooth/ Nocua/ Earth tones colour scheme that I had going in the build quite well. There was a good amount of cable manament holes, and space behind the motherboiard tray for cables, but there were not grommets on any of the cable management holes, so that kind of looks bad to me. the LEDs for power and HDD actiovity at the front were WAY too bright, they would light up an entire room. I covered the LEDS with a sticker and just let them shine down inside the case and light up the empty optical bay area and I saw them light that it was much nicer. The quick release stuff for the PCI slots were complete crap, they didnt hold a grpahics card in properly and they got in the way when you were putting a card in/taking it out and when you were screwing in a card. I took those out. There was no real fine dust filter on the front, just a fairly open mesh that would let plenty of dust in. The fans that came with it were a great size, but they were sleeve bearing and appearted to be low quality, because they would often make tickin noises when they were running on full speed. I ran them at 40% speed for a bit and then replaced them all together with a couple of Noctua NF-P12s. Some of the pieces of the case did not fit together very snugly, and there was often vibration noises that came from the case, and they would go away if you touched the side panel. The power supply was mounted at the bottom, but there was only the one set of holes for mounting it fan facing down, which I do not like, I like to mount it fan facing up. There was huge holes in the front of the case where the optical bay slot covers clicked in, so when you had an optical bay installed, you could see a huge patch of gray on both sides from the drive. Cooler master actually included a sheet of black stickers for you to stick on the sides of your drives so the grey would not show through. The rubber grommets on the hard drive trays would pop out easily and they pin in them was really hard to get back into the grommet. The downside of the very open mesh design of the HAF was that you could easily ear hard drives ticking and if any fans were ticking inside the case you could hear that easily too.

I know the negatives section is much longer than the positives section, but really for the time the HAF 932 was a great case and I think it was better than many cases around at the time.


IMG_0508 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0511 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0512 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0513 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0514 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0515 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr.


IMG_0516 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr.


IMG_0517 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0518 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr
 
Case, Part 2: Corsair Obsidian Series 650D

Now for the case that I will actually be using for this build. I have seen a lot of cases before, and I like very few of them. I really don't like very busy/tacky designs and decals. I like a case to have a high quality feel and an elegant, minimal look.
There were two cases that I had my eye on when I was picking a case, one was the Silverstone Raven RV02 and the other was the Corsair 650D.
I think the layout of the Raven is interesting, and I love the look of it, but I ended up picking the Corsair case. I like the look of it just as much, and I like the feature set of the 650D a bit more.
I ordered my 650D on Amazon August 9, and I even choose rush shipping. It came the next morning, but I missed the delivery, so I had to wait until the next day to pick it up at the local UPS place, so that backfired (2 days is still faster than normal deliver I guess)
August 11, I got my case and brought it home eager to start my new build.

I am getting ahead of my planned order for this thread though, because I am going to post some pictures from the initial HAF 932 build first.

Here are some pictures of the 650D box and packaging. Don't mind the crappy looking patches on the walls, that was in between repairing the walls and painting, which I have done and it's finished now.


IMG_2426 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2427 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2428 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2429 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2431 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2432 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2433 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2435 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2436 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2437 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2438 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2440 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2441 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2443 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2442 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2444 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2445 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2447 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2448 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2450 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2451 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr
 
CPU Cooler, Fans, and Power Supply

For the cooler I wanted a good air cooler, because I wanted it to be simple and perform well. I had seen a couple different H100 units that my dad had, and both of them made a ticking sound from the pump, and I don't like the look of the tubing they use on those and the thin radiator, so I knew I didn't want that. Air cooling it was. I had seem Tom's reviews of the Noctua NH-D14 and the Thermalright Silver Arrow, so I knew those were two of the top performing air coolers. I would say I like the look of each of those equally, but I had to choose one of course, so I picked the NH-D14.


IMG_1065 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


For the fans, we had a few extra NP-P12s around the house, and I love the look and performance of Noctua fans, so I decided to use one of those in the front and one in the rear of the 932 case, and I set them up connected to the motherboards PWM so they would be auto controlled by CPU load.


IMG_0460 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


I had one of those very old Ultra X3 units, and one of those crappy OCZ ModXStream units. Neither of these would do for this build so it was time to pick a Power supply.
I had heard that Seasonic was making some of the beast quality units, and that some other brands like the XFX gold/platinum units (I think) and Corsair AX series were being made by seasonic.
I decided that it was between a Seasonic X series or Platinum Series and a Corsair AX unit. I preferred the look of the corsair a bit over the Seasonic, so I decided on an AX850. I wanted to be able to add a second video card if I wanted to, so I picked the 850W so I would have a bit of headroom there.

This was around the time that corsairs individually braided cable kits were coming out, and I do like the look of those, but I also like the look of the stock black braided cables that come with the AX units, so I decided I didn't need those.


IMG_1066 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr
 
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Gurt11 said:
That's some nice kit you've got there! ^^ make it beautiful!
Click to expand...

Thanks!
I'm not 100% finished with it, as there are still a few things I want to play around with and tidy up etc, but if you want to skip ahead to approx the point it is at now, I do have a gallery for this build.

there is a picture with the lighting on page 2
Im going to take out the optical bay for some new pictures i think, later on.

http://forum.overclock3d.net/showthread.php?t=45768
 
Solid State Drive, Hard Drives, and Memory

I picked a Crucial M4 128gb drive as my boot drive. No real reason for picking this really expect I heard that they are good and they were on for a good price at the local shops.


IMG_3183 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_3181 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


For storage hard drives, I have a couple of 2TB Seagate Barracuda LP drives, and a couple of 1TB Western Digital Caviar Green drives that I took from cheap external drives I've collected over the past few years. Since I don't really like moving full sized external drives around anyway, and I dont like having tons of them laying around, I figured it would be cooler, quieter, and more cool to have them all inside the case. I have lots of 2.5 inch external drives with no power cables that I can use if I want to move data around, so all of these large drives did not need to be in crappy external enclosures.


IMG_3189 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1018 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_3191 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

I mentioned earlier that when my dad had a system build with this CPU and RAM it would fail prime 95. I suspected that it may have been the OCZ ram, so I did a bit of experimenting. I found that it would only fail during the in-place large FFTs test, but not during the Small FFTs. there was 12gb total of the OCZ stuff because it was 2X 6gb kits. I took out 3 sticks and ran prime, and it still failed, so i put those 3 sticks back in and took out the other 3 sticks, and it ran fine this time. This meant the CPU was fine, as I was suspecting and that it was in fact some of the OCZ ram that was causing the prime 95 problem. I was also getting sporadic random crashing and freezes during games.

I ditched the OCZ ram and had a look at some 12gb kits of ram online. I decided that the best option was a 12gb kit of Kingston HyperX Genesis 1600MHz for $75 CAD


IMG_3010 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_3018 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr
 
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The Build, Part 1: Rough, messy build in the HAF 932

Okay so I think that covers most of the hardware, if not I will add anything additional in a later post.

This post will cover my initial build when I built it temporarily into the cooler master HAF 932 case.

Getting my video card out of my old system

IMG_1001 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1000 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

Installing the cooler

IMG_1008 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1011 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

Motherboard and graphics card fitted in the case with no power cables

IMG_1012 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

Poor quality shot of the Noctua cooler
IMG_1013 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


Getting the AX850 out of the box

IMG_1014 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1015 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1016 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

The first time I did the cables I wired the graphics card cable in a weird way

IMG_1019 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr



IMG_1028 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


A shot of some of the hardware boxes on my table

IMG_1081 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


The ugly red LED fan at the front that I always hated. It was filthy at this point from 3 years of running. I also had no SSD installed at this point so I was running an OS from a hard drive.


IMG_1105 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

AX850 cables in the HAF
IMG_1107 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


The Gigabyte 6950

IMG_1108 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


The OCZ memory when it was still installed because I was just building the system for the first time and not really using it properly yet

IMG_1111 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


The insanely messy cables at the back the first time I built it

IMG_1197 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

better shot of the NH-D14

IMG_0018 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


This is the front of the HAF before I redid t he cables and replaced the fans

IMG_0020 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

I even had a crappy 10cm red cold cathode in the very first version of the build. it only lasted for a couple days, then I ran that build the rest of the time just completely date and minimal.

IMG_0158 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


The side panel of the HAF

IMG_0198 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


Here is that tacky HAF decal that I was talking about in the "things i dont like about the HAF" section earlier. Also you can see on the side of the optical bay i used camouflage duct tape on the drive instead of a black sticker and you can see it through the case side there

IMG_0258 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


I know some people here don't like optical drives, but I use my system for a lot of things including watching movies, so I use a blu-ray drive on a regular basis. I agree that they aren't great looking, but I'm not going to take out something I use just so it looks better but lacks some functionality that I want.

IMG_0459 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


The stock 140mm sleeve bearing fan that came with the case. It lasted for 3 years and performed fine

IMG_0496 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

Rear PSU section of the case

IMG_0498 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


Motherboard rear I/O

IMG_0502 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


Getting out the fans, about to replace the stock fans with these

IMG_0568 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


In the next post I will cover when I redid the cables in the HAF build so that it was properly tidy or at least as tidy as is possible with the case.
 
The Build, Part 2: Clean build in the HAF 932

Before long I got bored with the system, as I do, and I wanted to tinker around with it some more. Plus the extremely messy cables at the back had been bugging me, so I decided to completely re-do all the cables from scratch and do a tidy job.

Here is what it looked like when I was finished with the cables the second time

IMG_0788 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0789 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0790 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0791 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0795 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


I had both of the Noctua fans runing on PWM from the botherboard, so they would fun at 700rpm when the system was idle and it was almost completely silent, and they would spin up when the CPU was under a load.

The noctua fans that came with my NH-D14 didn't have PRM connections on the fans, it was just the standard 3 pin fan header. My motherboard controls those in a similar way for 4 of the 6 fan header on the motherboard, but the powerfan and cpufan headers on the motherboard seem to run the 3 pin fans at full speed all the time and even if you change it in the fan settings in the bios it doesnt change anything. So I just hooked both of the NH-D14 fans up with the fan speed reducers connected and they would run at low noise speed all the time. I didn't have my CPU overclocked yet so there was no need for them to run any faster.


IMG_0796 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

the heat would passively ventilate out the mesh at the top, and I didnt have any fans there.

i installed the psu face down because there are no holes to mount it fan up on the 932 case, and i didnt want to try and drill new holes or anything since i knew i was replacing the case shortly anyway.


IMG_0797 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0799 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0800 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_0802 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1167 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


Okay so that covers the aesthetics of the second HAF 932 build fairly comprehensively, except here are a few of the case with the doors on


IMG_1176 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1177 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

Not too bad looking in those shots.


After that I installed the solid state drive. we were able to get one of those little adapters that come with the HAF X cases now for cooler master hard drive trays for free from a guy at one of the local shops who had one laying in a basket of stuff.

IMG_1668 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr



IMG_1669 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr



IMG_1671 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1674 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


So that covers right up the end of the HAF 932 case,. these pictures are from June 26. I used it through July and then in August I got the 650D.
 
The Build, Part 3: Unboxing of the 650D case

On August 9 I ordered a 650d, and it came the next day, but I missed the delivery so I had to pick it up the next day. I was very excited to finally get a 650d and to get started with my build.


IMG_2426 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2427 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2428 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2429 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2431 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

It was wrapped up well with a nice cloth bag

IMG_2432 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2435 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

I really like the look of the feet on the 650D. You can see the slide out dust filter for if you're using your power supply fan down.

IMG_2436 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2437 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

The front fan filter was taped shut and the entire aluminum front panel had a plastic cover.

IMG_2438 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

The side panel window had protective plastic covering on both sides.

IMG_2440 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

Nice clean black rear panel, with the exception of those two white stickers, which I removed immediately.

IMG_2441 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2442 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

Inside of the case.

IMG_2443 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2444 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2445 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

The case comes with 2X 200mm fans and a 120mm black fan at the back. All of the fans come with nice grommets and large screws, and there are additional grommets and screws if you want to mount 2X 120mm fans or at the top, plus extras.

IMG_2447 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2446 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

There is quite a collection of cables coming from the front of the case.

IMG_2448 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2450 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

6 hard drive bays with high quality rubber grommets on each one. Each one supports 2.5inch drives and traditional size hard drives. You have move both sections around onto the floor in front of the power supply, or remove one or both of them all together.

IMG_2451 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

Very good quality quick release clips for optical drives. Drives slide in slugly and clip tightly into place. Optical drives also fit very well into the front with minimal gap on either side of the drive bezel.

IMG_2452 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr
 
The Build, Part 4: The Main Build

Here is the last couple shots of the HAF build before I tore it apart to get the hardware out.

IMG_2453 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2454 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2457 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

I took the graphics card downstairs and cleaned it out with the air compressor again

IMG_2462 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

I also cleaned the motherboard and cooler

IMG_2466 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

As I was removing other small stickers from things I was temped beiefly to remove the warranty sticker from the corner of the ax850, but decided against it incase I needed to use the warranty. The sticker is placed on the inside when it's fan up, so you don't see it too much because its at the back and it's not huge or solid white or anything.

IMG_2467 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2469 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

The cutout for the cpu coolers on motherboard tray is huge compared to the tiny ones on the HAF X and 932. 4/5 builds t hat I've done with HAF cases the cpu cooler backplate did not line up with the cutout, so it wasn't useful. The only time it did was on a Q6600 motherboard. I can understand the 932 having a cutout that is in a position for an older motherboard, but the HAF X has the exact same thing, and it's fairly recent.

The aluminum front panel comes off with 6 plastic hooks, 3 on each side. Once it's off you can see the large 200mm fan mesh for the front fan, the empty optical bays, and the front panel I/O.

IMG_2472 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

The power supply fit very securely into place, and there is a small piece at the end you screw in to hold the end. This can be moved for all different sizes of power supply, and it it attached with nice black thumb screws.

IMG_2476 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

Even though the black 120mm fan that came with the case was perfectly good, I still prefer the look of the Noctua fans, I know that they are high quality, so I replaced the black 120mm with a NF-P12 from the last case.

IMG_2478 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

When I got to routing all of those cables hanging down from the front panel I first removed any I didn't need (In this case just the firewire) and then I tried to nearly route them all directly out to the back panel using a couple of different cutouts along the top front of the case.

IMG_3351 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2479 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_2486 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr
I did not do any cable management around the back for the first build, so I will cover that in the next post.

The overall look of the case in the dim light of my room was really minimal and stealthy and it just looked AMAZING in my opinion. The sound it makes when the doors are on is a really nice clean, high quality sounding low volume woosh like air moving slowly through a tunnel. It sounds like a very small version of a server room the way you might hear it from the next room with the door shut or something? I don't know Im just trying to explain it but it is a really high quality and nice sound. It just sounds like a really high quality piece of equipment with no loose pieces or ticking noises or any kind of low end sounding noises, only a nice low woosh sound. I really love the sound it makes. It is a bit louder than my HAF setup with 2X 120mm noctuas, but I love the sound. Plus with the HAF case the noctuas were really quite, but because of the mesh in the side panel you would hear the graphics card fan spin up as soon as you starting playing a game, with this case you don't really hear the video card at all, its more of a constant sound. I like this better because the graphics card doesn't sound as nice in my opinion.

I didn't have my lighting yet on the first day I did the build, so I will cover the lighting and a few other tweaks I did in the next post.
 
Lighting

I knew I wanted to do something with lighting, but I hadn't decided exactly what yet. I know I don't like hugely bright insane lighting where everything is lit up immensely. I prefer more subtle, soft lighting. I had seen some of the different options like the BitFenix Alchemy strips, but I knew those were very bright. I also saw an option that was more appealing to me, the NZXT LED sleeved kit. I liked the sound of this because of the longer cable with leds spaced out on it so you could route it around the entire interior of the case and hide it easily it the corners. I also liked the On/off switch and dimmer on it so I could keep it off a lot of the time and also keep it on the lowest setting.

I ordered 2X 10cm bitfenix stips in blue and 1X 2mm NZXT kit in white.

IMG_2573 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

I installed the NXZT kit all around the outside edges of the interior of my case, and I loved the look of it. Unfortunately the unit I got seems to be defective, because the lighting does flicker when it is on. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do about this, because I ordered it online and I dont really want to send it back to be replaced. I've also head that this same thig has occurred with others as well.
I can say though that if the lighting did not flicker, I really do like the look of it on the lowest brightness setting. The spaced out single LEDs are a lot less bright and more subtle than the huge intensely bright LEDs on the bitfenix kit.


IMG_3361 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr



IMG_3362 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_3363 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_3364 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_3357 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_3359 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

The cable from the PCI bracket I put through the little cutout for the power supply and then put the power supply back in so that it is just a direct route out of the main chamber and to the back panel.

IMG_3353 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_3355 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


I haven't really played around with the blue bitfenix strips yet so I can't say too much about those. I know that they don't flicker and they do seem to be good quality, they are just a bit too bright for my taste and I dont like the lack of switch. I know you can make a switch yourself but I dont really want to do that right now.

I am disappointed that the NZXT kit turned out to be defective, but I do like the product otherwise.
 
Storage

Since I am using this system as my main computer right now, and I don't have any type of server setup, I needed to have a decent amount of storage in this build.
Rather than going out and buying all new drive for storage drive, I had some extra drive around from external enclosures and a couple from my dad's old build that he wasn't using anymore.
I have 1X 2tb Seagate barracuda LP, 2X Seagate barracuda, and 2X 1tb Western Digital 1Tb for a total of 6TB of storage for now, and of course I can always swap out some of the 1TB drives for 2+ tb drives in the future to add additional storage.

One little thing I always notice about hard drives is the small white barcode stickers on the ends of each of them. I generally dislike small white stickers like that anywhere on the inside or outside of a build, so I made a note when I was installing the drives to remove all of those from my drives.

Before

IMG_3225 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

After

IMG_3269 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

And here is a shot of approximately how it looks in the dim lighting I usually use in my room when I'm on the computer. The stock side panel for the 650D covers the drive bays anyway, but it's just one of those small things that is easy to do, and in my opinion its a nice little thing to make it look more minimal and tidy on the inside.

IMG_3276 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr
 
Cable Management

When I initially built the system in the 650D on August 11, I made sure to make it tidy in the main chamber side, but I didn't do anything with the back panel side, as I planned to tidy that up later once I got it up and running.
A few nights ago I took a couple hours to tidy up the cables around the back panel. I'm much happier with it overall now. The 2x 200mm fans I connected to the case's fan controller and zip tied those as well as the extra 2 cables from the fan controller to the side of the drive bay. The 2 fans from the NH-D14 I attached to the motherboard and let the motherboard control them, same with the rear Noctua NF-P12.
My motherboard does not have an internal USB3.0 header, and I do not like having a pass through out the back for that, plus it is a huge cable, so I tried that up and attached it to the side of the optical bays.
The other thing I don't like but still haven't done is the front audio cable header is right at the back of the case almost, and the grommets for cables to come in is right at the front of the power supply, so that cable has to travel about 5 inches or more along the top of the power supply to get to that header, and it looks really messy. I don't even use the front audio ports really, I mainly use the ones on my keyboard, so I will most likely do the same with that cable and just zip tie it to the side of the optical bay.
I aslo removed the firewire entirely because I have never used firewire once, and I dont even see a firewire header on the motherboard either.
I just did fairly standard stuff trying to find clean routes for all the cables behind the motherboard tray, spreading out the cables so there wasn't too much budging, and using all the cable tie loops on the motherboard tray to secure all the cables well so they won't be moving around at all.

Here is a before shot

IMG_3296 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

And an after

IMG_3370 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr
 
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