Midnight Smurf - My First Build

[PapaSmurf6768]

Finally got tired of waiting around for good deals so I bit the bullet and ordered the rest of what I needed today. Even managed to snag a 670 when they went back in stock on Newegg today. Everything should be rolling in via good ole USPS in the next couple days, and then I can start my build! Until then, here are some more pictures:

Alchemy cables came in a few days ago, a couple shots of them:

Got it in the mail today!

Can't wait til the rest of the stuff gets here, only a couple days left!

Edit: Wow just looked back on Newegg and the Asus 670 is already sold out again, only took an hour or two! They didn't even send my "Back in Stock" notification, good thing I stalk Newegg 24/7. Got my tracking number for it though, so I know I was able to snag one!

 

[Daxehh]

*exited* keep us updated and take pictures During the building, i (personally) like seeing progress

Oh and, good luck!

 

[PapaSmurf6768]

Fans are here

I am expecting everything else to come via UPS in the next hour or so (except the graphics card, which shipped from a little farther away and won't be here until the 22nd) and then I can start building! I'll take plenty of pictures, not sure if I'll put them up until the GTX 670 comes though, don't wanna put up an unfinished build! Now, time to wipe the SSD I have in my laptop for a fresh copy of Windows and set up my workstation! See ya soon!

 

[PapaSmurf6768]

OK, build is done. Typing this message from it as we speak! I'm going to wait until the 670 gets here to post up the full log though. Stay tuned, it looks amazing!

 

[G-Dubs]

how abouts you post some build pictures while you wait for the GPU.

We all love to see work in progress shots.

You did take some right?

tell me you didn't get all excited and just built it without stopping to take phots.

 

[ZZAC]

From what I've seen and heard Tom has never had good experiences with OCZ stuff, so I don't blame him from staying away. Hopefully I have better luck!

I have had the same issue with asus, My 7950 DCII barely holds a factory over clock, and occasionaly artifacts at the factory overclock. i have tried different a few different bios, none helped.

i have a asus motherboard that was working fine until i turned it all aff unplugged it, waited till it was discharged and installed a pci card, unfortunately they haven't utilised short circuit protection, and even after uninstalling the card the moatherbaord had a short. My old am3 asus board would take 6 attempts to boot and bsod frequently. the other am3 asus board i had was good for a bit and progressively became more unstable untill it couldnt handle a stock speed chip. And ive had several other asus motherboards fail on me. But from what others say, asus is excellent :/

anyway, enough of me ranting at asus, this build is looking decent, ive also before made the mistake of buying a case to big for my desk

. good luck mate

 

[PapaSmurf6768]

OK so here is my progress last night. I won't show you the final setup until later today when my 670 comes in, I want it to look complete. Enjoy the pictures!

All the hardware, excluding the graphics card which hadn't shown up yet and the case, which was too big to fit on the desk

Motherboard out of the package, lots of stickers...

Processor installed, stupid stickers removed

Heatsink on the board, not nearly as big as I thought it was gonna be, but still a PITA to install

Test boot... Success! Time to start moving into the case...

Fans installed, they look soooo nice with the other parts. Nice and quiet too. I have the rear 120mm and one top 140mm as exhaust, then the 200mm front and the other 140mm top as intake. Working pretty well I think.

At this point the hardware is in the case, but I don't want to spoil it yet

Time to manage some cables... Probably the most difficult part of this build and still not where I would like it to be.

About as good as I could get it, I spent an hour or two and the side panel is still bowing a little bit, not too concerned though because the right panel is up against a wall anyway where I am putting it, so no one will notice. Just one of those things that I know about that's gonna bug me...

Stay tuned to see the good side of the case later today!

 

[The Orange One]

Looks Good Mate

 

[G-Dubs]

There's no reason why you shouldn't be able to route a those cables round the back and have the side bowing out.

Have nother go or believe me it will bug you forever

 

[PapaSmurf6768]

Alrighty, the rig is now completely done (save for a couple little things I need to do, more on that later). This'll probably be the final update until I do some modding or set up a custom loop or something. Let me know what you think, I think it came out great! So without further ado...

Midnight Smurf

The final piece of the puzzle arrived today...

And a little something extra to go along with it

Installed with the rest of the components, no wires yet

Think I'm gonna need some of these

Just when I thought I was done cabling...

Don't think the cabling is too bad, panel still bows very slightly but nothing I can't handle. I'll probably redo it sometime anyway, I can do better.

Cabling's done!

Gotta say I didn't think I'd ever use this little hot-swap thing, but it did come in handy for copying data from my laptop and old desktop over to this build.

Now to see it all lit up and fancy! (Sorry for the bad shots, I'll put up some better ones when it gets dark later)

With a little overclocking I could get this up to 7.9. Kind of scared to do anything in this 95F heat though!

So that'll do it for this build log, hope you all enjoyed. Gotta say for a first build I don't think it could have gone any better, and I love everything about this rig. I do have some stuff in mind I have to change though, such as:

Getting a USB 3 header adapter thing to get rid of the stupid pass-thrus.

Changing out the front panel LED's from white to blue

Make the back cabling a little more tidy.

WATER COOL!

Hope you all like it as much as I do, but constructive criticism is OK. Thanks everyone!

 

[The Orange One]

Fantastic Work for a first build Mate

 

[PapaSmurf6768]

Fantastic Work for a first build Mate

Thanks, I think it came out pretty good too

 

[PapaSmurf6768]

Took the time to actually take a good picture, tripod and all.

 

[WillSK]

Big congrats mate it looks awesome!

 

[AuxiliaryPotato]

Build looks great dude How well does the blue on the ram match with the blue on the GD-65? It looks okay in the pics, but it's always a bit hard to tell

Cheers

 

[PapaSmurf6768]

Build looks great dude How well does the blue on the ram match with the blue on the GD-65? It looks okay in the pics, but it's always a bit hard to tell

Cheers

The heatspreaders are nearly the same color as the DIMMs, it looks really nice!

 

[AuxiliaryPotato]

The heatspreaders are nearly the same color as the DIMMs, it looks really nice!

Thanks for the photo still don't know whether I want to go with black or blue ram for that board...

 

[Bullmecha]

Nice build =)

I used that same cooler on my 950 in an Antec 900 case... noob cooler or not it did the job just fine.

Keep up the good work.

 

[PapaSmurf6768]

Nice build =)

I used that same cooler on my 950 in an Antec 900 case... noob cooler or not it did the job just fine.

Keep up the good work.

I'm pretty happy with it, I have my 3570K OC'd to 4.5GHz under 1.175V and she stays under 70C at full load. Still really want to set up water cooling though...

 

[PapaSmurf6768]

In an attempt to organize my Photobucket, I broke 95% of the links and now cannot edit them because of the new forum layout Hope that gets fixed soon, then I'll fix the pictures ASAP!