TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

Hope it helps anyone who wants to have a go

For those who are a little afraid of "playing" with their computers, I thought I would do a basic run through on the components and how to fit them all to a "bare" system.
I've not gone into detail with the motherboard or the fitting of the cpu or heat sink/fan unit, that was already on my old pc (I am refreshing her as i've built my new 2600k i7 and am giving this one to my uncle for his retirement).
Hopefully the photo's will help

The first part are the components and new PSU (power supply which is a Tagan 700w modular unit), you need to ensure that your PSU is sufficient enough for your needs, you can normally find a watt chart on the internet to how much power
your components use (similar to this one http://support.asus.com/powersupply.aspx)
I had to clean up all the old components as they were a little due to them being dusty, especially the fans (sorry no pics of that, I used a soft brush, the type you get with wonder wheels but unused!) and a vac to catch as much dust as
I could.



So from the back left, motherboard/CPU w/heatsink, memory attached, Tagan PSU, centre is the Nvidia GTX280 graphics card, front left is a velociraptor 10000rpm 150gb hard disc, then front centre is a 500gb seagate HDD and last is the sound card.

Next shot is the case, its a coolermaster wave, luckily it has a removable panel for the motherboard and definately makes life a little easier.



Mobo and case



The motherboard in detail.

Note this motherboard can run both IDE and SATA connections, the IDE connections are at the bottom (long red connector) and on the right hand side near the bottom (long black connector), just to the right of the black connector you can see the 4 SATA connections.



The PSU is next (such a nice one )



Out of box



Cables out of the bag



Back of the PSU



I prefer the modular units due to the fact you can fit just the cables you need, if you go for a none modular unit then you may well find it hard to place the unused/unwanted cables neatly.

Fitting the 2 hard drives



Note lining up the screw holes:-



This next picture is connecting the reset button, hdd light, internal speaker etc, the nice thing with this Asus P5KC (well any ASUS board) is the fact they give you one of these little connection fields to use, saves so much faffing about and connects to the white plug in the bottom right of the picture.



Now everyone has their own way of building a PC, I find it depends on the case/psu etc, so with a modular unit I like to fit the power leads in first to know what I need.





Now its time to fit the graphics card, quite a long one this at just over 11 inches one of the reasons I needed to fit the hard drives first





Now fitting the sound card, I like to leave a bit of space wherever possible to keep decent air flow in the case and stop the components heating eachother up causing premature failure



Last bit for me is adding the PSU and connecting up the SATA cables and power leads, only the 2 hard drives use the SATA leads, both the dvd rom drives are IDE.



Now to check it all runs ok, and a little bit of overclocking



Note that this CPU is an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 but it's the earlier B3 version and not the better G0 (this runs hotter and isn't as clockable).

Running at 1.8hghz as the cpu is clocked already up to 2.7ghz from 2.4, its not strained so its not running at 2.7 yet



Hmmm, a little better, a few more monitoring tools up on the screen.



Overclocked a little more to 3ghz now using the Asus overclocking tool, see the temps on the print on the rhs of the screen.



Well hope that was fun bit of an insight to anyone who wants to build their own or replace parts, the old sweats out there won't need any advice I think

The monitoring tools/stress testing tools can be found for free on this site (its safe )

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares.html

Tony

prodriverules

iTrader: (52)

Fair play Tony,nice work with that mate
Fancy building one for me

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

Not a problem, what do you fancy?

Tony

Scooby Soon!

prodriverules

iTrader: (52)

Something along the lines of the one you just assembled,looks to be a nice bit of kit
The one I have at present isn't exactly 'up to date' shall we say

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

Believe it or not, that pc is like 3 generations of cpu old now (its about 3 years old), scary
It would also depend on what you used the pc for to what you get for your money, most would go for a 2nd generation intel i5 2500k/2500 chip as its a good all rounder, and a budget would get you some decent parts (inc monitor etc )

Tony

ChefDude

you glossed over the cpu and cooler bit. that was always the most traumatic for me.

Coffin Dodger

Tsk, no anti-static precautions.

Building it on the carpet further increase the possibilities for some static discharges into your nice new PC components.

On this front I tend to get the PSU into the case early on and connect the mains lead to it but with it switched off at the mains socket. By doing this the earth pin is still connected to your house's earth and therefore the case is earthed. Periodically touch the case to earth yourself while fiddling around with stuff.

ChefDude

that's also a mid sized tower, Antec? you'd never get a 10" full length graphics card in there with all the drive slots filled.

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

I see no components on the floor as they are all on the chair the motherboard is on a metal plate and is insulated from the ground by the screws, so thats safe, the case itself acts as a faraday cage, though a wooden benchtop would be perfect, its not always available (or plastic etc), though as the psu is in the top of this case it makes it a little difficult to do anything, and unless the psu is on and you have the earth connected to the chassis, its pretty useless too
Most people also won't use that size case (coolermaster midi) for a big raid build probably 3 drives max in one of those and plenty of room for that graphics card unlike my bro in laws case (which was considerably more dusty and we cleaned that out on sunday), now that gpu wasnt going to fit in that case at all

I would have done the cpu but thats the best part about it and the instructions are pretty straight forward (and yes its a real pita to do ) but I do have a tool for handling the cpu which was pretty cheap (and did you notice the nice anti static gloves that came with the psu? )

Every computer can be different to build depending on the case and components, its much easier with a psu at the bottom, I originally had to modify the case to fit the 800w psu I have in my new pc now (same as the 700w but with 100w more power ) as it caused an issue with the power cables, but putting it in last here kept all the cables out of the way.

Tony

prodriverules

iTrader: (52)

Pm me a price Tony for making a tower up if you don't mind mate and we can have a talk over what would work best for me

Rob_Impreza99

iTrader: (3)

Very impressive.

Could you possibly give a quick break down of the total cost to build it and also the performance figures, is it a quad core i7 processor, what performance does that single Nvidia GTX280 desktop graphics card give compared to something like a crossfire ATi 1GB 5870 setup in a laptop ?

Ant

He's already said it was a core2duo

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

Rob, as Ant said its a core 2 duo, its fairly old, think it set me back about 900 quid when I built it around 3 or so years back, that was excluding the 280GTX as I was running a 7900 GTX at that time.
Performance wise, no where near as quick as the latest i7 chips (1st or 2nd generation), its a fairly old architecture now, its 65nm, they moved down to 45nm with the next gen of core 2 duo's then on to the i7 1st gen (the 920/930/940 etc), the latest being 32nm and 22nm out next year with Ivybridge, though the 280GTX will out perform most laptops and their graphics (with the exception of the top end gaming ones) if its in a desktop with a decent motherboard as they are not as restricted with the bandwidth, just harder to carry around

The other issue with that setup show here is that it can be quite noisy, smaller 80-120mm fans need higher rpm to pass the air out, my latest machine runs 3 230mm fans and a 140mm extraction, you can hardly notice the sound sitting next to it, typing on the keyboard is louder I even had to reduce the fan alarm on the CPU from 600 rpm to 400 on the new one as it kept alarming!

Downside is that if you want quiet you have to pay more for the cases, your talking 90+ quid normally, cpu wise, you can pick up a reasonable low end mobo for 75ish quid (older p67 chipset) and have a nice choice of i5 chips to choose from now (2300/2310/2400/2500), which is probably the best bang for buck cpu on the market at the moment in the home computing world (all the AMD fanboys are awaiting for the Bulldozer chip to show its head on the 19th of September to see if it can compete with this generation of intel chips, 8 core amd v 4 core intel!).

Tony

JackClark

£900! You're ****ting me!! Back then you could have bought an iMac, that comes in a box with just one lead to plug in.... and it has a built in Monitor!!

People say I'm mental for buying Apple.

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

That was like 3 or so years back Jack, and it would have outperformed any imac (isnt that a hair removal cream? ) considerably (that included a gaming mouse/keyboard and a 24 inch monitor)

Tony

JackClark

That's all dyno, over cocking talk, my 6 year old iMac is still blazingly fast on my dyno. I thought IBM's were cheap! Obviously not. Imagine how much that thing would cost if you had to factor in labour! And it's loud and ugly!!

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

Ugly? Nah, loud? well lets see, its probably as loud as your iMac, it has 2 more cores than your iMac, probably twice the memory and alot more graphics power it also came with a bigger screen, more tuning capability, a couple of dvd drives (write/rewrite), a floppy (well at the time I was transfering stuff from my old works laptop ), will still outperform your iMac even if not overclocked yet cost over 400 quid less than the top of the range (still not as good) iMac.
Go figure

Tony

ChefDude

jack, some people like to build their own.

I'd build to the tony mac specification in case you want to hackintosh.

ChefDude

link

http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/search/label/CustoMac

Rob_Impreza99

iTrader: (3)

Tony

As a rough guide, how much would you say it would be to build a nice i7 quad core desktop with a decent graphics card or cards in a dual setup. Good cooling, decent psu, good quick hard drives and as silent as poss, i appreciate desktops create more noise than a laptop etc due to what they are running.

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

Rob, you are probably looking at around 1000-1100 quid for a decent build on an i7 2600k, not top end graphics though, nearly maybe a 570GTX or a 560, probably a decent ATI card which are normally cheaper, good mobo will set you back between 100-130 quid (p67 or a z68), uprated cooler, case (looking at 90+ there, have a HAF-X but the coolermaster HAF 932 is pretty close to it with the silent cooling at around 112 quid), a good quality 800w PSU will be 80+ but realistically you will be breaking the 100 quid mark for an 80+ rated one (independent test and marked with bronze/silver/gold), onboard sound is good enough on the motherboards, then it depends if you want to go SSD or not for a fast boot, the 1tb/2tb drives are dirt cheap, a blu ray player is like 41+ quid, a player/writer will set you back about 68-70 quid, and I would also pick up a couple of sata III 6gb cables to be on the safe side (couple of quid each).
Extra costs will be the likes of your monitor/keyboard/gaming mouse/speakers unless you already have those?
Memory is cheap, your taking 50-60 quid for 8gb of DDR3 ram (1600mhz) now and then windows 7 OEM will set you back 80 quid for the premium version.

Tony

Rob_Impreza99

iTrader: (3)

Cheers Tony

Thats roughly what i thought.

CREWJ

Nice little guide. Would have been nice to include all the CPU fitment though as applying the thermal paste is possibly the easiest part to get wrong.

DoZZa

iTrader: (4)

Nice post and guide.

Only issue with it as stated above is the lack of anti-static protection.

Static is the biggest killer of motherboards.

Maplin do a cheap roll-up anti-static mat which is what I use for all computer and electrical maintenance activities

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

I did the same of another forum .. heres the photos without the long winded descriptions some photos have been removed for some reason ?

And this was built in 2008 .. still a nice spec now ..