Update;

WOOT!

Update;

Well, as you saw with my previous post, the motherboard I wanted was released. I went ahead and ordered everything, so that should come during the week, maybe Wednesday.

I also sanded the milliput corners down, and now need to sand the whole front, preparing it for the first layer of primer.

Plans;

Prepare the case with the fan holes, so I can put the hardware in it without the front. I'm hoping for a complete computer on Wed/Thurs, depending on if the components arrive.

The new front should be finished paint wise by the weekend, meaning I can have a finished computer then.

Woot, this is really falling into place now!

Can't wait to get my little pyro back

Update;

Motherboard arrived today, it looks awesome, fairly nice package too, but not many SATA cables. We were right, it doesn't have a firewire port on it, unfortunately. Ah well, it's nothing big.

EBuyer stuff (aka everything else) might arrive tomorrow, they appear to be organising all the bits ready to send out.

Update;

The front has now been primed ready for painting, looking pretty good, will be dry ready for sanding tomorrow afternoon, then ready for paint, which I will probably do on Friday.

I've started cutting the new CD cover, will continue to work on that, maybe prime it tomorrow.

I might cut the front of my case up later

Ebuyer has dispatched the rest of my components, should be able to build tomorrow

I will post a big update either later or tomorrow, Friday at the latest.

Time for a big update for the past 3 days!

This update is titled "10/09 - Primer, Prep and a Parcel" (Oh yeah, alliteration FTW).

As per usual, I have a new album here.

So, earlier this week I sanded down the milliput (read the box, it's not mulliputti) to create smooth corners;

I also sanded the rest of the front to prepare it for primer, but this is hard to see.

Anyway, today I got a fairly small package;


Of course I opened it pretty quickly! It was pretty well packaged, with 2 layers of bubblewrap. This is what the box inside contained (for pictures of the box, check the gallery);

In full, the contents were;
A DFI LanParty JR P45-T2RS motherboard in antistatic bag. It's mATX with the ATX P45 chipset. It supports crossfire with 2 8x PCI-E slots, has a heatpipe cooling system (which is watercooling friendly - you can take the black heatsink off and the heatpipe will stay there, ready to be watercooled) and various other features.It has the CMOS reset jumper on the IO plate, which is awesome. It lacks FireWire, but that is the only problem I see with this gamer's motherboard, and it's very minor. The 8x PCI-E slots might be a problem with high end graphics, such as the 4870X2, but as they are PCI-E2.0, they should be good for most other graphics cards (equivalent to a 1.1 16x slot). The FP audio looks like it's in an awkward place, too (right at the back of the mobo next to a PCIE slot)
2 Manuals (1 standard, one for the auto overclocking system, both are pretty thick, with the standard manual having 30+pages for each language).
A CD (drivers, I think) and a driver floppy for the SATA RAID controller (if you are installing Windows onto a RAID array)
2 (UV?) orange SATA cables, 1 IDE cable (rounded, 2 plugs), 1 Floppy cable (rounded, 1 plug) and a Molex to 2 Sata power converter.
4 replacement jumpers (with a little handle on) and the EZ Smart connectors (more on those tomorrow).
All in all, a pretty good box. maybe could have done with more SATA cables (my last mobo came with cables for all ports), but can't really complain.

So after that came spraying the primer. I cleaned up the metal with meths then applied hte primer how you're meant to. This meant spraying in quick sweeping motions to prevent paint build up, leaving it to dry for 15 minutes then spraying it again (at right angles to the previous coat, for the best coverage).
I did the back first. Before;

After 2 coats;

Then I waited 15 minutes to flip it over and do the front. Before;

After 2 coats;

Now I leave it to dry for 24 hours before sanding it down ready for the paint.

So, while that was drying, and with the promise of new parts tomorrow, I decided to prepare the case so I could build it tomorrow and add the front when it was finished, without having to remove the components. This is the front, mostly done, with holes cut out for the fans;

I don't have pics of it finished, but it has holes drilled for the fans and another hole cut in the top left for the front IO cables. It's also been sanded and neatened up.

An internal bar also needed to be removed so the heatsink would fit;

(This is before filing and sanding, I think)

Finally, I wired up the power switch, the other switches will come later;

I simply cut the wires from the old front and wired them up to the new switch.

Well that's it for this update, enjoy!

To come;

Tomorrow;
Receiving components and building the computer. Also recover data from my old HDDs.
Working on the DVD drive front, up to and including primer.
Sanding down the primer on the new front.
Cut Mesh to cover fans.

Friday;
Painting the front and DVD drive front black.

Saturday;
If I am not happy with the paint job, I will sand and give it another coat, otherwise;
Attach front to case, with mesh.
Wire up all switches.
Sort out DVD drive by replacing the front and wiring up a new switch for eject.

I'm right on schedule now, which is excellent.

Oh, and to TF2 players - you will soon be eating fire once more!

Update!

I have a box!

Mini-update;

Spent most of the day modding the case some more to fit the fan in so I'll be finishing it off tomorrow. This is going to be one small powerhouse.

I pre-emptively claim the highest performance per cubic centimetre of this forum.

You know, I think that is the best looking motherboard I have ever seen.

Its best feature: it is gimmickless.

Yeah, everything on it is pretty awesome, nothing stupid, nothing big missing (maybe FireWire if you have an old DV 'corder). The orange slots could be a bit garish for some, but it still looks good. The black PCB and the awesome NB cooler just make it look awesome

I found that the the CPU socket is slightly crowded, I had to shave the fan shroud on the Freezer7 to make it not collide, and I'm slightly worried. Overall, that seems to be the only problem, the rest of the stuff around the socket is pretty clear. It is to be expected of mATX, though.

Currently I have the CPU, RAM and GPU in place, didn't get much further as I had lots of cutting to do, will finish it off tomorrow. Expect a proper log entry tomorrow.

I'm thinking of getting an mATX board for the family and this is a likely candidate... I really want to see the finished product now. I hope you slave yourself all night so you can have the pictures uploaded in the morning. Of course you will have OC'd it at least 25%, and will have run 3DMark Vantage and a 5 hour Prime95 by then... with screenshots...

Nah, will do it tomorrow afternoon. Will tell you the results tomorrow. Might overclock it tomorrow or leave the overclocking till when I've got my data recovered from my RAID array and finished the front. I will give you all the benchmarks, temperatures and clock information.

Update:

Please wait...

(boy is it cramped in that case now)

Cramped cases are now a thing of the past for me! I want a watercooled system? I just install a swimming pool.

LOL, I could fit WC in here, just.

Anyway, Vista hates my NetGear WG311T and I can't install it. This means no internet yet

New or old hardware?

Also, its probabily an issue with incorrect driver instllation, you just need drivers, not some app thatll <LOOK MA, I AM SWEARING> windows over by corrupting part of the network stack.

Old hardware. It seems NetGear is useless, their config app doesn't load properly at startup, making it useless. I tried some 3rd party drivers, but they froze and destroyed my Windows install. It could have been related to my heatsink being lifted off the CPU, so I'm going to try again (the heatsink would fit, but it now collides with the power cables for my hard drives),

OK, it's now started working. I installed the NetGear drivers, but they didn't work. I then unistalled the NetGear software. Then I went in device manager, and the adaptor was there (as the correct name), but with a warning triangle. I tell it to uninstall the drivers, and it does...

... then it goes and installs itself again automatically and proceeds to work.

Now all I need is my freaking WEP key.

Did you manage to get this working OK? Do you have any photos of the build?

I have it working now (infact I'm posting from it). I do have photos, but I won't upload them yet.

RAGE

Well I'm switching my wireless with my dad's to fix the driver problem (hopefully), but now I have more problems.

My extra HDDs block the fan, so it can't go all the way into where it's meant to, but I did push it that far once, without noticing. THis has loosened the tension on the cooler, and it is possibly not contacting properly now. This meant that while trying to play CSS today, the temps went to 100+ according to coretemp (and the CPU was running x6, not x9). I will reseat it tomorrow, and hope it hasn't fried the CPU. There may be other things causing contact problems too.

I also need to find a way of moving the HDDs back, or will end up with them out of case.

As for the front, I haven't done much more on that. I'm going to do another primer coat tomorrow, then paint during the week.

Update;

No Vista 64 drivers available for my dad's wireless card, getting a new one (£14 from PCWorld) that does have drivers.

I found what was causing the temperature errors, 2 of the push pins holding the heatsink down had come out when it was pushed up against the cables. This, of course, meant virtually no contact. I don't think I caused any damage (fingers crossed). The temperatures now hold about 30C idle (after reseating the fan).

I am remounting the secondary hard drives backwards. They are not meant to go this way, and there isn't much space, but right angled cables do fit. I haven't got any right angled data cables, so I have gone for the homemade option.

Oh yeah, epic quad posting time (no-one is replying )!

Anyway, another miniupdate;

Computer technical;

The CPU is still running stong, only 45C after some good TF2ing. Might try an overclock soon, aiming for 333x9 (3.2GHz) but getting it to 400x9 would be amazing, though unlikely. It seems to drop to 1.6GHz a lot (x6 instead of x9), I think that's the power saving/heat reducing thing, right? Temps and clock speeds are according to CoreTemp.

GPU is idling at 76C, which is about right for a HD4870, I think. It's got fairly good airflow, though I may try and move the PCIE power cables to block the front fan less.

I have got a new wireless card and it (just) works. It seems to lose internet but not network occassionally. We will see how it goes.

I have sucessfully remounted my hard drives so they face the opposite direction, which means everything now fits in properly (even if it is a bit tight in there). Homemade right angled SATA cables are working

The only test I've given it so far is an evening of TF2. It ran at an average of 100-120FPS (80 low, 200 high, but I couldn't make out the cl_showfps 1 numbers very easily because they changed so much) with everything maxed out (including AA/AF) at 1600x1200. A very pleasing result, I think. Expect more results soon, and maybe more benchmarks coming soon.

General building;

I have done a second coat of primer on the front now, and will sand/paint tomorrow. Hopefully it will only need one coat of paint, but we will see. I have also cut out the new DVD front and the mesh for the fans.

Everything except the new front is in place, and all the cables are tidied pretty well (considering the cramped conditions). Some cables could be positioned better, and the PCIE and ATX cables might be moved a bit.

Oh, and the red cathodes are a bit pale (aka pink), so I'm going to take a marker pen to them to darken them up.

Sorry for the lack of proper updates, I will aim to get a big one for the past 5 days up tomorrow evening, Wednesday at the latest. As I say, I've got very little left to do, so if I update tomorrow, the update after would be tiny, but this one will be epic.

Try cl_showfps 2 for an average

Ah, thanks, I will try that later.

I have decided that you won't get an update until I finish it. It will be a massive update, showing construction of the computer, more modifications, the painting of the front etc etc. I should be done tomorrow if the paint job is alright.