LJones First Build!

[ljones2]

Hello Forum,

I wanted to buy a boutique computer at a resonable price, but couldn't find anything I liked, so I decided to buy a bunch of parts and make an attempt at building one on my own. Everything has gone reasonably well thus far, but there are some issues that are unclear to me. Google hasn't been a whole lot of help, so I found this site to seek advice from the experts. I would greatly appreciate anyone's expertise to help me through this process.

Here is what I have to work with:
Motherboard
EVGA 122-CK-NF68-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX Intel

Processor
Intel Dual Core E6600

Case
Lian-Li PC-101B Mid Tower

Hard Drive
150Gig Western Digital Raptor SATA

Video Card
8800 GTS 640 MB Superclocked

Power Supply
PC Power and Cooling 750W Quad Silencer

Ram
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)

CPU Cooler
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro

Sound Card - now understanding I didn't need this with my motherboard selection
Fatality Sound blaster XFi with Xram?

This is basically it besides cd drive, floppy, etc.

I appreciate anyone's comments on the system.


I am currently trying to figure out a few things.

1. The case comes with audio, USB, and firewire ports and wires on the top of the case.
After I plug everything in from the motherboard, I cannot find any room to connect these.
There are some pins for HD audio on the board, but nothing more for USB/firewire.

2. What is the difference between hooking the fans to the Motherboard vs. the power supply, are you better off letting the motherboard regulate the fan speed and frequency?
The fans come with 3 pin plugs and molex adapters to let you decide.

3. I can't find anything on this. There is a 6 pin PCI-E power connector on my video card, there is also a molex type plug in on the motherboard for auxiliary power to the video cards. Should I plug in both, or only one? I currently have the 6 pin plugged in to the GPU, but no molex into the motherboard.


Any help is greatly appreciated!

[blue60007]

1) Have you looked in the manual? Usually you'll find a diagram showing where audio, USB, etc. goes. Also I don't see anything in the specs that indicates the motherboard has an internal Firewire connector. It only lists one on the rear, but the manual should clear you up there.

2) I would hook any case fans up right to the power supply. Takes the extra load off the motherboard. I suppose if the fans are too loud you could hook them up to the motherboard later and see if you can control speeds.

3) Good question...again, this is something I'd refer to the manual to or maybe someone else here can provide more specifics...

[ljones2]

Blue,

Thanks for your post. I have taken your advice and hooked up the fans to the PSU. I am about to boot up for the first time and see what happens, I do not have an OS system in place yet, just want to boot up to see if I get a display and go forward from there. I guess on the motherboard, there is no more room for connections for the case inputs.

As far as the video card issue, I have still not found anything about the subject. I am going to power up with the PSU hooked up to the GPU, without hooking another power input to the motherboard auxiliary power.

The most time consuming process so far has been designing the wiring for the case, this PSU has a ton of wires. Thanks for your feedback, I will keep everyone posted on the results.

[blue60007]

My guess the aux power is extra power if you are using SLI. The manual isn't a whole lot of help...

"The PWR3 connector is an auxiliary power connection for graphics cards.
Exclusive power for the graphics card provides better graphics performance."

I don't see why you'd need to plug it in either. I did a quick search on their support message board and it sounds like you don't need it unless you are using SLI. Seems like even then you don't need it, not all SLI boards have this and work fine...

[chuck4456]

ABIT's got those as well. I didn't bother to plug mine in for 3 months. Read a sticky at ABIT one nite that said it should be plugged in. Finally got thru to Tech Support to find out what it was really for. It also provides support voltage for the Southbridge Core. So I plugged it in. Next thing you know, I have SOUTHBRIDGE CORE VOLTAGE readings included in my sensor readouts. I would definitely seek out Tech Support for your board and verify what it does and if it should be plugged in, to eliminate any risk of motherboard damage. See if they have anything on it at EVGA's Forums.

[ljones2]

Thanks for the replies. Chuck, ABIT =? .

I just booted up for the first time, everything looked good. Good suggestion to hook fans to PSU and keep them running, this case is extremely quiet to me, kind of surprising. I only have the motherboard, video card, PSU, and inputs installed.
The ram loaded correctly, and I booted to the BIOS setup and changed the internal clock to correct settings.

At 10 minutes (this is with Intel CPU cooler, my arctic pro 7 arrives tomorrow)

CPU = 43 C
Board= 29 C
MCP = 46 C

At 15 minutes

CPU = 44 C
Board = 29 C
MCP = 47 C

CPU Core = 1.28V
CPU FSB = 1.18V
Memory = 1.85V
+3.3V = 3.28V
+3.3V Dual = 3.28V
+12V = 12.08V
+5V = 4.99V
Vbat= 2.96V

The CPU fan speed was constant at ~990 rpm

nForce fan speed fluctuated consistently from ~5300rpm - 5900rpm

The three case fans worked great, seemed very quiet.

Everything appeared to be in working order so far.

I will search the forums to see if I can find anything else about the issue with the GPU power supply vs. the motherboard auxiliary power.

Thanks to everyone for their help.

Some lessons I have learned thus far:

- Install CPU cooling fan so that wires are arranged towards bottom of case
- Do a good job of thermal pasting CPU and motherboard heat sink
- Wear latex medical gloves when installing CPU, using thermal paste, and installing motherboard.
-Test system with minimal hardware installed before progressing further
- Wiring and routing can be one of the most time consuming issues with a larger PSU

[ExPA]

Originally Posted by ljones2 - Wear latex medical gloves when installing CPU, using thermal paste, and installing motherboard.

Hiya... I read in a custom builders book somewhere that cotton gloves are better than synthetic (esp. nylon, polyester, etc). The main argument raised in the book was that the hot surfaces in a PC could melt the fabric onto your fingers, which might not be pleasant. Not sure how much of a risk that would be for the various grades of latex med gloves. cheers...

[blue60007]

Seems like if you touched a surface hot enough to melt the gloves you'd be burned regardless...

I've never worn gloves before...only time I could see wearing them is when messing with the thermal paste.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by ljones2 Some lessons I have learned thus far: - Wear latex medical gloves when installing CPU, using thermal paste, and installing motherboard.

Gloves? Why? To keep your hands clean?

Originally Posted by ljones2 -Test system with minimal hardware installed before progressing further

Yes, test the core component out of the case before you install the motherboard into the case.

Originally Posted by ljones2 - Wiring and routing can be one of the most time consuming issues with a larger PSU

Actually, getting the wires neat is the most time consuming thing in any build regardless of the size of the power supply.

Cricket

[ExPA]

Originally Posted by blue60007 Seems like if you touched a surface hot enough to melt the gloves you'd be burned regardless... I've never worn gloves before...only time I could see wearing them is when messing with the thermal paste.

I think you're right about getting burned if your gloves get hot enough to melt. But that's really the point. Cotton isn't going to melt, and it is the glove fabric of choice if you're going to get ANY protection against burns. If I'm grabbing a hot cookie sheet out of the oven, I'd rather be wearing a pair of cotton gloves than latex surgical gloves or gloves made with synthetic material like nylon or polyester.

Originally Posted by Cricket Gloves? Why? To keep your hands clean?

As I recall, the book authors suggested the key potential benefits of thin cotton gloves were (1) keeping finger oils off components, especially pins and contacts (though why you'd be grabbing those is beyond me), (2) avoid burns from hot components (again, why grab a hot component anyway?), (3) reduce risk of cuts from sharp internal case edges (not a bad argument perhaps, given how much people say they get nicked and cut), and (4) reduce risk of damaging ESD. But thinking about it, to the extent there might be toxic compounds on the surfaces of the components, maybe keeping your hands clean WOULD be an additional benefit.

[ljones2]

Thanks for everyone's feedback, it is greatly appreciated.

Last night I tried to mount my new CPU cooler, the arctic freezer 7 pro. My build took a 180 deg turn. I got arctic silver thermal compound on the motherboard in a couple of small places, so I am not sure if I need to remove it with the solvent or not. Also, the arctic freezer pro does not fit well in the case, and I am not sure which direction to point it! I could really use some advice on this, this case is unusual compared to standard cases. There are two intakes (front and back) and the exhaust is the side fan. I will buy a camera and post what it looks like sometime soon. In the meantime, if anyone can give any advice it would certainly be appreciated. The motherboard mounts kind of upside down, if you want an idea of where the cpu is, I provided a link under my first post (lian li case). I got frustrated and went ahead and re-installed the intel cpu cooler, I am worried that I am causing too much stress on the CPU and motherboard by removing and installing the heat sinks. It sucks when you have everything going your way and then something stupid like this happens. Hope it boots again!

[ljones2]

Anyone have any suggestions on whether I need to clean up the small amount of thermal paste that got onto the motherboard when I was installing the heat sink to the CPU?

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by ljones2 Anyone have any suggestions on whether I need to clean up the small amount of thermal paste that got onto the motherboard when I was installing the heat sink to the CPU?

Yes, clean it up. Arctic Silver is conductive and it could cause shorts.

Cricket

[ljones2]

Isopropyl alcohol works great as a thermal compound solvent. I used 70% solution, but you are supposed to use 99%. I just made sure to keep everything dry as possible and soak up the residual with a Qtip or coffee filter. I removed the few places on the mobo that had the thermal compound on it, and everything looks like new. Something interesting on the copper heat sinks - on the stock intel cooler, the thermal compound came off like magic, leaving a clean shiny new surface. The Arctic freezer 7 however took some scrubbing, it seemed to retain the compound much better which leads me to believe it has a higher quality heat sink that is more porous.

I mounted the arctic freezer 7 with the fan blowing towards the bottom of the case. This is the same direction the fan for the motherboard heatsink is blowing. I am hoping that I will see a cooler CPU due to the superior heatsink on the arctic freezer.

I have now clamped and routed all wiring, it actually looks pretty good. I was able to clamp the mass of leftover wires from the PSU and neatly tuck them between a bracket and the PSU itself.

The build is just about complete I believe, I will boot up the system again and check to make sure the hard drive, floppy, and DVD rom are installed correctly.

I will then stop to do research on what is next. I will be overclocking this system, it should be fun to do. I will post pictures as soon as I get a camera.

Thanks to everyone for their help.

[glc]

No, you do NOT want a porous heatsink. The smoother the surface, the better the heat transfer and the less compound you need. Metal to metal is the best heat transfer medium, NO compound is as good as that.

[ljones2]

So the Intel stock heatsink is superior to the Arctic Freezer 7 heatsink.

For homogeneous materials, thermal resistance is directly proportional to thickness. For non-homogeneous materials, the resistance generally increases with thickness but the relationship may not be linear.

Thermal conductivity and thermal resistance describe heat transfer within a material once heat has entered the material. Because real surfaces are never truly flat or smooth, the contact plane between a surface and a material can also produce a resistance to the flow of heat. Actual contact occurs at the high points, leaving air-filled voids where the valleys align. The air voids resist the flow of heat and force more of the heat to flow through the contact points. This constriction resistance is referred to as surface contact resistance and can be a factor at all contacting surfaces.

The thermal impedance, q, of a material is defined as the sum of its thermal resistance and any contact resistance between it and the contacting surfaces.
q = Rmaterial + Rcontact

Surface flatness, surface roughness, clamping pressure, material thickness and compressive modulus have a major impact on contact resistance. Because these surface conditions can vary from application to application, the thermal impedance of a material will also be application dependent.

[glc]

That is the ONLY purpose of compound - to fill those air voids with SOMETHING. I'm not saying the stock heatsink is superior - there's other considerations. I'm assuming the Freezer is using brute force to remove the heat faster. What you CAN do is lap the Freezer to make it just as shiny as the stocker.

[ljones2]

Correct, sorry I did not word that correctly, but assuming the metal is the same material makeup and quality, the heatsink with the smoother surface would atleast have a superior contact surface for thermal transfer than the heatsink with a more porous surface.

[glc]

Exactly. A copper contact surface is also better than aluminum, but aluminum fins dissipate heat to the air better than copper. This is why you see aluminum heatsinks with copper inserts.

[ljones2]

Well, the most difficult part was not the wiring after all....

Now the OS is up and running. Temps are running cool, (48 C at full load) e6600 2.4 GHz overclocked now to 3.375 GHz.

PC Mark score was 8574. Which sucked compared to others with a similar system, so I have more to discover... I ran Sandra SiSoft XI and my processor looks superior to others of the same rating, but my hard drive cannot transfer data quickly, and has a slow response time... Surprising since I have the 16MB 150Gig WD raptor.

Anyways, I partitioned 10 gigs for my OS and major apps on the C:\ drive. I partitioned 100 gig for data on another drive. Then I started reading about this pagefile business and created another 3 gig partition for a pagefile. Then I read that you should put that on a totally different hard drive, so I deleted the partition, and it looks like it deleted the disk space!!

I'm not sure how to get it back, or how to increase the partition for Windows. I also f'd up big time and installed office to C:\ instead of another partition.

I think I am screwed at this point, can anyone lend a helping hand?

BTW,,,

I installed Windows XP professional, along with it, I have added the following software:

Firefox
Acronis true image
SiSoftware Sandra XI
CPU-z
CoreTemp
PCMark 05
Zone Alarm
Symantec corporate
spybot S&D
CCleaner
CleanCache 3.0
MS Office 03 professional
Perfect Disk 10.0

[glc]

My best suggestion is start over and don't bother partitioning the drive. Keep it simple.

[LeftyAce]

I've been running with the harddrive page file set to 0 ever since I upgraded to two GB ram....