Biulding a New PC : How To?

luxe said:
1. I got the CM V8 Cooler instead of the Cogage, didnt want to wait for Wootware. That thing is ENORMOUS and causes endless problems. I popped it onto the motherboard first (after the chip lol), and then SERIOUSLY battled to get the ATX power, LCD Poster another clip into the top right of the board. There was basically no space left between the case and the cooler. No way I could have preempted that really. It was basically in the way the whole time after i put it on.

3.Thermal paste was trickier than i thought, used a business card, not really as easy as it looks
first time round.


13. Does it make a difference which SATA input the HDD's are in? Currently they are in SATA 3 and SATA6, with the DVD in SATA 1. Weird.
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1. Sorry, I forgot to mention that in my previous post. It's easier for me to install the MB first without a PSU installed, get that top corner screw in, feed PSU wires in, connect the corner connector and then install the PSU.

3. That's fine. Everybody says just put a blob down and it will spread itself to cover the entire cpu surface. My experience indicates the opposite. I also use a credit card and get much better results that way.

13. The port numbers are linked to different IDE channels. So you can end up with both drives on Channel2 for example as master & slave. I prefer to spread the drives across different channels.


Archer said:
3. Sounds like you spread the paste? You're meant to let it spread by itself via pressire between the cooler+CPU. Next time...
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After some experimentation I no longer buy that and I tried a good few times starting with a really small blob going bigger. It always ends up as circle that never covers the entire cpu surface and if you use a bigger blob the paste just gets thicker with a slightly larger circle and you don't want a thick layer of paste. The best result was obtained by spreading with a credit card to a really thin layer covering the entire cpu surface.
 
ponder said:
After some experimentation I no longer buy that and I tried a good few times starting with a really small blob going bigger. It always ends up as circle that never covers the entire cpu surface and if you use a bigger blob the paste just gets thicker with a slightly larger circle and you don't want a thick layer of paste. The best result was obtained by spreading with a credit card to a really thin layer covering the entire cpu surface.
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Thing is you dont need to cover the whole surface. The actual CPU cores only take up the 1/4 of the heatspreader, and they are all located in the middle. I've found my blobs to spread almost the the sides anyway, just leaving out the corners. Whatever method is better you'll only be seeing 1-2° anyway, so if the CC method is indeed better it takes too long for my liking :p And oh, the CC method also increases the chances of trapped air bubbles, decreasing cooling performance.
 
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Is it worth it getting a fan controller for the 5 fans in my case, or just leave them as is so that the mobo can control em?

Btw - the rampage board oc'd my 950 from 3.06ghz to 4ghz with one button click in the bios.

Epic.

Oh - and why are red fans hard to find, never any stock anywhere....meh.
 
Fan controller is useful for OC sessions and looking good. Otherwise just set them up in the bios (or run at full speed) and leave them be.
 
Archer said:
Thing is you dont need to cover the whole surface. The actual CPU cores only take up the 1/4 of the heatspreader, and they are all located in the middle.
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I think I'll just stick to what I learned wrt contact area & thermal efficiency in engineering.
 
ponder said:
I think I'll just stick to what I learned wrt contact area & thermal efficiency in engineering.
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First, you dont know what thermal efficiency is since it usually refers to a dimensionless measure of a device that uses (not dissipates) thermal energy, ie how efficiently it converts that heat to another form of energy. Eg, an engine, furnace, etc.

Next, contact area between the CPU cores and CPU heat spreader is roughly 150mm². The heat spreader itself is 1800mm². So now whether you use the full 1800mm² or part thereof the "bottleneck" is still between the cores and the heatspreader.

Not to mention that the thermal conductivity of most metals (eg copper = ±350W/mK) is orders of magnitude higher than any thermal paste (AC5 = 8.89W/mK). A small area of direct metal to metal contact can provide equal cooling to a larger area metal to paste to metal setup.
 
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Might have missed it but no one has mentioned that your old hdds didnt boot up because of all the hardware changes. Always backup and reinstall when changing motherboard/cpu/ram
 
squirrel said:
Might have missed it but no one has mentioned that your old hdds didnt boot up because of all the hardware changes. Always backup and reinstall when changing motherboard/cpu/ram
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Ahh...so now i know :)

It was time for a reinstall anyway :)
 
squirrel said:
Might have missed it but no one has mentioned that your old hdds didnt boot up because of all the hardware changes. Always backup and reinstall when changing motherboard/cpu/ram
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XP sometimes has problems with new hardware, but W7 has no issues. I changed out the mobo, CPU and RAM. W7 booted, saw new hardware, mucked around for a few minutes, restarted and hey presto everything worked. No clue about Vista though.
 
Mine was a win 7 64 install, it apparently found a corrupted registry when i booted up the new pc.

Fail.
 
Now to add another 2Gig dimm and another GTX460 ;)

BTW, is it the 768mb or the 1gig and how much did you pay, if you don't mind me asking?
 
Yeah - might just get 4gb dimm...what the hell :)

its a the 768mb mate, bought it about 2 months ago for R2500. Gonna wait for the price to come down below 2k then buy another, that should leave me in a nice place for a little while i hope :)
 
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