Well, I decided it’s time to overclock, and since my load temps were already 60*C I bought some new kit:

• DFI Infinity P965-S Dark (all solid capacitors).
• Thermaltake Armour Jr Midi tower case.

And Re-use some bits I have lying around:

• Thermaltake Big Typhoon.

Here’s a log of the re-build:

1st we have to deconstruct the uATX machine, I’ll miss this trendy little case. Stuff everywhere.

Ready to move all the interesting stuff over. My NB cooler was all bent up and squint, but the board works in that respect. However the sound failed on this board, and its replacement, on number 3 now.

Have to make a foam bit for the Typhoon. This is how to apply thermal paste to a Conroe. I forgot just how big these coolers are.

The Case is here!

My Flopy drive/card reader installed in the Power button bay, and DVD drive ready for tooless installation. The Power button bay can be moved around, I didn’t have to take the other side of the case off to install anything, but you would have to to use the other front 3.5″ drive bay, or to tidy cables a bit.

This hard drive cage can actually be moved into the 5.25″ drive bays and have its own fan attached, it has rubber mounts which is nice.

The case has support for both front panel audio conector types. Engough room for my X1900XT, and with the Hard drive cage up in the 5.25″ drive bays ANY graphic card will fit.

The finished build. My IrDA module is visible in the window. My desk is the wrong way round for a windowed case, time for a new one.

I like the case overall, I think I’ve covered the good points in the photos, however, there were a few niggles:

• There aren’t any little red washers for under the motherboard stand-offs, so sometimes when unscrewing a motherboard you end up unscrewing the stand-off instead. This can be cured using a thread locking agent.
• The thumbscrews which I’ve used for the back side panel are way to big, it’s hard to find a thread with them and to easy to over-tighten and strip a thread.
• There aren’t enough hard drive type screws in the little bag, beacuase the hard drives use rubber mounts and the 5.25″ drives are tool-less, there are only enough of these smaller threaded screws for the motherboard (10). I could have done with 4 more to innstal my floppy drive, and some people might require 4 more than me for the extra front panel 3.5″ drive bay.
• The case fans are only 2 cable jobbys, and only 4-pin Molex powered. I would have preferred 3 cable fans with the normal fan connector, and 2 4-pin molex adaptors for them.
• They grey primer inside ain’t that pretty.

That’s all for now, next time; the overclocking report.

Saved enough money for a second hard drive and a RAID adaptor. The Adaptec 1420SA, it does SATA RAID (also known as Fake RAID, Software RAID, and BIOS RAID). I set it up in RAID 0, and noticed a small performance boost, it would have been more if my PCI slot was 64bits wide, not 32.

Splitting the contents of the 1st drive over two took longer than the installation.

I also took the opportunity to add some potentiometers to the automatic fan speed controllers I’d installed to make it quieter.

This series of posts, in the “computer” category, is a rolling project about my PC. To start off with it’s just stuff I’ve done in the past, but pretty soon we should hit what I’m doing now, which is a bunch of case mods.

But for now, here’s how my 1st, and longest running build started out:

A µATX mobo, an E6600, and some Orange RAM.

An X1900XT 512MB, which only just fits.

Far to many wires (note to self: go modular next PSU).

And a sexy case, with a neat floppy dive/card reader combi.

No clocking on this small scale, it’s a little warm.

Next time; the SFF mods.