Drayu
11-06-2006, 06:54 AM
Ok, so Gorro and I put the bad boy together yesterday. I will give you a parts list and then a brief run down of what I think about the build, the thoughts on the computer itself will take a few days.
Parts List
Motherboard: Asus P5B Deluxe WiFi-AP
Memory: Corsair XMS2 4-4-4-12
CPU: E6600
Heatsink: Arctic Freezer 7 pro
Vid Card: BFG 7600GT OC
Hard Drives: Western Digital 250gig 16meg 3.0/gb SATA
Optical Drives: 2 x NEC 3550A
Sound Card: Audigy 2ZS Platinum
Floppy Drive: generic
Card Reader: 42 in 1 card reader (3.5 slot) w/1 usb port
Power Supply: OCZ 600w Ultra
Case:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811144151 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811144151)
My Build THoughts:
1. I absolutely HATED the way the heatsink was attached to the processor and the board!!! In the AMD's the heatsink was attached like a chasity belt, on the Intel it is 4 plastic push pins. To me, it doesn't seem like a good connection between the board and the heatsink and the processor. I am still worrying about this now!
2. The mid-tower case looks cool! The three dials on the front are more for show than anything, but I attached the temperature dial to the heatsink, but rather than putting the probe between the heatsink and processor, I just shoved it into the heatsink fans. It gives me a good idea. The fan speed one is cool because I can adjust the fan speed with a dial on the front, and the read out dial tells me the RPM's. Haven't figured out what the VU one is for yet, but I will. The case is also a little flimsy to start, but once it is filled it is very solid. The bitch was going from a full size tower to a mid tower, so much less room, and it was difficult finding a place for the power supply cables.
3. Installing everything else was pretty easy, no probs there. We did learn that you shouldn't plug in the card reader till AFTER you install windows! The card reader took up the C: drive designation, and the first install of windows was on the H: drive. had to reinstall to fix.
4. Setting up the raid array on the P5B was a little confusing at first. There is a JMicron raid controller, but only one SATA hook up for it, no idea with that. Gorro figured out which Sata connectors were used for the INTEL Matrix raid, so we went with that and it was freaking easy! Took all of 2 mins to set up. Once we set the drives and the array, we installed windows. Make sure though that you have the Raid Driver Disc ready for when you start the install process. The nice thing is that you can either make the disc in another windows machine, or right on the machine you are building by booting from the utilities disc. (down fall is that unless you have a slipstream winxp install with the raid drivers on it, you have to install a floppy drive to use).
5. What I don't like about the board is the placement of the USB headers, in order to get to them, you have to take out your bottom pci card, install the header, then reinstall the card. They should have moved it elsewhere.
6. The Q Connecter that comes with the board is nice, instead of trying to plug in all the leads for the power, reset, etc right on the board, they give you a connector that you plug all that into and then just slid it onto the motherboard.....very nice!
7. The graphics card from BFG was easy, and didn't make me install any of their drivers, they said to get the latest drivers from NVIDIA. So nice.
8. My utilities CD didn't have a menu option to install the Marvell Lan port, I had to manually find it on the CD to install, not a big deal, but different than what was stated in the manual.
So far, that is it. I will update this with more about the performance later and any additional comments. Thanks for reading!
Parts List
Motherboard: Asus P5B Deluxe WiFi-AP
Memory: Corsair XMS2 4-4-4-12
CPU: E6600
Heatsink: Arctic Freezer 7 pro
Vid Card: BFG 7600GT OC
Hard Drives: Western Digital 250gig 16meg 3.0/gb SATA
Optical Drives: 2 x NEC 3550A
Sound Card: Audigy 2ZS Platinum
Floppy Drive: generic
Card Reader: 42 in 1 card reader (3.5 slot) w/1 usb port
Power Supply: OCZ 600w Ultra
Case:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811144151 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811144151)
My Build THoughts:
1. I absolutely HATED the way the heatsink was attached to the processor and the board!!! In the AMD's the heatsink was attached like a chasity belt, on the Intel it is 4 plastic push pins. To me, it doesn't seem like a good connection between the board and the heatsink and the processor. I am still worrying about this now!
2. The mid-tower case looks cool! The three dials on the front are more for show than anything, but I attached the temperature dial to the heatsink, but rather than putting the probe between the heatsink and processor, I just shoved it into the heatsink fans. It gives me a good idea. The fan speed one is cool because I can adjust the fan speed with a dial on the front, and the read out dial tells me the RPM's. Haven't figured out what the VU one is for yet, but I will. The case is also a little flimsy to start, but once it is filled it is very solid. The bitch was going from a full size tower to a mid tower, so much less room, and it was difficult finding a place for the power supply cables.
3. Installing everything else was pretty easy, no probs there. We did learn that you shouldn't plug in the card reader till AFTER you install windows! The card reader took up the C: drive designation, and the first install of windows was on the H: drive. had to reinstall to fix.
4. Setting up the raid array on the P5B was a little confusing at first. There is a JMicron raid controller, but only one SATA hook up for it, no idea with that. Gorro figured out which Sata connectors were used for the INTEL Matrix raid, so we went with that and it was freaking easy! Took all of 2 mins to set up. Once we set the drives and the array, we installed windows. Make sure though that you have the Raid Driver Disc ready for when you start the install process. The nice thing is that you can either make the disc in another windows machine, or right on the machine you are building by booting from the utilities disc. (down fall is that unless you have a slipstream winxp install with the raid drivers on it, you have to install a floppy drive to use).
5. What I don't like about the board is the placement of the USB headers, in order to get to them, you have to take out your bottom pci card, install the header, then reinstall the card. They should have moved it elsewhere.
6. The Q Connecter that comes with the board is nice, instead of trying to plug in all the leads for the power, reset, etc right on the board, they give you a connector that you plug all that into and then just slid it onto the motherboard.....very nice!
7. The graphics card from BFG was easy, and didn't make me install any of their drivers, they said to get the latest drivers from NVIDIA. So nice.
8. My utilities CD didn't have a menu option to install the Marvell Lan port, I had to manually find it on the CD to install, not a big deal, but different than what was stated in the manual.
So far, that is it. I will update this with more about the performance later and any additional comments. Thanks for reading!