EPTIt was a bit piecemeal, with core components ordered at the start of June and replacing out what I could afford to from there, but it's finally finished. What I ended up getting:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3
CPU: i5-750
CPU Cooler: Scythe Mugen
Thermal Paste: Tuniq TX-2
RAM: 2x 2GB G.Skill Eco Series 1600 MHz 7-8-7-24
DVD-RW: Sony Optiarc
PSU: Seasonic M12II 520W
GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 1GB
HDD: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit
Case: Antec 902
I don't have pics of the original build, sadly, but I'll give a short description. The parts arrived on a Friday afternoon, and I got started assembling about 8 that night. About 6 the following morning I finally finished and set the computer up. There were a couple breaks taken for this and that, but it still took me nearly eight hours to put the thing together, which, in fairness to myself I should point out that pretty much everything past installing the CPU/RAM/thermal paste happened after midnight, though it mostly just stems from me being stupid.
Evidence: I wanted to see if I would be able to install the heatsink backplate through the cutoff on the back of the motherboard tray on the 902, just in case the Mugen was too large for the case, so after I got the CPU and RAM put in, I lined the studs up and worked the mobo into place. Then, to make sure it wouldn't wobble while I was moving the case around, I screwed it down some. I checked and found that I could install the backplate, but it would certainly be easier outside the case. I went to unscrew everything, only to find I had gotten the screw at the top left (besides the back I/O Panel) cockeyed and stuck into the side of the standoff and couldn't remove the screw without the standoff coming, too. Rather than risk damaging the only standoffs I had, I screwed everything back down and installed the Mugen with the mobo in the case.
Ahhh, but I'm not done chronicling my stupidity. I then spent almost thirty minutes trying to figure why I couldn't get the brackets on the heatsink to properly screw into the backplate, only to find that I had oriented one of the brackets right side up and the other upside down.
Another 30+ minutes was lost unsuccessfully attaching the fan to the heatsink. I'm still not sure how that happened, honestly. I searched youtube vids, looked up various websites and studied the booklet multiple times and couldn't figure out how to do the following:
![[image loading]](http://img205.imageshack.us/i/007zna.jpg/)
The large aluminum looking item at the top of the image is the heatsink. The black part on the right side is the fan. On each end of the fan is a hole on the top and bottom that the paper clip looking part clips to and then slids into the grooves on the heatsink (as you can [possibly] see, you can mount two fans, if you buy the second one separately and there are slots to mount a single fan on any side of the heatsink.) Not a difficult maneuver, at all, but apparently beyond my abilities.
Oh, almost forgot I couldn't get the I/O shield in right for the longest time. If you don't know what that is: look at the back of your computer. There's a metal area that has your USB, ethernet, speaker and probably more connections all together. That's your I/O shield and it actually fits around the connections that stick out from your motherboard. Putting it in place is a very simple thing: you put it between your case and motherboard, push the shield until it clicks into place and then the connections should just line up when you place your motherboard in line with its standoffs. Still took me ten minutes to figure out, including one point where I ended up with the I/O shield on the outside and then put a little pressure on the motherboard, knocking the shield onto the floor where I *almost* stepped on it. God, I'm awesome.
Then I couldn't figure out the hard drive cages in the 902. Was transferring the hard drive from my Dell Optiplex gx620 - which was actually a Western Digial of some type that performed much better than I expected - and I dropped it at least three times inside the case trying to fit it into the cage. Then I dropped it again on the table after I figured out I had to take the cages out to install a hard drive (small rant: they may be easier to navigate for some people, but I do find the drive cages on the 902 to be a fairly major pain the ass). maar's blindingly obvious computer hardware tip of the day: dropping your stuff is bad. Fortunately, the patron saint of clueless newbies had my back that day and no damage was done.
Lastly, I had one more dumb moment that, maybe, some of your can relate to. I finally had the guts hooked up, secured, and was ready to fire the rig up. I moved it into my room, attached the monitor, etc, plugged in the power cable and hit the power button only to have nothing happen. I sat there for a minute in despair, staring intently to see if anything had responded in the slightest, but to no avail. Then I realized I hadn't turned the power supply on, slapped myself in the head, flipped the switch and everything sprang to life when I hit the power button again.
That was around the middle of June, and I just got my last pieces in yesterday (the HDD, Windows and a SATA cable) and decided that, as long as I was diving back in, I should fix my "cable management." As you can imagine, at ~6am, after roughly 8 hours of being on my feet working on this thing, I wasn't too keen on making it pretty. Basically, all the front lines/data cables/SATA power cables were just bundled up behind the drive cages. I didn't remember the camera until I had finished putting things together, so I don't have before pics, but maybe that's good enough to give you an idea. The after pictures should be more aesthetically pleasing (my bad camera skills notwithstanding) anyway.
![[image loading]](http://img69.imageshack.us/i/001mxt.jpg/)
Alright, maybe I spoke too soon; this looks messy. But the 4+4 connector comes attached and I only need one molex connector even though every line comes with like 4, so I had to just stuff them somewhere. The fan connections are a little tight, but I'd rather have to undo them to deal with the drive cages than fool with another arm of the molex connector.
![[image loading]](http://img715.imageshack.us/i/002xyg.jpg/)
Basically, the old look was all these cables (plus the front panel connectors you don't really see) hanging behind the hard drives tied up.
![[image loading]](http://img205.imageshack.us/i/003co.jpg/)
The back. Here's those front panel cables, along with SATA data, SATA power and the 24 pin connector. Had to use a few more zip ties to get the back panel to fit on.
![[image loading]](http://img197.imageshack.us/i/010twg.jpg/)
Was trying to show the height of the Mugen with this.
![[image loading]](http://img8.imageshack.us/i/006xxk.jpg/)
Jacked up and good to go.
As for numbers: the CPU is overclocked to 3.2GHz at stock voltage with all features enabled, meaning it hits >3.8GHz in single-threaded apps. Highest CPU temps I've seen were 55C on the hottest core during a Prime95 session, with the lowest being 19C (well, I saw 18C while the case was open but meh) on Cores 2-4. Core 1 I've never seen below 22C. The GPU idles at 34-35C (30-31 with the case open!) and the highest I've seen it was 54C during a long 3v3 with Ultra settings at 1680x1050 (GPU-Z listed sustained 100% usage, so I'm guessing that's around as hot as it should get ... unless things get dirty.) I play at low, though, so no real FPS benchmark at Ultra. My room stays pretty steady 77F (~25C), for reference.
Anyway, my main goal for this post was to try to show any of you on the fence about putting together your own computer that it really isn't that hard. I don't know if any idiot can do it, but this one muddled through well enough. ;p Feel free to let loose with any questions, comments or dumb moments in your own computer builds, and thanks for reading!
