Thunder - Simple Budget Build

[Instant Thunder]

Hello everyone...I've been reading TPU for a few years now and finally signed up. I just finished building a new budget rig for myself and wanted to see what everyone thinks about it. Since I actually finished the PC already and need to catch up in this log to where I'm at now, I'll show you a pic of the PC sitting on the desk right next to me...

Here's the list and cost (including taxes) of my budget parts:

Processor: Q8200 (microcenter hot deal - $109)
Motherboard: ASUS P5Q Pro (Newegg open box - $70)
Processor Cooling: Zerotherm FZ120 (Newegg - $30 after $10 MIR)
Video Card: ASUS 4850 Top (Newegg - $100 after $30 MIR)
Memory: 2 X 2GB DDR2 800MHz Patriot Viper (Newegg - $28 after $25 MIR)
Hard drive: 500 GB Seagate SATA 7200 RPM, 16 MB Cache (Free gift for helping a friend)
PSU: Tuniq Potency 650W 80 Plus (Newegg - $47 after $40 MIR)
DVD: Samsung SATA (Newegg - $25)
Wireless Card: Belkin G+ (Free)
Case: Raidmax Eclipse (Newegg - $50 after $20 MIR)
Shipping: Newegg ($35)

Total cost spent after MIRs on this build: $494

I ordered the parts on Monday (4/11/09) from Newegg and they all arrived by Saturday of that week. I was so excited...like a kid in a candy shop...to open up the packages and get started!

I tore open all the hardware packages (except the case for a moment) and happily started a quick test fit to make sure everything would fit correctly and to take a quick pic...The P5Q pro is on the left and that is an ASUS P5N32-SLI on the right. I HIGHLY recommend the P5Q Pro and will strongly recommend getting one as an open box item on Newegg. This is my third one in a row and it is absolutely solid. A friend of mine fried that P5N after 3.5 years of good hard use and I was attempting all I could to get it to boot again. He gave me his old Pentium 4 320 for helping him rebuild his setup...I love the smell of new hardware.

 

[LittleLizard]

nice pc. i love the detail of the transformers wallpaper.

 

[freaksavior]

looks like it's a piece of shit


just kidding man, looks nice. and welcome to TPU (finally)

 

[LagunaX]

Well I hope you've at least overclocked it to 3ghz ( 7.5 x 400) =)

 

[Instant Thunder]

After looking over the new pieces, I moved onto the case. Now I know that all the peeps here on TPU love a good quality case...and needless to say...I knew what I was getting into when I ordered the Raidmax Eclipse.
After opening the undamaged box and removing the Eclipse from its packaging, I was greeted by an extremely flimsy, piano black case with a busted front cover and one less fan than what was stated on Newegg (it should have had 2 led fans on the side panel).

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 050.jpg

Well...I decided to keep this poor quality product to see if I could spice it up a little. (...If you read this Raidmax, please take note of the simple things I did to make this case better...)
I began by taking out the fans and removing the side cover. After placing the power supply in the case, it became very evident that something needed to change for me to be satisfied with this build.

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 052.jpg

I moved forward with the idea of making the case into what I wanted it to be. I place all the components into the case to make sure they would properly fit. It quickly became apparent that the case needs some sort of cable management routes behind the mobo. Having a bottom mount power supply is nice unless you have to run your 12V line across the top of the entire board. I tested the setup and it all came on at my first attempt...that moment always gives a good feeling of success...

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 054.jpg

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 056.jpg

 

[freaksavior]

Route your cables behind the board. flip your hard drive around and power and sata from front end. tie wrap whatever you dont use in a nice very clean (but dont make it a "tight" bundle or it looks like shit) Definitely route the 4pin behind the board

also bend the sata cable to a 90 degree bend and that helps also.

im sure you just building to build right now (i think) but check out my coolermaster cm690
http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=90154
that will help inside cosmetically.

 

[Instant Thunder]

So I took everything apart after testing it and stripped the case down to it's bare essentials...after looking at it...I don't like the 90 degree hard drive case. I'd rather have that front fan be wide open. I don't run more than 2 hard drives, so the small cage is all I need. The silly thing is riveted in place...so it's going to be permanently removed. I'm also going to need to drill some holes to route the 12V behind the mobo tray (you read my mind Freaksavior...I've already done this...I'm just catching up the log)

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 057.jpg

This can't all be done without our favorite tool for modification...spray paint. I drilled the holes (not super clean, but they're hidden behind the mobo), removed the silly hard drive cage, masked off what needed to stay clean and started painting.

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 060.jpg

After a couple of coats and getting a little high in my garage, the krylon gloss black went on awesome. I just needed to wait for it to dry...so I started to play again with that burnt out P5N to try and get it to work again.

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 062.jpg

This is by far the best tech bench money can buy...that's right...it's a newegg box. Such quality card board and packaging peanuts rivals the build quality of the Raidmax Eclipse. I'm tempted to just keep this setup...but sadly, even with all my new hardware, I couldn't persuade the board to come back to life...

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 059.jpg

 

[Instant Thunder]

So now that I'm happy with the case, I started thinking about temperature...and I noticed that the P5N has a pretty sweet heat spreader that goes from the VRMs above the socket with a heat pipe all the way down to the south bridge. I was extremely happy to find out that ASUS used very similar heat sinks on many of their boards...so I went in for the kill...It was very easy to take the heat sink off the board. ASUS uses a pretty nice little push pin setup that only took me a second to remove. I then attempted to cut the heatpipe with a simple set of wire cutters. I was extremely surprised. These heat pipes are very thin. I was able to cut and pinch off the hollow heatpipe easy.

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 066.jpg

Sweeeet!!! The little VRM heat sink looks great on the P5Q Pro. ASUS even had the exact spot on the PCB outlined with a thin white line and the exact holes were ready and waiting.

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 072.jpg

My only concern was with the crap on the back side of this heat sink...it was seriously was rock solid silly putty. I had to scrape it off with a razer and in doing so...got to thinking...I've always wanted to try lapping...this was a perfect opportunity to practice.
So I went into my garage and grabbed a sheet of 600, 800 and 1600 grit sandpaper (yes...I already had this from my car painting days). I had a small pane of glass, some tape, a little water/dish soap mix and got started. I followed some instructionals were on a couple different sites and the finished product turned out excellent!

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 071.jpg

 

[Instant Thunder]

The lapping results were so freaking awesome that I decided to go ahead and do it to the processor. I was pretty shocked to see just how uneven the top of the Q8200 really was.

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 074.jpg

The more I went at it, the better it got.

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 075.jpg

In the end, the surface of the processor was a clean, flat piece of copper. I went ahead and sanded down the base of the FZ120 just to get rid of some deep machine marks that were scored into the copper. They both look pretty darn nice now.

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 082.jpg

 

[Instant Thunder]

I went back to the Mobo after all this sanding and looked at the northbridge...I knew I had to take it off to reapply quality TIM. Pulling off the VRM to northbridge heatpipe was a great decision. The northbridge had silly putty on it and the VRMs to the left of the socket had some sort of nasty, gooey, wet feeling tape (?) on it. This junk must have the heat transfer coefficient of cheese. I was extrememly happy to replace all that garbage with Zerotherm ZT-100 (came with the FZ120).

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 083.jpg

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 084.jpg

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 085.jpg

 

[Instant Thunder]

After putting all the heat pipes back on the mobo, I mounted the lapped FZ120 on the lapped Q8200 with a rice sized drop of Tuniq TX2 (leftover from a Xigmatek S1283).

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 087.jpg

With the help of my favorite super hero, Super Glue, I fixed the busted front cover of the Eclipse.

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 090.jpg

I then started putting the case back together while trying to keep the cables as clean and hidden as possible.

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 092.jpg

 

[Instant Thunder]

After a bunch of pulling, bending, and zip-tying...I happily ended up with the inside shown below. It isn't the best...but it looks pretty nice.
Painting the inside of the case black is absolutely necessary. Routing the 12V cpu power behind the mobo worked well. There isn't a good way to hide the large bundle because the power supply is mounted upside down. Removing the hard drive cage frees up a lot of room, but also made it very open. That exposed the wires that would have been behind it.
Overall, I think it turned out OK. However, I absolutely would not recommend this case to anyone. You can get much better cases for a similar amount of money. It doesn't matter that this comes with 5 X 120 MM case fans, a bottom mount power supply and a pretty window. The low build quality of the chassis outweighs any pros.

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 095.jpg

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 099.jpg

 

[freaksavior]

After a bunch of pulling, bending, and zip-tying...I happily ended up with the inside shown below. It isn't the best...but it looks pretty nice.
Painting the inside of the case black is absolutely necessary. Routing the 12V cpu power behind the mobo worked well. There isn't a good way to hide the large bundle because the power supply is mounted upside down. Removing the hard drive cage frees up a lot of room, but also made it very open. That exposed the wires that would have been behind it.
Overall, I think it turned out OK. However, I absolutely would not recommend this case to anyone. You can get much better cases for a similar amount of money. It doesn't matter that this comes with 5 X 120 MM case fans, a bottom mount power supply and a pretty window. The low build quality of the chassis outweighs any pros.

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 095.jpg

http://img.techpowerup.org/090502/2009 4-28 099.jpg

looks nice man. didn't relize you had most of this planned when i said what i said in my previous post.