2010 Mid Tower Update

M

Makaveli@BETA

2[H]4U
Joined
Mar 24, 2004
Messages
2,433
Finally decided to upgrade my case this year :D


The Whole process took about 3 hours do to cleaning and trying to keep the wires in check.




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Uploaded with ImageShack.us





Old Chenming Case :eek:




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This was the longest part of the night with all the cleaning while swapping :banghead:



Finally got it all up and running.





I thought I did a pretty decent job internally on the first try the back is quite the mess tho, that will be a work in progress.



Think I will need to order some extension cables from NZXT to clean up some the extra cables.



The default thumbscrews that come with this case do suck I must say I will be replacing them soon. You need cyborg strength to remove them the first time and I just don't like the look of them.



Will update when I replace all the stock fans so far loving this case. Don't think you will find a better one for $90 :rockout:

*edit* Still waiting for the replacement parts looks like the snow storm in buffalo caused some delays.

6 x 3-Pin Fan Extension Cable 8" Custom Colors - Sleeved
- Sleeve Color: Black
- Heatshrink Color: Black
3 x Xigmatek XLF-F1455 140mm 4 White LED Case Fan - Retail - Sleeved
- Sleeve Color: Black
- Heatshrink Color: Black
2 x SCYTHE S-FLEX™ "F" 120mm 1600 rpm Quiet Fan - Sleeved
- Sleeve Color: Black
- Heatshrink Color: Black
1 x 3-Pin Y-Adapter Cable 6" - Black Sleeved
 
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Sad to see an aluminum dragon go. :(

New build seems pretty nice and organized, though.
 
Yep, some room for better cable organisation, but after 3 hours your attention span can get cut a little short. Thats just my OCD though haha. Looks good, nice upgrade.
 
What model is your new case? All I can tell is that it's a CM case.
 
Petey1013 said:
Yep, some room for better cable organisation, but after 3 hours your attention span can get cut a little short. Thats just my OCD though haha. Looks good, nice upgrade.
Click to expand...

I agree plus i'm waiting for the replacement fans before I go at it again. Just wanted to have it up and running for now.
 
nalc said:
Sad to see an aluminum dragon go. :(

New build seems pretty nice and organized, though.
Click to expand...

:) the Dragon had to be retired she has served me well.

I will probably rebuild my Opteron 170 Rig and use her as a file server or NAS.
 
Parts finally showed up UPS sucks!











Things left to do...

Extension cables and thinking of replacing all the SATA cables with black ones.
 
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I decided to ditch S1 because I found my idle and load temps on the GPU were unaccepable 60c idle and 90-100c full load. Which is very strange because in my Chenming case I wouldn't break 50c idle or 85c load. That case had a slim 80x15 fan flowing on the S1 while the advanced has a 120mm blowing on it.

I thought about slapping a fan on the S1 but it would block 3 slots in my rig so that was out of the question. The only open PCI slot was being used by my X-fi Music, so I picked up the an Accelero Twin turbo pro today after reading some reviews on it last night which claim it only blocks 1 additional slot.

So I get home install the thing and it blocks 2 1/2 slots and I can't keep the x-fi installed with the cooler I blame Xbit review on that one :p

So now i'm going to replace the x-fi with a PCI E version which I can install above the videocard to solve this issue. I wanted to do this eventually but this has forced me to do it sooner.

Here are some pictures of the swap will post more tomorrow.





I decided not to use any of the heatsinks that came with twin turbo because if you look at the picture the 4890 already has stock heatsinks covering the VM's only thing not covered is the memory.







Now if you focus on these last two pictures you can clearly see there is plenty of room for the ram sinks under the new cooler. However, I choose not to install them because they don't fit under the stock cooler and as much as i've enjoyed this card she will be replaced probably with a 6870 and I need to sell it with the stock cooler on. So for now ram sinks will stay off.
 
Yep, good choice. I was going to give my HD 4830 to my friend but killed it taking the ramsinks off, oops.
 
Swap now completed.

Had some issues with the Creative drivers anyone surprised lol.

It seems with the X-FI Fatality Pro PCI-E card you have to make sure windows doesn't auto detect and install drivers automatically. It kept setting it up as an HD audio device which worked fine for sound but I was unable to use any of the X-fi specific features. Once I made that change it then took the drivers.




With everything now up and running i'm very impressed with the performance of the Accelero Twin turbo Pro.






 
Probably wouldn't hurt to use a little less sauce on those GPU coolers.

I like this case. I have two of them myself.
 
I used to have that tower (the aluminum one)...man I do NOT miss it. lol

fashionable in it's day, but just seems so tacky now.

so good upgrade.
 
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