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[Build Log] SCARLETT - A BitFenix Prodigy mini-ITX build log (in progress)

TheInfamousMrD

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Well it's been seven years coming but I finally got the chance to update my daily driver from an old Core 2 Quad into a modern monster!


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While a capable rig, it was starting to get really long in the tooth... and anyone who's owned a COSMOS of any flavour knows how bloody huge those things are!! I'd been dreaming of an update for some time.

 

Well, at the start of the year I bagged myself a new job & a pay rise!! After a couple of paychecks & once I had a bit of spare capital to invest, I went ahead and specced myself something a bit special!

 

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The day came & I took delivery of my components...

 

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It had been a while since I'd put together my own rig, although I'd had experiences inbetween helping others with theirs. I was salivating & ready to roll!

 

However... best laid plans and all that...

 

The first hurdle I encountered was a broken Maximus VII Impact. After test assembly, it was clear the board was having issues POSTing properly, with strange errors about overvoltage on the USB bus. This was despite any and all USB devices being unplugged.

 

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So it got RMAed, and a new one shipped & tested as working! The initial fit & boot...

 

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Although there was another issue... I'd originally ordered a i5-4690K which I intended to overclock the nuts off.

 

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Initially everything seemed fine. Until it came to trying to overclock. No matter what I tried, I could not get the multiplier to go higher than x39. Scratching my head as I'd bought a 4690K, I checked the ASUS forums, ROG forums, overclocking forums and everything seemed futile. Then I looked at the box again.

 

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The part label confirmed my fears. I'd been shipped a bog standard i5-4690. Bugger.

 

RMA number 2... away!

 

Once the replacement i7-4790K had arrived (yes, I relented and went for a higher spec...) I was pretty much up and running! Well... aside from some annoying cable management caused by a excess of non-modular PSU cables.

 

 

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Although despite the rat's nest of cabling, it was a real shame not being able to see inside. The Corsair H105 lit up beautifully. The Spectre PRO had a lovely red LED that made the components glow.

 

Then a little peek on BitFenix's forums revealed some interesting accessories...

 

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Case windows, you say?? Oh well, why not!!  :P

 

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Admittedly the larger windows panel was meant for the Prodigy M, which is the mATX version of the Prodigy - however they were totally compatible and I was prepared to ghetto it up for the sake of full side panel goodness!

 

Except (and this might explain why the drive bay cover is missing for those eagle-eyed viewers out there) when I replaced the side panel with the Prodigy M window version, there were a couple of features I neglected plan for... features which were pretty important to the operation of a PC...

 

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*to be continued*

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Do you plan to upgrade the gpu?

Main PC |CPU - i7-6700k|GPU - R9 290x tri-x 4gb|RAM - 16gb ddr4|MOBO - MSI z170 - A PRO|HDD - WD 1TB/240gb Sandisk |PSU - 700w Raidmax

Laptop |CPU - i7 4720hq|GPU - 960m 2gb|Ram - 8gb 2x4|Model - y50-70 Touch|SSD - 240gb Patriot drive|Display - 1920x1080 IPS touch

 

 

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Do you plan to upgrade the gpu?

 

Oh goodness yes! After assembly & testing it was clear the HD 5870 was a serious bottleneck. Add to the fact it was noisy and hot running, it had to go! More on that a bit later though...

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So the HD 5870 was a real bottleneck. I'd contemplated making a jump to a more modern card - I opted against an R9 Fury X or R9 Nano due to cost (£500-£550!) and settled on a £200 R9 290X 4GB.

 

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However, while the frame rates were astonishingly good, the fan noise under load was HORRENDOUS!! Not to mention the heat belching out the back of the thing. As such, I looked into AIO cooling and ordered a Corsair Hydro H75 and a HG10 GPU bracket.

 

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Cleaning the die was straightforward, the RAM was coated in thermal gunk and took AGES to clean! However once they were done, the bracket went on without a hitch.

 

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As the 290X was likely to have a greater thermal requirement than the 4790K, I swapped the H75 and the H105 over - the H105 was cooling the 290X and the H75 was mounted in the front in lieu of the Spectre PRO.

 

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Hurrah! The noise was abated and a lovely quiet hum was present in its place. And the temps had gone from upwards of 85°C to a much more palatable 45°C under load!

 

However... because of the reduced noise... I could hear something else I'd not noticed before... OUTRAGEOUS COIL WHINE. 

*to be continued*

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The coil while was totally unbearable, even when I put the side panel on & moved the case off the desk top... it was too much to live with. I tried using the PCP&P Silencer to power the system to see if a different PSU would alleviate the whine. It just got much worse. So that had to go back. RMA number 3.

 

Reading up on the 290X and coil whine, almost all the reference designs were susceptible to it. As such I opted for an ASUS R9 290X DirectCU II OC 4GB instead.

 

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The difference was astonishing. The cooler which ASUS use is streets ahead of the reference design. Taking a look under the shroud they use totally different chokes. More importantly, no whine! The fans were also still pretty reasonable under load at a decent 65°C even with the side panel on.

 

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After reinstalling the Spectre PRO as an exhaust rather than an intake, I reorganised the cables as best as I could and took some beauty shots.

 

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*to be continued*

 

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Minor update - delivery from fastener-express.com - red #6-32 1/4 socket screws to replace some of the otherwise ordinary black ones!

 

 

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*to be continued*

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Wait... How did u get the xilence fans??

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PSU cables need some love frome sleving or black plasti dip or something. but other then that its a sexy little beast.

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Wait... How did u get the xilence fans??

 

The same way I got everything else - I bought them from Amazon.co.uk ;)

 

 

PSU cables need some love frome sleving or black plasti dip or something. but other then that its a sexy little beast.

 

Definitely - my next step is to either mod the existing PSU to remove the extraneous cables or to invest in a modular PSU with some sleeved cables. Not quite decided yet, depends how brave I'm feeling! 

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The same way I got everything else - I bought them from Amazon.co.uk ;)

 

Ohh.... i know that the company stopped like big business... 

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Definitely - my next step is to either mod the existing PSU to remove the extraneous cables or to invest in a modular PSU with some sleeved cables. Not quite decided yet, depends how brave I'm feeling! 

 

I'd suggest getting a higher wattage modular PSU. A 530W PSU doesn't seem like the best choice for a future upgrade path. I'd suggest something from the Cooler Master V - Series or the SuperNOVA Series from EVGA. :)

phanteks enthoo pro | intel i5 4690k | noctua nh-d14 | msi z97 gaming 5 | 16gb crucial ballistix tactical | msi gtx970 4G OC  | adata sp900

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You sure that the 530 what is enough for an i7 4790k and a 290x?

 

I measured the load the PSU was drawing from the wall - even under heavy load during a gaming session yesterday with overclocks the peak wattage never went over 316 watts. I know what you mean though, a higher rated PSU is never a bad thing.

 

 

Ohh.... i know that the company stopped like big business... 

 

Did it? Oh that is a shame - I love the Red Wings, have used them for years! Picked up some new 120mm ones for about £5 each!

 

 

I'd suggest getting a higher wattage modular PSU. A 530W PSU doesn't seem like the best choice for a future upgrade path. I'd suggest something from the Cooler Master V - Series or the SuperNOVA Series from EVGA. :)

 

Ideally I'd buy a new PSU - I'd been looking at Corsair's RM series specifically. However as above the power draw seems to be within tolerances for the time being. As for upgrading, I hope the next time I upgrade the industry will have moved away from ATX power supplies to something more straightforward! Not to mention the R9 Nano using much less power than the R290X... it's a trend I hope we see more of in years to come :)

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Ideally I'd buy a new PSU - I'd been looking at Corsair's RM series specifically. However as above the power draw seems to be within tolerances for the time being. As for upgrading, I hope the next time I upgrade the industry will have moved away from ATX power supplies to something more straightforward! Not to mention the R9 Nano using much less power than the R290X... it's a trend I hope we see more of in years to come :)

 

Well, with the Silverstone SFX power supply one can hope that we'll move more and more to SFF builds. And considering that they're already offering 600W SFX PSU's I think the industry is heading in the right direction!

 

Just noticed that I haven't said anything about your build yet, and I gotta say I really like it! Especially these small & little details like the red screws for the motherboard add wonderfly to the attention of detail you're putting into this build! Can't wait for more updates, and it's also nice to see someone actually take the time and put effort in appropiatly presenting the build log with beautiful and crisp pictures :)

phanteks enthoo pro | intel i5 4690k | noctua nh-d14 | msi z97 gaming 5 | 16gb crucial ballistix tactical | msi gtx970 4G OC  | adata sp900

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Well, with the Silverstone SFX power supply one can hope that we'll move more and more to SFF builds. And considering that they're already offering 600W SFX PSU's I think the industry is heading in the right direction!

 

Yeah totally agree - SFF is the way forward to my mind. Having owned an enormous ATX tower for years, there is no real need for modern rigs to be huge leviathans any more. Sure, they look imposing - however I'd love to see a newer, more power efficient standard as a successor to ATX where the connectors, standards and power requirements are simplified instead of power-hungry parts which take up huge amounts of room & require monstrous cooling solutions. Not to mention bulky connectors first defined in the standard 20 years ago.

 

Just noticed that I haven't said anything about your build yet, and I gotta say I really like it! Especially these small & little details like the red screws for the motherboard add wonderfly to the attention of detail you're putting into this build! Can't wait for more updates, and it's also nice to see someone actually take the time and put effort in appropiatly presenting the build log with beautiful and crisp pictures :)

 

Thanks :) I've wanted to use non-standard screws in a build for some time. Finding custom screws is not the easiest thing to do - I had to order those from the US :P

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mmmm, red. 

CM Storm Switch Tester MOD (In-Progress) - http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/409147-cm-storm-switch-tester-macro-mod/


       Ammo Can Speaker 02 (Completed) - http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/283826-ammo-can-speakers-02/       A/B Switch V 0.5 (Completed) - http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/362417-ab-switch-v0


     Build 01 - The Life of a Prodigy -  http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/13103-build-01-the-life-of-a-prodigy/             Build 02 - Silent Server 3000 - http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/116670-build-02-silent-server-3000/

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Yeah totally agree - SFF is the way forward to my mind. Having owned an enormous ATX tower for years, there is no real need for modern rigs to be huge leviathans any more. Sure, they look imposing - however I'd love to see a newer, more power efficient standard as a successor to ATX where the connectors, standards and power requirements are simplified instead of power-hungry parts which take up huge amounts of room & require monstrous cooling solutions. Not to mention bulky connectors first defined in the standard 20 years ago.

 

Exactly, although I've actually moved up the scale and size of my build from my old Define R4 to the Enthoo Pro, mostly due to the fact that I want to make the move to a SLI array of two 970's (first one coming in November) in the near future, I still wanted to utilize the additional space for having adequate airflow to cool these cards. However I can see myself moving down the scale in terms of MB size to µATX as well, considering that these boards are smaller (as are the cases) and are just as feature-packed as their larger brethren.

But I can't see myself going down to mITX just yet as technology still isn't there to be able to push 4k with a single card, although we're getting incredibly close to it with the Titan X and 980ti, which are insanely expensive parts unfortunately.

 

If we were to look at power consumption of even the highest end cards, there's no denying that we're already at a very impressive point, where a 980 only needs two 6-pin connectors in the reference version, and a 970 (in case of the ASUS Strix version) only needs a 8-pin connector while not necessarely limiting the performance of said cards. Like you and I both say, the industry is moving in the right direction and I personally cannot wait for the day where we only need a few cables to power a seriously powerful gaming system, with that being said though, I think we're still a couple of years, maybe even a decade from this point, away. But I cannot wait, what the future holds for (PC) technology and plans to further reduce the power draw and requirements. :)

phanteks enthoo pro | intel i5 4690k | noctua nh-d14 | msi z97 gaming 5 | 16gb crucial ballistix tactical | msi gtx970 4G OC  | adata sp900

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Exactly, although I've actually moved up the scale and size of my build from my old Define R4 to the Enthoo Pro, mostly due to the fact that I want to make the move to a SLI array of two 970's (first one coming in November) in the near future, I still wanted to utilize the additional space for having adequate airflow to cool these cards. However I can see myself moving down the scale in terms of MB size to µATX as well, considering that these boards are smaller (as are the cases) and are just as feature-packed as their larger brethren.

But I can't see myself going down to mITX just yet as technology still isn't there to be able to push 4k with a single card, although we're getting incredibly close to it with the Titan X and 980ti, which are insanely expensive parts unfortunately.

 

If we were to look at power consumption of even the highest end cards, there's no denying that we're already at a very impressive point, where a 980 only needs two 6-pin connectors in the reference version, and a 970 (in case of the ASUS Strix version) only needs a 8-pin connector while not necessarely limiting the performance of said cards. Like you and I both say, the industry is moving in the right direction and I personally cannot wait for the day where we only need a few cables to power a seriously powerful gaming system, with that being said though, I think we're still a couple of years, maybe even a decade from this point, away. But I cannot wait, what the future holds for (PC) technology and plans to further reduce the power draw and requirements. :)

 

Yeah, Bitfenix do a µATX version of the Prodigy, the Prodigy M, which is exactly the same outer dimensions, although probably with much less wiggle room inside; my Prodigy has plenty of dead space for pumps, reservoirs, etc (which I have considered!). For me, 4k is a way off - I'm still gaming at 1080p and quite happy with it for the time being. And yes, the high-end parts are simply not a sound investment, unless you need to be at the bleeding edge. That said, the R9 Fury X did make me drool just a bit.

 

I cannot wait for the day when we get to that point - in terms of the technology, we're pretty much there excluding the most high-end CPUs and GPUs. But with things like HBM making smaller, more power efficient GPUs possible, it is exciting times ahead  :)

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Minor update - been experimenting with interior case illumination. Not sure if the red lighting is a bit excessive...

 

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Minor update - been experimenting with interior case illumination. Not sure if the red lighting is a bit excessive...

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It does give an nice glow to all the parts [emoji41]
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It does give an nice glow to all the parts [emoji41]

 

It does!  :P those PSU cables are really getting on my rack now though...! Ugly, ugly things!

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It does! [emoji14] those PSU cables are really getting on my rack now though...! Ugly, ugly things!

Then onwards to custom sleeved cables. Or are you going to make them yourself?
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Then onwards to custom sleeved cables. Or are you going to make them yourself?

 

I had plotted to make my own custom sleeved cables... ;) as well as trim all the unnecessary Molex & SATA cables - I only need one SATA connector!

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  • 3 weeks later...

I think white lights would be better. Nice rig

CPU: i5 2500k@4.2 MBO: Asrock P67 Extreme4 GPU: Gigabyte GTX 560Ti 1GB RAM: Corsair 8GB 1600 SSD: Samsung 840 Basic 250 HDD: Samsung F3 1TB + WD 2TB Green + WD MyBook 1TB external; ODD: LG BD/DVDRW; PSU: Corsair TX 650
Case: Fractal Define R3 Black Pearl; Mouse/Keyboard Logitech Performance MX + Wireless K800; Monitor: Dell U2311H 
 

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On 27/10/2015 at 3:01 PM, Dacho said:

I think white lights would be better. Nice rig

 

I did consider white lights instead, not sure if they would look too washed out? Might have to try it though. Thanks :)

 

Been away on holiday for a few weeks! Just got back to find they've delivered some mesh... and one of these little beauties!!

 

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Looking forward to mounting this over the weekend! :P

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