My second rig

[Unlocker9000]

Hello everyone

 

So I moved some time ago, and needed a second PC for some web surfing light gaming and watching Netflix, and had some spare parts laying from upgrades done to my main rig through it's lifetime, so I decided to use those parts to build a new rig. But instead of just building a regular PC (as I often do), I decided to make it a little different and mod it (because why not).

 

So I'll start from the beginning, the case.

This was a case I bough some time ago with a socket 775 Celeron in it, and had it laying around empty. It was the prettiest (except the color) and smallest case I had, so I decided to use that.

 

 

So I decided to paint it, to make it look more modern and fit in better, as the white/beige color that it's born with. I took it apart, sanded it with some sandpaper and painted it with some glossy black spray-paint three times.

 

 

I was surprised with the result, it made most of the scratches invisible and made it look mostly like a new case. *picture of the case assembled to come*

 

Now to the fun part, the hardware

So I had all the components, except the motherboard, but I got a Asrock N68C-S UCC, that was mATX and am2+/am3 for cheap, that hopefully would work just fine for this project.

I had a AMD Athlon II X2 265 CPU that once occupied my main pc, but haven't been in use for some time, an Nvidia 8800GT with a badass Scythe cooler on it that I bough off a friend some time ago, some random DDR2 1GB sticks I had laying around, a Northq CPU cooler, an Samsung 320GB HDD, an IDE DVD burner and a crappy Intertech 750W PSU.
And then theres my OCZ Vertex Plus 60GB, this was my first SSD and I remember it being shitty expencive. And yes, it's the model that had a 50% failure rate, but mine's still running after years of continues use

 

 

My bed with all the hardware and some extra

So I know that the motherboard have a maximum CPU TDP of 95W, but I know that I want to overclock at some point, so I decided to install some heatsinks on the motherboard to make it capable of delivering a higher current without overheating. And even though the max TDP is 95W, you can make a 125W CPU run in this board (why I love Asrock).

So I found some heatsinks I had laying around, made them the right size and glued them on with some thermal adhesive.

 

 

 

 

Glued the heatsinks on the transistors on both the VRM to the CPU, the northbridge and a small one on some for the ram modules.

 

 

So after doing that, came the part where I was to power on the board, with all the nervosity of a shortage on one of the transistors as a result of glueing the heatsinks on, as I didn't have any proper silicone to cover the pins. And I won't be able to remove a heatsink without the transister comming with it...

 

 

Success, it boots! The project could now continue

 

So I mounted the enormous Northq cooler on it, mounted it in the cabinet and installed the rest of all the components. It looks a little tight, but it all fits quite well, the only problem being the very limited cable management options, but it worked out.

 

 

While painting I made some holes in the case to mount my SSD on the back, to save space and having cables everywhere, and it worked out pretty well.

 

 

After some waiting I finally got another northbrige cooler, that is a must if any overclocking is to be acheved on this board, so I got that mounted to. It's just some Cooler Master northbringe cooler that I got for around 8usd.
 

 

After building it and installing Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit I ran it a couple of hours with Prime95 to test stability.

 

The build is not done yet and it's actually a little while ago I build it, but haven't done anything since as I've been busy. There's actually a lot of upgrades on the way (which I of cause will post) and yet some overclocking to come.

There's some more pictures of the project on Imgur for those interested.

 

Sorry for English, it isn't my native language, but I hope you found the reading/project interesting, would love to hear your input

 

Second update

[Guest]

nice. it's looks pretty cool!

[Unlocker9000]

nice. it's looks pretty cool!

 

Thanks

[Wingfan]

very cool

[Marinake]

Nice little build. I like that CPU cooler :3

[dionis.bajrami]

Hmmm....A full pic of the painted case would have been cool....nice project btw

[Unlocker9000]

Hmmm....A full pic of the painted case would have been cool....nice project btw

 

A picture of the hole case is coming up soon

 

 

Nice little build. I like that CPU cooler :3

 

Thanks, It was cheap and keeps the CPU cold

[ALXAndy]

/waits for that "zomg 750 WOT" PSU to go bang.

[iHardware Shelden]

Love it, totally my style of a system.

[Unlocker9000]

/waits for that "zomg 750 WOT" PSU to go bang.

 

I know, been lasting for two yeas actually, but I'm going to replace it

[Unlocker9000]

A little update on my ongoing project

I've got a XFX Pro 750W PSU from a upgrade on my server, a Gigabyte HD6870 Twinfrozer from my main PC and a LiteOn bluray disc drive I had spare, so I went on and changed that.

I didn't really bother on cable management, but I'll properly do that at some point.

 

I also found a TPLink WDN4800 Wireless card and got in there. I actually have an ASUS PCE-AC68 that I'm not using, but there's not space for it, as the northbrige cooler is in the way

 

Also took the time to get some pictures of the whole case

 

The left side panel ended up getting pretty scratched up, so I'll have to repaint it at some point

 

Also a picture of the back, with the missing I/O sheld

 

I also just bought a Phenom II X2 550 BE on eBay, so I'll be installing that one. I hope I can unlock it to a quad core, but if not I can at least overclock it to get some more juice out of it

And I got a Windows 8.1 license, which have a lower memory usage and better memory management, so it'll hopefully work better with only 2 gigs of RAM.

So the only thing I'm actually missing now is some more RAM, but the 2 gigs works for now, I'll wait on doing that.

 

I sadly won't have much time in the next couple of weeks, but I'll try to get time to change the CPU and get some overclocking going to see what I can get out of this system.

Do you have any wanted benchmarks for when the times comes?

 

Thanks again