Operation Hand-Me-Up

AutonomousRedux · May 7, 2017

I recently updated my personal computer to a Ryzen 1600 system. With a month to go 'til my Dad's birthday and limited funds (due to the upgrade), I decided to use the old parts and peruse my stash to Frankenstein a PC together so that he would be able to play his single game on something more than a seven year old $400 laptop.

Specs-

Case: BitFenix Neos*

MoBo: Asus M5A97 R.2 LE

Ram: 2x2 Mushkin Blackline 1600, 2x2 OCZ Gold 1600

Storage: SanDisk Plus 120gb

CPU: AMD FX-6350

-Cooler: Hyper 212 Evo

GPU: Sapphire Radeon 7770

PSU: KingWin Mach 1 700w

I had all the parts barring the Case and the SSD, so I bought those from amazon. After cannibalizing the rest, I assembled them in the case and the completed machine is sitting in my bedroom.

What? You wanted to see actual steps and pictures? Ugh.

Fine.

I selected the BitFenix because it was the most humiliating color case I could get within my price point.

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Purple and white. Perfect.

So I began by opening up the beast and "pre-routing" the included cables.

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I screwed in the three included motherboard risers, put in my IO plate, put the motherboard down...

...only to discover that with the risers, they lifted the board a quarter inch too high to line up with the IO plate. And there was no way in hell I was placing it on the bare backwall to risk a ground fault.

So I returned the case to Amazon, and bought the Thermaltake Versa N21 instead.

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With pre-installed risers and a much more accommodating interior...

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...I installed the IO plate and motherboard with no issues.

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Thusly, I went on with my quest and encountered the bane of my existence. The dreaded front panel connectors. However, Lady Luck smiled upon me as Asus was kind enough to provide me with the ultimate weapon against these foul beasts.

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With the enemy slewn, I moved on to the next part. The power supply. I attached the cables I'd need and inserted them into the case.

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Easy peasy. Next came the SSD, which was inserted into the very bottom rung of the top storage holder. After that, I also inserted a DVD burner because my Dad is old-school like that.

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Popping the front face off, a couple of spare Coolermaster 120 fans were put in.

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Then came the graphics card.

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Which was mounted as usual, and then annoyingly secured through this balls-stupid removable cover on the back.

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It was at this point that I realized I had forgotten to install the 6-pin that would be powering the graphics card. I am a dumbass sometimes. I then pulled the PSU out as best I could without unplugging anything, and then spent about 5 minutes trying to put the cable in the wrong PSU slot.

My perseverance finally paid off in that all my core components were now successfully installed.

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Then came the moment of truth. Testing time. Which had one problem.

This is my $1000+ dollar custom liquid build.

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This is that build on the ground. Which I can never apologize enough for and repeatedly swearing that it was only for testing purposes, I moved on.

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This is my Dad's "new" $600ish build in its place.

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Surprise surprise, it posted.

Now, for those of you who are observant and/or OCD, you will have noticed that the Hyper 212 suddenly changed directions. The reason why I had it in the configuration was because when it was in my case, I had two 140s pulling in from the front, a 140 pulling in from the back, and two 120s going out the top. The new build has two 120s coming in, one 120 going out the back. So I undid the screws, cleaned the CPU and the copper heat pipes, and put it on the more traditional way.

As for cable management, I really didn't give a damn. Why?

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None of it can be seen, that's why.

After installing a copy of Windows 7 I had laying around and downloading the update and his games, I'm just waiting for his birthday to come around and hand it over with an old monitor and USB wireless adapter.

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themctipers · May 7, 2017

very nice of you

King_of_Oz · May 7, 2017

Very nice. Did you run benchmarks?

AutonomousRedux · May 7, 2017

Naw. Didn't run any benchmarks because HD7770 and FX6350. It averaged about 45+ FPS in BF4 when I had it and around the same for the game he plays (Perfect World International).