Getting Back into Building Build

[Robi_g]

Because Who Uses Serial Ports and Floppy Drives in 2018?

 

So the last PC I build was back in 2012 (i5 3570k, HD6870, 8GB 1600MHz, a 60GB SSD (that cost £60!)). Since then I've sold it, bought a laptop, and used that for a little over 4 years.

But FPGA design synthesis and Lightroom / DaVinci Resolve are taking annoying amounts of time, and I'd quite like to get back into gaming too (gt 730m doesn't cut it outside of 720p low).

 

So here's the log of my new build!

Parts List:

• Ryzen 2600
• 16GB 3200MHz GSkill Trident-Z
• Zotac AMP! 1060 6gb
• MSI B450-A Pro
• Bitfenix Nova
• bequiet purepower 10 500W
• 2x Corsair ML120 fans
• Samsung 970 Evo 500GB
• DVD drive, 300Mbps N card
• FD-CR8 Floppy & Card Reader (with some mixing/matching of other parts)
• Serial and parrallel port headers

 

The Build:

So the cheap case was picked for 4 reasons

1. It's cheap
2. More money to spend on decent fans
3. It's about as compact as an ATX case can get
4. No-window or top fan spaces = more space to stick sound damping material (this thing is going to be silent).

Building in it wasn't the easiest job in the world, but it was far from horrible. Below are some quirks...

Slight oddity in 8-pin connection routing (I guess to cut down on the height of the case).

This tab needs bending out the way with a PSU gasket installed.

Fans are mounted to a plastic bracket (that includes a filter) instead of the front facia as with a lot of cheap cases.

The same goes with the front I/O, so cabling can be kept tight without having to worry about removing the front.

Easy to remove fan filter on a cheap case too. The case market has moved on a lot since 2012 (but backwards in some places). The stuff in the front bays doesn't line up flush with the front panel for instance (how do you mess that up!?).

Speaking of moving backwards, it was so difficult to find a reasonable looking case with two 5.25" front bays. I need a card reader for camera work, a DVD drive is useful to have to hand too. Why is that so much to ask?

Gratuitous bokeh. Front panel also has foam filter (non-removable) along with the fan filter/bracket.

Motherboard installed, cable space was a bit tight around the back, but everything fit without bulging. Will have to paint the DVD drive at some point. Drive bays don't allow the best airflow but whatever, I can always cut some material out if it's an actual problem.

The MSI B450-A pro was chosen because it literally does everything! Plenty of SATA and rear USB, enough internal USB and fan headers, and plentiful and well-placed PCIe slots. I've read they don't have the same VRM cooling issues that Gigabyte boards have had recently too.

And last but not least, the board has parrallel and serial port headers, saving £12 on a PCIe card providing the same thing. I'm not fussed about the parrallel port, but serial ports come in handy interfacing with multimeters and other lab equipment, and RS232 is quick to get up and running on a microcontroller or FPGA, instead of the age it takes for USB.

And because serial wasn't enough of a throwback, here's a floppy drive. For backups of single files, floppy discs are so convenient and hard to lose. The one I ordered from eBay had a USB card reader, but a ribbon floppy drive! Luckily the drive was an exact physical match to an external USB floppy drive I had, just disassembled the two, swapped the drives, and voila! I now have all the front panel I/O I could ever wish for.

 

Other parts are arriving soon, so update will be coming soon too.

Edited September 14, 2018 by Robi_g
typos

[lmeneses]

how much was the whole build 

[Robi_g]

All in, £952.97, RAM prices are ridiculous, and I overpaid for the semi-modular PSU over the non-modular version.

Going to be upgrading the NAS soon too, from a 3TB WD Green, to a couple of 4TB WD Reds.