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Planning my next pc purchase and looking for ideas!


Schot

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  • 2 months later...

It better! Haha. That's not my 6870 in the picture but pretty much the same size. It should fit no problem. The Prodigy was designed for gamers and their big honking vid cards. It has modules that you can pull out and shift around so that everything fits. You made me nervous though, lol. After I read your post I opened up the case just to see. :sweating:

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It better! Haha. That's not my 6870 in the picture but pretty much the same size. It should fit no problem. The Prodigy was designed for gamers and their big honking vid cards. It has modules that you can pull out and shift around so that everything fits. You made me nervous though, lol. After I read your post I opened up the case just to see. :sweating:

You can slide out the upper HDD bay in order to fit those full size graphics cards ;)

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Well, I haven't gotten to it yet. Ugh. I really have a lot to back up. Mostly, I need to know exactly what I have and make a list of it. I have lot's of little addons/plugins/drivers and whatnot that have piled up over the years. Individually they're minor things but all of them as a whole could take a long time to re-create if I don't take note of them now. Yeesh. I'm also feeling uncertain about my cooling, factory default heatsink, and I think I might run down to my local pc shop and pick up a giant fanless heatsink. I wanted to try out the factory default just to see how well it would handle but I'm thinking now that I'd rather not have to dabble with the cpu heatsink more than I have to... Oh and I think I might splurge for a new PSU even though my present psu "seems" to be fine. I've had it over 6 years and during that time I've replaced it's internal fan twice. I really wanna get this right on the first try. Since this is a mini itx with a i7 haswell that likes to get hot I think I better pay special attention to cooling. Though I'm going to try using non water cooling methods.

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Well I can't bare to have my pc down for even a day it seems. Plus I really don't trust the age of my existing PSU. Soooooo. I ordered a nice PSU on special plus an ssd drive. Once they arrive I'll be able to build my new pc without having to have my present one offline. Big relief! Never know how long building a new pc can take and with an active design contract I can't afford to be down for even a second. So for the sake of curiousity, here's the price breakdown up to now for the system I'm building:

White mini-itx Bitfenix Prodigy case beside my present old ATX case. - $65(on sale)
Asus MAXIMUS VI IMPACT mini-itx motherboard (teeeeny tiny) - $235
Intel Quad-Core i7-4770K Haswell 3.5GHz $310(on sale)
Patriot Viper 3 16GB 2X8GB $150(on sale)
CX Series CX600M Modular Power Supply $80 (after mail-in rebate)
600 SSD SATA III, 240GB $150 (on sale)

Arctic Cooling thermal paste $15

 

Subtotal = $1005 + 15% tax

Total = 1155.75

 

 

Not bad for a fairly high end build but... It doesn't include the cost of a new video card and screen. Those 2 items would be an extra $500 at least. Thankfully I have those already but the video card will definitely be upgraded by the summer.

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Hehe, yup! It was aaaall about the snazzy when I saw it too. Had to have it! It's surprisingly well put together too. I just noticed a couple weeks ago just how well put together it is. The PSU has it's own private semi-enclosed section with intake and exhuast vents which means it will have minimal impact on the air in the main space of the case. Similar concept was designed for the video card as well. It's set up in such a way that when all put together the video card will be pressed up against the side of the case where a nice wide and long intake vent is placed. Again this will mean that the video card will have minimal impact on the air in the main space. So that just leaves the cpu that will be relatively the only thing causing heat within the case. The prodigy comes with two nicely sized fans which will push more air more quietly. I'll take some pictures later on. It's impressive what they did with this case. Oh and the slide in and out snapping modules are pretty high quality. Oh! And you know those lil screws you use to screw your HDD or SSD drives in places? This case doesn't use screws. Just metal pins that press into the holes of the drive. Soooo smart. Comes with dust filters for the top and bottom vents. Ummm... What else? Oh yah! I think I might buy some plumbing pipes to force air from the intake fan directly onto the cpu heatsink. Mwahaha! I should probably stop typing now... :crazy:

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Oh god this is terrible! I forgot how much shoving, cramming, squishing and tweaking goes into building a pc. Been so long. Everything is juuuuust slightly out of alignment so I'm having to do a lot of forcing in order to get holes to align and whatnot. One thing I was smart about though was heating all the wires before assembling so that they would bend easily. I managed the wires so well that I think I could have easily gone with an even smaller case... One minor snag in the works though. The stock CPU cooler is blocking access to the socket for the io side panel audio connector. I don't really need the mic and audio jack on the side of the case but I may find myself wishing I could use it one day soooo... I'm probably going to buy a heatsink tomorrow.

 

To be continued!

 


IMG_20140203_210019.jpg

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I opted to not use the front panel audio connectors for now and kept the stock cpu cooler. I'm still getting a feel for temperatures so I may still end up buying a cpu heatsink but for now temps are reasonable. Average CPU temp is 38-44c. Temps were very eratic for the first day or two but it's possible that was because I was using hwinfo to monitor my CPU. Now I'm using the cpu monitor software that came with my motherboard which appears to display much more steady results. I still have a lot of work to do to get this new pc setup with all the apps I had on my old one. Such a long process!

Here's the tool I'm using to monitor my pc. The motherboard is a "RoG" board by Asus which is a category of boards for gaming/overclocking. It's very impressive.

 

aisuite3.JPG

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Oh god this is terrible! I forgot how much shoving, cramming, squishing and tweaking goes into building a pc. Been so long. Everything is juuuuust slightly out of alignment so I'm having to do a lot of forcing in order to get holes to align and whatnot. One thing I was smart about though was heating all the wires before assembling so that they would bend easily. I managed the wires so well that I think I could have easily gone with an even smaller case... One minor snag in the works though. The stock CPU cooler is blocking access to the socket for the io side panel audio connector. I don't really need the mic and audio jack on the side of the case but I may find myself wishing I could use it one day soooo... I'm probably going to buy a heatsink tomorrow.

 

To be continued!

 

I feel you man, but that feeling when you've finally crammed everything in there just right, and the air is flowing, and you plug it in and hit that power button, everything lights up and the fan start blowing....

 

ItsAlive.jpg

 

...Nothing quite like it.

Edited by Flix
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Oh god this is terrible! I forgot how much shoving, cramming, squishing and tweaking goes into building a pc. Been so long. Everything is juuuuust slightly out of alignment so I'm having to do a lot of forcing in order to get holes to align and whatnot. One thing I was smart about though was heating all the wires before assembling so that they would bend easily. I managed the wires so well that I think I could have easily gone with an even smaller case... One minor snag in the works though. The stock CPU cooler is blocking access to the socket for the io side panel audio connector. I don't really need the mic and audio jack on the side of the case but I may find myself wishing I could use it one day soooo... I'm probably going to buy a heatsink tomorrow.

 

To be continued!

 

I feel you man, but that feeling when you've finally crammed everything in there just right, and the air is flowing, and you plug it in and hit that power button, everything lights up and the fan start blowing....

 

ItsAlive.jpg

 

...Nothing quite like it.

hahah, that was awesome

loved the rhyme too

:)

 

gogo

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Up and running! Very nice :) I'm just waiting on some case fans now, but already installed windows on the PC because everything else is there. And dang! First comp I've used with an SSD, I mean I knew it would be fast, but it took something like 10minutes to complete a fresh windows installation!!

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10 minutes for a fresh windows...

I remember that I needed 3 1.4MB discettes for MS-DOS and 7 more for Windows 3.1 in a time long long ago, I think it was 27.12.2013. Reanimating a 80486 machine for a shortwave radio card which is not running on new machines.

----

In my experience the heat problems at a motherboard is not the cpu but the voltage converters. Try to avoid to block the air flow to them with cables, cards, watercooled cpu...

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Well this sure has been an experience. While trying to build this monster our wifi router has been in it's death throws. For the past several days we've barely been able to keep a connection which hasn't helped with trying to get all my apps into the new pc. I learned a bit about the mtu setting in my router. It was in it's default setting which was causing 75-100% chance of packet failures. Eh heh. Did some testing and found the magic number to use. Things are smooth. For now... So back to the fun!

 

*lurking* :ninja2:

Haha. If you haven't started purchasing yet then I would highly recommend you look into the collection of Asus Socket 1150 Maximus RoG boards. Some really impressive features... I'm loving my vi Impact.

 

 

Oh god this is terrible! I forgot how much shoving, cramming, squishing and tweaking goes into building a pc. Been so long. Everything is juuuuust slightly out of alignment so I'm having to do a lot of forcing in order to get holes to align and whatnot. One thing I was smart about though was heating all the wires before assembling so that they would bend easily. I managed the wires so well that I think I could have easily gone with an even smaller case... One minor snag in the works though. The stock CPU cooler is blocking access to the socket for the io side panel audio connector. I don't really need the mic and audio jack on the side of the case but I may find myself wishing I could use it one day soooo... I'm probably going to buy a heatsink tomorrow.

 

To be continued!

 

I feel you man, but that feeling when you've finally crammed everything in there just right, and the air is flowing, and you plug it in and hit that power button, everything lights up and the fan start blowing....

 

ItsAlive.jpg

 

...Nothing quite like it.

lol Flix. It IS! It finally IS! Riiiiiiise! Riiiiiiiiiiiiiise! xD Funny you mention air flowing and whatnot. When I got it going for the first time I was excited but then I freaked. I didn't hear any air flowing. :o I quickly looked inside the case and found that everything was in fact alright. The fans are just THAT quiet. Hurray! :D

 

Up and running! Very nice :) I'm just waiting on some case fans now, but already installed windows on the PC because everything else is there. And dang! First comp I've used with an SSD, I mean I knew it would be fast, but it took something like 10minutes to complete a fresh windows installation!

 

Oh SSD's are truly gold for the pc geek in all of us, lol. It really is amazing what a difference it makes. Don't forget to make backup images!

10 minutes for a fresh windows...

I remember that I needed 3 1.4MB discettes for MS-DOS and 7 more for Windows 3.1 in a time long long ago, I think it was 27.12.2013. Reanimating a 80486 machine for a shortwave radio card which is not running on new machines.

----

In my experience the heat problems at a motherboard is not the cpu but the voltage converters. Try to avoid to block the air flow to them with cables, cards, watercooled cpu...

Good point about the source of heat. I'm noticing in my monitor that the major parts of the motherboard are fine but there are two sensors that are reading temps that are double what my cpu and gpu are. I can't tell what it is yet though because the high temps are labeled as "temp5" and "temp7". Thanx fer nothin temp monitor, haha.

 

As for temps I'm managing well. I bought after market thermal paste, (arctic cool MX-4). Temps were averaging around 40. Today I found the fan controls so I set my front and rear fans to stqay at about 90% rpm. They don't spin very fast. Their max rpm is about 1100. I have them sitting at about 920 rpm. Now my temps are averaging around 32-37 at modest loads like browsing and stuff. While playing Diablo both CPU and GPU were around 50. Celcius. I'll try and write a bit of a "wrap-up" and likes/dislikes when It's all set up.

 

P.s.

Nice little surprise. I happy little red Start button inside the case. Handy for building and diagnosing while the case is apart.

100_1842.JPG 100_1820.JPG

 

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The voltage converters are the hot parts close to the CPU's in following images. They can get really hot if driven to the limits, even destroyed.

e42intelhaswell-vrm-waermebild-load2.jpg

 

Has Asus still a technical help site where you can download full technical manuals to find out which heat sensor is connected to temp5, temp7, .... I/O pins of the heat control chip? Sadly it is never the same, depends a lot of the routing of the motherboard.

At my notebook temp5 and temp7 are at the lithium battery and charger, doubt that yours has a battery :)

 

Dou you have access to an infrared thermometer with a laser aiming aid? I bought a good one last year to save like 1000euro in money (not hiring an expert). New german law demands houses to be isolated and I used it to scan for hot spots when it was -10C outside and I did 4 hours in the cold to aim at the house at all angles.

Did same at the houses for the rest of the family too. Another usage of the thermometre are BBQ's for charcoal heat, pottery, checking for shortcuts in the house electrics, flame of the gas burner in house heating ... and buidling a new computer when running a worst case test.

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