Maybe I just need some more coffee and it will all become clear.



Sailus

I got some wire cutters I'll fix ya up.

WOW! Never seen so many wires.

The front view looks a lot better. : )



Sailus

Because my old Dell is frying, no time to paint the inside of the case. With all of this wiring, I seriously doubt that i will ever take it all apart again, unless I decide to go water cooled. Maybe then.

Lotta wires... but a lot of the PSU cables will simply not be used, the rest will fall into place for the most part. The biggest pain in the ass are the small wires that go to the power, reset, hdd light, internal speaker and so on... most MOBO manufacturers supply a small adapter that goes over the pins on the MOBO to make it idiot proof... almost.

I'd get all the components installed leave it wide open install the OS and a couple of apps/games fire it up and see how it goes. If everything is okay then tidy up, button up and game on!

GOOD SHOW! keep the pics coming.

Asustek needs to hire technical writers who actually understand english. : ) The directions are like trying to navigate with Map Quest directions. You always get the feeling like you're going in the wrong direction. U tube has been a big help.

Sailus

That's what happens when Asian manuals are translated into English by folks in India.

You'll figure it out.... used to be much worse when there were tons of jumpers to deal with.

The tough part can be firing it up for the first time.

On more then one occasion I have put everything together and then...... nothing.

Usually start with one stick of ram closest to the CPU.

Sometimes I've had trouble with high end video cards first time around. I keep a cheapo video card around just for that.

Stick the cheapo in fire it up install OS shutdown install high end card and drivers.

Good idea on the GPU. I'll probably pull out my 9600GT to fire up the new unit. I'm probably going with the ATI 5870 due to the price and availability. The Fermis are really expensive. Haven't ordered the GPU yet.

What kind of thermal paste do you use? Is there a break-in process for it? My I7-930 has arrived. : )

As far as the drives, I am probably going with a 7200 for storage and an SSD for boot and game cache. WD scorpio looks nice and the Hitachi too. SSD I'm probably sticking with the Intel. I have a 40GB X25-V in my little 11.6" travel notebook and i like it. I probably need sometihing close to 160GB though - ya think?

Probably starting with 6GB ram. Corsair.


Sailus

I used whatever thermal paste comes with the CPU, just gob it on there never had any issues.

Here's a wiki on ssd's

Given the option SLC seems to be the way to go if you want to shell out the extra bucks.

160gb is a pretty good size drive, should be no issues getting the OS and a bunch of games on there.

6gb....... salada ram, should be nice.