Halfway through my first build...crisis of confidence!

[drpbier]

I'm transitioning from my old Athlon XP 2800+ based system to a Core 2 Duo system, mainly for Photoshop. I hope to see a big performance improvement. The main parts are as follows:

E6300 CPU
Scythe Ninja Plus with Yate Loon D12SL-12 120mm
Antec SLK1650 case
ASRock 775Dual-VSTA mobo (cheap and allows me to re-use my graphics card for the time being)
ATI All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro AGP graphics card (I think) from old PC
2 Gb Corsair DDR2 6400C5
Seagate 120Gb and Samsung 250Gb SATA drives from old PC

The idea is to start with this and gradually upgrade, over about a year, to a system built around a Kentsfield, 4Gb of the same RAM, an Asus P5W DH Deluxe mobo, Vista running of a Raptor, a RAID 1 array, all housed in an Antec P180 with a Seasonic S12 500W PSU. Anyway, that's in the future. I've encountered a couple of issues with the current build and would appreciate some advice:
- Thermal compound. I used Arctic Silver 5, and was expecting it to be a looser consistency, not the quite tacky consistency it actually is. I put a small grain of rice amount in the centre of the CPU heat spreader and spread it around with a clingfilm covered finger, but it doesn't cover the whole surface, just the centre 30% or so. Is this enough? Do I need to remove the Ninja, clean and re-apply to the whole surface before the first power on?
- 20-pin connection. The connector from the PSU that comes with the case (Antec SmartPower 350 I think) doesn't reach around the Ninja, in either direction, to reach the 20-pin connector. I've ordered an extender from ebay. Is this a common problem? Where is the best place to route the 20-pin cable for best airflow?
- CPU fan connection. the header is a 4-pin. The Yate Loon fan has a 3 pin socket. I connected it up using what looked like the right 3 pins, but how can I check? Should I just connect it to the PSU via a molex?
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Sorry if these are newbie questions but there's a good reason for that! :lol:
I've got to say this is harder than I thought it was. The case is really small and hard to work in. Next time I'm going with the P180 to have more room!

Thanks,
David

 

[drpbier]

217 views and...no replies?

 

[fredgiblet]

Middle 30% is probably a little low, might want to add a little and try for the middle 50% or so. The core is actually a lot smaller than the heatspreader.

They make adapters to go from 4 to 3 pin, I would NOT suggest doing electronic engineering on your expensive computer parts.

 

[nikolokolus]

I've encountered a couple of issues with the current build and would appreciate some advice:
- Thermal compound. I used Arctic Silver 5, and was expecting it to be a looser consistency, not the quite tacky consistency it actually is. I put a small grain of rice amount in the centre of the CPU heat spreader and spread it around with a clingfilm covered finger, but it doesn't cover the whole surface, just the centre 30% or so. Is this enough? Do I need to remove the Ninja, clean and re-apply to the whole surface before the first power on?

the thermal compound only needs to be centered on the die, not much heat energy gets transferred across the entire surface area of the metal "shield" that covers the die . . . Just in case you don't know what a "die" is, don't worry too much, it's at the center of the CPU and is about the size of a fingernail. If you think you have good contact between the CPU and heatsink and your temps aren't out of whack you should be fine.

- 20-pin connection. The connector from the PSU that comes with the case (Antec SmartPower 350 I think) doesn't reach around the Ninja, in either direction, to reach the 20-pin connector. I've ordered an extender from ebay. Is this a common problem? Where is the best place to route the 20-pin cable for best airflow?

Just make sure the wire harness doesn't lay across or impede your air path. put your hand in your case and see if you can "feel" how air moves around in there. In general though you're not going to see a huge amount of difference in system temps just from the placement of the 20 pin atx power cable. Cable managment is a "whole-cloth" affair.

- CPU fan connection. the header is a 4-pin. The Yate Loon fan has a 3 pin socket. I connected it up using what looked like the right 3 pins, but how can I check? Should I just connect it to the PSU via a molex?

a four pin fan header? weird. If there is a manual that came with your motherboard it should have a schematic that shows the polarity of all headers, jumpers, etc. Black or white are almost always negative and colored equals positive. yellow is +12 volt, red is +5 volt, and orange is +3 volt. But all things considered I would just use the molex. You'll lose your fan speed monitoring as a result, but the alternative of using that three pin connector with a 4 pin header sounds a little dodgy to me.

Sorry if these are newbie questions but there's a good reason for that! :lol:
I've got to say this is harder than I thought it was. The case is really small and hard to work in. Next time I'm going with the P180 to have more room!

Thanks,
David

We all had to go through this ourselves at one point or another; there's nothing wrong with being a newbie.

 

[fredgiblet]

'nother thing, don't just grab a Kentsfield as soon as it comes out. You should wait for benchmarks in Photoshop before you put down the kind of money they'll probably be asking for them. I personally am not so sure that the performance gains for quad-core are going to be as large as the performance gains from dual-core.

 

[drpbier]

Thanks for the advice guys. I'll use the molex for the CPU fan, and will monitor the CPU temp to see if it needs the AS5 reapplied.

Oh, and I won't be moving to Kentsfield soon after the release date. My upgrade path will allow me to realise a lot more performance out of my existing CPU, then maybe I'll upgrade to a well-overclocked E6700 or X6800 (which may be much cheaper then) before going to quad-core.

I'll update when I finally manage to power up and get this machine running