My Project: Part X

Well, other than my new Power Supply having an X in the name - I have no witty banter or movie tie-in to do with this one.

My mind is pretty wasted from thinking about the Lost finale last night night, which I thought was great. Most co-workers that watch Lost (1) didn't like it. I guess he didn't get everything answered and wrapped up in a pretty bow. But honestly, if you were a fan of Lost, I don't think you're of the mindset that needs thinks handed to you on a platter...the show made you think, it's no surprise that the ending did so as well.

Anyway, here it is. I make this post 8 minutes before I leave work...and once I get home it shall be installed.

And I plan on doing some serious wire hiding, learned a few tricks and I'll show ya what they are.

My Project: Part IX

Yes, there's been a sudden stoppage of posts about my progress.

The machine was built and turned on, I had taken pictures along the way to post each step.

However, when I finished the machine and tried to boot it. It was dead. I checked the power supply with a multimeter and it was DOA.

So I'm waiting on Newegg's RMA procedure to finish, and while I was logged in I looked around for different PSUs and with a little help from the awesome people over at the AMD forums, decided to purchase the Corsair 650Tx.

Maybe add a little extra power to the thing...there's some heavy-duty stuff in there, and if my research is any kind of indicator, there's reports of people getting this Deneb up to 3.5 and steady. I'm pretty sure 400W wouldn't handle that.

My Project: Part VIII

They're coming to get to Baaahhhbra...Braaaains....

Yes. The brains of my new toy. An AMD (my first by the way) Phenom II Quad-Core 6MB L3 Cache AM3 processor.



This beauty came in a box that...maybe it was how excited I was...had a nice, roughish texture to it. I carefully opened the package and pulled, ever-so-lovingly, its small yet powerful contents.

The heatsink and fan were assembled already, no worries...and there it was. Sitting on a bed of greyish-black foam (do I use too many "-"'s?) was my gift...I flashed back to my Commodore 64 and thought about it's processing power and wondered at how far we have come. I then realized I never took a picture of the motherboard with nothing in it...so we'll skip that part and pretend it never happened.

Moving on, I had purchased some thermal compound, picture included for my non-existant readers:



But I didn't need it. There was compound already applied on the bottom of the heatsink and once I secured the processor into it's slot (it's very easy...it won't go in unless you have it the correct way - completely fool proof).

So onto the board the units went.



Happy, I was. No zombies crashed through my window and I placed the parts aside to continue, and survive, another day.

My Project: Part VII

We come to it, at last. The great battle of our time.

Hail Ripjaws, son of Gskill, Lord and Steward of Jarvis! (that's what I'm going to name my machine...awesome huh? You know, Jarvis. The Avengers...? Tony Stark's butler? You know...the machine Tony talks to when he's flying around shooting baddies?...never mind...on with it)

Yeah, I mixed two movies...so what?

So here we have some nice 1600mhz memory to sit comfortable in perfect little slots on the motherboard.

Now's a good time to strap on that ESD wrist strap. I purchased a nice Rosewill from newegg before I began my journey up into Mordor...I suggest you get one if you're going to be doing any work on a PC.

ESD is no joke and it will fry a brand new motherboard faster than you can say "No RMA for stupidity".

I almost didn't want to take this stuff out of it's packaging. You know how getting there is half the fun? That it's the journey, not the destination? This stuff just looked too damn cool to use. But oh wait, I bought a case with a nice big window in it - so I can still see it. Don't worry, I'm fine.

So with a satisfying, endorphin releasing snap the RAM was seated and ready to do its job.



Stay tuned, more to come!

My Project: Part VI

So here we are...6 "steps" into building a new computer and I've turned the first screw.

Today, my Corsair 400W Core i7 power supply arrived. Excitedly, I grabbed my case and, my extra-favorite Victorinox Swiss Army Spirit Multitool, my ESD bracelet and the PSU.

(All pics are links to bigger pictures)

Here she lies, naked...wooing the Corsair:



Then, the Corsair made his move and they are mated, joined if you will, for life.

My Project: Part V

In honor of Tony Stark's complete rebuild, I'll use this post to note that all parts have been ordered for my machine, and knowing how much ass newegg kicks, the stuff should be here today or tomorrow.

So for those that might be just jumping on board here (Hey look, another parallel Invincible Iron Man #25 is a great point to jump into the series, as the above reviewer states), now would be a great point to jump on and follow along with my building the new machine from the ground up. Here are the bits and pieces:

• AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Quad Core Processor


• ASUS M4A77TD AM3 AMD ATX Motherboard


• 4GB G.SKILL Ripjaws Series DDR3 - 1600mhz (PC3 12800)


• CORSAIR CMPSU-400CX 400W Core i7 Power Supply


• Cooler Master Elite 310 ATX, MATX Mid Tower Case


• Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 1GB GDDR3 625 MHz PCI-E Video Card

All to be run by Windows 7 64 bit.

As I said, I'll be documenting the process throughout...from opening the boxes to opening the first Firefox window when the machine fires up.