Ready for a new PC

[Demon Cleaner]

That looks great. Very nice neat job you did.

Were you happy with all the components and the case?

Thanks. I still didn't install my stuff yet so far, only Windows, as I gave my old PC to my father, who still had an Athlon Barton with 512MB memory and 40GB HDD But I had to install it for him from scratch, as he wanted the Windows in french, so that took me some time, plus to copy and install all his stuff again.

One problem I only noticed is that the CPU cooler is quite big and reaches over the last RAM expansion, so that you cannot upgrade memory without removing again the cooler.

[Teho]

One problem I only noticed is that the CPU cooler is quite big and reaches over the last RAM expansion, so that you cannot upgrade memory without removing again the cooler.

Have the exact same issue with mine. That was the only one sensible way to install that huge thing when I built mine as well. If I'll ever really need that last RAM-slot I'll have to get a different cooler, plain and simple.

[J T]

Is it a big case or a small motherboard?

I may be a 'little' behind the curve with PC things.

(The only PC I ever really open up is my one that I built 3-4 years ago. I think it was 4).

[Demon Cleaner]

It's a big tower with a normal sized ATX mobo. My older PC was 6-7 years old already, and annoyed me lately whilst multitasking, and also streaming HD material to the PS3.

I also only had 760GB of HDD space (IDE disks), and had to backup everything on slow external USB drives. Now with 6TB (SATA/300 --- reading at 135MB/s) I can do that internal, and a lot faster.

[Harrison]

One problem I only noticed is that the CPU cooler is quite big and reaches over the last RAM expansion, so that you cannot upgrade memory without removing again the cooler.

You got the Freezer 7 Pro CPU cooler in the end, didn't you?

If so, the fan can easily be unclipped from the front of the heatsink via the rubber frame that holds it all in place and reduces vibration. Makes it fairly easy to then reach the ram. I also have this problem with mine.

[Sharingan]

PC pr0n! Nice!

Have you considered getting a Solid State Drive as the system drive? You can get 250+ MB/s transfers out of that, and if you put it in a RAID, things will really fly.

There was an experiment a while ago by a couple of guys who put 20 SSDs in a RAID. That was some sick shit ... they got several GIGABYTES/s transfer rates.

[Demon Cleaner]

One problem I only noticed is that the CPU cooler is quite big and reaches over the last RAM expansion, so that you cannot upgrade memory without removing again the cooler.

You got the Freezer 7 Pro CPU cooler in the end, didn't you?

If so, the fan can easily be unclipped from the front of the heatsink via the rubber frame that holds it all in place and reduces vibration. Makes it fairly easy to then reach the ram. I also have this problem with mine.

Yes, I got that one. The problem is that the RAM I have, the Patriot GSeries, is quite large (look here), because it has a heatsink, and the fan reaches over the last RAM expansion. So only RAM without a heatsink would fit under the fan.

[Harrison]

That is annoying, but would happen with all tower style heatsinks, which are the most efficient type these days.

[Submeg]

Wow, I really know nothing about building PCs these days...

[Harrison]

It isn't that different building a PC from the past 10 years really. You still have a case, motherboard, ram, CPU, cooler, PSU and graphics card as the main parts.

The big differences are the need for a powerful PSU, graphics cards are now much bigger and longer so need larger cases for them to fit, and good after market CPU coolers are much bigger, with tower style ones being the current popular and most efficient design.