Time to get started with a Smackover Mobo
Backplace, cables and SLI connector
Coming out party!
Makes you want to crawl right in.
Unboxing the case
Sleek but not fingerprint proof.
Finally case screws but why all the locks?
Nice built in Earthwatts 500 silent but energy efficient. That fan has got to go though.
Lets replace it with this very efficient and silent Noctura NF-S12B FLX model
Rubber mounts take noise imparted by case fan vibrations down to nil.
Pushing these in took some work.
Yeah, first blood.. Cases are sharp.
Fan is in, and look as this nice Noctura CPU cooler
Dual Fans make this cooler top of the line.
Core i7 980X CPU is in place. Fit tight and made me entirely paranoid that I bent the pins or damaged it.
I wanted to play around with some cable sheaths to keep the insides cleaner but it was PITA since there is no window to see inside anyway.
One cooling fan installed which later turns out to be the noisiest thing in the build
Ok the mobo is in and CPU cooler brackets are in. I'll only have to take it back out once to run wires.
What the heck is this three pin Power LED connector. The mobo has only two pins. Seems to be a common question on forums and I just needed to use a pin and move the one wire.
Whoops I forgot to put the shrink wrap sleeve on. Lol, typical theme with me.
SSD Time - Ok which way should I mount this on the tray? Thought I had it backwards, then reversed it, then put it back then back to how I had it.. :)
Power is now all hooked up. The yellow power in the middle is a dual x4 block which was very confusing since the manual says if you mess it up you can kill the mobo and CPU. Paranoia self destroy ya! Took me days to get to here.
Anti-vibration strips are on, wont be the CPU cooler is installed.
I put it together only to take it back apart.. I kind of do that.
Ok which way does this go again?
Ok it's mounted and I only had to put the memory in and take it out three times. You can see a slight bend on the cooling fans for the 6GB Kingston RAM with XMP support (for overclocking)
I eventually took the blue ultra-low noise adapters off the CPU fans. The fans use a three pin connector and the mobo takes a four pin if you want the CPU to automatically control the fans speed. Since their silent I'll just let them run at full speed.
Bought a cheap video card till I get my Nvidia card. I think I'll be getting a GTX SC EE 260 or 285. SC=Super Clocked and EE=External Exhaust. This will have to work for now.
Aww the pretty lights.. 90% of the noise you hear comes from this little fan. It needs to be taken out but it's clip is under the CPU fan and the CPU cooler is a tight fit for the memory. Taking it out will be PITA!
Everything is in place. Time to add a DVD reader and get Win 7 64bit installed.
Slick way to hide the tray sides to hold the DVD drive in place.
It's in.. It powers up. Ran a BIOS update first. OS Install time.
Nice, that was the fastest OS install and boot time I've ever seen. I guess my wife will be happy to get the kitchen table back. Burn in is done and current CPU overclock is running at 3.6 GHz but I can do better. Not sure I need to though.
