My Computer Adventures - Part 2

*Make sure you read Part 1!

Now for the good stuff...

Here are the parts I ordered:

(you are correct, the power supply is upside down)

(mission: to get all that stuff inside here)

*EDIT: Intel I7-930

Antec 902 Mid Tower Case

GigaByte ATI Radeon HD5830

Asus P6X58D-E

Corsair HX 850w

G.Skill 2x3gb  (6gb) RAM

WD Caviar Black 640gb HDD

Asus PCIx1 Wireless Card

So now, I just had to put it all together! I recruited Lauren again to help me out and we were both trying to wing it all together. I got her to help me screw in the motherboard and then unscrew it when i realized i missed some of those extra screw hole things you attach to the case. I had some idea of what to do, but it definitely felt like a bit of a struggle. First we decided to install the CPU. Getting the steal support detached was easy enough and placing the cpu in wasn't too bad at all. Installing the cpu heatsink was a bit tougher though. The instructions the I7 came with were a bit hard to understand since there were no words that went along with the pictures. After that was done I put all the remaining hardware in without all the wiring--which was kinda bad thing to do--since when I decided to wire everything, the frigging Video Card was so massive that it made it such a hassle to plug anything in. I actually had to reposition the hard drive cuz the gpu was blocking its connectors. The wiring itself was a complete mess and I was pretty tired by then so I just said screw it and kept going. 

Once all the pieces were together, I plugged the beast in, press the power button and bam! Nothing happened.  I was disappointed that the first attempt of turning it on was a fail. I wasn't sure at that point whether it was my fault or the case's fault because Lauren realized that the motherboard's onboard powerswitch's light was on. So i press that and the beast turned on! The splash screen loaded up then another screen after that and then disaster struck. An error popped up saying the CPU was over temperature and shut down the computer. I was a bit scared but I tried booting it up again. Still, the error popped up. After another attempt I decided to take apart the heatsink and reconnect it and make sure it was all snug. After removing the heatsink i realize how sparse the thermal paste was. I applied additional thermal paste and connected the heatsink again this time, I made sure it was thoroughly secure. I attempted to boot it up again, and voila! My computer finally ran fine!

Dayammm... there it is. The BeanMachine. Look at how frigging ugly the cables and wiring ended up being! I didn't care at that point. I just really wanted my computer to start running!

I thought i wanted to do another post of my struggles cleaning up the cables, but it's not as exciting. Instead here's what my computer looks like after i took some time to tidy up the cables a little bit.

(before)

(during. without the GPU)

(after)

(cables tucked away at the back of the case)

(my home set up)

And there it is... the BeanMachine. I wonder what else i should do to it to make it more awesome. I know i could probably put in 2 more fans. One side panel fan for sure... and maybe a gpu fan that's neatly integrated into the case. Any suggestions to pimp my computer would be appreciated.