Core i7 Build

[TheMainMan]

Back in the early winter I was commissioned to do a built for a customer who was replacing a very old P4 based system. As near as we could figure their old system was 7 years old and it wasn't cutting it anymore.
Old system:
P4 1.6GHz 478
Asus P4B800
512MB 133MHz RAM
ATi Radeon 7000VE
40GB Maxtor
160GB WD
17" Samsung CRT and 15" Dell LCD

New system:
Core i7 860
Asus P7P55D Deluxe
8GB Corsair XMS3 DHX heatspreader RAM
Sapphire HD5770
60GB OCZ SSD
1.5TB WD Green
Hauppauge WinTV HVR-2250
OCZ 750W GameXStream
Coolermaster CM690

This is the first system I have built all at once rather than through a process of upgrades so there were a few things I was looking forward to doing. First, cable management was of highest priority and every possible wire would be sleeved (with one exception which I'll cover later). Secondly, it meant that I would get a chance to modify the case prior to putting in the hardware.

* Note * Comments are appreciated however this system has been completed and delivered to the customer so changes I can make are limited.

Here's a teaser of all the hardware.

[TheMainMan]

@Starlite - Since that is the only major mod to this system there will definitely be pictures and lots of them!

@x88x - Just a bit, lol. I too love the CM690 as it holds my primary system. I seem to find them nicely priced when I need them, usually around $60-70 CND which makes them even nicer

@diluzio91 - Short answer is yes it does. There are 6 clips that you push out while lifting to remove it.

Thanks for the comments everyone! I was going to put up more pics tomorrow but since there's interest I'll put some up now instead

Parts were sourced from two sources for this build, TigerDirect.ca and Canada Computers. The case was on sale at Tiger and was one I was familiar with which made planning ahead much easier. I also grabbed the RAM and BD drive from there as well due to better pricing. So about a week later I wound up with this lovely brown box at my door.

What's in the box, you say?
Maybe some RAM...

and a Blu-Ray!

The case I picked up locally due to size and shipping costs but was no less fun to open! My personal CM690 has seen some use and I forgot how nice this case looked coming out of the box.

So the first step of this build was actually counter-intuitive as it involved dismantling almost everything in the case.

The only thing I ended up using in this photo was the motherboard standoffs. No floppy here! (thank goodness they have eliminated floppy ports from the newer mobos) The case manual would be quite useful if you have never built a system before as it was well illustrated and detailed.

I don't know if this is the case for all CM690s but both that I've worked on have required tremendous force to get the front panel off. The top panel is quite easy but the pegs on the front panel haven't been slotted deep enough to allow for easy removal. I have yet to damage anything but fear I will everytime I have to remove it.

As I mentioned earlier there will be no floppy so out goes the 3.5" to 5.25" adapter. Then I removed the front indicator LEDs and power and reset switches as they will be sleeved. I also took the intake fan off to sleeve it as well.

When I purchased my first CM690 back in Sept '07 I thought that the cable organizers were a good idea. That was when modding was still a relatively new word in my vocab. Now I think they're not a bad idea but for this build they were clutter. Needless to say, out they came! While I was at it I removed the bottom fan filter/mount so that I could clean up the excess mesh and remove the fan mount tabs. The filter has holes to mount a fan so if the client needs one at some point I'll use those.

I used an X-acto scalple to remove the corner tabs very carefully by scoring then breaking them off. I then trimmed the excess plastic and mesh and wound up with a factory-made look.

That's it for disassembly, with the exception of removing case fans which I didn't take pictures for. My journey into the depths of sleeving begins in the next update...

[TheMainMan]

It gets easier. I have that case and love it. The first dozen times you take the front or top off, it feels like it is going to break. Just go slow and eventually everything loosens up.

Thanks for the info, I figured that was the way it would happen but it's reassuring to hear it from someone else.

I HATE the cable management clips. I tossed mine out after 1 day. There is enough room behind the mother board tray to hide the cables. Mine is really clean.

BTW: I like the idea of removing the fan clips on the filter.

I think you'll like the end result of the cable management here then. Removing the fan clips was one of those "Why didn't I think of that before?" moments when I started thinking about how to clean up the look of things.


On with the update!
Now that everything was disassembled, it was time to begin sleeving. I wanted everything uniform and tidy so it didn't matter where or how long the cable I was going to sleeve it. I started with the front buttons and LEDs as this cable is the one that bugs me the most in my personal case. It's a flat, ribbon cable which is tricky to route and very awkward in any themed case due to its many colours.

After splitting the wires it looked like this and was finally ready to be sleeved.

Finally sleeved and looking good.

Those of you with sharp eyes will notice the first thing that went wrong in this build. When I was applying the heat to shrink the end with the mobo connectors I was a little to enthusiastic and left the heat on too long. Luckily, I had put the Asus Q-Connect (white) on already and it helped the connectors keep their shape.

Next, I sleeved the front and top fans so that they were ready to set aside until re-assembly.

Then I moved on to sleeving the top panel USB, Firewire, eSATA and audio connectors. It was really easy to remove the cables as the case mounts the ports to a circuit board and the cables plug into headers mounted on the board. The eSATA cable is molded and fits into a slot where it's held in by two screws. That long red cable was not acceptable to me so the entire thing is getting sleeved.

Once I had a good look at the USB cables I realised that they were shielded so the sleeving went right on over top of the entire cable. I read a variety of opinions online as to whether the shielding was necessary so I chose to play it safe since this build isn't mine.

I noticed that I hadn't done the rear fan so I did it with the eSATA cable.

This entire process was a lot more work and took more time than I expected but I'm happy with the results as it will give the case a uniform look in the end.

In the next update: Starting the installation of hardware.

[TheMainMan]

@ Twigsoffury - Thanks for the info. They are pretty long cables so I left them shielded as there was a good chance of being parallel at some point.

A little bit of backstory before I start this update. When I was building this computer I was away at school. The system was being delivered over the holidays to the customer but before I was going to deliver it I needed to mod the case for cable management. So I ended up assembling the system and testing it while at school, then completely disassembling it, modding the case, then putting it all back together. It seems rather backward but it allowed me to ensure that everything was stable and ready to deploy immediately after finishing reassembly.

On with the update...
For those of you who haven't had the privilege of working with a CM690 the HDD cage has very simple but effective drive trays. A metal peg in a silicon insert replaces the screws that go into the side of the drive. The entire plastic tray slides into the cage and fastens quite securely. Here's a shot of what I'm describing.

I'm putting in a WD 1.5TB Green drive for storage and a 60GB OCZ SSD for the OS.

Since this is the original CM690 there is no 2.5" mount for SSDs so I used the OCZ adapter to allow me to mount it in the tray.

And here's both drives ready to go in the case.

Time to put the motherboard into the case and start making some visible progress.

Coupled with a Core i7-860.

I wish I had a chance to get the chassis painted blue so that it would accent the black I/O shield and black exterior.

No offense to Intel but this thermal paste...

...does NOT equal this thermal paste!

Cleaned and ready for some AS5.

I couldn't forget about sleeving the CPU fan wire and since I wasn't cutting or soldering on this system I folded the fan wire back on itself then put the sleeving and heatshrink on to make it the right length to connect to the mobo.

And the CPU and fan mounted and cable sleeved.

The next update will contain graphics, ram and POWER!
Muahahaha!...cough...cough

[TheMainMan]

Wow, it's been a long time since I've updated this thread. I'm going to try to finish posting the rest of the updates before the new year. This project is long since done and so I should get the worklog done and move onto starting one for my main system, Thor.

A quick recap shot of what the system looks like at this point.

Now onto the power supply for this machine.

Shot of the PSU mounted. I love the bottom mount idea in a case as it just makes so much more sense.

As you can see I'm going to have my work cut out for me as this is not a modular PSU so I've got a lot of cables to hide.

For the time being I'm putting them all on the backside of the mobo tray.

It was a tight stretch to get the 8-pin CPU power cord to reach with the PSU on the bottom but it did fit and doesn't stress the connector.

Onto the RAM portion. I went with 8GBs of Corsair DDR3 Dominators in two 4GB kits but decide to cool it with OCZ's cooler instead of Corsairs. Since I wanted this build to be fairly quiet the 2 60mm fans should produce less noise than the 3 40mm fans the Corsair uses.

The RAM slots came covered by a promotional sticker extolling the virtues of the board. Why they couldn't just put the info on the box I don't know.

Now that the RAM is in place, it's time to sleeve the fan wire for the cooler. I made a bit of a mini-guide of the steps for sleeving a wire here.

First, this wire could be completely detached from the fans as it plugs into a controller board on the housing.

Then I took the pins out of one connector with a small jeweler's screwdriver.

Next, I measured out the length of sleeving I needed to cover the cable.

The sleeving on the cable and the heatshrink cut to size and positioned.

A couple of seconds with the heat gun (or very carefully a lighter or soldering iron if you don't have a heat gun) to tighten the heatshrink.

And finally the cable reattached to the cooler and ready to be installed.

This is where I had my first stumbling block of the build. Asus decided that it would be a good idea to make one end of the RAM slots without locking tabs for reasons unknown (since AFAIK you can't hot-swap RAM so speed of install shouldn't matter). Unfortunately for me, the cooler mounts to those tabs.

Thankfully the revision two cooler (which is what I'm using here) actually has some clamping force and so I was able to move it lower down on the slots so that it isn't holding onto the RAM.

Then to tuck the cable in under the SB cover to hide it nicely.

Last section for this update will be graphics. Since the customer doesn't game but will be driving two 1080p monitors I chose a decent ATI 5770 by Sapphire. Keep in mind that this build happened a year ago and so there weren't a lot of the now higher model cards.

Brown cardboard inner box, neatly packed.

The fairly standard set of accessories contained within.

Expansion slots removed and ready for the card to go in.

Installed and ready to go!

I did try to see if I could take the plastic housing with the red and black stickers off as it doesn't go with the colour scheme of the rest of the case. I would have had to take the entire heatsink off and since this isn't my machine I chose not to.

That's all for now, another long update will be coming soon.
Thanks for reading,
TheMainMan

[TheMainMan]

So this update will cover Blu-ray, cables and TV tuner install.

A very unassuming Blu-ray drive.

The Blu-ray drive will go in the top and an older IDE DVD drive will occupy the bottom slot.

While the drive bays have tool-free installation brackets I will be putting screws in the back side as the customer will not be swapping drives.

I tried multiple times to create my own rounded IDE cables without much success. While I can usually split 40-60 wires with no problem I couldn't get all 80 split without exposing a few. Rather than putting flat IDE cables I got creative. One teal coloured rounded IDE cable will be the victim. Yes, teal!

I can't imagine why there were so many of these in stock at the store I went to. That's okay, I'm about to deal with the colour.

Time to sleeve it black.

I wish I had thought of this earlier but I had the normal IDE cables around.

While I was sleeving I did a few SATA cables for later.

I also realised at this point that I had overlooked the top input cables for USB and audio when I was sleeving so I did them as well.

The last component I have to install is the TV tuner card.

Hauppauge really packed this box full of all kinds of goodies. I won't be using most of them since the customer does not need to control a set top box.

Installed, it doesn't take up a whole lot of space.

There will be two more updates until this worklog is finished. The next one contains case mods and the final one is glory shots of the finished product.
Thanks for reading.

[TheMainMan]

So this build was a little bit backwards as I needed to have the sustem built and running, then take it apart over my exam break and mod the case when I had access to the tools I needed and a space that was safe to work in. I'm sure that shooting streams of sparks and cutting metal with power tools is probably NOT allowed in my dorm.

Let's start with a shot of the case and the tools I'll be using.

My first Dremel!

Comes with a mini workbench! Too small to use with this build but nice to have for the future.

One Dremel, two very large safety and user manuals (which I read entirely before using).

The other weapon of choice, a beefy cordless drill and 1" drill bit.

Drilling shots first. Before...

...and after. A nice clean hole for the ATX power cable to pass through.

Removing the pins from the ATX power connector after having clearly labled each wire.

With a rubber grommet installed all I have left to do is match the wires up with the connector.

Here you can see what a help to the overall cable management that small mod was.

I also trimmed away the bottom of the rolled edge of the motherboard tray to allow some of the larger cables to pass behind the motherboard. The edge was filled clean and since there shouldn't be any movement inside and the cables run parallel, I wasn't worried about it damaging the cables.

This is the mess of cables to get sorted and managed.

The final update will be the cable management situation finished and some testing and glory shots.

Thanks for reading!

[TheMainMan]

That never stopped me.

After seeing what the Dremel can do and what I need to be aware of (i.e. where the sparks fly) it doesn't stop me now either.

I found a cardboard box with the top and one end cut out worked great to catch the sparks and metal filings. Maybe wet it down a little if you're concerned about the sparks. Another thing I would worked well was one of the basement loading docks..

Thanks for the great idea! +rep!

Awesome build, cant wait to see some more pics.

Thanks! I've saved the best ones for last!


So this is the last update in this journey, posted almost 13 months after the build was finished

Testing to make sure it all works.

Now that I know it works it's time to finish the cable management.

And here's where most of the cables are hiding! There is almost no play in the cables back here.

Shot with the side off in the light.

Same shot without the light on.

Front fan and lower grill.

Here you can see the subtle blue glow leaking out from under the case given off by the PSU fan.

A very clean build overall IMHO.

I'll have a few more shots to post in late February as the computer is in a different province now. I'll hopefully be able to get a few shots of the whole setup.

Thanks for reading!

[TheMainMan]

hey just a tip - I have teh 1st version of that OCZ ram cooler rand it's LOUD at 12v. If you hook it to a fan controller, or just swap the molex pins around to hook it to 5v instead it's much quieter and still works wonders

I know what you mean. I have a version 1 as well installed in Balder and it's pretty noisy. One of the best features of the version 2 was the inclusion of a speed selector. On the high setting it's the same as v1, on the low it's much quieter and the LEDs are dimmed.

Here are the last few shots of it all setup and running.

The cables look a little messy from this angle but they are quite clean behind the entire desk.

So this finalizes this build. It was a great experience and taught me a lot that I hope to integrate into Thor 2.0 this summer.
Thanks for reading!