Gaming your Machine

Got back today from Christmas shopping to find a dead PC. Turns out it's the PSU, and I always keep a spare one handy.

I now need to get a new one, any suggestions from those with more recent experience?

Corsair is always the most popular but my last one was a Fractal Design.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

I got no suggestions as the PSU was probably the one item i didn't spend much time researching. I got the EVGA because it was physically smaller than my case's max width for a PSU, it was on sale AND had a mail in rebate, and had 5 stars at Newegg. Marketing claimed it had a large silent fan too, which is of interest to me. But as to comparisons, I got none. It was literally the second on the search list.

Well... I was looking at a Seasonic too. Fan was a bit smaller i believe but reviews and price were neck and neck. I think it was their 650W semi-modular model. 5 stars with like 100 reviews.

@Tacitus

Seasonic: always and forever.

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

J.J. Fad's PSU of choy'z.

Yeah, Seasonic's always been a good choice, although I don't think I've ever had a bad PSU from any of the recognised brands. Had a quick look on Amazon earlier to see what was about and ... oh no ... RGB PSUs are now a thing.

My case, keyboard and mouse are all RGB. I feel drawn to something totally needless.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thermaltake...5752984&sr=8-1

Not a fan of rgb!!! I had to dig around to find RAM without it. Wow! But that aside, looks like a good price for 700w.

Don't do it! You'll need another PSU to power all those rainbows

(PS on Corsair 600, is solid. Suspect you're right and they all are )

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

All my best stable builds had Seasonics. We had the downstairs machine crap out 3 PSUs (dirty power) over the years but once I put a Seasonic in it has been solid. Going on about 6 years now.

Processor is inbound. Should be here Wednesday. RAM on Thursday or Friday. Will make a go of it next weekend.

*cracks knuckles*

I'll probably end up with something dull and non RGB-y but it can wait til after Christmas now. The 650W Fractal Design PSU in there is fine ..... until my OCD tells me I need a 750W.

I'm going nuts eyeing this small stack of stuff knowing I can't do anything with it for another week!!! Grrr. I've not removed the mobo from its static bagging but I'm examining every slot and port like a kid who's managed to surgically remove the tape binding the wrapping of his (or her) Christmas presents that are already under the tree. I sooooo want to start plugging things in!!

@ynwtf: You just gave me a flashback to the Christmas when I got all new parts for a build. And I locked myself in my room building it while the extended family was out in the living room. God I was a rude kid that year.

Processor just arrived!!! It was bound and sealed in a supermax 3,640-faceted Phantom Zone crystal chamber wrapped in a ball of bubble wrap with at least five 1' long strips of packing tape. And then there was a shipping box.

Holy mother of biscuits, this thing was hard to get into. Product packaging alone probably cost 1/3 the retail price. All this, for a roughly 2" x 2" chunk-o-metal.

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"My Dionne Warwick understanding of your dream indicates that you are ambivalent on how you want life to eventually screw you." - Joel

"Ever try to forcibly pin down a house cat? It's not easy." - Captain Steel

"I just can't get pass sticking a finger up a dog's butt." - John Dumbear

****, I just sent my old one off in an envelope...

(Padded envelope, but still )

Man. I just started dismantling my case only to find that my tiny screwdriver isn't tiny enough for the fan mount channels.

It's nearly 11pm! I have to WAIT now until Lowes opens tomorrow?! lol.

I'm an idiot. Fan screws are accessible from outside the case and not through that 1" channel through the fan corners. Gah. Back to it then!!

Alright. 5 fans installed. Gah things are not designed for fingers to fit through. Those little Noctua silicon mounts are a real PITA, especially for the fan corners against a case wall. I had to use a screw for one corner of a 120mm fan. They do not feel as tight on the 80mm, but we'll see. PSU is next but I'm done for the night. I half expected some foam padding spacers for the PSU, but oh well I guess.

MOBO mount pegs are in place and I've got the CPU cooler plate installed. With a bit of Google-fu I learned to install that BEFORE mounting the MOBO. Seeing it now I have to agree. I would have lost it had I went ahead and installed the board first.

Slow and steady wins the race though. I doubt I'll post much more until I'm done just this is my first build and I'm kinda giddy.

Post progress pics! ;

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Gosh. This mammoth is assembled. I realized about halfway in that I didn't bring a monitor with me to test so ima hafta plug into the TV via HDMI at some point. Too, this MOBO has a merged keyboard/mouse port that I'm also not prepared for so it may be Thursday before I can test boot to the BIOS.

All things considered, I really enjoyed this experience and learned a lot---mostly what not to over think. I have no GPU, but the processor has Intel UHD. This is mostly for audio work so that should be fine. Down the line I may step up to something dedicated but that may be a while.

I'm very impressed with both the motherboard and case. Huge space! The case is 4U so it's quite tall for a horizontal rack-mount case. I was worried about the CPU cooler being too tall for the case but nope. I was worried about the cooler fan blocking RAM slots, but nope again. Space is great. It could be a MASSIVE GIJoe base of operations.

Right now I have two 120mm fans on the underside blowing into the HD cage. There is another 120mm fan on the side pulling air in blowing over the RAM and into the CPU cooler fan. The CPU fan then pushes air through the cooling radiator, toward the back of the case. In the rear are two 80mm exit fans to pull the hot air out and through the back. There is room for another CPU fan, as well as another 120mm intake fan on the side. Fancy thing about these Noctua fans is that they include so many cables extensions and a Y-adapter for syncing two fans on the same motherboard header. That maybe be standard practice for all case fan manufacturers but I thought it was nice. Too, the 3" extension added to one fan kept both cables the same length before the Y. I mean to say that one fan was farther away from the header than the other, so with the Y-adapter the closest one had extra slack. An extension on the farthest one out evened things up allowing me to tuck them both flat around the case.

I only have the one SSD drive for now to act as my boot drive. I'll eventually get a second SSD for storage. The HD cage is empty but I may eventually fill them with backup storage. I'm not sure if I want the added weight, heat, and air flow clutter though. With the available ports I may just keep backups on external drives and be done with it.

Tomorrow or the day after I will try to get into the BIOS and make sure everything is connected correctly, fans running, etc., etc. Then it's off to the OS! ...I think.

Oopsies.
I forgot to connect the CPU power supply cable.

I finally got to the BIOS screen. No idea why I'm instructed to load BIOS before installing the OS, but I did. I saw it. Clicked around. Noticed my RAM isn't set to the advertised speed but will deal with that after the OS stage. Everything seems to work and the SSD is listed. Only thing is powering up leads to a momentary click and what sounds like a reboot before fans settle back down and the BIOS menu comes up. Not sure what that's about.

Fans are crazy quiet. Like, "is this thing on?" quiet. Alright. I'm off to download the OS to a USB stick then an install.

Fingers crossed.