PC Building Project....AMD Gallardo: Black Edition

[Genesis2kx]

AMD GALLARDO: Black Edition

With technology rising faster than ever these days, and also thanks to price drops I've decided to do a little updating myself from my old AMD socket A rig to more current generation products. I'll be using this thread to document the build for anyone interested in setting up PC's. So without further ado, I present my new budget Gamer rig...AMD Gallardo: Black edition. As for the name, It's simply about speeeeedddd. Anyway, Here are is a list of parts I got for the build.

• Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail
• ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI MCP ATX AMD
• EVGA 512-P3-N802-A1 GeForce 8800GT Superclocked 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card
• XION PowerReal XON-600F14T-201 ATX12V 600W Power Supply
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Brisbane 2.6GHz Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Black Edition Processor Model ADO5000DSWOF
• G.SKILL 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording Technology) 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620A (Perpendicular Recording Technology) 320GB 7200 RPM ATA 133 Hard Drive
• Saitek PZ30AU Black USB Wired Standard Eclipse Keyboard
• ZALMAN CNPS9700 LED 110mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler
• Logitech X-230 32 watts RMS 2.1 Black Speaker System

Here is a pic of all the parts stacked together.






The smexy keyboard


Front shot of the Antec nine hundred.


Side Shot



Next will show the parts being assembled.

[Genesis2kx]

Okay after unwrapping all those boxes, it was time to get down and dirty into the groove of things. Here is a shot of all the things I had to start off with.



Now remember folks, Don't forget to ground yourself when setting up a machine. I used a anti-static wristband clipped onto the side of the antec nine hundred. The first thing I decided to do was install as much components on the motherboard before installing into the case.

The first thing being the shiny new budget Overclocker AMD 5000+ Black edition.
Got it for 100 bucks on a tigerdirect deal with free Call of Juarez. Pretty sweet imo.



It comes stock 2.6 GHZ but has an unlocked multiplier.
To install , I lifted the lever of the mobo socket fully before inserting with the gold arrow matching up with the arrow on the socket.




The next step was to apply a little Antec Ceramique Thermal Mixture on the heatspreader of the chip. Only a LITTLE is needed. A rice grain or two in the center is enough. I didn't spread it around either as its best to push the heatsink on and let it spread it itself.



For the heatsink, I went with the MASSIVE Zalman CNPS 9700LED Here is a few pics of this beast.





Yes that is my hand in the back. This thing was way bigger than I expected. Nonetheless, I go on in the next post.

[Genesis2kx]

Following the isntructions, which kinda took some time, I managed to get it on the motherboard with a bit of force on the lever provided and it held on tightly.



Yes see how massive it is compared to the board. The next item I put in was the ram.



I went with 2gb x 2 Gskill ddr800 (PC6400) ram at 5-5-5-12. I wanted 4-4-4-12 Timings but at $100 for the pair it was a real bargain.

For now, I installed only 1 stick since I didn't want to have any probs especially to install Vista later on as I hear it has problems installing with 4GB. I'll stick it in after my OS installations.
Here it is installed.


I prepped the case by installing the rest of the brass standoffs to support my motherboard on the motheboard tray before attempting to place it in.



Here is it screwed down in place with 9 screws.



Stay Tuned...

[Genesis2kx]

Okay the next step was to slap in the Power Supply in the case.
The Antec nine-hundred has the Power supply bracket mounted in the bottom of the case to provide stability, but cable management as you see later is a real challenge.

Here i mount my Xion 600W with its barrage of wires I prolly won't need.



The case has 2 holes in the back, as you can see in the picture for water cooled solutions which I may try in the future.

Next, I install my graphics card of Choice. The limited eVGA 8800GT superclocked edition 512MB.





Also came with a free goody. Quake Wars.


Fairly easy to mount. Just slapped it in the first PCI-E 16X lane on my SLI motherboard. Had tons of room left so it fit quite nicely.



Up next is installing all the peripherals.
Stay tuned...

[techdude]

Great Post Yo. I always wanted to see something like this.
Sell OFF mi don. CPU cooler

[Genesis2kx]

First up I Popped out a drive bay cover of the sleek Antec case and installed my NEC IDE DVD-RW drive. Pretty straight forward. Here it is installed.



The next item was my two Hard drives. What is sweet about the ANtec is that it has many different configurations for drives due to its 2 removeable Hard drive bays that house 3 devices each. A very nice modular case. Here i install my IDE drive in the top drive bay of the higher cage in order to have the ribbon reach my IDE Optical drive.



Here is the black asus IDE ribbon. MY second Sata is installed in the middle bay of the lower Drive bracket.

Also both drive brackets have a 120mm Blue led Fan in front which keeps them nice and cool and allows a lot of air into the case.



THe floppy comes with this funky bracket that took me over 30 mins to figure out how to get it to install correctly. Heres a pic copped from bjorn3d - Click link below (7 Images per post exceed)
http://www.bjorn3d.com/Material/revi...oppy_mount.jpg
I finally got it installed though although it is not flush with the front cover but its good enough.



Next was to connect the Sata cable onto the first sata port on the motherboard.



And then into the SATA Drive.



Stay tuned. More coming

[pezz]

maaaad m bosss maaaad

[Genesis2kx]

At this point It was almost 2 hrs if not over, and I was getting very anxious.
I decided to speed things up a little and neglect cable management till after I got everything up and running.



Yes I know it looks Real bad. That will change soon though. A modular power supply would really come in handy here.

I will post more screens when I get that done. Let me note that the case has included cable ties that attach to the inside of the case. Very good but still a lot of wires to figure out.

After plugging everything in, at least that's what I thought, I proceeded to power it up.


BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

OMG, the Mobo let off loud squeels and I shut it off instantly.
I unplugged it to try and find what the problem was and no dice. PLugged it back in again and same beeping. Real annoying

OMG how could I forget. Turns out since the included FAN for the Zalman was tucked so neatly inside its huge inside I totally forgot to plug it in.
Yes, It happens. Anyway, it uses a 3 pin plug yet my mobo has a 4 Pin for the CPU. Anyway i tucked it on a PWR_FAN connector and connected to the real Sweet Zalman Fan controller than has a knob to adjust RPM from around 800 - 2000 or something. Its real loud at max So i set it at almost the lowest setting.

All the fans in the Antec case as well have a switch with 3 modes. Low, Medium and High. I left them at low which is about 800RPM for Noise reasons.
The 200MM Fan on the to of the case is Huge and the noise wouldn't be fun to listen to.



Anyway after setting that up. The system still beeped. I quickly figured that out though as i forgot to put the 6 pin pci-e back in the GPU i had taken out to route a cable better earlier.
Finally after a long setup time. THe system booted into bios.

Here's a pic of the pretty blue lights in the front and rear.





I have 2 many Blue leds I think. 2 on the 120mm front fans. The Zalman Glows Blue as well and the rear 120mm as well as my PSU 140mm fan or whatever size it is.

Even the sexy Saitek Eclipse glows blue too.



Stay tuned for stock benchmarking tests.

[Genesis2kx]

Okay, so I partioned the Sata drive into 3. One part for XP which i promptly installed. Another for Vista to test DX10 Goodness, and I left about 30GB or so for Ubuntu I may put on. Here is the system specs from windows.

DOn't ask me why it says 2.8GHZ. It even says so in the bios, but the box and CPU-Z says otherwise.



Here is the CPU info of Processor and 1 stick of ram in..



I went straight away into doing some initial benches to get over my anxiousness. Remember the Black edition has an unlocked mutlipler so OCing is definately on the way soon. All that is needed to get to 3.1GHZ is a change of multiplier from stock 13 to 15 or so with no voltage change. My plan is to stop at 3.2GHZ tho to preserve the 400MHZ speed of memory. That should only take a 0.05 increase in voltage to accomplish the extra 100mhz. Anyway more on that later.

The first bench I pulled up was SuperPI Mod 1.5. Here is the result for 1mb Test



Not bad..so far I guess.

Next I tested Aquamark 3 which i had lying around. Yea I know. Its really a pointless tool these days but I wanted to see it get blown away. Here is the result



Right over the 100K mark.

Now for the Bench you've been waiting for. 3dMark06.

Here it is running on my old 19" LCD.



My plan was to hopefully get 10K 3dmarks at stock speeds. Sadly I fell short.



AS you can see the CPU is very lacking atm at current speeds. The 600MHZ overclock should fix that. Also I plan to OC the core and shader speeds of the GT to 700 and 2000MHZ respectively up from 650 and 1900 I believe it is at now. Don't quote me on that though. THat should prolly get me to at least 10.5K which is reasonably over my mark. I'll keep you guys posted.

I am calling it a day to relax and play some Crysis

[techdude]

Jah kno mi feel like mi want build a system right now. It haarddd, maaaddd.....