New Year, New Systems

With some time off over the Christmas period I decided it would be a good opportunity to upgrade my local PC and server. The plan was to buy all new hardware to form my new machine and then make a hybrid from the last server and my old machine. As you’d expect with brand spankin new hardware and software there were various hiccups along the way, I thought it would be handy for others following in my footsteps if I chronicled what I did to fix these issues and get things back up to 100%.

The new system consists of these components:

Motherboard: Abit IN9 32X-MAX Wi-Fi with 13 bios (came with first release bios, I upgraded it)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
CPU Heatsink: Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme
Additional Cooling: 4x 120mm Noctua NF-S12 Fans
Fan Controller: Akasa Fan Control Pro Fan Controller
Case: CoolerMaster Stacker RC-831 black with white mesh
Memory: 8GB OCZ PC2-6400 ReaperX HPC Enhanced Bandwidth (4x OCZ2RPX800EB2G)
Graphics Card: XFX 8800GT Alpha Dog XXX 512MB
Soundcard: Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Fatal1ty
Power Supply: Tagan TG1100-U6 Turbojet Plus 1100W Quad SLi
Hard Disk: Western Digital Raptor 150GB
DVD: Samsung SH-S203N (Lightscribe capable drive)
Pointing Devices: Logitch Trackman Wheel and a Wacom Volito 2 tablet
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate 64

All in all it’s a pretty rock blockin system. Like a complete noob I expected it all to work straight away after I assembled it all. Little did I know that even just getting it all assembled would be a chore.

The first bump in the road came when I tried to fit all 4 sticks of the memory. If you look at the image in the link for the memory you’ll see that it has a dock off heat pipe system sticking out of the top. It actually comes off the sides out of the heatsink that is clipped onto each side. This makes the memory both wide and tall. The first 3 sticks went in just fine from left to right. The fourth stick wouldn’t push all the way in. After I shone a bright light in there I realised it was pushing down on a big transistor situated next to the fourth slot. After much deliberation I decided to unscrew the memory seatsink and remove it. After doing that I realised I could just unscrew it, move it up slightly and then re-tighten the screws. This then meant it had enough room to clear the transistor. I tried it again. Still a no-go. A lot of four letter words were uttered at this point. Turns out that because the sticks are so wide they all push each other to the side slightly. The ultra simple solution is simply to loosely slot the memory in, then push it to the left so it’s properly vertical, then push it in. Before it was being pushed into a very slight angle so it wasn’t fully vertical. I tried this later on with an unmodified stick and it doesn’t touch the transistor when inserted this way which means I didn’t have to void the warranty on that pesky 4th stick earlier on. More four letter words were uttered at the moment I realised that 😝

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  • Smith6612
    Smith6612

    Glad to hear you got your new computer built and set up for you. I’ve got my new Dell coming, as you know from checking SGCSim (the specs when I was asking them if the Dell I chose was good). Have fun with your new awesome toy! 😛

No, you’re Fired!

— Lee Holloway, Secretary