It was just last week that Jamaica was inundated by an unnamed storm. The weather situation was getting worse and flooding was widespread. My bedroom was finally starting to bend to the pressure of the continuous rainfall. More importantly, Godzilla was waiting for me at Mailpac- but could not be claimed until the day after.
I’ve really come a far way in a week. I have constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed the case a couple times. I think I have reached a position where I am somewhat comfortable with the build. I have also had time to evaluate the case I chose and the configuration.
Mistake #1: Turning the Radiator Wrong
My initial build was quite problematic because at the end I could not close the case. The Antec Lanboy Air comes with an intake fan at the back of the case which happened to be the best place for the radiator. The team at Antec allege that radiators belong at the top of the case- but that is if you are using a small PSU that is top mounted- none of which was true for my build.
To add insult to injury I turned the radiator with the large piece at the bottom (2:20 on the video I posted or the picture below) pointing outside, because otherwise it would rest on the back-plate (with the USB/Ethernet/Audio ports.)
Can't Close the Case
The initial build took me between 7 and 9 hours. The reconstruction took less than two hours. The solution was:
- Move the power supply tray to the top of the case
- Move the motherboard down
- Keep the H70 Cooler’s radiator on the back but turn it in the direction with the bump staying in the case.
Mistake #2: Extra stock fan
All reviews suggest that the Antec case is more more about customization and modularity than cooling. It certainly looks cool- but I have yet to see if everything the case promises will be realized. They claim that the creation of positive pressure (through blowing all fans inward) will prevent dust bunnies because the hot air and dust will escape through the vents. The reason I went liquid cooling is because I knew that the stock fans and air would not be enough to achieve the temps I am seeking. However, will this no dust idea actually work? Time will tell.
I had to reposition the fans a bit to facilitate the cooler and for a few days I was running with a fan down. I have now put that fan next to the hard drive bay, to blow at nothing. It feels…uneven. I have two fans blowing forward and one fan blowing across- it feels pointless. I am going to get one more fan to make it feel at least even. In a few weeks I will let you know if I have a dust build-up.
See video below for the ‘ideal scenario’ for my case. I am not going to get more than one additional fan.
Mistake #3: Trusting the Old Drives
In addition to the 120GB SATA 2 Drive I bought to run the OS (the one element of budget in this build) I had three internal hard drives and one external drive from a previous build.
- 1TB WD Sata (fell and died a year ago)
- 500GB WD Sata 2 (was still fine by all accounts)
- 200GB IDE (I was pleasantly surprised to know that the motherboard supported one PATA)
- 500GB WD External USB 2 (always on)
I planned to use the SSD for the OS and core windows applications only- and then use the 500GB for applications. Fortunately I had accidentally installed Steam and Starcraft 2 to the SSD. I unfortunately installed the MS Office and Picasa to my new “Application” hard drive. I thought the 200GB IDE was going to be unreliable so I attempted to copy all it’s contents to the 500GB and then format it. I attempted to do this while playing single-player in Starcraft 2. That is when the 500GB internal drive crashed.
The 500GB came back up on Saturday but it caused my entire system (the same one with the hexacore processor and 8GB RAM) to go at snail’s place. All indicators showed that I wasn’t using a third of the RAM or 5% of the CPU processing power. The bottleneck was in the hard drive. I unplugged both faulty drives- and now I am on the road again.
This means that I have to buy a new set of hard drives. I am toying with the idea of buying a 1TB mechanical SATA 6GB drive for my applications and then 2 2TB Sata 3 drives for my media. If I had the 1TB then I would be assured that the bottleneck would be the SSD, which is fine with me. I would have to uninstall and reinstall my non-OS applications but that won’t take a lifetime.
