Its taken me a good few months to get all the money and the parts together but I'm finally on the home stretch... (I hope)!

System is an AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego overclocked to 2.6GHZ on an Arctic Cooler Freezer 64 Pro.

Full spec list:

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3700+ w/ Arctic Cooler Freezer 64 Pro
Motherboard: ASRock DualSATA2 Motherboard (Passive NB/SB)
Memory: 2x 1GB Corsair DDR XMS3500LL Pro TwinX
GPU: Sapphire ATI Radeon X1800XT 512MB w/ Zalman VF900-CU
HDD: Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB SATAII 16MB Cache
Optical Drive: NEC ND3550 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter
Case: Antec P180
PSU: Antec Phantom 500 500W





Case fans are currently stock TriCools in the upper chamber on their lowest setting, removed the lower wide fan (currently waiting on an order of Yate Loons from the US) meaning HDD temperature is higher than I would like at 44 degrees celcius.

Cable management is an ongoing thing, once the new YL fans are here I'll be seeking to improve as much as possible.

After the nightmare I had finding long enough 20 and 4 pin extention cables from the PSU to motherboard I'm so pleased with how the system has turned out, especially as I'm a first time builder (although I do have experience of upgrading parts over the years).

The intent was to build a PC which I could play the odd game and produce music. The first part has come to fruition with Half Life 2: Episode One looking absolutely stunning.

Finally... well... the bread and butter of SPCR - the system is not silent nor does it make a racket like my old machine. The Zalman VGA cooler has really made a difference already (I've had the system running four days and I just installed the cooler), and I expect the YL fans to bring the noise down even further.

Temperature-wise the CPU idles around 35oC. Higest temperature recorded so far was 45oC using S&M to test for stability. The GPU currently idles around 45oC according to ATI CATALYST Control Centre a marked decrease of 5-10oC over the stock cooler.

The NEC optical drive only really makes noise on intially spinning up/accessing a disc. Not as quiet as my old Pioneer 107 shame I couldn't source one in black.

I'm currently saving up for a new TFT. If anyone has any suggestions they're very much welcome - either a combination of two or a decent sized widescreen!

Thanks Mike and the rest of the SPCR community without you I would have probably ended up with a horribly loud PC... If I hadn't have begun reading the websites articles and then joined the forum I wouldn't have been interested in noise or aesthetics! Form really does come with function.

Gareth (Dr. Gonzo)

P.S As a sidenote I implore anyone with a Sapphire manufactured graphics card with a stock cooler to check the thermal pads on the RAM sinks... On removing the cooler earlier today I was horrified to find the pads barely touching the RAM.

nice build...
im awaiting my p180 & seasonic next wk... will post as soon as it comes!!!
then next update comes w/ Conroe release!

Thanks.

I'm not big on modding/cathodes etc but I love the blue glow from the rear of the Phantom in the dark, it really matches the P180s Power LED. shame I can't get a decent enough picture of it though.

A pretty nice system overall And huge respect for the clean desk! I can´t even see my desk under all the stuff thats on it

The insides of your puter could do with some cable management though

Thanks nici... the desk was a mess before I went a little bezerk last week.

Cable mangement - the thorn in my side at the moment. I just got a rounded IDE floppy cable so I can get rid of the horrible grey ribbon tomorrow woohoo. Due to the location of the ATX cables they do make the case look messy.

Anyone with a Phantom will know all the cables leading out of the PSU are a bloody mess.

Why Antec decided to cross them over one another I'll never know I'm seriously considering pulling them all out, cutting the cable ties and redoing them all. Anyone with experience of doing this please let me know how you got on!

A bit of a mean comment: Instead of buying the ATX extension, you could of probably got a motherboard with a decent layout for only a bit more money

Ever since I built a machine with the same mobo, I have been permanently looking at the photos of motherboards before I buy them

Do you have enough ATX cable to run them up the front left corner (as you look at the picture) and then over the rear fan ? I did that with my four pin and it looks a lot better.

My Antec Truepower cables are crossed at the PSU also. I tried to straighten as best as I could, but they come out as all yellow together and all red together and all black, well you get the picture
I thought of removing the molex connectors and routing them that way, maybe some day when I'm bored.

Ray

Considering the board cost £45 and is a lot better than a hell of a lot of more expensive motherboards no.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2524