kuzzia wrote:@toronado455: What a nice build. And the pictures are very good as well.
What do you feel about the components in general? How quiet is the system? And how was it to build in that case?
We want to hear it all
Thanks. I only used my cell phone camera, so maybe some day I'll take some better shots with my real camera.
I'm generally happy with it. The components are all pretty good except that I wasn't happy with the mounting system on the Mugen 3. Installing it stresses the metal backplate to the point of bending the metal.
System is very quiet. Usually below ambient noise level. I can hear a faint whirring/air sound when it is very quiet in my environment. Very happy with the lack of noise. Haven't tried the "silent mode" on the BIOS yet because I don't really need it.
Only noise that bothers me a bit is the 3.5" HDD after moving it to the screwed-in position in the lower part of the case. While it was suspended, I didn't hear any sounds at all from it. Now I can hear an occasional click clack and a funny "meow" sound on spin up when the system boots. I've disabled hard drive spin-down in Windows, so that helped. But basically it is usually inaudible with absolutely no whine of any kind. Great drive. I plan on putting it into a different system in a few months with a larger case where I can suspend it (and also a second identical unit for RAID 1).
I haven't decided how to mount the 2.5" I'll be getting to replace it. I wonder if I can get away with using the SSD mount on the case floor with just some sort of improvised isolation material where the screws attach. Otherwise I'll need to use the lower mini cage and 3.5" adapters.
The case is well-made, and very lightweight. So it is easy to work with in that respect. My personal preference was to remove the drive cages. I'm using the small lower cage now, but would rather not. It just makes the case two cramped to have big drives in it for my taste. Without the 3.5" drives it's perfect. In fact, for a while I had only the SSD and that was very nice. But I need at least one data drive in it.
Only hardware problem with the case is the top panel is attached with tiny little screws (internal - not visible from outside) which are difficult to deal with and can strip threads easily.
The white PSU matches the case nicely.
There are problems with the HD4000 when using extended desktop mode with dual monitors - occasional flickering and jumping image. I'm hoping a driver update will fix it.
I haven't had much luck with Windows 8 on this system (boot loops, failed updates, horrible fonts, etc), so staying with Windows 7 for now, which I quite like.