Lian Li A05b build

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seraphyn
Posts: 322
Joined: Wed Nov 28, 2007 1:26 pm
Location: Netherlands

Lian Li A05b build

Post by seraphyn » Mon Jan 07, 2008 10:42 am

G'day gents!

Last Saturday i finally received my long overdue Lian Li A05b. First impressions were that it looked like pure awesomeness. The aluminium has a nice feel to it, better then my P180. It is however very very light, mainly because there are no parts in it yet, but even then, it is still the lightest case i ever handled.

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As you can see it has 2 5,25 bays and a floppy drive bay. Plenty enough for my purposes.

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Backside, loads of air holes. In this case it is good to have the back so open, because the airflow is back to front. I am not sure on having either closed or open PCI slot covers, input here is welcome.

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Inside, upsidedown full ATX mobo room. It has an intake fan at the lower back and an outtake at the middle front. PSU is on left bottom side of the case. PSU is mounted slightly elevated from the bottom, but I am unsure if placing the fan down is an improvement on placing it upwards in this case. Thoughts anyone?
Also the videocard will probably be a bit hotter then usual, due to having little airflow over it. Any thoughts on this?

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Here we can see the backside of the mobo mount and the space where i will most likely stuff as much cabling as i can.


Various parts are still on their way but here's a list of the parts that are being used.

- Asus P4P800SE mobo
- Intel Pentium 4 2,5ghz (unsure if its a presscot or northwood, i hope the latter)
- Scythe Ninja HS (bought one at last!)
- 4x 512mb RAM
- Geforce 7300GS Passive
- Generic PCI stuff: soundcard, LAN
- Hardisk: Probably an old 20gb WD as main disk, with a 400gb Samsung Spinpoint as storage. I would've just used the Spinpoint for silence reasons, but it has some serious master boot record issues which i can't seem to resolve.
- Non brand DVD burner
- Silverstone 3 knobs fan controller
- Spire Soundpads
- Nexus Real Silent Fans 1000RPM (taken from my P180 which will take new Scythe Slipstreams)


Any thoughts / suggestions on this build?
Last edited by seraphyn on Fri Feb 08, 2008 11:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

Ryan Norton
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Post by Ryan Norton » Mon Jan 07, 2008 1:07 pm

Use a drill to drill out the rivets holding the 3 HD trays in the 3.5" drive cage, then use Stretch Magic to suspend 1-2 HDs in there.

Take advantage of the loopy upside down mobo's alignment of the CPU socket with the rear intake fan to use a Ninja fanless. I get all the airflow I need from the Yate-Loon fan I have blowing from its intake onto my Ninja a couple inches away.

Replace the stock fans with quiet ones. I'm using Yate-Loon D12SL-12's.

Here's a few pics of mine when it was more of a work in progress:

http://picasaweb.google.com/nortonius/LianLiA05B

The only other major, albeit not specific to this case, mod I've done is to use an Accelero S1 on my 7900GTX with yet another YL fan strapped to it.

seraphyn
Posts: 322
Joined: Wed Nov 28, 2007 1:26 pm
Location: Netherlands

Post by seraphyn » Mon Jan 07, 2008 1:35 pm

How are your temperatures on the graphics card? Well within acceptable range?

Thing is, I'm worried that the graphics card won't get enough airflow and if possible i want to do without a fan on it.

As for suspending, the Lian Li solution in this case is not adequate i take it then. Stretch Magic, where would one buy this? Haven't seen it in webshops, but i assume it comes from another use then suspending hdd's?

porkchop
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Post by porkchop » Mon Jan 07, 2008 2:09 pm

what psu are you using?

for your vid card- if you want some extra air, leave open one or two of the pci covers above the card, and control the fans so that you exhaust more than you intake (should be easy since you've got one 120mm intake and the psu and another 120mm exhausting), this should encourage some air through the pci slots and onto the vid card.

i actually prefer corded elastic over stretch magic, especially if you can't get the really thick stuff.
i can't get the really thick stuff here in Australia, but the corded elastic is available at my local craft store.

don't forget to post more pics as you go along, i love this case :D

seraphyn
Posts: 322
Joined: Wed Nov 28, 2007 1:26 pm
Location: Netherlands

Post by seraphyn » Mon Jan 07, 2008 2:17 pm

Oh i'll be posting lots of pics :)

As for PSU, can't believe i forgot to mention that, it's going to be a corsair hx520. Used one in my main rig and am very please with it, though it is way overkill on this system.

Ryan Norton
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Location: South FL

Post by Ryan Norton » Mon Jan 07, 2008 3:12 pm

PSU = Corsair HX620 with the bare minimum of cables attached. One 3x SATA takes care of my 2 HDs and 1 optical drive.

Video card hovers around 50 C idle and never goes over 62 C fully loaded by Call of Duty 4 at 1680x1050.

I'd like to try this elastic stuff, since Stretch Magic is a royal pain to get tied off.

seraphyn
Posts: 322
Joined: Wed Nov 28, 2007 1:26 pm
Location: Netherlands

Post by seraphyn » Tue Jan 08, 2008 6:35 am

So anxious about my build, i started preparing the case while still waiting on most my parts. These are the parts i already have:

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So i decided to put in the mobo and graphics card to see how they fitted, and ponder about airflow, fans and such. Also, i could see if i had room to place the soundpadding around the mobo.

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I will put a bit on the top, bottom i'm not so sure of, due to not knowing how close a fit the ninja will be.

Moving on, i took out the rear 'Lian Li' fan, not sure what fans they are, but i assume they won't be the most silent ones. I'll probably leave out the mesh fan guard as well, serves no purpose for me.

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Taking out the front fan was a little more work then i thought at first. You can't pull it out through the HDD cage, but instead you need to take it out at the bottom as shown here:

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Next a little picture of how unconstricted the airflow within the case is:

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I'll be receiving my Ninja tomorrow, so i'll probably update in the evening then (european time).

*edit

Seems like i'll be getting screwed over. Order of my ninja is delayed because the Slipstreams i had in the same order were suddenly out of stock.
Good news though is that my PSU and Soundpad should arrive earlier then planned and should be here somewhere tomorrow.

seraphyn
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Joined: Wed Nov 28, 2007 1:26 pm
Location: Netherlands

Post by seraphyn » Wed Jan 09, 2008 8:08 am

I have just recieved everything except the Ninja + Fans:

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I'll be putting in as much as i can tonight, without obstructing the mobo, since i need to take that out when i receive my Ninja.

protellect
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Post by protellect » Wed Jan 09, 2008 9:53 am

Keep us posted :) The case is a nice size, and I like it.

seraphyn
Posts: 322
Joined: Wed Nov 28, 2007 1:26 pm
Location: Netherlands

Post by seraphyn » Wed Jan 09, 2008 10:57 am

I put in the soundpads, which i find to be of very poor quality, then again, they were only 6 bucks so i din't expect a whole lot. When i applied them they stretched out (weakening its effect) and the glue stuck onto the case when i wanted to make a little adjustment leaving me with a not so nicely looking interior. Ah well, as long as it looks good on the outside.

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I then moved on with putting in my ancient DVD burner and attaching the front bezel from another Lian Li case, which apparently fits on all of the Lian Li cases. It even had predrilled holes for attachment of the bezel. Saved me a lot of work :)

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I put in the PSU, even though i'll have to take it out again later to fit the front fan. I was interested in how much the case would weigh with a few parts in it. Still a bit too light for my liking, but we'll see if it'll do i guess.

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Last thing to put in today was the backside pci slot fancontroller. I chose this one because it gave me the option to either use the front, the back or both fancontrollers. I ended up choosing the back one due to the knobs on the front ruining the clean look the case has going.

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And lastly, a little shot of the A05b next to the p180.

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Not sure when the next update will be, depends on the delivery of the remaining parts.

seraphyn
Posts: 322
Joined: Wed Nov 28, 2007 1:26 pm
Location: Netherlands

Post by seraphyn » Thu Jan 31, 2008 1:17 pm

So, euhm, a semi update here.

Apparently, the shop i ordered the Ninja + Slipstream fans at didn't bother ordering new fans so i decided to cancel them. I could wait longer, since this will just be an extra system on the side to mess around with, but I feel like building.

So cancelled the fans, ordered some Nexus ones at a different shop. All should arrive on Thuesday.

In the mean time i ditched the 20gb and 400gb IDE drives and put in a SATA 160gb one. The 400gb couldn't boot, which is why i had to use the 20gb to get windows/linux/hackintosh going, but alas, the 20gb suffered a heavy stroke and died on me all together.
I figured i was screwed, since i didn't have another decent IDE drive laying around (only 5-40gb OEM Dell/HP/Compaq disks) but to my surprise this old board supported SATA so i could pick up a spare disk and get cracking.

Installed XP SP2 on it (and then got 100 update's handed to me still -_-) and ran it with my old Andy Samurai + the Lian Li fans.

Well, the Lian Li fans won't do, that's for sure. They so seem to move a nice amount of air though, just not at the silence level i want. The Andy had no problems with the CPU, which turned out to be a nice cold Northwood and luckily not a Presshot.

Pictures of my build as it is now will follow tomorrow, since i don't have a camera right now. Then Thuesday will be the final build.

seraphyn
Posts: 322
Joined: Wed Nov 28, 2007 1:26 pm
Location: Netherlands

Post by seraphyn » Sat Feb 02, 2008 8:06 am

So, i got my Ninja early, which is great. It didn't fit however, which is a bummer. It came into contact with condensators/coils/whatever on my motherboard and would break them off if i put it on as tight as it should be.

So i decided to just take the fan off the Andy and try to run it passive like that. I hope it'll manage without frying my CPU, luckily it's not a prescott else i wouldn't even have dared running it passive.
According to Speedfan it's now running at 29C with fans on slowest, which seems acceptable. Haven't stressed it yet though. Everest wouldn't work for some reason, giving me a 12C temp reading while ambient is 18..

Anyway, as promised a little pic of how the interior looks like at the moment (minus the fan though)
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Now just waiting on my Nexus fans to quiet it down and then do some massive cable management work, maybe swap the PSU upside down as well.
Last edited by seraphyn on Sat Feb 02, 2008 9:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

MikeC
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Post by MikeC » Sat Feb 02, 2008 9:19 am

Looks to me that the PSU fan intake is >50% blocked by the bottom of the 3.5" drive cage. That is not promising for quiet PSU performance -- the Corsair needs breathing space as its fan runs so slowly; otherwise it'll ramp up.

seraphyn
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Post by seraphyn » Sat Feb 02, 2008 9:33 am

That's what i figured as well, but mounting it the other way around will put nearly it's entire weight on the fangril, because that's where the support thingy is.
Going to try anyway, we'll see how it goes. I need to take it out to fit in the front Nexus fan anyway. If it doesn't work, i'll probably cut out some more space to give it some breathing room.
Can't really hear it ramping up now due to it being drowned out by the Lian Li fans.

What i can say is that the HDD mounting system does seems to work pretty good, at least when coupled with an already silent drive (Samsung Spinpoint). The hddcage gives no vibrating sounds and doesn't seem to pass any vibration on to the case at all.

The soundpads are starting to smell though, yuck.

seraphyn
Posts: 322
Joined: Wed Nov 28, 2007 1:26 pm
Location: Netherlands

Post by seraphyn » Fri Feb 08, 2008 11:24 am

Got a new camera recently so i was waiting for it before taking my latest shots of this build.

And here it is:

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What you see is the front fan, the HDD and the connectors of the fans + fancontroller

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The CPU HS and the back Nexus fan.

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Cabling job, i will probably get this done properly at some point, but at least it's out of the way from the airflow now.

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The end result, you'll also notice a change in desk in the meantime. The old one was killing me, way to short in both width and depth.

It is still a bit audible, about the same amount as my external spinpoint hdd. The reason for this is the fancontroller, which apparently doesn't undervolt as much as my akasa one on my main rig.
So i will be looking out for a new one, but this will do in the meantime, it isn't on 24/7 anyway.

PSU got flipped over, so it has more intake. I found the fangrill on the PSU to be way more sturdy then i recalled from my main rig so i'm pretty sure it'll hold up nicely.

Oh and last but not least: my new desk ornament:

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