Hot Air

The build continued today, I installed a 120mm rear fan and an 80mm front fan. The fan at the front pulls air into the case and the rear moves it out. The Antec case has a side panel attachment that matches the CPU fan position and provides an external vent, I've not checked yet, but I'm assuming it will correspond to the position and height of the updated processor cooler.

The GPU that you see is for test purposes, I intend to install the GTX 750 TI from the $85 purchase which will enable this to be quite a capable potato. I quoted the case and power supply, dvd and hard drive at a conservative $25 in the previous calculation, so being conservative again, the GPU at $60 is used. If I sell the motherboard, ram and cpu from the purchase, I can offset the price, but it looks like the final build cost after I install the GPU will be around $160

The Antec case is very well made, but an older design, so cable management is not really high on the priorities, however, I have made the front panel attachments as tidy as I can, it matters not as once the side panels are installed, it is all secreted away. The front fan clipped nicely into that plastic shroud at the bottom right of the photo and the fan made use of the second 3 pin system fan header on the motherboard.

I can control the fan speeds, and the noise somewhat, from the BIOS settings.

The next step is the GPU installation and then I will install an operating system and a game or two and see how it performs, both from a game focus and a temperature management point of view. It is almost at that end point, a sort of time of sadness regarding the build, but I am learning to take my time, understand what I'm doing and not just throw these things together and move on.

It will be nice if I have a WiFi card somewhere to install in that PCI slot.