2nd August 2010: Bascially forgot to add all the other build work I did to my PC in Janurary prior to getting the new 5870, so adding it for the sake of completism.
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PC Upgrade [Jan 10]
Prep Work
To start my prep work, I removed the graphics card and the middle bottom fan. The bottom middle fan from the case was removed as there just was not enough space even with a modular power supply to fit everything in. I am pretty sure that the fan was not even moving the moment I moved the case as the non modular cables and the tiny space probbaly stopped the fan from moving anyway.
With this fan removed, it opened up a lot of room, allowed me to thread cables through the other opening and I think make things that much more tidier as well as allowing some air to be pulled through from the PSU.
I then used a ton of cable ties to keep things as tidy as possible. The grey cables that connect the front panel to the motherboard are tied together and then tied up out of sight as much as possible.
I did not know at the time, but if you look where the SATA connections are, I actually pulled off one of the bloody connections on the board, leaving metal pins behind. What a ****tard!
[Its the missing red one above the 2 red on the leftmost row.]
New DVD
The new DVD goes in, nice and easy and with it the old IDE ribbon and molex power disappear as a thin black SATA and power are nicely cabled to make it work.
Cable Ties FTW!
How many cable ties can you see here? :shock:
Hard Drive
The hard drive goes into its caddy, held in place with the rubber grommets. I kept the drives in the bottom caddy rather than put the middle one back for the same reasons why I took it out in the first place - too close to the graphics card and now I had put a Noctua in to aid cooling.
Bloody Molex Connection
And here we have the only molex connection left in the case, which means I have to add in a molex connection to my PSU, adding another cable coming from the PSU and leading up through the case to be able to power the top fan.
I will be replacing that fan with a Noctua next month, as the noctua can simply plug directly into the board and be controlled by the BIOS - you can even see one of the spare fan controller pins I have on the board
CHA_FAN 2 to the left of the molex.
You can see that I have popped the SATA connection back onto the motherboard and have my hard drive plugged in which thankfully all worked ok.
I have added another 30 or so cable ties to the picture here as you can see, and I also make another mistake - read on if you cant see from this pic....
Oops!
Yep, my excessive cable tying had resulted in my pulling one of the connections off - my PC would not boot despite there being power present, and thankfully it was simply due to the cable controlling all the front case switches and not the fact that I had pulled off part of the motherboard by mistake earlier.
All done!
All done, well, 95% done anyway. That red SATA cable is temporary as I am in the process of copying data from old drives to the new one, and next month I will be replacing the top fan with a Noctua and therefore not need the power cable from PSU to molex.
Far happier with how my cabling has gone as well - look at this pic for a before and after shot to see just how much things have changed by spending £25 on a SATA DVD drive and a few hours cabling: