The Build

OK, so it's been a while but I've been ill.

I said I was gonna let you in on my magical PC build - the one I bought pissed in Drunk FTW - well here's a list of the items I bought for starters:

Gigabyte 3D Aurora Silver Full Tower Case
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.40GHz 1066FSB LGA775 4MB cache
Asrock Dual VSTA motherboard
Yeah I know - Asrock, but I got one of their boards to replace the Gigabyte one I had that fell on it's arse, flawless tbh. Prolly not the fastest thing on the planet, but it'll do.
2Gb OCZ DDR2 PC2-5400 Value Series CL5 Dual Channel kit
Gigabyte i-RAM Ram Disk Max 4GB Memory 1600Mhz back up battery
Samsung Syncmaster 226BW Widescreen 2ms LCD
GeForce 7900GS 256 PCI-E (yeah not the latest graphics, but no slouch either).

So I started off with all my old stuff, drained and took out the existing Gigabyte water cooling kit, 10K WD Raptor and my Soundblaster Audigy, as I would be reusing that stuff in the new box.

The build was pretty simple and I was glad that I'd saved all the CPU mounts for the water cooling kit, I was coming from a socket 478 to this new-fangled core-2 stuff, so the cradle supplied with the kit was well required, no real problems there.
The Gigabyte case is supposed to be a complimentary part of the Gigabyte accessories range, and this was half the reason I got this specific case, because it has mounting holes for the Gigabyte water cooling system, and rubbers for the cooling pipes to pass through the case, well sure, you can use the mounting holes, just so long as you have absolutely no cards plugged into your mainboard. I ended up having to mount the water cooling pump and reservoir in the area the case toolbox would normally be just below the IDE drive mountings, and mound the hard drive in the 3.5" floppy drive bay.

So I mounted the mainboard in the new case, well straightforward as expected, CPU in it's slot with the neat fold over the top bracket.
Coolermaster thermal compound slarted on and the cooling block fitted, all nice and together.
I'd previously gone to e-bay and bought a couple of meters of new tubing and to overclockers for some water additive/dye for the distilled water.

Got some sticky velcro and stuck the cooling res and pump to the chosen location, routed pipework and mounted the radiator on the back of the case, then took it off so it can bleed once piped.
Cut, clamped and fitted pipework, wired everything into place, and filled the reservoir. The cooling kit has an auto off function if your coolant gets too low, so you need to switch it on a few times, refilling the reservoir as you go.

Started it up and let it run checking for leaks before adding cards.

Next fitted all the cards and switched on.

XP threw a track, wouldn't get past the AGP DLL check.

Luckily I'd had the foresight to back up my system before indulging in this madness so it wasn't really an issue, re-installed the drive from CD and put all my junk back where it was.

The Gigabyte i-RAM was bought specifically to be my Eve Online cache directory, so a lil' bit of config later and that was all working to satisfaction.

I now have an eve client that runs at about 145 FPS in space and about 115 or so in fleet - OMFG!

I already had stuff like the Razer Habu and Logitech G15 keyboard.

Anyway - some pics: