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I built my first surprisingly inexpensive PC for my son a few months ago. When PCPartsPicker says your GPU is shorter than it actually is:
Replaced the one glass panel with appropriately clearanced acrylic from sendcutsend, and a little beauty trim plate for the GPU end to bring me to the $29 minimum.
Replaced the one glass panel with appropriately clearanced acrylic from sendcutsend, and a little beauty trim plate for the GPU end to bring me to the $29 minimum.
$29?
That is shockingly reasonable. I seriously need to look into using these folks for my sheet-material needs.
They recently up'ed it across the board to $39 (used to only be $39 for certain materials/thicknesses), but yeah. That includes shipping and sourpunch candy. Back when they were $29 including 2 day shipping it was silly. But it was $29 minimum per material & thickness, now it's $39 regardless of thickness and material so it works out better if you're only getting one of each material or thickness. Deburring (sanding off the slag) is no longer free but is usually less than $1. Shipping speed is now whatever UPS or FEDEX ground is.
Also that $39 includes tax. If you have a taxfree account, the minimum is $37.21.
I had them tap holes on the last parts we got from them too, but that's an upcharge over the $37.21. The threads came out nice.
A month or so ago, I replaced the CPU fan on my primary machine at home. Intel i7, and had been using the stock fan & heatsink. It was starting to make noise, and I have had some thermal issues in the past as a result of being lazy and keeping several hundred browser tabs open at the time.
I bought one of the fancy heat-pipe units, where the fan is perpendicular to the motherboard. Installed it, works well, it's essentially silent, and the CPU is running about 10°C cooler than it used to.
I did not think to measure the width of my case before purchasing this fan.
In the past, that's never been an issue. There seemed to be a de-facto maximum height for a heatsink, that being what would fit inside of a tower case which is just wide enough to accommodate a 5.25" drive in the normal orientation. (The case was originally an HP Z-series, one of the big ones.)
So I need to figure out a way to cleanly cut a hole in the lid of that machine.
I bought one of the fancy heat-pipe units, where the fan is perpendicular to the motherboard. Installed it, works well, it's essentially silent, and the CPU is running about 10°C cooler than it used to.
I did not think to measure the width of my case before purchasing this fan.
In the past, that's never been an issue. There seemed to be a de-facto maximum height for a heatsink, that being what would fit inside of a tower case which is just wide enough to accommodate a 5.25" drive in the normal orientation. (The case was originally an HP Z-series, one of the big ones.)
So I need to figure out a way to cleanly cut a hole in the lid of that machine.
Like what theBrain is using? Yeah i assumed they were all the same height too, what i would also imagine the height of a video card would be.
I'd think buying a shorter heatpipe cooler would be easier & cheaper than cutting, but I understand wanting to cut metal for no good reason. It would have been far smarter using one of the other three cases I bought instead of custom making my plastic panel. (which also required careful removal of the metal mounting pads from the glass and reattaching to the plastic, and cutting white vinyl to hide said metal mounts), but we liked the look of this case the most.
Originally Posted by Braineack
nice i just built one last week, but reused my x6700.
Nice build! You made me add up actual costs on my kid's build. It's a mix between the default 'modest build' on pcpartspicker and $800 gaming pc build on toms hardware.
Intel i5-12400F $117.22 (came with fan)
ASRock B760M pro RS/D4 $106.61
Silicon Power DDR4 32GB $52.21
Thermaltake Smart 600W $43.71
Kingston 1TB SSD PCIe $60.77
XFX Speedmaster SWFT319 RX6800 16GB $395.19
Okinos Aqua 3 Micro ATX $70.32 (came with 3 fans)
Total w/tax: $846.04
Plus:
Dell S2722DGM 27" Curved 2560x1440 165hz $187.45
Reddragon M612 Mouse $29.90
Wireless keyboard $29.70
I see Tomshardware now puts the i5-14400F and RTX4060 in their recommended $800 build since it seems the rx6800 is NLA.
For his games I'll take the faster GPU and slower CPU.
I've been sucked into fortnite with all of the kids, I may build myself one of those 'caseless' PC's. Or throw it all into my cyrix/soundblaster/5.25 floppy college tower.
Like what theBrain is using? Yeah i assumed they were all the same height too, what i would also imagine the height of a video card would be.
I'd think buying a shorter heatpipe cooler would be easier & cheaper than cutting, but I understand wanting to cut metal for no good reason. It would have been far smarter using one of the other three cases I bought instead of custom making my plastic panel. (which also required careful removal of the metal mounting pads from the glass and reattaching to the plastic, and cutting white vinyl to hide said metal mounts), but we liked the look of this case the most.
This particular one, made by Antec:
It's a very well-made unit. Runs pretty much silent, even when all CPU cores are maxed out. It's just that it never even occurred to me to check the fitment.
Like, when you purchase a roll of toilet paper, you don't have to think about the diameter of the cardboard tube or the width of the roll. There is a general industry standard which has developed over time, such that all rolls of toilet paper are compatible with all toilet paper holders.
Now I know that CPU heatsinks aren't like that. At least, not anymore.
Also, now that I am home I can share a photo which demonstrates that I am not a l33t g4m3r d00d with a fancy-looking "rig." My daily driver is just an old HP Z240 with a few life-sustaining updates, including a CPU cooler which ever so slightly protrudes out the side where the lid should be.
Also, now that I am home I can share a photo which demonstrates that I am not a l33t g4m3r d00d with a fancy-looking "rig." My daily driver is just an old HP Z240 with a few life-sustaining updates, including a CPU cooler which ever so slightly protrudes out the side where the lid should be.
No, I do not ever dust or vacuum.
Looks like an easy fix. Put some playdough or similar on the side panel, locate where the cooler pin features are, transfer over the profile, dremel it out. I think it would take you 35 minutes including time to mix alcohol refreshment.
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