My new computer has arrived – in several large boxes! It took me about 2 hours to fit the dvd-rom and dvd-writer, hard drive and graphics card (i was taking my time). The instillation of the drives was very easy as the case comes with runners that click into the screw holes on the drives and then you just push them into the slot behind the front door – completely tool-less. The hard drive is just as easy as all you have to do is pull out a cage inside and then use the thumb screws provided to secure it in place however it has an added bonus in that there are already rubber washers in place to reduce vibration. The nVidea 7600gt simply fitted into the pci express slot and then the clip built into the case secured it into place.

The installation of windows was pretty easy – the longest part was the full format of the 200gb hd!

The screen looks great with the 7600gt and there do not appear to be any dead pixels which is good. Sadly i have been unable to make the tv card work so i have been forced to send it back however i will be looking to purchase a new one soon.

I have ordered my speakers now and am waiting for them to arrive (at the minuet i am using the speakers that are built into the monitor however theses are not very good and are only really suitable for use with the windows sounds. I have also ordered another gb of ram to match the one already installed.

Next week i will be running prime95 on the system for at least 6 hours to check that all the hardware is working properly. If anyone else knows any good tests i can run on my computer let me know and i will be more than happy to try them and compare the results to the ones you get! This system is very fast and has handled everything i have thrown at it with ease i have installed -

AVG

Ewido

Zone alarm

Ad-aware

and these do not seem to slow it down at all!

My plans from here are to maybe purchase some new 12cm silent fans (as i think the fans are maybe slightly louder than i like and other people who have bought this case have suggested them)

also i may buy a zalman GPU fan to replace the stock cooler.

Part 3 | Part 2 | Part 1

Posted by Final Look on Saturday, September 2nd, 2006 at 12:50 pm.