Endless Paradigm

I needed to play Supreme Commander ;)

Specs Before Upgrade:

AMD Athlon64 3000+ Venice 90nm @ 1800mhz
2x256MB CAS 2.5ms TwinMOS DDR400 memory
1x WD2500YS 250GB S-ATA2 Harddisk @ S-ATA1
1x WD1600 160GB IDE Harddisk @ IDE
1x NEC ND-4550 16x DVD-RAM burner @ IDE
1x AOpen Geforce 6800LE 128MB AGP8x @ Unlocked shaders and pipes to 6800

AC Ryan UV Blue Casefans
AC Ryan UV Blue Cables
Vantec UV Blue PCI dust covers
20kg's of dust

Upgrade:
Add 2x 512MB CAS 2.5 Kinston DDR400 memory
Add 1x WD2500YS Harddisk
Add 1x UV CCFL and inverter
Remove IDE harddisk
Make RAID0 array of harddisks
Put 160GB drive in USB case
Replace Northbridge cooler with nicer Zalman one (lying around)
Remove dust

Well here goes nothing. I went and got everything i needed, and i took apart my entire PC except the DVD drive, power supply and fans stayed in. I also left the CPU and cooler attached to my motherboard, the rest I took out. I filled almost half a vaccuum cleaner bag while doing this.



I installed my cheap passive harddisk coolers, which actually work really well...

I then removed the northbridge cooler from the motherboard, cause i had a nice Zalman cooler lying around that I had wanted to use when building someone else's new PC but it didnt fit. Well guess what. After I had taken the cooler off and cleaned the northbridge chip:



And the new cooler didnt fit my motherboard either. I wonder which motherboards it DOES fit. Anyway, I cleaned the old heatsink and applied new (arctic silver 5) thermal paste. Which is really good :P

So now my case was clean and my motherboard was too, so I plugged in the new RAM and put my motherboard back in the case. I rearranged the cables so they looked just a bit organised, and plugged some vital things into the motherboard.

I screwed the motherboard in place, and then I put in the harddrives. Connected them with a new pair of new S-ATA cables I had lying around too. I left the old 160GB out so I could put it in my USB drive so I could put the 80gb from my USB drive in something else :)

Now everything was in place, and I put in the new UV CCFL I had bought. I had one earlier, but it melted. It didnt even come with something to attach it to the case with, so I used tape hehehe. I rearranged the cables with nice UV Blue glowing tiewraps and turned it on...



The picture truly sucks but that's because its too light and it just doesn't capture the cool blue glow...

Then I went into the RAID menu, and I could only find RAID1 which just saves 2 copies of the same, wasting 50% of your space... so I didnt want that, I wanted RAID0 which uses both disks at the same time so it reads and writes at double speed :D But I couldnt find it.

But that's because its a piece of fudgeing VIA spoon. Its just not logical, so I looked over it like many others before me (according to forums). I made the array and installed tteh windows and now it works!!!! and its nice nd fast1!!



Harddisk speed comparison with other normal harddisks

Oh and by the way, I know its not perfectly clean inside but it does make a huge difference. I didnt measure any temperatures and stuff but I think it really does matter as all my fans were totally clogged :P

Sweet :)  Though I don't see much point in HDD coolers - I have a RAID0 array as well, and the HDDs don't overheat or anything

Anyways, sounds like a cool upgrade :)  Hehe, I hated installing the CPU heatsink fan for my comp...

:P thanks
I already had the heatsinks, and I guess because of the hot weather here and the fact that if one of my 2 drives fails all my data is gone, I'd rather use a heatsink to reduce the risks. Also I was able to remove the entire 3,5" bay now so it saves some space

you know, before i cleaned my PC when I played Supreme Commander my graphics cards cooler would get really hot, like barely touchable. now when I play it, even after an hour, on the same settings, it doesn't even get warm. that's cool eh?

Wow, literally cool :)

Hmm, hot weather, I get it...

?

nice upgrade

good job, nice pictures :cool:

ty xD