New Here, Upgrading my SFF Build.......

[Fastbird]

Current build was as follows:

Ultra Microfly BX6 case w/Ultra XVS 600w Modular PSU
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-US2H Motherboard
AMD Phenom 9850 Black Edition
Ultra X-Wind 120mm CPU Fan/Heatsink
Western Digitial Caviar Black 750 GB Hard Drive
OCZ Platinum 800 MHZ PC6500 DDR2 2x2GB
LG Black Blu-Ray/HD ROM / DVD Burner 16x Optical Drive
PowerUp All in One Card Reader, 3.5" bay
ASUS VH242H 23.5" Monitor
Windows XP Pro SP3

As above the system performed ok. Early this year I purchased a fanless MSI 4550 64bit video card for a little bit better graphics........that was a mistake. Actually pulled my Passmark benchmark down from 826 to 823 as I found out yesterday. Idles around 44c originally, occasionally hitting 52c when I was video editing or something else intensive. Rear fan died, put in another that moved more air, and idle dropped to 38 and it has only hit about 50 peak now.

But.........as of yesterday.........it's got some new stuff.

2 x Adata S599 64GB SSD's in RAID 0
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit
Sapphire Vapor-X 5770 Graphics Card (being delivered tomorrow).

So........I had to find a place to mount the SSD's. I am saving the second hard drive bay for another large capacity spinner for backup/archiving purposes. So I came up with a little something with some spare aluminum I had in the garage. Took me about an hour, but came out pretty nice:

It is actually mounted by the two left side screws securing the optical drive. Keeps them out of the way of everything where they see a little bit of airflow too. Plans are to put two more fans in the case, one in each acrylic side, to get some cross flow and cool things down some more.

Got the raid set up, had some problems with the drive read/write speeds. Was only seeing about 300/200 per the Atto benchmark, and about 250/180 per HD Tune. Did some digging, and decided to flash the motherboard bios to the latest version, then installed the AMD RAIDxpert utility and enabled writecache and NCQ on both of the SSD's. That brought my read/write speeds up to 536/482 on Atto and 490/425 on HD Tune. THAT, I can live with. The thing absolutely FLIES. An amazing improvement over the WD Caviar Black drive. New Passmark benchmark was 967 after fixing the read/write issue, up from 816 which was disheartening originally.

Future upgrades planned are most likely going to be an upgrade to the Phenom 1090T and another 4gb of the OCZ Platinum..........then I should be all set for another year or so.

Need to get some pics up, had some lost them. Anyway, that's my introduction to the SFF community!

 

[setscrew]

I have built three systems using the Microfly (or clone chassis). Welcome!

Thank you for the pictures.

Please, please change the Ultra power supply first. Preferably to a SeaSonic X650 Gold, Corsair 620HX or 650HX, or Silverstone ST60F-P.

I like the SSD mount.

 

[bastage]

Please, please change the Ultra power supply first. Preferably to a SeaSonic X650 Gold, Corsair 620HX or 650HX, or Silverstone ST60F-P.

His list of decent PSU's is too short, but he is right in urging you to change the PSU..

My Recomendation for pretty much any SFF that can support a Full ATX psu is going to be the Silverstone Strider series & there Short Cable Kit.

 

[Fastbird]

What's wrong with my PSU I have currently? Learn me some here.....psu's are a weak point for me.

Just got the sapphire video card put in it today, rerouted some cables, got it all purdy as I could, and got a good benchmark from Passmark that I'm happy with (1527).

 

[bastage]

your current PSU is just low quality.. Most on these forums will tell you to get a generic video card or even motherbard before a generic PSU. To put it simple you have too much riding on it.. It would be like buying a 60k sports car & putting it on some 25 dollar a piece walmart tires.. Risks are just too great for the cost of the unit. Plus a decent PSU will normally last 2 or 3 builds & then only get replaced out of precaution..

Also the only review I could find for the PSU online was here. They gave it an 8/10, but I dont understand how when the PSU didnt survive testing. Blew @ less then its advertised wattage.

 

[Fastbird]

Interesting.........I'll have to give this a look. I will say that the silverstone short cable setup caught my eye. It's a PAIN trying to hide wiring in this thing. I'll post some pics tomorrow now that I've got it all figured out working with what I've got.

 

[Fastbird]

Update. Up to 8 gigs of ram now and just installed an AMD 1090T. WEI at 7.2 graphics limited. HDD's scored 7.9 and Ram/CPU both scored 7.5 Overclocking will commence tomorrow night. Going to try to get to 4.0 stable in the Microfly on the Ultra X-Wind cooler. Still need pics......got a half wire tuck, about as good as it's going to get.......

 

[Fastbird]

Ok, think I'm good for a while. Had to do some modding to facilitate a new heat sink/fan for the CPU as the one I had was NOT cutting it with the overclock.

Before, with acrylic windows and an Ultra X-Wind 120mm CPU Cooler:

After, with the addition of a Coolermaster GeminII S CPU heatsink/cooler, extra 80mm front intake fan, and mesh sides replacing the acrylic windows:

First up was fitting the new cooler. I pulled the fan off and found clearance issues at the left and center supports. The left side support got cut out, the center was modded with two cuts then bending the space between the cuts straight down.

After that was done, I noted that the hard drive cradle needed to me cut back some and moved forward. Simple cut to take the back overhang off, then drill a hole in the rail to hold it back down since it doesn't fit the slider anymore.

New Heatsink fully installed:

Second 80mm fan added to the front (the green one). I put teh new one in the stock location, then took the stock one and moved it to the left, drilling two new lower mounting holes and several holes in the casing for airflow.

New mesh sides replacing the acrylic. I used the pet resistant screen door mesh as I had some left over from redoing our rear door. Worked PERFECT.

Couple of the fans are green LED. They're all pretty much the same color, camera captured them as different is all. THe blue is from the Video card.

Only thing I have left to do is to cut out the lower cover on the front and put a screen in it as it completely blocks off intake airflow. I don't have a dremel anymore and it's about all I trust to make precise cuts at a low speed to keep from distorting the plastic, hence the holdup.

So.......at a 3.8 ghz overclock on the 1090T I'm now idling at 20-22* C, and at a just over 4.0 I'm idling at about 26-29* C due to the extra voltage. Under Prime95 I've seen a MAX of about 56 at the 4.0, and a MAX of 48 on the 3.8 overclocks. I'd say this was a successful endeavour, and I'm VERY happy with the preformance I'm getting out of my machine now. Pay not attention to the front display temp reading, it's off because there's no good spot for the sensor to go with the new heat sink.

 

[ADRENALIN_2099]

sick