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[Rich-M]

Wow that is seriously interesting Gimbo.
I am going to be redoing mine shortly as I practically stole an AMD FM2+ 7850k Apu I am going to switch into my unit and then take my 7700k with another Msi board as I have another MSI A78M-E35 Socket FM2 board I got as an open box really cheaply to use for a client build so I'll switch the drives around then and clean up the rest of the wires. If I am not too busy I'll take a few more photos.

 

[IceMan37]

Nice Gimbo =) I like your office pen holder! I also like your green case.

 

[Rich-M]

Yeah me too I love bright colors and that "slime green" is awesome. Pencil/pen holder I didn't notice I like as well.

 

[Rich-M]

I went back in tonight to change out the Apu to a spare FM2+ Apu 7850 so I can use the 7700 in a new build and thought I would move the drives to reverse side and then move the wires but the more I look at this, I have no space on my desk so to have to open both sides of the case to change out a hard drive is a complete pain in the ass and the way I have the ssd and hard drive in, the side closes perfectly now on the left anyway so I decided not to. I know you guys prefer to run the wires behind the board but again if you have a shop with all kinds of room that is no problem but in a narrow space as I have, I do not want to be removing both sides of the case to do everything and again the way I did it nothing is really blocked and everything is accessible and easily changed. Sorry photo looked much better in the Lcd on the camera than it does here.

 

[Rich-M]

I forgot to add in the last discussion I had ordered a Seasonic 650 watt modular Psu so as to cut down the wires, but when it came in it was defective as every other thing I order from Newegg is and I never got around to putting in the replacement.

 

[IceMan37]

I think you did a great job Rich. The only thing I would suggest for your purposes would be to run your rear fan on mobo power. this would drastically cut down in the front facing wires. I know you don't like to use fan headers on the mobo but that goes way back, and trust me things have improved since the old days. That mobo just like mine will run both front and rear fans on mobo power fine plus, if you use a 4 pin fan you can control the speed from the bios.

I love the look of that rig!

 

[Rich-M]

Thanks Catch and I will have to look again but I do not remember seeing a mobo fan connector, and I do use those now preferably if there. It is possible there is only one and there is a front fan connected to the motherboard connector. I agree I hate the way that green wire looks which is why I clipped it to the Psu cable but actually either the connection is blocked by something, possible the sound card or there isn't one but I will have another look later today. I have another of those motherboards I haven't used for another build.
Can you see how I used the inside smaller molex cable on the mechanical hard drive which is smaller to allow case closure? That was the only thing blocking the case closure originally until I switched those. The Ssd carrier clears by a mile on the bottom.

As I said it could easily be cleaner but I go into the system a lot and the thought of disconnecting every device so I can take the second side off to get to the hard drives which I can't do on this desk easily is just not anything I want to be bothered with. I still have yet to put the 240 Gb Ssd drive in there which I haven't had time to do so I am still running with an old Crucial 128 gb drive the way it originally ran after the 240 Gb Pny Ssd drive became corrupted. It's ok because remember my files are on the server so I am only using about 70 gb on the 128 but I have to be careful to keep it lean is all. I still need to see what happened to that PNY 240 gb drive that went beserk in this system and in the mean time I have another Crucial I bought to put in here as I don't want to chance a bad ssd drive in my main system because I know it will happen at the worst possible time as it did the last time.

 

[DSTM]

Looking good, Rich. I run the rear fan wires under the card and mostly out of site.

 

[Rich-M]

It would be more than possible Dougie though the card is really big and the one thing I worry about there is can I clear the card fan by enough because it is hard to see that. I will look at that again. The Psu 12v wire isn't long enough to go any other way so I tied the fan wire to it since it has to be there anyway but Catch just suggested the mobo connectors and I don't think there were 2 but I easily could have missed that because I used every slot on that board as it is a micro and could easily have obscured it. As I said I have another of those boards and I am going to look at it today clean to see how I can get that wire completely out of there.
What really tightens this build is the Creative Xfi sound card on the bottom and I also have an addon Usb card as well under it because there are only 6 Usb ports and I need 8, and that plugs into the board giving me 3 more ports as every slot is in use.

 

[GimboV]

Wow Rich I see your tower is sitting on a desk with quite a bit of space around it. I am not sure how much space "you" need to open both panels of the computer but to me it sure seems as if you would have plenty Maybe you need a 3000 sq. ft. warehouse so you can work on your machine.

 

[Rich-M]

Ha funny Gimbo. Yes if you look at the picture but I had made space there because I thought I was going to take the right side off and move the drives so I had removed many things that are normally there. The Cisco router is on top with no play in the lines you cannot see. On the right side there is a small speaker, external dvd-rw, Usb 2 drive dock, a desk lamp I had to move away totally.....but again all that was shoved over from the right side so I could take the door off. Go back into the first thread I believe picture 4 and you will see how it normally looks. What you have to imagine is behind the monitor is where the dvd external, Usb Dock and sub woofer you can see on the other side but there is also a speaker behind the monitor you cannot see and another Usb 2 drive dock. That desk and the two counters to the right are packed. I did though recently get rid of the copier, fax machine and black laser printer replaced with a laser All-in-One so the other wall unit is loosened up and I am slowly working back that space into the desk.

 

[IceMan37]

Your board has two fan headers, one a 4 pin on the far right of the board and the one near your rear IO plate just above the top PCIe slot that you would connect your rear fan to is 3 pin. I made a quick pic for you showing where they are.

 

[IceMan37]

Here is a pic of your rig and here is what you can do. Run that CPU power cord near your rear CPU behind the video card. I know you might not think it can be done but I do it all the time. Follow it behind (it's usually easier to remove the video card) and along the back rear of the case out of sight and curve it then along the bottom of your case behind your power supply as the red line indicates. You can simply use the green fan cable to the rear fan header on the motherboard indicated with the arrow. Wham! both cables tucked neatly and out of site.

 

[Rich-M]

Actually I looked at the new board still boxed yesterday and also noted there are two fan ports and the one not in use is slightly above the video card as you point out so I will go back and look again and see if I can get that in there, I must have just missed that as I don't see where the video card would have obscured it. Then if not I can move both as you suggest in above photo behind and give that a try.

 

[IceMan37]

Just like many long time builders, some of which still prefer to use full power from a molex 12v connection, you probably just got in the habit of not looking. With todays boards power regulation is usually much better than previous era boards. About the CPU power cable. When I build I always build with the case on it's back laying downside flat down so that parts are settling flush with the back of the case, and likewise, when you run that power cable behind the GPU it's easier to have the PC on it's backside run ore completely and easily snake the cable around that area.


Here is the area of the GPU that the cable goes under. As a final note don't feel like you need to do any of that if you like it the way it is. It looks fine and looks like the airflow is fine. If it runs well and you like it the way it is I wouldn't worry about it enjoy the rig!

 

[Rich-M]

No I did look but I would bet the gpu may have obscured it....I never got to look at it today as my ram came in for server so I had that nightmare instead. I failed to notice that this server starts with 2008R2 server OS and that one I cannot do Workgroup on and I owb 2008 Standard. Of course it installed but I could not get any drivers to get nic card going. Then I tried to add an Intel Gigbit Nic card bujt it was too old and I could not get that one in either. So after wasting all that time I had put away a version of 2012 R2 Standard which worked a treat once I finally chose the right version;.l Honestly I don't know why anyone has issue with that one. It tames as nicely as Windows 8 does. Real quiet with 2 ssd drives in. If it weren't for an occasional blinking light I would never know it is on. Thing is about 20% the size of "the HP beast", and I can carry it with 1 hand. The HP I need a fork lift for. Later tonight I migrate it over into network.

 

[IceMan37]

^sounds great. Nice compact unit.

 

[IceMan37]

About facing your HDD backwards (the way it's supposed to be facing in your case) I would not worry about having to get into your case all the time. Also I would think you not have to continually get in and out of the backside of your case once the HDD SATA power and cable are connected it should be a one time thing pretty much.

 

[Rich-M]

About facing your HDD backwards (the way it's supposed to be facing in your case) I would not worry about having to get into your case all the time. Also I would think you not have to continually get in and out of the backside of your case once the HDD SATA power and cable are connected it should be a one time thing pretty much.

You are right and for the average user it would be it. Remember though I make a lot of changes in a system but I also occasionally have to plug a client drive into a sata port too as the usb docks are not perfect and every so often I have a drive the docks won't read but my pc will. When I used to have a bench machine I never had to do that. On this system built about 2 months ago I upped the video card, added the soundcard and replaced a bad ssd drive in that time and I still have to replace the Ssd drive in it when I get another 256 in as I have a 3 year old 120 Gb Crucial in there that I replaced the corrupted PNY with and I used one of the drives I was going to do that with for the server so I am waiting for that replacement to come in from Tiger Direct as I do not want to put the PNY back in there. I will try that in another pc to find out why it failed. It could have been a bad install or clone as easily as a bad drive.

 

[DSTM]

I always run the power cable under the GPU and I have an 8 inch extension if I need it.
Looks so much better.
I replaced a faulty PSU yesterday and the 4pin molex came in a long black strip with multiple connections
which I hadn't seen before.Came with 2 strips of 4 so plenty
So much neater than having extensions everywhere.