Manyak

So I'm sitting around, saving up for a new sig rig (I don't have one anymore ). Out of nowhere my girlfriend decides she wants to replace her motherboard because its buggy. Of course, nothing I could say would convince her otherwise, so she went ahead and did it, leaving me with an ASUS M2N-SLI.

So now I've got an opportunity to put together a PC from nothing but spare parts! So lets see if I can dig up the parts for this.

So, this is the motherboard I've gotta work with.


First things first. Lets see what I can dig up from my closet o' parts.



4x512MB DDR2-533, from an old P4 rig. I'm almost positive that one of these sticks is bad, but there's no way to tell which one. Guess that'll have to wait.


Hrm, I wonder which drive to pick....


810MB hard drive? Screw that.


80GB? More like it.


That's right, a spare 8800GTS G80. Now we're talking.


A heatsink. Its one of those rosewill ones, but I broke one of the fan blades by accident and replaced it.


Out of 3 PSUs, this is the only one over 300W. I wanted to wait for a nice rig before pulling it out, but oh well.


Oh cool, a power button!


I think I'll take the X-Fi platinum.


I'm pretty sure there's an IDE cable in there somewhere.....


All the parts for the build!!!! Oh wait a second, forgot the CPU...


Crap, nothing but a bunch of P4s and a T1300. Looks like I'm gonna have to resort to extreme measures...

And take the CPU out of my HTPC!!

Oh well, I guess I can just use my bedroom HTPC for the next few months until I can put this back in.


Cleaned up all nice and shiny.


Heatsink: on!


Just look at that beauty!

Ok hold up a second....what MORON at asus thought it would be a good idea to stick the ATX connector in the MIDDLE of the motherboard? Good thing I'm not trying to do any fancy cable management here...


The setup!


And apparently none of the sticks are dead. As I'm writing this memtest is already on the 4th pass and no errors yet. Can't complain I guess


And to leave you guys with a pic of how everything's set up:



And that, boys and girls, is how you put together a PC without spending a penny


Update
I finally put the finishing touches on this build. I repainted my A900 from a mod that I ended up neglecting, and put some water cooling into it.

The WC parts are:
- D5 pump
- Apogee GTZ
- MCR-220
- Scythe Slipstream fans

I did finally spend some money on it.....I bought some extra screws for the rad - it only came with 8, and I needed some to actually mount it. So for now its only got 1 fan. It also needs another red LED fan in the front, but whatever.

All that's left is filling up the loop and leak testing it.

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For Sale: [Conus] CM Storm Scout, TEC, WC, Laptop, A900, Model M, GPU, Audio, and a ton more!!

Sullivan

Nice, thats pretty sweet that this costed you nothing.

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Mjg1675

I'll trade you a PS for your 1000W I could really use the power.

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SniperXX

Haha nice, you got some decent spare parts. :P

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Want to get ~25,000PPD folding on your i7 running a Virtual Machine?

EVGA 680i FOR SALE

i7 920 @ 4.2Ghz
HT off for now, still testing.

HEATWARE

O o
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kinubic

lol wow u sure do have alot of "extra" parts xD

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halifax1

Why the hell do you have a spare 8800 just sitting around when it could be folding?

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Ducky

Your girlfriend knows how to replace a mobo? Marry that woman.

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Mjg1675

Not if I do first.

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Manyak

lol, the 1kW is from a failed QX9650 TEC build last summer (bad luck with parts), and the GPU and sound card are from my old rig. I had sold its other parts for the money for the TEC setup, so I was left with these two pieces. They've been sitting in my closet for about 8 months now, lol.

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For Sale: [Conus] CM Storm Scout, TEC, WC, Laptop, A900, Model M, GPU, Audio, and a ton more!!

Manyak

Because I just moved like 2 months ago and wanted to get a baseline for my electric bill in the new (bigger) apartment.

lol no, she asked me to do it.

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For Sale: [Conus] CM Storm Scout, TEC, WC, Laptop, A900, Model M, GPU, Audio, and a ton more!!