Purchase Price :- Approx.£2000 Including UK VAT So Far (without Water Cooling) See dealers below

Features:-

CPU:- AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Winchester S939 512Kb £185

Motherboard:- MSI K8N Diamond Socket 939 nForce 4 SLI PCI-E ATX £152

Memory:- 2off Crucial 512MB DDR PC4000 • 2.5-4-4-8 • UNBUFFERED • NON-ECC • DDR500 • 2.8V • 64Meg x 64 Ballistix £78 each

Hard Disk Drive:- Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 NCQ 160GB SATA150 7200rpm 8MB £67

Full Tower Case:- 1off Lian-Li PC V2100 Black Aluminium Full-Tower (No PSU) £192

Power Supply:- Enermax Noisetaker 600W EG701 AX-VE PSU £100

Graphics Card:- MSI NX6800GT-T2D256E GeForce 6800 GT 256MB DDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) £328 With provision for adding another one at a later date

Keyboard and Mouse:- Logitech diNovo Media Desktop 2.0 £148 (I am sucker for shiny Bluetooth wireless gadgets)

Optical Drive:- Existing GSA-4120B LG DVD-Rewriter DL DVD +r/-r/RW RAM £50

Floppy and Memory card Reader:- Mitsumi 7-in-1 USB Media Drive FA404M - Floppy disc drive / card reader - Floppy/Hi-Speed USB £17

Monitors:- 2off Viewsonic VP171B-2 17" LCD Monitor - Black (MO-033-VS) £264 Each These are the new 8ms ones that have just come into stock with a few UK dealers. Plus It's cheaper to get two medium res 17" LCD's than one large (Slow) 20" Hi Res one. (It is time to retire my old 19" IBM G96) and get my desk space back.

Operating System :- Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre Edition 2005 £79 with MCE2005 IR Remote and Receiver£23

Network Equipment :- Netgear DG834GT ADSL 108 Mbps Wireless Router with free USB Wireless Adapter £110

Printer :- Existing Canon A3 I9950 Photo Quality with CD Print attachment

Pending Equipment

2off Nexus Real Silent 120mm fans for tower case cooling. Mainly for getting rid of the motherboard and HDD heat load. £14 Each
1off Matrix Orbital MX412 Black Keypad with 3 off temp probes £140
1off Innovatek SET Passiv XxK (Universal) Black Ultra
Comprising of 12V Pump, CPU Block, Pipe, Fittings, Ultra Sized Radiator 600mmx370mm
1off Innovatek Tank-O-Matic external rev1.1 Black fittings
1off Innovatek Cool-Matic NVIDIA NV40 rev1.5 WB-VGA994 For cooling the 6800GP Video card
Approx £375 for all the water cooling kit

I have been wanting to upgrade my PC for a while and made myself wait until the next technology change came about. For me it was the availability of the new SLI based motherboards and video cards.

I also wanted to tinker with water-cooling and this article will be expanded to cover this area in due course.

For now here are the pictures of the standard air cooled machine. In this stock setup with no additional after market cooling or mods it runs perfectly. The only thing I don't like is the amount of noise it generates. The main culprit is the Graphics Card cooling fan. This is seriously loud! Not good. You may think I am exaggerating here. But after having a quiet PC there is no going back. If the TV with the home cinema surround is on it is not too bad but can still be heard in deathly quiet sections of your favorite scary film :-(

My previous machine was modified to reduce the noise with thanks to the help provided on the SCPC forums and website. I think it will be a similar case with this machine and you can see my proposed water cooled solution listed out above.

The main change as far as operator input and displays from my old machine is the move to LCD TFT twin display panels. I have used an IBM 19" G96 monitor for a few years along with a NEC/Mitsubishi 2070SB 22" Monitor at work. These are both excellent CRT devices. I was going to get another 22" CRT for myself but found out they had stopped making them so was forced to look for a good alternative. I wanted a 20" LCD but the cost was HUGE and they do not perform well at high speed. So Video use and games would not be too hot.

So after much head scratching I thought why not get two smaller but faster LCD displays and use them together? Good idea! BenQ and Viewsonic both had just released the new 8ms (Very fast) display onto the market and I thought that these would be ideal. So I opted for the Viewsonic VP171b displays. Mainly because they come in a cool black bezel version! Sad but vain I know. LOL

They are set up on the DVI (Digital) Video input from the twin output on the MSI 9800GT graphics card. The displays are in a word Stunning. I was warned that the colours may not be as good as my CRT. Well they are certainly good enough for me! Games are also excellent with no motion blur that slower display seem to have. I made the right choice.

I was a little concerned how a dual screen display would work in reality. But it works really well. Its easy to set up which one you want as a master display and the second screen can be placed on either side of it without problem. Once setup you can just move off the edge of one screen with the mouse pointer and onto the other. Same with windows, just drag them onto the required screen. If you maximize a window it fills the screen that it is currently displayed on. Simple.

The Logitech Di Novo V2.0 Keyboard and Mouse is also a great improvement. This is the new improved version 2 of the set that is Bluetooth 1.2 compliant at last! It integrates with windows media player and shows the current song title on the media pad display. New emails are also displayed when they arrive. Very slick and well executed. The mouse is rechargeable and has extra scroll buttons along with prev and next page buttons. The recharging station is also a Bluetooth hub and will allow you to connect other devices to your PC such as your mobile phone.

I suppose I ought to describe a few of the other features of this PC.

The CPU is an AMD 64Bit 3500+ Winchester. This was chosen mainly on price per performance the very top line AMD CPU are almost three times more expensive yet only offer a third of improvement in performance. Easy decision then!

Motherboard is the MSI K8N Diamond. This was a difficult choice. As MSI have played a bit of a game with the UK market on these boards. They do not come with the WiFi and Bluetooth as seen in all of the online reviews. Not to worry as I already have Bluetooth with my Logitech setup and my WiFi from Netgear is 108Mbps anyway but is connected to this PC via an Ethernet. So no advantage there either. Others may think different though and at £170 for the complete version it may be too expensive.

On the other hand it does perform well and it does have a built in Creative Labs sound card. Although apparently this also has issues if you want to use the Line outputs as you must use a V1.2 Power supply with a -5V line connected to the motherboard plug. Guess what you also need? A V2 motherboard plug to connect to the MB socket. Seems like a conflict of interests here then!

My Enermax Noisetaker PSU is V2 and does not have the -5 Line. Whoops! Not to worry as I only use the Coax SPDIF output anyway and this works O.K. Pheeww! Other people may not be so happy about this though! Be warned. I imagine they will fix it quick smart on the next release of the board though so not to worry if you wait a while.

Nice features of the MB are the many USB2 ports, Firewire, two Gigabits Ethernet Ports, SPDIF, Optical/Coaxial. Status LED's on the Firewire header for MB fault codes. 6 SATA connectors. Plus the all important dual SLI sockets. I am not going to review the MB here as these are sites that have already done an excellent job of that. Just be aware of the above issues an you will be fine.

The SLI technology allows two ideally identical graphics card to be installed and essentially share the load of any graphics processing that needs to be done. So in this mode you would still only connect the monitor/s to the one card and the other would send it's portion of the display information over the SLI and direct VGA link. A small PCB is provided for linking two cards with the MB. So good future proofing if you need more power in another 18 months, by which time a second card will cost about 1/3 of what it does now!

I am more than happy with my single 6800GT card. It does everything I need at the 1280 x 1024 native resolution of my displays. And I don't need 100fps as my monitors max out at 72Hz anyway. But if someone releases a 32" LCD screen with 100Hz display for less than the cost of my current displays I WILL add another Graphics cards and try out SLI for myself. LOL

The other change is my move to Windows XP Media Edition 2005, this is currently available from certain UK suppliers if you buy it with things like HDD drives MB etc at the same time. What a bargain, you get the full XP Pro edition (not the upgrade) with all the Media Centre add ons and SP2 all for around £80 I also recommend you get the Microsoft WMCE IR remote with this as well. It give you full control over the media functions on the 10ft menu system. Also it will allow you to record programs and change channels if you have a compatible tuner card installed.

A DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) Tuner card (Or two!) is next on my shopping list. At which point I should be able to throw away my VCR! Making the PC silent has got to be done first though.

On to the other items.

Lets have a look at the case. It's hard to miss! The Lian Li V2100 Full Tower case is huge. I thought with the water-cooling that I needed plenty of room to work with and that is the main idea with the full sized case. It does make it far easier to work on things inside the case or install new shiny bits of kit! The case is marketed as a quiet case and is indeed fitted with two 120mm fans that produce less noise that the usual 60mm type. The sides of the case are covered with sound absorbing foam material which helps to dampen any internal fan noise. The rear fan is also fitted with a shroud to achieve the same. It's a shame the top rear half is covered in small holes as I am sure these let the noise out! But they also serve to allow some cooling air to escape the case another essential feature.

I love the access to the inside of the case. Just undo ONE thumbscrew and pull. That's it, the whole side panel can now be removed. Why can't all PC's be like that?

The inside of the case is split into three main areas. MB tray section in the top (Note the MB is Inverted). HDD Section and a PSU section. The idea is the split the cooling airflow and improve cooling. I have no idea if it works but it does have advantages. The MB has much better access and hot air from the CPU goes straight out the rear 120mm fan and is not drawn into the PSU as on normal case designs.

The front of the case has a large hinged removable door. This is swung from the LHS ONLY, but it can be taken off if it gets in the way. I think it helps with the noise damping and it certainly makes for a cleaner front panel. A stealth cover is provided for the optical drive and works fine with my LG DVD writer.

Ports are provided on the bottom of the case for USB2 Firewire and audio. I do not use these at the moment as I have many ports available on the back of the case and use the Mitsumi card reader for my camera. Could me good for my MP3 player though.

The Mitsumi drive is really great. It gives you a 1.44" floppy but cleverly also add two card reader ports two this as well. These are connected to an internal USB2 header so you need to make sure you have a spare on the MB. No problem with the K8N. I can now plug my CF and SD camera card directly into the front of the PC. No annoying card reader that I normally lose or tread on. Although my Firewire reader is probably a bit faster at transfers.

The Enermax Noisetaker 600Watt supply is more than overkill for this system. But it is very very quiet. Plus it carries on running when you turn off to cool itself down. If I go mad and fit the additional VGA card and 5 more HDD along with water cooling and a VFD display it will still cope without problem. It's an ATX V2 supply and has the extra SLI plugs along with the 24pin MB plug, 4 off SATA connectors and loads of standard HDD power plugs.

I played with the speed control pot on the back of the unit. It seemed to make no difference. Perhaps the load is so low that it does not need to speed the fan up?

The memory was from Crucial and is the Ballistix range. It is better than it needs to be, but one think I never skimp on is the quality of the memory. This is from previous intermittent faults with no-name brands. So this time I thought better safe than sorry. So far so good!

The hardisk is a Seagate Barracuda Serial ATA, 160GB in size. It seems very quick and the noise is drowned out by other items at the moment. If it does become an issue, suspended mounting options will be looked into.

That all for now. I will be back in the next few week with all of the water cooling additions.

I'm off to play Doom3 in all its glory! Or is that in all its Gory! LOL

I thought that I had better add a quick section for anyone who has not built a PC before, so this is my quick assembly guide. If you have built a PC before I will accept any constructive comments to make this guide better! Thanks.

You will need a few basic tools to start with.

1.) Cross headed Screwdriver
2.) Small pair of needle nose pliers
3.) Anti static wrist Strap
4.) Felt tip or CD Marker pen.
5.) Zip / Cable ties for improving the neatness of the cables.

The Anti Static wrist strap is a very good idea if you don't want to kill your very sensative electronic components in the build process. I attatch it to a good gound or earth point such as the metal case of another computer that is turned off but still plugged in. Another good choice would be a copper heating pipe. Also watch what clothing you wear. Avoid man made fibres that hold large static charges.

I'll start with the simple items first.

1.) Open the case, removing both side panels and the front door. Carefully remove the stealth covers and housings for the optical and floppy drives. Then screw in the drives using the supplied correct size fixings.
2.) Replace the stealth covers.
3.) Fit the Hard Disk. In my case this is simply to attach 4 special screws and to slide it between the mounting rails and slide the two locking levers into place.
4.) Remove the rear PSU mounting plate and attach the PSU to it, but do to tighten the screws fully.
5.) Refit the PSU plate and slide the PSU down in the adjustment slots until it meets the case mounted shelf.
6.) Tighten the PSU screws.
7.) Get your Anti Static wrist strap and make sure you are grounded.
8.) Remove the mother board socket cover from the rear of the case. Be careful as the edges can be very sharp. I use the needle nose pliers to push gently along the edges.
8.) Unwrap the Motherboard and find the supplied socket cover and install ino the case. Making sure that you fit it the right way round.
9.) Look at the inside of the case and you will see many holes for the mother board mounting points. Get the mother board and mark the case holes which line up with it.
10.) You can now install the supplied mounting stand off fixings and tighten them with the needle nose pliers.
11.) I now install the motherboard in the case. But you may wish to install the CPU and Memory outside the case as it gives better access. If you do then follow the guide below but make sure you put the board on a non static sensitive surface such as a wooden table top or the bag that it came in. DO NOT put it on the carpet! You have been warned.
12.) Carefully pass the rear sockets through the holes in the mounting plate. You may need to bend the tabs out of the way a little to do this. But they should still touch the socket housings to shield them correctly.
13.) Install and tighten down all the board fixing screws. Do not over tighten them.
14.) Now we already to install the CPU. Again make sure you are grounded. Open the CPU package and read the supplied instructions.
15.) Lift the socket lever. Drop in the chip the correct way round. Close the socket lever.
16.) Install the CPU heat sink as instructed in the AMD guide. Make sure you get the clips on correctly and close the locking lever.
17.) Plug in the CPU fan cable to the correct socket on the Motherboard.
18.) Install the Memory modules into the first two sockets. For optimum performance make sure that the modules are the same type and make.
19.) Unwrap the video card and remove the slot cover from the case to allow it to be installed.
20.) Install the video card and mounting slot screw. Attach any required additional power supplies to the card. There should be the required connector on a ATX V2 supply for this. Or the card may come with an adaptor for two HDD power cables. If it does make sure you use the supplies from two different looms from the PSU to share the load.
21.) Install the mother board PSU connector.
22.) Attach any supplied additional USB / Firewire sockets to the rear case slots. Observe the board instructions and connect these to the correct mother board socket header pins.
23.) You now need to connect the case power on / speaker / HDD LED/ and power LED to the correct pins on the motherboard. These should be clearly marked in the instructions. Make sure you get them the correct way round. If you don't the LED's will not light up.
24.) Install the cables for the Optical drive and the floppy. These are a pain as they are so large and bulky. You can carefully fold them to be neater.
25.) Install the Serial ATA Hard disk drive connector between the drive and the mother board.
26.) Attach the PSU power connectors to the HDD / Optical and Floppy drives.
27.) Make sure any case fans are also connected to the relevant connections point on the mother board of the PSU cables.

You should now be ready for powering the system for the first time. Before you do just check all the connections and make sure everything is reasonably neat and tidy. This will give better airflow through the case and stop any free connectors shorting out on anything. You can use zip ties to tidy away any excessive cable. Do not over tighten them though.

Attach your monitor, keyboard, mouse and power cables and hit that all important power on switch!

If the system starts beeping wildly at you don't panic. Listen to the pattern of beeps and/or LED's of any diagnostic displays (as on my MSI board) and then switch off and go look in the manual. Most probable causes are incorrectly seated memory. Check cause and try to rectify it and then try again!

You should now be able to turn on the machine and get a boot disply that will probably tell you that you need system disk.

You are now ready to install your operating system. Put the CD in the drive and press any key., The system should restart and boot from the install CD. Follow the on screen guide and away you go. Just a couple of points here that are important. Most modern mother boards use their own drivers for the HDD system (Usually for a RAID setup) You will need the supplied floppies handy when the XP install routine asks for any additional drivers and requires you to press the F6 key. Do this and put in the disks as requested. Otherwise the install program will fail to detect you hard disk and you will be stuck.

Other settings can be adjusted in the Bios at start-up but these are complex and you should understand what you are doing before altering any of them. To get a working system you should not need to even go into the BIOS setting screen as the defaults will give you a stable working start point.

For ultimate performance and over clocking please refer to some of the excellent online sites for information and tips.

UK PC Dealers used for my above purchases.

www.Microdirect.co.uk Used for most items

www.overclock.co.uk Lian Li case

www.dabs.co.uk Netgear Networking

www.Crucial.com I Bought my memory direct and got a 4% discount plus free postage!

www.kustompcs.co.uk Matrix Orbital (Pending)

www.koolnquiet.co.uk Nexus Fans + Loads More (Pending)

www.pc-water-cooling.com Innovatek Water Cooling (Pending) same company as koolnquiet see above. Very helpful on the phone and I look forward to dealing with them when they get the parts I need into stock.

For help on systems and silencing a noisy PC

SCPC forums and website

Equipment Reviews

These sites helped with the reviews on the components I looked at for my system.

Viewsonic VP171b Review

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=1317&cid=5&pg=2

MSI K8N Diamond Review

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=1364&cid=6&pg=1

Matrix Orbital

http://www.3dvelocity.com/reviews/mx2series/mx2.htm