First Build

[Lpfan4ever]

Well, my parents finally let me pull the gun on a new build that I've been gathering parts for since June. Here's what I've got (I'm gonna update this later with pics once I get some cold cathodes since it's boring without lights!)

Q9400 @ Stock, cooling with a Silverstone NT08. Overclock comes after I run Memtest and make sure my RAM is all good.
Gigabyte X48 DS4 (Courtesy of Tazer)
2x 2GB Mushkin Redline RAM @ 1066
BFG GTX260 Maxcore OC
Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer (Courtesy of Inik)
Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB
Corsair TX650 (Until I get my Quattro 850 from Tazer)
All this in my HAF932 (Thank you work for my Christmas bonus)

For peripherals I have:
Logitech G5 (Inik again)
Logitech G15
Creative Fatal1ty Headset
Samsung 2053BW (Tazer, again)

Disclaimer: All pics taken with an LG Shine camera, do not rip on me for quality as it's all I have

Most of my components:

CPU in and MX-2 ready to be spread:

RAM in place (Redlines look sweet):

And then my phone died and I didn't want to wait for it to charge, so I went on bulding it without pictures
The HAF is ridiculously tall, here's a pic of how close it is to the top of my desk (had to take out the keyboard tray to fit it) :

The reason I don't mind it being so close to the top is the top 230MM fan is out of commission because after putting my whole build together, my brother pointed out that a whole fin was missing from the top fan, and wasn't in the box either. The missing fin caused a retarded amount of vibration so I just unplugged it and sent CM and email, because Canada Computers want me to take my build apart and bring the whole case in for a single fan. Worst comes to worst I'll take out the fan and buy some 120MM's for there.
Overall, I think it was pretty easy for my first try probably due to the case, except for putting on my CPU heatsink because it overlaps everything no matter which way I put it. The NB heatsink on the mobo is way too big for aftermarket coolers, so I had to put the fan facing upwards for now and bend some fins up to fit over the RAM And the toolless expansion slot clips are freakin useless for bigger cards, such as video cards, because mine practically fell out of the slot with a little nudge. Hopefully I'll get to building something more challenging soon, maybe with some liquid involved in it (A guy can hope, right?)
You guys at HWC made this a lot easier with the amount of knowledge you have and the amount of sharing of such knowledge, and I thank you all for it. Also I would like to thank Inik and Tazer (Well, I'll thank him when my PSU comes) for the good deals on my parts

[LCB001]

Nice Rig, you're gonna have alot of fun OC'ing that ...

[chrisk]

I have heard of the fans on the HAF being flimsy...I wonder if CC resold you a returned case...those guys do that sometimes.

Let us know what fans you use....that HAF has been on my lust list for a little bit now as my 900 is a little cramped.

Nice rig you have going there congrats!

[Lpfan4ever]

Originally Posted by chriskwarren

I have heard of the fans on the HAF being flimsy...I wonder if CC resold you a returned case...those guys do that sometimes.

Let us know what fans you use....that HAF has been on my lust list for a little bit now as my 900 is a little cramped.

Nice rig you have going there congrats!

The case was definitely opened before I bought it, the tape job was horrendous. I think I saw the guy who returned it too, it was 2 weeks ago when I helped find my friend a new video card, and he was sitting next to an HAF box asking where to return it Too bad that was the only one in stock.

[Inik]

Nice build! I'm also waiting for my HAF from Puro
Keep us posted when it's complete!

[Lpfan4ever]

Alright, I had my first attempt at overclocking, with a little help from the Tech Report's overclocking for noobs guide They were using an X38 DS6 I believe, so the confusing Gigabyte BIOS was not as confusing when I had the pictures in the guide.
I'm currently at 3.2GHz and I ran Prime95 for 7 or 8 hours last night to make sure, and I got no errors. RAM is still at 1066, 5-5-5-15, I believe it is 2.05V they're at right now, but the Gigabyte BIOS is quite confusing . I'm not sure if the voltage is a bit high for my clocks though, because when I first booted at those I got a weird graphical glitch before the login screen. Let me know, I'm probably going to try some more and I have to run Memtest still.