Bang for the buck Overclocker

[Alwaysrun]

I love the smell of new parts in the morning! Well it was an agonizing wait for my part to arrive but after a full day sitting idle at NCIX packed and ready to go it still wasn't picked up by Purolator. Then it sat at the Purolator depot for another full day collecting dust before making the last 50km trek to my house..uggg. Maybe the shipping gods knew I only paid $5 for shipping so they ensured that my normal shipping time of 2 days from order to arrival took the 6 day path instead. Anyways on to the goodies.


So much for the Heavy shipping box I paid for


"Smells like Victory"


"Huston, We have a problem"


CO stepping

Well I called NCIX right away, Pissed off that I got charged for the heavy duty shipping box and didn't get one, the fact that the CPU box came looking like they'd used it as a puck to play hockey with, and thirdly I very nicely asked in my shipping note that they try thier best to ship me a new EO stepping chip.

Anywho... After 15min on hold to a person who was in thier 1st semester of English as a 2nd language, they told me to crack the CPU box open and take pictures of the chip and the deformed outer box as well and send the pictures off to thier shipping dept.

What a royal pain in the butt and I so wanted to get down to biz piecing everything together. I bought a new dremel, primer, paint, wire sleeving, shrink wrap wire tubing, bondo and assorted zip ties ect ect ect but this chip now seems to have me in a holding pattern.

I know it's no big deal on the stepping and NCIX never promises specific revisions but damn I waited extra long to place my order so they could get rid of the old stock and I could get a new EO which so many people have gotten recently from them. Anyways I'm going to start ripping down the CM 690 and prime it for pain and cable management and I'll up some more pics tonight.

[misterlarry]

Looking forward to the build log.

[enaberif]

You won't get what you want.

You can't ask them as they have a warehouse of over 20000000 cpus and they aren't going to hand pick it for you. They are going to grab one and toss it in.

[Chilly]

Originally Posted by enaberif

You won't get what you want.

You can't ask them as they have a warehouse of over 20000000 cpus and they aren't going to hand pick it for you. They are going to grab one and toss it in.

doesn't mean they should of litterally tossed the cpu in the box

[enaberif]

Originally Posted by Chilly

doesn't mean they should of litterally tossed the cpu in the box

true.

[Cptn Vortex]

No way they are going to pick an E0 for you. It might be listed on your order, but warehouse staff dont look at models or anything.

[Eldonko]

Yeah best bet is to either buy a second hand E0 or buy from a small local retailer so u can get them to check.

[miggs78]

Get re-imbursed for shipping at least, I won't be happy myself when I get a box kicked like that. But looking forward to your build log, especially with bondo use.. !!

[Alwaysrun]

Well we'll see what they say but I've read others at NCIX complain about not getting the heavy duty box but they didn't order more than a couple parts. I've seen the box a user posted over there and I thought they'd certainly use that behemoth since I ordered a complete system, monitor, case, components. Giving me back the 5.99 for the box or the 5 bucks for the shipping I'd gladly turn down if they'd send me a CPU with EO stepping that wasn't a victim of a slap shot.

But alas that will not happen as I just got an e-mail back regarding the CPU and crunched box. "I can seen in the picture that the damage is to the package only.The CPU is intact.You can go ahead to install and test it. If you have any further problem during the testing, please don't hesitate to contact us." Thanks Fei your a peach! I wanted a EO stepping ffs..haha ohh well


But enough griping, it's drizzling outside now so I put on hold my Case for the time being as striping down the CM 690 is kind of..well...boring
I really want to take a look at the parts and one in peticular which hasn't gotten much face time with the press was the Palit Radeon HD 4850 with it's new HS fan. So heres some picts.


Short and sweet


Chunky around the waist definately not a single slot jobby


Measured only 3mm gap between ram and HS, no easymode ramsinks addon


End of the card, more bare ram, VRM (I think) and powah.


Well I feel like I'm abusing HWC image upload feature so I'll take a break for awhile and throw a couple more shots up when I have the rig up and running. BTW the bondo is to cover the Power and reset button on the side of the case as I plan on moving those to the top of the CM690 as I've seen in a worklog posted here and I thought that was a terrific idea so sorry I'm not all that original but do take requests haha.

[Alwaysrun]

Last update for today. I struggled with the Thermalright 775 bolt through kit for about 2 hours untill I just gave up on it. The skrews just wouldn't reach and it wasn't for the lack of trying. I just pieced back together the push pins and snapped them in np and they were tight as a drum. One observation about the fan included with the Vendetta 2 is that its very quiet indeed but really dosn't push much air at all. I was parusing the bios for an hour and reading the mobo manual and the fan cranked up to about 1450rpm and the air comming out the other side of the Vendetta was barely noticable. I'll be stressing the system more tomorrow once I get an OS on it but I suspect I'll be exchanging the Vendetta's fan for a Noctua NF-P12.

As for the Palit 4850 I think it's possesed. It cranks up full throttle at the strangest times, On boot up, on entering bios, and just about anytime it wants to it just has a hissy and goes full out...and its very loud. Scratch that, it's abnoxiously loud. Heh maybe once I get into Windows and have a driver and better fan control it'll be better but I kid you not the fan can wake the dead at full rpm.

Some boring picts of my bargain parts going together, wish I had better bling to show everyone


Very soft lcd screen cloth and alcohol to wipe CPU and HS down.


Turned out to be a good idea, but now look at my new monitor cloth!


Maybe a tad to much TIM?


Locked down HS and ran for 1 hr. Looks OK to me


Huston we have Bios. It's 28C ambient so temp look ok for 1hr idle. (fireplace on)


What a mess to clean up in the morning. Bleh

Hope my picts don't suck to bad I'm using a cheap'o Kodak Easy share M753 but its way better than my cell phone