Ok so I unpack everything. I get the case out and take the thumb screws out of the back. After 10 minutes of fiddling I finally get the panels out. My understanding was the motherboard tray came out. It apparently doesn’t. This is after I had, had to unscrew two fans or whatever to get it to. Anyway, time to put the motherboard in.
I screw in my risers (once I’ve found them), and pull out the original back ports plate that came with the case and put my motherboard one in. It doesn’t fit. After 20 minutes of forcing it and bending my brand new case out of shape it goes in. I screw my motherboard in place as best I can with the few screws they provide for said purpose. Next I come to put the power supply in. Except, it won’t go in while the motherboard is on. So I unscrew the motherboard, put the PSU in, put the motherboard back on, screw it back on.
The second set of screws I try are long enough to actually screw in the PSU. Two of the four holes on the back of the case line up with the four screw holes in the PSU. Next for the CPU. I have to tear my way in as the box doesn’t open. I find a CPU fan inside making the one I bought rather redundant. Nice of them to tell me. After working out which bits are supposed to unclip I drop my CPU in place. Thanks to the clever design it doesn’t feel like it’s in right no matter which way you put it in. I eventually decide on a way and lock it into place.
Anyway I come to put my CPU fan in. Guess what? That’s right, the motherboard needs to come out again! I get the backplate in and put the motherboard back in. Now for the thermal paste. I’m a little confused as to why the cap is just metal with no hole for the paste to come out of. Eventually after a phone call with Maths Chris I get it sorted and manage to get the cooler on.
The memory goes in without much problems even though the slots and different styles for no apparent reason. The hard drives also slot in ok although they do move around a little. This seems standard with modern computers though.
Now I need to attach all the power cables. The ATX cable goes in fine. The case fans don’t match the motherboard though. Neither does the speaker / power LED / hhd LED / etc, there is like 10 of them, none of them match what is on the motherboard. Ironically enough, the instructions for the motherboard give something different to both what the case has and what the motherboard has! Not that I can really read much of the motherboard instructions as the writing is almost all in Chinese but it has a few English words to table the components as well as a diagram that doesn’t match up to what they offer.
I also begin to unpack the graphics card. The box has no simple way of opening. I manage to get a flap out only to find the box is divided into two and that everything is in the other seemingly unreachable compartment when keeping the box intact. Not that the card fits anyway.
So currently I need some taller screws because the ones supplied with the case aren’t tall enough to actually screw anything in, I need to work out how to wire my front side USB ports in because there is no English information in the manual and I need to solve the problem that the power LED wire takes 3 pins (even though it only has two wires and the middle pin doesn’t do anything) when there is only 2 on the motherboard as there should be.
This is why our industry has such a high failure rate.
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This entry was posted on Friday, June 1st, 2007 at 11:30 pm and is filed under Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.