SG03 Build

S

Skott

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Aug 12, 2006
Messages
4,291
Here's the build I'm doing now. Its nothing special or unique but its a good quality build. Its a medium price PC build for all practical purposes. Parts were ordered just before Thanksgiving and I'm just now finally getting the time to put it all together.


SG03 Case
2 - 120mm Scythe S-Flex SFF21F Case Fans
Corsair HX520w PSU
Intel E6750 CPU
ASUS P5K-VM Mobo
2GB Crucial Ballistix RAM BL2KIT12864AA604
Silverstone NT06-Lite HSF
eVGA 8800GT KO Video Card
Lite-On LH20A1H DVD+/-RW Drive
Samsung T166 500GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer Sound Card
MS XP Pro SP2
Logitech G5 Mouse
Saitek Eclipse Keyboard

Price came in just under $1150 but I already had the hard drive and keyboard lying around as spare parts. The Hard drive has never been used before and the Eclipse keyboard was just lying around unused. The Scythe fans are their F rating types. Most people get their E ratings because they are more quiet but in this build cooling is more important than noise and from what I researched they are not that loud. The PC will be used in a somewhat noisey environment anyway so its no biggie. The fans are rated 28dBA, 63.7CFM @ 1600RPM. If they prove to be too noisey I can always swap them out.

I'll try and get some pics up after its built :)
 
Little update

Got the PC up and running. Had a devil of a time trying to get the hard drive to boot. Spent two hours working on it. The formatting went fine and the BIOS showed it recognized but booting into Windows kept hanging up after initializing the initial files and it just kept looping back to that point. Honestly we're not sure what we did to get it to boot we tried so many things. Finally it just took. My buddy (who was helping me) just blames it on Samsung drives. He doesnt like them at all. ;)

Only other slow down we had was just making sure we had the NT06-Lite situated correctly on the mobo. You can set it in a couple different ways. After looking at some posted pics and some presetting tests we put the heat pipes butt end pointed top of case. As shown with Reswob's pics here:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1195527&page=5

btw, special thanks to Dworley, Reswob, and others for past posted pics to help my friend and I figure out the best way to set some things up in the SG03. They helped alot. We found when using the P5K-VM the way Reswob did it the psu and NT06-Lite lined up the best way.

So far early Orthos prime tests (Small FFT) are not too good temp wise IMO. Under load CoreTemp is showing 69C/69C and SpeedFan is showing 54/54C after 20 minutes of run time. Idle it was CoreTemp 39C/40C and SpeedFan 25C/25C. Room is a little on the warm side though of 80F. I usually keep the room about 75. I may need to reset the heatsink again. I think I'll let it run overnite though to give it a good burn in first and then see how temps are. Those load temps are too high for my liking.

I have the two 120mm fans set to run 100% speed and they are fairly quiet actually. better than i thought they would be. I think the weak link is that other than the psu there isnt really any good way to move air/heat from cpu. A heatsink with a fan would be a better ideal I'm thinking. But its too early still. Resetting the heatsink may help.

A exhaust fan would help wonders for the SG03 I think. In fact if I were to make a mod to the case it would be putting a 120mm blow hole ontop in the rear. There is room for one and a fan. The user would just need to cut a hole in the top and place a 120mm fan there.

Thats all for now. :)
 
Another Update:

Well, after stress testing the new rig for 24 hours or so I deemed it good enough to start loading games and see how it ran. Only installed two games that are not overly power intensive. Rome Total War Platinum Edition (mod) and M2TW and the 3.1 LTC mod for it. Gaming for a couple of hours and everything is fine. Then the hard drive started to make some clicking and clacking sounds. Not the rythmic smoothness of file searching neither. The harsh type. I've heard this sound before when a 60GB drive I once had went belly up. Sure enough an hour later the Samsung T-166 crashed dead and wasnt booting. Ugh! :mad:

After talking to a buddy on the phone who knows alot about PCs and fixing them had me try some things till he too pronounced it dead. :( So its back to to either Seagate or WD for me. No more Samsungs! Tomorrow I gotta order a new drive. Probably get a 250Gb or a 320Gb drive. Not looking to spend a huge amount this close to Xmas.

I did notice the 150Gb Raptor on sale at NE for $169 but I'm thinking I want more storage than boot speed this time around. Its a secondary gaming rig so boot up times arent real important for me in this case.
 
And another...

Today I ordered one of those new Seagate 7200.11 drives. The 500Gb model. NE had them for $119 so decided to try it. Hopefully it wont have the firmware problem I have heard some have had. I went the free shipping route so it probably wont get here till Monday at the earliest. I doubt it'll get here in time for the weekend.

Also ordered one of those GearGrip harness from CaseAce to making moving it around a bit easier. They reccomended the LT model for the SG03.

http://www.geargrip.com/details_gglt.php?UID=939658354476065d537b89
 
Skott said:
Got the PC up and running. Had a devil of a time trying to get the hard drive to boot. Spent two hours working on it. The formatting went fine and the BIOS showed it recognized but booting into Windows kept hanging up after initializing the initial files and it just kept looping back to that point. Honestly we're not sure what we did to get it to boot we tried so many things. Finally it just took. My buddy (who was helping me) just blames it on Samsung drives. He doesnt like them at all. ;)
Click to expand...

I had this exact same problem. Samsung drive, P5K-VM.

What fixed it was doing a BIOS reset, the one where you pull the battery or jumper something, I forget the exact procedure. But, for reference, that fixed it for me.
 
Skott said:
Only other slow down we had was just making sure we had the NT06-Lite situated correctly on the mobo. You can set it in a couple different ways. After looking at some posted pics and some presetting tests we put the heat pipes butt end pointed top of case. As shown with Reswob's pics here:...
Click to expand...

You might like to consider putting a 120mm fan under the NT-06 heatsink, blowing up. It is a squeeze, and it only works in one orientation (with the "butt end" of the heatpipes pointing towards the RAM; 90 degree clockwise turn for you), and you may need to remove the black SilverStone shroud (which is only for show). It's been mentioned here before.

Also, to check cooling, you can hook your front case fans to a variable speed controller. Ramp it up and down and see what it does for your temperatures. Ditto for the heatsink fan if you install it.

Unfortunately, in my experience, you just can't push this setup as "hard" as other full-size rigs. If you find a setup that you're happy with, stick with it.
 
I have the original SG03 120mm fan that I replaced with the two Scythes and was thinking of trying it on the underside of the NT06. I also got a 80 and a 90mm fan I can experiment with too.

I already ordered the Seagate 500Gb drive and it arrives tomorrow or Monday so I'm going to use it. Supposedly faster and better than any other 7200 on the market now. Thanks for that info though. :)
 
Skott said:
I have the original SG03 120mm fan that I replaced with the two Scythes and was thinking of trying it on the underside of the NT06. I also got a 80 and a 90mm fan I can experiment with too.

I already ordered the Seagate 500Gb drive and it arrives tomorrow or Monday so I'm going to use it. Supposedly faster and better than any other 7200 on the market now. Thanks for that info though. :)
Click to expand...

Any chance you have tried this yet or anyone else? I may do the same, if I knew how to mount a fan just below the heatsink and between the vid card. From the pics, it looks tight and I am not sure if there is 'ready made' hardware to do such a thing?
 
The lining up of the NT06 is spot on as you can see, but it works fairly well. I'm planning on putting a Q6600 in here, but I want to see how temps are if there is a fan underneath the NT06. Have you tried it yet?
 
I havent done mine yet. It has been done though. I think dworely has a pic of his setup and there have been one or two others as well that have pics somewhere in this section.
 
reswob said:
The lining up of the NT06 is spot on as you can see, but it works fairly well. I'm planning on putting a Q6600 in here, but I want to see how temps are if there is a fan underneath the NT06. Have you tried it yet?
Click to expand...

I keep meaning to do a "proper" post on this. Maybe one day I will...

I have a Q6600, and the SG-03/NT-06 combo with an 120mm fan wedged in there, blowing up and out.

I've done almost everything "reasonable" to get a good performing system out of it. Lapped heatsink. Lapped Q6600 (!). Arctic Silver 5. Dual 120mm fans as intake. Extra 80mm fan strapped to the outside of the PSU as exhaust. Some ducting. Minimum Vcore.

At 3.0GHz, and 25°C ambient, I'm seeing around 65°C under maximum workload (Prime95, Small FFT). This is high enough that I'm not willing to push it harder. Under "typical" gaming workload, it's around 55°C.

A 3.0GHz overclock isn't huge, so if you want huge overclocks, perhaps you can't use this setup...
 
Formatting the new hard drive (Seagate 7200.11 500Gb) now as I type this. I was talking to my buddy who helped me build this rig and he's positive he has a slot fan that can fit and work in the back upper part of the case so when I'm ready to do the 120mm fan mod I'm gonna take it to his house and we'll see what we can rig up. A 120mm fan under the NT06 fins and a rear slot exhaust should drop the temps a fair bit I'm thinking. I'm hoping 10C or more anyway. Not gonna do it till after Xmas though. Right now I just want to get the rig up and running.
 
Build Update:

Well, I installed the new Seagate 7200.11 drive. It replaced the original Samsung SpinSeries T166 that was bad. Here's what is interesting. When the old hd was in there I was getting load temps running Orthos Prime of 69C under full load with CoreTemp. (see above for details). Now after installing new hard drive and installing the software again I'm getting load temps of 50/51 C. Speed fan is matching it as well pretty much as 51/51 C. Idle temps are way down too on Coretemp readings. 23/24 C. SpeedFan is matching those numbers. Room temp is down as well (70F) but when we had a cold spell that matched the current temps back before the old HD went belly up the load temps still went to 69C and stayed there.

So, how much did the new hd install affect this? Not sure. I figure the room temps make some difference but something else is different too. I'm wondering if the hd or possibly the reinstall of XP Pro has made a difference? Has anyone seen this happen before? First I have seen it but this is only the third PC I have used with Orthos and monitoring SF and CoreTemp. Nothing other than hd and Windows XP have been touched. Possible bad install of CoreTemp maybe the first time?

Not complaining mind you. In fact I'm quite happy. Just a bit puzzled by this.
 
Skott said:
...Now after installing new hard drive and installing the software again I'm getting load temps of 50/51 C. Speed fan is matching it as well pretty much as 51/51 C. Idle temps are way down too on Coretemp readings. 23/24 C. SpeedFan is matching those numbers. Room temp is down as well (70F)...
Click to expand...

Hmm. 70°F is about 21°C. In that case, I can't see how you'd get idle temps of 23°C...
 
Dunno what to tell you. Thats what CoreTemp and SpeedFan are telling me. Wouldnt surprise me if they are wrong. Also that 70F is what the a/c unit was saying. It could be off too.
 
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