Corsair Carbide 300R Mid Tower ATX case

So I've decided to start the posts about my friend's Oh Baby! computer by talking about a couple of the parts that are used in the build. Firstly I will be talking about the Corsair Carbide 300R Mid Tower ATX case. The rig cost 65 dollars (not including tax or shipping and on sale from 90 dollars at Newegg.ca) not including a 15 dollar mail-in rebate. I don't like to rely on mail-in rebates as the deciding factor of price of the rig because sometimes the mail-in rebate does not get fulfilled. For a 65 dollar rig that is normally 90 dollars, I expected a bit more from Corsair on this one. There's a few things missing that should have been included with the rig especially considering it's price range. That being said, it does still have some very nice features to which I will be going over in this overview of the Corsair Carbide 300R Mid Tower ATX case. 


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Final parts are here

Got the final parts today for the Oh Baby! rig today. What came in the mail today was a Corsair Carbide 300R case, an Intel Core i5 3570k, and a LG DVDRW drive. Soon to follow is going to be a post containing me building the rig.

The Corsair Carbide 300R box, i5 3570K, and LG DVDRW drive (in OEM packaging)

In other news, currently my overclock on that DFI LanParty rig is unstable, doesn't seem to want to pass Prime95 right now. Going to take some fiddling to figure out why it's not stable, but I know that it's fixable. I'll post an update when I manage to get around to fixing it.

DeepCool IceWind Pro and the DFI LanParty Rig

OK, so as I referenced in a couple of previous articles, I am working on an old DFI LanParty Ultra-D motherboard rig and seeing how it compares to an old ASRock 939Dual-Sata2 motherboard as well as an old ASUS A8N-SLI motherboard in terms of performance and see how it has held up over the years. To help with overclocking, I purchased a DeepCool (or Logisys if you want to go by the brand that acquired them) IceWind Pro heat-sink. This heat-sink I purchased was 35 dollars and has heat pipe direct touch or HDT technology. This is where the heat pipes are in direct contact with the CPU allowing for better heat transfer rather than the heat pipes being soldered to the base of the heat-sink and the base of the heat-sink has to transfer the heat from the CPU to the heat pipes (which is less efficient in heat transfer).


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Got some of the parts today!

Well today I was woken up to a massive box placed at my bed by my dad (who I thank for answering the door). All that's missing at this point is the case, CPU and DVDRW drive. Today I received a MSI Z77A-GD65 LGA1155 motherboard, a EVGA GTX 560 DS 1GB GPU, an OCZ ZT 750w PSU, a Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 60GB SSD, a Patriot G2 8GB dual channel kit (2x4GB), and a Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme heat-sink all for the computer we're dubbing the Oh Baby! computer (an inside joke with my friends).

Most of the Oh Baby! parts

I'm a bit disappointed that the Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme box is an OEM box, because I have ordered one in the past (mind you it was a few years ago) that came in a nicely packaged and decorated box. But it's not what's on the packaging that matters as much as what's on the inside of it. Just wish that they would go back to that packaging in the future as it is more professional looking and shows that Tuniq means business.

The OEM new box on the left and the old box on the right

For myself, I ordered the IceWind Pro heatsink as well as a Silicon Power 32GB flash drive (because I needed a drive with more storage than 4GB so I can store seasons of TV Shows on it without running out of space).

The IceWind Pro heat-sink and Silicon Power 32GB flash drive

The case, CPU and DVDRW should hopefully be here by the end of the week and then I can dedicate an entire article to how it was built. In the meantime, I will also be covering in a separate article on the installation of the IceWind Pro into the DFI system as well as seeing how good it overclocks.

Parts on the way for another build

So one of my friends had their PC unfortunately crash recently. And to that, they said, time for an upgrade. So we discussed something that would last 5 years and would be a fairly decent gaming rig. I came up with these specs for $1000:

Case: Corsair Carbide 300R
Motherboard: MSI Z77A-GD65
CPU: Intel i5-3570K
Heatsink: Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme
RAM: Patriot Gamer 2 2X4GB DDR3-1600
GPU: EVGA GTX 560 DS SSC
HDD: WD Caviar Black 500GB (from old PC) + a new Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 60GB SSD
PSU: OCZ ZT 750W 80+ Bronze
DVDRW: LG GH24NS90
Fans: Xigmatek 140MM XLF-F1455 (x4 @ $5 a piece) + the ones included with the Corsair Case

The parts are now on order (total including tax and shipping was approx 1150), and both him and I are looking forward to the parts in the mail. I will have pictures up the day I receive the parts and I'm sure I'll have pics up of me putting it all together as well in a seperate post later on.
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On a separate topic, Charlie recently gave me an old PC she no longer needed. Inside was a lost gem of a motherboard, a DFI LanParty Ultra-D Socket 939 board. Man, that thing was a beast back in it's day. Unfortunately, the RAM that was installed into the system wasn't cooperating with the motherboard, causing it not to post. Considering it used DDR-400 RAM, I had plenty kicking around to try the system. It definitely did not like the high density RAM that I had lying around, so I tried also some Mushkin Silverline RAM that I had installed into another 939 board prior, and the thing boots up just fine now. I went through and dusted out the computer (sat outside for like 2 hours dusting off the internals and all the components because it sat for so long and looks like it collected a lot of dust when it was in use) and now is fairly respectable inside now. There's still some dust in some hard to reach areas, but it's certainly a fair bit better than the condition I originally received it in. It came packaged in a Coolermaster Centurion 5 case, which is a decent case for it's time with plenty of front ventilation. Also inside, it had an AMD Athlon X2 3800+ which is a decent dual-core CPU as well (but not as well performing gaming-wise as a Core 2 Duo). I've ordered a Deep Cool (or Logisys if you want to go by the brand that procured them) IceWind Pro heat-sink to install on to the system so I can overclock it and see how good I can get it performing. It's a decent performance heat-sink that won't break the bank too much and considering I won't really be using the system, I don't want to drop 60+ dollars on a heat-sink (the IceWind Pro only cost 32 dollars). I'm curious if it will outperform my ASUS 939 board (where the Mushkin Silverline RAM came from) as well as my ASRock motherboard that I was originally running with for years prior to building my i7 rig. My ASRock board outperformed my ASUS board (2.8GHZ vs 2.5GHZ) but I believe that was mostly due to the fact that the ASRock BIOS seemed to have better overclocking capabilities, or it could be that the CPU itself just wasn't up to the task, but we'll see how the DFI rig compares to those two for a general sense of how it's held up over the years.

Parts parts parts.

Boy I love getting parts in the mail. Makes me feel like it's Christmas opening up boxes from Newegg and NCIX to be greeted with two new XFX PRO550W 80+ Bronze power supplies, two sets of Mushkin Blackline 2x4GB kits, and two Western Digital 1TB Caviar Blue hard drives all of which are going into Charlie's duplicate rigs. I also ordered two Bitfenix 140mm Spectre Pro Blue LED fans and one Bitfenix 120mm Spectre Pro Blue LED fans to install into my own rig (because the two top mounted Xigmatek XAF fans are making a bit of vibration noise and it's really annoying me).


I've installed everything already into the one In-Win rigs, just need to get the SATA cables that came with the motherboards (which are in possession by Charlie at this moment) to hook the CD drive back up. I managed to fit the excess cables neatly behind where the 3.5" hard drive bays are allowing the system to have the most efficient airflow without extra cables getting in the way. I hope this will start to clear up stability issues and BSOD's because now the system has more than enough wattage for all the components with a fair amount of room for future improvements as well as better quality RAM. Fingers crossed!


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Parts on the way for Charlie

So I had to order some parts for the Avon customer (which will now be referred to as Charlie as she allowed permission to use her name). Ordered two WD 1TB Caviar Blue hard drives, two XFX PRO550W power supplies, and two sets of Mushkin Enhanced Blackline 2x4GB DDR3-1600 kits  for both her pcs. Hoping it will be here before the weekend so that she can start having a stable system.

The situation takes a scenario from my page about power supplies. The builder thought he'd put in a GTX550Ti (which is a great entry level gaming GPU) into Charlie's systems in order to jack up the price of the computers. However, he didn't take into account how much wattage a 550Ti draws and as such only put a cheap 350W power supply into the two systems. Because of this, Charlie is having a bunch of BSODs, freezing etc simply because the wattage is being stretched past the peak wattage of the power supply. Not only this, but there was no headroom to any upgrades in the systems at all in the future. As such, I've planned to  upgrade them to a 550W power supply so that it can take the extra hard drive in the system as well as give them some headroom so that they can do a bit more upgrading in the future if necessary.

Not only is the power supply too low of a wattage, but the RAM was also a bit cheaped out on. Instead of using premium RAM that has heat-sinks on it, the builder decided to use Kingston Value RAM (which isn't bad if you're on a REALLY tight budget). Considering how much was paid for the system, I definitely think that having better RAM and a larger hard drive would have been more important than jacking up the price with a graphics card that will probably never see past 20% load. The reason behind getting heat-sinks on RAM is because less heat is less wear on the parts. Not having a heat-sink on the RAM causes the chips to stay hotter longer and as such, wear out quicker. If you are on a tight budget and just need something right away that you PLAN to upgrade later, you can always get value based RAM so that you can have a system that is operational, however I would suggest against value based RAM if you plan on owning the system for more than 3 years. It's not necessarily going to mean that after 3 years RAM without heat-sinks will fail, but I have seen from personal experience that RAM without heat-sinks does get unstable a fair bit quicker than premium RAM with heat-sinks installed.

Lastly, because of the need of storage, I have planned to upgrade Charlie's systems to have a Western Digital 1TB Caviar Blue storage drive in the system (as well as the 500GB that is already currently installed in the computers. Even though Charlie expressed her NEED for as large of storage space as possible to the builder, he instead only put a 500GB drive in (when a 1TB isn't that much more in price). I was fairly disappointed when I heard how she needed a lot of storage but instead only got a 500GB and then a graphics card that is more than she'll ever use.

What I would have done if I built the system from scratch is build an AMD FM1 system instead first off to save cost which still having excellent performance (as the most expensive A8-3870K is almost the same price as the i3 2120). I would have put premium RAM in, a motherboard with four DDR3 slots (to allow for more upgrades in the future if really necessary to put extra RAM in), a lower end graphics card (such as a 6570 that only costs 60 dollars) to save on price as she doesn't plan on doing any hardcore gaming, and an aftermarket heat-sink on the CPU (as both systems are currently sporting stock cpu heat-sinks) to allow for easy cool overclocking.

She was also charged for a Logitech Z506 speaker setup (which she voiced that she did not need). Considering the price of the speaker setup (which usually goes between 90-100 dollars), I would have instead (if still needing speakers) hooked her up with a set of Logitech LS21 speakers or Creative A220 speakers.

Here are the current specs of her two systems which are built identical(pre-upgraded by me):
In Win EM013 Chassis
ASUS P8H61-M LE Motherboard
I3-2120
Kingston Value RAM 2x4GB
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB HDD
EVGA GTX550Ti Graphics Card


Would have also liked to see in her system a more updated chipset (such as a Z68 or Z77 chipset) on the motherboard as H61 is fairly old now. But soon hopefully everything will be cleared up on the system and resolve several issues Charlie is having at this time on the two systems (assuming Windows was installed correctly and all drivers are installed correctly).

Updates and Why you should get a second opinion

So over the last few days I've been helping one of my mom's Avon customers with a bunch of computer problems that they have been dealing with through another company (which will not be named here). The employee that was supposed to deal with all their issues has been lazy and lying about work he's done and has had poor performance across the board thus far. I'm glad they're finishing dealing with him because not only does it make their life easier only having to deal with me (of which I'm pretty much available 24/7) and am willing to actually do work assuming I'm not sick to my stomach or something that day. They have been overcharged on parts that they don't need for their systems and are getting billed for stuff that hasn't even been done. This is why you should always get a second opinion and look around whenever possible to weed out sketchy computer technicians.

Now, on to updates on the Reiter rig. I've gotten Windows 7 64-bit all up to date on the system and have installed several other programs. Everything seems stable thus far, but have yet to do a Prime95 test because I've been busy with other things around the house and the previously mentioned help with the Avon customer. That being said, everything is definitely shaping up on the system and it is near ready to go, just want to cross the T's and dot the I's to make sure that as soon as it leaves my hands it'll be stable for the friend I'm building it for without any hiccups.

Other than that, not much else to talk about right now. Been busy collecting NES games to play on my recently purchased Retro Duo and playing a lot of League of Legends on PC. Ghost Recon Future Soldier still doesn't work on my system (hasn't worked since day one) which I purchased through Steam (at least not through my account). Input of WASD and my mouse both don't function at all. There is a work around where if I create a separate user I can play it no problem, but I shouldn't have to do that to circumvent an  issue that shouldn't be there in the first place. I passed Max Payne 3, the story was pretty decent and loved the visual style of the cut-scenes. Multiplayer is a bit unbalanced though, with higher level people being pretty much godly by comparison to lower leveled people so that's a bit disappointing but when you do find a game where it's pretty much balanced, it's got decent replay ability, but I wish Rockstar would have some sort of balance filter in play so you could choose to play just with people of plus or minus 3 levels from you or so before it goes and dumps you into a game with 8 level 40 players and you just get your butt handed to you. In any case, I'll just have to tough it out till I can get to a respectable rank so that I don't constantly die from sniper rifles (which are extremely over-powered by the way).