I have built quite a few custom machines for people in the last few months from word of mouth and an advert in the local paper, and for anyone in wanting to build computers for a bit of cash, forget eBay – the paper is the way to go I will have an article up about my experiences with this new side venture soon.

Anyway, I’ve seen and tried a fair bit of hardware and decided last week I needed to get myself a new machine. Didn’t want to spend more than £450 on the hardware but I had a bunch of Ebuyer vouchers and had some stuff in stock at home already so I actually spent way less than this.

The specs I decided on were as follows:

Intel E7200
Asus P5Q Pro
Saphire Radeon 4850
OCZ 800Mhz RAM
Corsair 450W PSU
Antec Three Hundred Case
Asus DVD Drive
Arctic Cooler 7 Pro
Western Digital 250 GB Hard Drive
A Hiper 120mm Case Fan

This is almost exactly the same as one of the systems in teh reccomended hardware thread by Carbon. So shows what it looks like built.

And now for the pictures: (You can click on any of them for bigger ones)
I went a bit crazy with them but they may help someone or be useful in the PC buiding guide.

The requirements

Some tools required.

Antec Three Hundred Case. Truly excellent in my opionion.

Plenty of case screws, and I have vast ammounts left over from other builds. Antec are very generous with them.

I had a look in my parts box and found this fan. The Hiper ones are actually surprisingly quiet when on low voltages and move lots of air.

Bloody impossible to open.

Finally out. Won’t be needing that molex adaptor.

Mounted in the front.

And the wires passed through the handy hole left by Antec. I later changed the fans around so this one was exhausting at the back and the Antec one that came with the case was an intake because the Antec one could not be controlled by the motherboard.

The Asus P5Q Pro Motherboard

CPU Socket

Now open.

Intel E7200. Going to clock the nuts off this.

Noisy stock cooler. I have a collection of these as well :laugh:

The actual CPU and its protector.

CPU in. I don’t understand why Asus left off the little yellow mark on these motherboards that matches up with the CPU.

CPU in and lid closed.