This will be my first “from scratch” build for myself in 7 years (AMD 939 system was that one), and about 4 years since I bought a couple used mostly-built systems (both Intel Core 2 Duos). Here’s what I decided on to replace all 3 systems and my thoughts during the build.
First off, the case:
I wanted a case that had tons of drive bays, was easy to install 2.5” SSD’s and included USB 3. There were several cases that fit these requirements but the Rosewell Blackhawk-Ultra really caught my attention. The biggest thing that grabbed my attention was that 8 fans were already included – and the system had capabilities of a total of 15 fans! I knew my new machine was going to run warm so included fans are a big plus as are optional additional fans. Also liked the fact that this case supports motherboards from ATX all the way to HPTX – nice feature especially if I wanted to do a dual or quad CPU system in the future. Also liked the fact that the power supplies can be mounted on top or on bottom – or both (must remove one of the top fans to install on top though). Overall, great case – HUGE and heavy. TONS of room. The case is also very well built.
Case (Rosewell Blackhawk-Ultra)
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| Clearance after casters added |
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| Bottom of case |
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| Casters on carpet - just enough clearance to move |
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| View of Top Control Cables |
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| View of Back side of case |
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| External Drive "Quick Connect" |
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| This thing is huge - just a bit over 2 ft tall and heavy even empty |
- Huge case but not as big as I had originally thought. For some reason I was thinking super tower would be a mid-tower (Antec P-180 size) plus the next size down from that in a single case – or, in other words a bit over 3ft. But, this is still pretty big, P-180 + the size of the quad drive cage of the P-180…or, a little less than 25” tall after casters installed. This case is also much deeper than the Antec case…so it does not easily fit on my desk without hanging off. This case also sports a huge 230mm fan - massive compared to the 120's I'm used to. Very quiet fan, nothing like I thought it would be. Low RPM speed as well.
- Two Extended 12v power cables included. Would’ve been nice to include ATX motherboard power extension + a full range of extended length SATA/floppy/IDE (ok, scratch that on IDE :)) cables. An added plus would’ve been to include a molex to single multi drive (i.e. 4+ drive) - SATA cable (i.e. like this one - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812400127) . This is a pipe dream but would’ve been nice. Doubtful anyone does that, even on a $3k server case.
- Fan "hub" - uses one molex to power multiple fans. There are two of these inside the case. Nice but no control over fan speed, etc. Added feature would be to take the fan PWM signal from the MB and amplify it using one of these hubs. Or, at least a fan controller per hub.
- Side panel can use 230 or 9 120mm fans. Yes, 9 120mm fans on side panel! Power would be a pain. A hub for that would be nice – that is not included!
- 230mm fan very quiet but not a ton of airflow.
- Casters included. Can be used without casters and still very stable.
- 3 positions available for each caster. Nice to not be restricted to a specific position.
- With casters, case is still stable. Does not add excessive height to the case.
- Just enough clearance to clear the carpet without dragging (~.5")
- A plastic parts case for screws would be nice (like the Antec P180 series). Instead these are in a plastic bag, all mixed.
- Separated screws would be nice - hard to find some – this is just a minor gripe. So many screws look so similar! All are pained black which is a plus as they match the case very well.
- Manual included but minimal – sufficient though.
- Top or bottom (or both) mounted power supply. If top mount, one of the top fans has to be removed.
- All 10 internal drive bays as 3.5 or 2.5 capable. Would be nice to include standoffs, even if just paper ones, for 2.5” drives. Would be very nice to have “hot swap” drive cages.
- Red LEDs on the visible external fans aren’t too bad- would be nice to be able to turn them off. The blue power LED is pretty bright though.
- Lots of pass-thru areas for hiding cables. Lots of room for small to extremely large motherboards. I think a quad CPU board could easily fit.
- Top-mounted controls and cables are more than ample length to reach motherboard. No firewire port on case though. Not a huge deal but worth noting.
- Cables are arranged on the back-plate so no hanging cables by "default." These cables go to the top-mounted SATA drive mount, and the front-panel controls.
- Fan power cables for the front drives were not protected and are easily caught in the back panel's channels – they really need protection or at least attachments or even channels to keep them in place without them getting caught
- Stand off tool - used to take off standoffs instead of using a wrench/pliers – very nice addition. Manual said 2 were included, only got 1. Still, one is enough. Thought it would be easy to hand loosen the existing standoffs, but had to use a screw driver to get them loose. Configuration was not for a standard ATX board but the next larger size. Easy change and they are labeled but I still put the board in the case and verified positions.
- Plenty of screws. Way too many at times due to them not being pre-separated.
- Suggestion from manual is to bottom-mount the PS with fan down. Warning is to keep the bottom dust-filter clean or the PS may burn out early. Agree with what others said on Newegg/Amazon. If we should keep dust out of that area, make the filter washable and accessible from the front. Decided to still go ahead and point PS fan down.
- Velcro strap - ??? Can't be to hold PS in place (not long enough). Had to undo caster to get it unstrapped. Still unsure of its function.
- Bottom of case and where the power supply attaches to the case have rubber pads to keep PS vibration down - nice addition.
- Top mounted SATA drive port – looks like only designed for 2.5” drives – opening not large enough for 3.5” drives. Manual does not state either if this is a SATA II or SATA III compatible port.
I wanted a power supply that was modular (to keep air flow going), decent efficiency rating, and powerful enough to run an 8-core AMD system. Did the NewEgg power supply calculator and it stated I needed a minimum of 300w power supply. I know from experience that 300w won’t get you much in terms of tons of extra hard drives – so I doubled that just to be safe. Should have plenty of additional power if needed. Currently with the configuration shown here, it uses ~150w “normal/idle” use.
Power Supply (Coolmax ZU-600B
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| 140mm Fan w/ view of non-modular plugs |
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| Modular plugs included |
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| View of modular cable ports |
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| Installed in case |
- 600w - more than enough for what I plan to run initially. Extra traditional SATA drives may push it over its limit but at ~20w (or less) each, should be plenty even for a full case of drives.
- This is a partial modular power supply - has cables for almost every system now (motherboard power + 4, 2 molex, 2 SATA, 1 8-pin PCI-Express power). Modular cables are for 3 extra SATA, 1 6-pin PCI-express (video card), 1 6 or 8-pin PCI-express (video card), and last modular is for 1 floppy and 3 additional molex. Found out the molex connectors aren’t exactly “standard” and wouldn’t work with the side fan’s connector. Molex worked in all other areas though.
- Manual is online - not a big deal, just interesting.
- No screws included - not big deal. Case came with plenty. But, that’s one thing I’ve come to expect over the years, even with “cheap” power supplies.
- Power supplies and their cables are not designed for cases of this size. Just due to cable length, had to use the molex modular cable just for the fans since one fan panel is at top, one is near bottom.
- Routing the power cables takes some thought with this case.
Have a case and power, now need storage space:
Being stuck at SATA II drives (and on the AMD, IDE drives), I wanted to try out all the new technology – from SSD to traditional SATA III. Went with a Blu-ray burner as well.
Drives
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| All 3 drives installed |
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| Drive tray with 3.5 and 2.5 options |
Mounted the drives in reverse of what I would normally think - power and SATA cables towards the back side of the case. A PAIN if you upgrade or add/change drives often to have to remove BOTH front and back panels. Oh well. Really would be nice to have a RAID-like or hot-swap bays. I did not check to see if the drive cages could be installed “backwards” so that you’d only have to take off the back panel when adding/upgrading a drive.
Decided to put a bit of space between the standard drive and the SSDs - heat has always been an issue with normal drives...even with the fans, I'm a bit cautious.
SSD (SAMSUNG 830 Series 2.5-Inch 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-7PC128B/WW
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- Wow, this thing is tiny - at first thought it was sample blank Blue-Ray discs. Totally sealed so no exposed circuitry. Surprised by the 1.5A power requirement (~8w) though - seems high.
- Felt like I was going to break the power connector on both 2.5” drives – seems a bit flimsy compared to the 3.5” ones.
- Boy is this drive fast! Never seen anything this fast! I was able to install Windows 7 Ultimate from DVD to this drive fully in ~13 minutes – with ~2 minutes of that being from the install wizard itself and human speed. Like a former co-worker told me, I will not want to go back to traditional drives after being on this drive!
Blue-ray (LG Electronics 14x Internal BDXL Blu-Ray Rewriter with Software WH14NS40
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| Drive itself |
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| Exterior faceplate removed - after much coaxing |
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| Empty drive bay - no steel plate, thankfully |
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| Installed drive |
- Surprising - no manual, no sample disks – it is an OEM so not really expecting it. SATA cable and Molex to SATA power adapter though and software CD/DVD were included.
- One of the things I always hate about installing external drives is the plate that normally shields that area. Rosewell was nice for the topmost drive and didn't install the steel plate - but the nice "shield" that covers the hole was a PAIN to get out. I did not remove the front panel of the case (come on, installing one drive here, not redoing everything front facing). Had to take a flat head and pliers to get it out after a bit of hammering on it with the flathead. Not easy - had much easier. Like another reviewer said, that ain't going back on there.
- The "quick install" drive feature on the one side of the case is nice – very easy to do...other side, if you want the drive "stable" requires screws. The quick install feature is nice, but, um, I'd rather have this on the drives I'll change often such as the 3.5/2.5" ones - am not going to fight the case to do another external drive. Nice feature but not worth the money IMO.
Hybrid (Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB 2.5 Inch Solid State Hybrid Drive ST95005620AS
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| Hybrid drive with paper spacers |
- Tiny little thing - about what I'd expect for a laptop drive (1.8/2.5"). Very nervous about putting this in the drive cage as is as there's very little separation between the exposed underside of the circuit board and the metal cage. Drive really needs a spacer of some sort. But, I guess it's meant as a laptop drive, not to be put in a desktop case. Found some old paper spacers from the age of the 486's - put those between the cage and the drive to add a micron more space. Rather not see a drive or power supply go up in smoke. Drive seems to be fine and works without issue. Have not tested speed yet but the hybrid is meant to store commonly used files in SSD and the rest on magnetic. With the SSD being master, not going to be easy to test raw performance of that.
SATA III (Western Digital 1 TB WD Blue SATA III 7200 RPM 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive
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- Now this is what I'm used to. SATA III 1TB WD Blue. Nothing at all new here other than SATA III. Drive installed fine.
Cooling:
Since I’m running an AMD processor and since it’s also 8-core and meant for overclocking, I decided to go water-cooled – also, a first for me. After reading many reviews, decided on the Thermaltake Water2.0 Pro. So far it’s keeping the stock-parameter AMD 8-core, when idle, at 32C – have seen it go as high as 48C under load. Not bad, especially when my Intel Core 2 Duo systems were sitting around 55C+. Prefer to keep temps below 40C – running a computer, not a stove :)
Water cooler (Thermaltake Water 2.0 PRO/All In One Liquid Cooling System CLW0216
)
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| Water cooler radiator and 2 fans |
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| Parts for Intel or AMD |
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| Pump itself (with installed brackets for AMD) showing thermal paste |
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| Back of Motherboard with installed cooler plate |
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| Water cooler installed |
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| Another view of water cooler |
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| Another view - notice the room in this case vs the motherboard |
- About what I expect for a after-market/non-stock air cooler. Misc parts for Intel/AMD, fans, radiator (i.e. heatsink), etc. So far so good...and one plus, no leaks in the box [blaming UPS, not mfg's/NewEgg] :) A plus - a manual :)
- No thermal paste included though it appears to be some on the pump itself. Time to read the manual to make sure. And, yep, first page of the manual suggests "read this manual thoroughly and follow all steps in order"...hmm. Ok, first off it's install pump – but this is hard to do without a motherboard installed...
- I do feel like I'm working on a car with this radiator though. Not huge, but still.
- Instructions are not completely clear for first time water-cooler installers - backplate for CPU, does that come off or no? I voted for yes – and it is required to take that off first. Manual said read carefully and follow directions in order and that was one of a few steps they left out.
- After getting the cooler installed (pain, btw) [but probably normal for users who're used to doing after-market air coolers - I'm not, been 4 yrs!]. And, yes, the thermal paste is on the pump - pretty clearly stated don't touch it in the manual. I did not add additional thermal paste.
- Cooler is QUIET and so are the fans. Would like a bit more control over the cooler. Believe the next step from ThermalTake has that feature.
Now for the motherboard, CPU, RAM, and video card, then back to the cooler:
I really like all of Asus’ products – from their Netbooks to their tablets to their motherboards. Haven’t had a single problems with any Asus equipment I own or have built for others. Great company in terms of quality!
For the motherboard, one requirement I had was Firewire. Asus has 3 990-based boards (the 990 chipset was also one of my requirements). One of my requirements was a Firewire port – of which the Sabertooth has and so foes the M5A99X EVO. I liked the 3 PCI-express slots on the Sabertooth
Motherboard (Asus Sabertooth 990FX) and also the thermal radar, military spec components, etc. Extra USB 2 ports was also a nice feature.
Motherboard (ASUS Sabertooth 990FX TUF Series Motherboard AM3+ DDR3 1800 - 990FX
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| Quick-connect headers |
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| 5 year warranty and cert of reliability |
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| Various components included |
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| Wow, tons of room in this case! |
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| Installed motherboard |
- Motherboard install was pretty standard.
- Motherboard set inside the case really shows how HUGE this case is.
- Was surprised that only one side of the memory release levers went down – the other is fixed and doesn’t move. New feature to me.
CPU (AMD FX-8150 FX 8-Core Black Edition Processor Socket AM3+ - FD8150FRGUBOX
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- Nice TIN box, not the cardboard ones I'm used to. Easy install - nothing new here.
Memory (G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory F3-12800CL10Q-32GBXL
)- Well, these were a pain - the plastic case was difficult to get the chips out. Got them out but prefer an "easier" container. Same old same old here.
Video card (GIGABYTE GV-R667D3-1GI Radeon HD 6670 1GB DDR3 DVI-D / D-Sub / HDMI CrossFire Ready Graphics Card
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| Nice fan/heatsink on video card |
- Video card has a fairly nice heatsink and fan. The fan is pretty quiet.
- Did not see a Crossfire port. From what I’ve read elsewhere, it uses “hyper-crossfire.”
- One HDMI, one SVGA, one DVI port.
- Performance is decent.
- Actually have a 2nd video card coming – nice to have quad monitors and also experience crossfire (while it existed on prior builds, I never used it – didn’t see the sense as I don’t do a ton of high-performance gaming).
Final comments on case, water cooler, and power supply:
Case and PS
- Additional comment on the 230mm fan and PS - the molex connector on the PS did not fit the molex for the fan - bit of a annoyance. Had plenty of motherboard connectors...but, the side panel fan is now relatively closely tied to the case. Oh well...
- Did think I was going to have a problem with the 230mm fan and the water cooler - seems to be a good fit after all. At first thought the water cooler was in the way of the fan, but that is not so.
Water Cooler
- Water cooler radiator as installed is opposite of what the book recommends - the tubes were just too close to comfort for me to the power regulators (which have heatsinks, which means they will get warm/hot) and the bends were a little too tight. Fits fine with the tubes towards the outside of the case.
- Also, did not use the included Y connector - motherboard has plenty of fan connectors. One thing did concern me on the Y - one connector looked like it was missing a pin (and wire), the other had all 4 - book did not say which fan/pump should go where. Both fans and pump are on motherboard fan connectors. Cools pretty well as is so leaving alone for now.
Conclusion
About 4 hrs total to put together but was taking my time and documenting as I went. Everything worked first try. Win 7 installed in 13 minutes from a DVD. SSD card is handling Win 7, Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and 2012 Ultimate, Office 2013, and SQL Server 2012. Still has plenty of room left. System goes from login screen to ready to use in ~2 seconds.
So far, it's extremely difficuly to get the SSD drive to get to100% usage - I can usually easily do this with a traditional drive. Drive rarely gets above 10% usage.
CPU also stays pretty low - usually around 20% total.
Motherboard's BIOS is nice - allows for easy overclocking. I haven't done so yet. The BIOS has a setting that allows the system to be overclocked into turbo mode, which is 4.2Ghz instead of the 3.6Ghz. Can't tell the difference either way.
Windows 7 Experience Index with stock settings:
Processor - 7.7
Memory - 7.7
Graphics - 6.8 (overclocked slightly for a 6.9)
Gaming Graphics - 6.8 (overclocked slightly for a 6.9)
Hard Drive - 7.9
UPDATES
Ordered a second ATI 6670 card with the goal to crossfire the cards and to get a quad-monitor system going. While in the case to add the card, I noticed the power supply itself was fairly warm so I removed the dust filter from the bottom of the case (it is relatively easy to remove - but would be a pain to do more than just a couple times). That should help open up the bottom of the case and allow more air into the power supply. I'd thought about flipping the power supply but the motherboard power cables are already pretty tight - will try it this way first for a while.
Also moved some of the fans to be motherboard-driven instead of off the fan hub. Should allow me to keep better control of the areas that don't have fans on them (such as the vcore's). They and the PCI-Express cards seem to run a bit hotter than I'd prefer. So far the moving of the fans to the motherboard along with adjusting the fan speeds seems to have dropped those temps down by 6C.
Unlike what I understood, the ATI 6670 card can not be crossfired as normal cards can (via the bridge) - there is no bridge connector on the cards! From what I've read elsewhere, they're "hyper" crossfired via the PCI-Express bus. The ATI software did allow me to enable crossfire but doing Windows experience testing did not show any improvement so not sure if it didn't work at all or just not seeing any gain. Even with 2 cards in the system (with crossfire on or off), the video performance stayed at 6.9. Have seen other reports that say the ATI 6670 cards aren't worth crossfiring as a single 6870 series card is faster than the dual ATI 6670's would've been and is actually cheaper total cost. Not in it for the graphics/gaming so not too concerned about it for now. Little disappointed but, oh well, crossfire is a feature I won't use much anyway. But, good news is that an additional video card only rose the wattage requirements of the system by 25W idle (from ~125W to ~150W) [as per the reading from my UPS]. With all 4 monitors running, total power draw sits around 300W total - course the monitors are adding 150w from the mains, not from the power supply. Really nice to have a quad monitor system and a system that has lower power draw than my prior system.
And the Asus motherboard, well, it seems Asus has relased version 2 of that motherboard with new features. Some neat features (i.e. single button to enter bios, etc) but sure it's not worth taking apart the entire system, and paying the extra for the newer board. Will stay with what I have.
