I had so much fun building this thing that I took a bunch of pictures to document the build. Here is my build diary:
It all started with the case. He travels daily, so he wanted a computer that he could take with him. BAM. The solution was a slim case. I chose the Rosewill R379-SM case because it was fairly cheap, and it looks dead sexy. This case will look good anywhere, for any application. It doesn't have a window, but who wants a window in a slim case anyway? Trust me, it looks like intestines inside once it's all put together. The power supply is totally unique, so that's a downer for me. If this thing ever goes up in smoke, I want to be able to instantly order a new PS for him and be done with it. Or a bigger power supply. Anyway, not happening. You get a 300 watt power supply, but it's fairly hefty. It passed the most rigorous stress testing I could throw at it, so it's good enough. The case was cheap, but so were some of the components. I absolutely cringed when I plugged a device into the front USB ports. Cheap might be the word I'm looking for. Wait, that's exactly the word I'm looking for. To illustrate the sound of plugging a device into the USB ports, I want you to imagine taking your case to the beach. It's a beautiful day, and it's just you and your PC. You both go for a swim, and then build sand castles. Ha ha, you buried your case in the sand, giving it a funny body. How cute. When you get home, you have to get some work done and you get out your other lover: the flash drive. You plug the drive into the USB port, but to your horror it sounds like there is sand in the USB port!
That's the kind of cheap I'm talking about. It sounds awful, but everything still works. For now. I'm guessing the ports will slowly become loose over time. Oh well. Nothing a USB card can't fix. Also, there's a neat Silverstone 3.5" USB/Audio panel I own for my computer that's really high in quality. So there is always a remedy for cheap manufacturing. While also on the cheap topic, I must say that I'm less than satisfied with the front panel. All of the Newegg photos suggested that the whole front panel was silver. That was a big selling point for me. It is, in fact, not completely silver. Instead, it's half silver and half mirror. Yeah. In person it looks like a more beautiful Two-face from Gotham City. They didn't even cover the mirrored part with plastic film. It was just completely exposed during manufacturing and shipping. It looks like it was, too. Right out of the box I noticed several MAJOR scratches. I thought it may be plastic or thread, so I tried to rub it with my shirt. Bad idea.
A picture of the inside of the case. For size comparison, a regular can of Coke Zero.
Though there may be a lack of a window, the huge vent on the side of the case may as well be a window. You can see the parts inside if you look close enough. I bet some cold cathodes inside would have a very nice effect. All in all, it's a worthwhile case. It was easy enough to work on, but you better forget about great cable management. It's almost impossible.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/Xenophek/vent.jpg
If anyone from Rosewill is reading this, would you please tell the Incredible Hulk to not screw in the back thumbscrew so tight? I had to find a screwdriver to remove the side panel. Thanks.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/Xenophek/case4.jpg
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/Xenophek/case3.jpg
For the guts of the build, I did my best to use quality parts. In a case this small, heat is going to be a problem no matter what you run. No sense in going halfway by using cheap parts. I chose the Foxconn A7GM-S motherboard, and paired it with a AMD Phenom 9600. I was told by a techie "god" who I get my advice from that the Phenom x4 in a slim case was a bad idea, and I should abandon it. He did say, however, that it would be fine if I could keep the heat down. Ha. Madness? THIS- IS- CALEEEEB!!!
Here's the motherboard fresh out of the box:
For size comparison, notice the now empty can of Coke Zero.
I had originally ordered a aftermarket Zalman CNPS 8000 "low profile" CPU cooler, but I didn't think it was low profile enough. Yes, it would fit, but I was happier with the clearance of the stock cooler. The whole point of buying the Zalman was to get better CPU temps in that tiny case. Going with the stock cooler wasn't such a bad idea, since the fan was directly under that huge vent in the side panel. Smart one, Rosewill. The stock cooler had more clearance, so it fit much nicer inside. I also didn't have to worry about it bumping into the RAM slots, because it was smaller.
Here is a picture of the clearance between the top of the CPU cooler and the side of the case:
For the RAM, I chose a G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) set. The only reason I bought that particular set was because they were cheap. I thought to myself, "Why pay more for cool looking RAM when nobody will see it?" That's a pretty good thought process, but when I got the RAM out of the box, boy was I impressed. That's some really cool looking RAM. The heat spreaders feel very solid and are slightly thinner than my Wintec AmpX set of RAM. Point for G.Skill. I'm not much of a blue fan, but that baby blue is really sweet in person. I'll have to look and see if they make a black version.
The G.Skill RAM:
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/Xenophek/ram-1.jpg
Here is a picture of the motherboard right before I installed it in the case:
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/Xenophek/board_final2.jpg
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/Xenophek/board2.jpg
Installing the board in the case was no problem, once the drive tray was taken out. I promise you, if you don't take that cage out it'll be the bane of your existence. The motherboard tray was good, I guess. There aren't any particularly special features about any motherboard tray, unless it detaches from the case. The screw holes lined up very nicely, but there was one screw hole that didn't have a mount on the tray. It was the bottom-right corner, near the SATA ports. No biggie. It's not like the SATA cables are made of lead. Well, I think they're not made in China, but I could be wrong.
Here's the motherboard in the case, with some cables hooked up:
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/Xenophek/board_case.jpg
The next task was to prepare the drive cage. If you've read any other reviews about this Rosewill case, this is where they say it's like playing Tetris. Installing the drives in the cage wasn't really hard, but it took some figuring out. The manual wasn't very helpful, so I sort of fudged my way through.
On the bottom side of the cage is where you'll install your one and only hard drive. You need to make this one count in terms of size, yet you're going to want a low power (less heat) drive that [hopefully] won't burn up. For this task, I chose a Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB hard drive. The hard drive just hooks into one side of the cage and screws into the other side. There are three screw holes. One on the side with the hooks, and two on the other side of the drive. Those hooks remind me of the brackets you install on hard drives for tool less racks.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/Xenophek/cage1.jpg
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/Xenophek/cage4.jpg
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/Xenophek/cage2.jpg
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/Xenophek/cage3.jpg
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/Xenophek/hdd.jpg
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/Xenophek/hdd2.jpg
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/Xenophek/hdd3.jpg
I used a LG 22X DVD?R DVD Burner, and it installed nicely. I decided to leave it loose until I did a test fitting of the whole drive cage, and I'm glad I did. Most optical drives are going to use the screw holes farthest to the back. So I put the cage in and slid it until it touched the Open bumper. Both the DVD drive and the HDD are SATA. No room for crappy IDE cables in this slick machine. Lucky for me, the motherboard included a molex to SATA power adapter. Coolness.
The drive cage fit in nicely, but I had to move a few cables around. I bought OKGEAR 18" SATA II cables because of the 90 degree bend. Sadly for me, the bend faced the wrong way I wanted it to. I made the best of it and routed the cables under the drive cage. It kind of looks cool, but it was completely an accident.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/Xenophek/dvd1.jpg
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/Xenophek/dvd2.jpg
Cable management was a mess. I did the best I could and the result wasn't too bad.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/Xenophek/psu_management-1.jpg
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/Xenophek/management1-1.jpg
The PCI cards installed nicely. I chose a Radeon 3650 for the video card, and a Rosewill 2 port USB card for a few extra ports. Running the case's front USB ports yielded a unusual result. I had about six inches of excess cable to hide, so I picked it up out of the case to think about where to put it. I lowered my arm, and the cable just looped around on its own and "stuck" to the bottom of the case. "Cool," I said. So I did the other cable the same way.
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/Xenophek/cards.jpg
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/Xenophek/clearance2.jpg
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b367/Xenophek/final.jpg
Overall, it was a fun build. I just loved everything fitting so compactly, but still having so much power. I finished it up and then installed Windows XP, and everything's been working great since. To compliment his new powerhouse, I ordered a Rosewill RM-1600L laser mouse and a Lite-On black and silver keyboard to match the case. It's very satisfying to build this computer for two reasons.
1) It is my hobby, and I had a blast building it.
2) It is working great, and is dominating the 3D software he uses.
From an email:
"...THIS THING IS LIKE RIDING IN A FAST CAR."
"IT MAY LOOK BAD BUT IS BADDDDDDDDD. IT IS SURE GOING TO BE HARD WORKING ON MY SISTER COMPUTER AFTER WORKING ON THIS, YOU KNOW WHAT I AM GOING TO CALL IT FROM NOW ON? MY C-MACHINE. C FOR CALEB. BET YOU THINK I'M CRAZY DON'T YA."
He's so excited that he's typing in all caps. Score.
