Hi all, on this thread (http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=175048) I asked for some advice on if the hardware was a good choice or not. I had some very helpful feedback. I now have the system, (built it last night). This is the first time I have ever put a system together and am pretty happy that things seem to be working. I was following the guides from Custom PC magazine which really helped (and obviously all the docs that came with the parts). I have one question though. The PSU came with 4 fan cables and the 4 point plugs (don't know what that is called, sorry). The motherboard has a CPU_FAN connector, this was easy and connected straight away. But it also has SYS_FAN1, SYS_FAN2, SYS_FAN3 and PWR_FAN. They seem to have different connectors than the fan cables that came with the PSU and all the other cables I think I have. Should I have things connected to these sockets on the board? All the fans in the case are working so I am not worried about that, but I am wondering if I have things setup correctly, or maybe inefficiently. Thank you for your help and advice. Jon
I have the Dark Power 850. Your talking about the black and white cable if I remember correctly? These are to power fans which you might add in addition to the ones connected to your motherboard, i.e. your board will power 4 fans (SYS_FAN1, SYS_FAN2, SYS_FAN3 and PWR_FAN) then the PSU will power an additional 4.
The difference between the two being the PSU has a Molex connector on the fan control cables the Motherboard doesnt. The PSU will also throttle the fans according to load automatically and leave them on for a few seconds after the system is switched off to continue cooling just for a while. I used to have a 650w one Anyway, yeah connect your Antec 1200 fans to the fan headers that came with your PSU and your system will be better cooled and quieter. That's the optimal solution, short of swapping all the fans for models with nice long 3 pin connectors
Good choice of case. It is an excellent cooler and I personally have not needed to crank the fan speeds up from the lowest settings yet. I was unsure about wiring up my fans too as I didn't know if they had to run directly from the motherboard. Turns out they don't and I connected them by molex connectors straight from the PSU and all is fine. I love the blue LED's too!
Thanks for the replies. Feel better knowing that I haven't done anything majorly wrong! Had lots of fun trying to get the harddrive working, didn't have the bios setup correctly I think. Was then trying to get VM ESXi installed but it failed with (what I think is) the wrong type (unsupported Dlink) NIC. Think I will just put Ubuntu Server on and then VMWare Server.
