2 Questions: 1. Do you have enough heatsinks? 2. How do you play the drums then? On a serious note, I'm thinking of putting some 2" spacers underneath the mobo & putting the hard drive & CD ROM underneath. Will this cause too much heat? or is 2" above good enough for a case-free PC? (I probably won't be putting it in a case for a month or so)
1) Yes, two of those are in use as it's got two processors, so theres not *that* many. 2) In an "interesting" manner. That shouldn't cause too much heat, just be 100% sure about the cd drives not making contact with the bottom of the motherboard.
Yeah, I'm thinking of getting a big sheet of plexi and bending it, so the top holds the motherboard, and the bottom holds the HDD/CD ROM, and I might mount a fan to cool the area around the HDD/CDD, and if I've got room, possibly a fan to cool the bottom of the motherboard... would that help at all? The only problem is noise though... This is the first time I've had a real HSF, and I'm using a second-hand volcano 7+. Now the last thing I have to figure out is how I'm going to hook up my monitor without having to purchase a KVM switch. (and how to install gentoo, but that's another thread)
Well, I thought I'd post the final product: (sorry about the crappy quality, but the USB cable I usually use for my digital camera is in use by a 62 page print job! I had to use "el-crappo", the camera on my cell phone) So, whacha think? Hard drive and CD ROM are inside the motheboard box, and the wires are all tucked inside the box via small holes cut with an xacto knife. I'm using an old reset button from a 1988~89 gateway 2000 PC as the power button! I'm not planning on overclocking, and the only change I plan on making before I get the actual case built will be adding a small fan on the side of the botherboard box to get some air circulating in the box. As it is, I've got a few vents in the back, but nothing that will actually help the HDD probably. Oh well, this computer will probably be on for an hour or so a day until I get a KVM switch.
I think I am probably the most careless person there is when it comes to static precautions. Normally I'll just plonk the mobo down on any non-conductive surface that comes to mind - whether that be chair, carpet, tablecloth, or desk. I never discharge myself of static, normally I take parts out of the box and install them the second I get in after driving back from the shop to collect them, on hot days too. Oddly enough, I've never killed anything with static...suppose I'm just lucky
the idea that leaps to my mind is "removable motherboard tray". Failing that, anything that doesn't conduct electricity and isn't going to produce excess amounts of static seems a safe bet to me *shrugs*
Yeah, I decided to get a little picky with it. I was using a screwdriver for a while, but with my luck, I'd end up bending the pins or breaking some leads or something. The KVM switch would be to togle between my main rig and this test rig. This test rig is becoming more of a normal rig as my old crappy parts (PCI graphics/10Gb HDD, etc) started breaking and now I'm onto an AGP card and a 40Gig HDD. The idea is I want to learn linux, and a friend gave me some old computer parts (old being more than 2 years!) so I'm 'throwing them together' to install gentoo and setup a webserver, etc. for some experience/playing around. And no, the A7N8X-X box does not belong to the motherboard atop.... I think he was just showing off by giving me his old A7M266 in that box (not that I'm complaining, I've got an A7N8X-Dlx that works fine for me ) It came with an Athlon-XP clocked at just over 1Ghz, not sure what it is supposed to be, as my monitor goes white during POST.... and the memory is 512MB spread across 2 sticks of Crucial. One of which is broken, but I haven't found which one is bad..... I may want to do that before compiling linux, huh? And yeah, computer parts are much more durable than people think... the fact that my motherboard is still working is proof of that.... although the cat will never be the same!