Show Us Your Rig [5]

Lady Fitzgerald said:

kbrady1979 said:

Is this your build Gary? Also, I like to keep the pillows but man it's fun to bust them! lol

Fun as popping them is, I give them to my private mail service when I pick up packages so they can reuse them.

When I worked in warehousing, we would place bubble wrap under the tires of forklifts and trucks where the operators couldn't see them and watch the reaction when they drove off.

We used to do that as well.....fun times, fun times. I really try to quell my urges to pop them and reuse them as much as possible. What I can't use, I usually give away as well.

Hey guys,im back
Ran into some problems. My previous board malfunctioned when i put in the new processor so was without internet access for an entire 40 hours. Now i know how cavemen lived
Anyways got new processor,rams and motherboard. Now i only need to Put in the Xigmatek cooler which i have absolutely no idea how to do.
Again,cable management isnt good,i know.
Rams:

NOOOO!! It took me 40 mins to put in the board And there are instructions but they are absolutely useless. Cooler is Xigmatek Achilles.

shinigami8671 said:

Now i only need to Put in the Xigmatek cooler which i have absolutely no idea how to do.

Seems pretty straightforward.

However, you do need the board out of the case, because you will first have to mount the backplate onto the back of the motherboard.
If you did not get the instruction manual, here it is.

Xigmatech Achilles II SD1284 Support & Downloads

Download and read/print the User Manual, lay out all the items needed acc. to serial number, and you should be good to go.

I am attaching the relevant parts as images so you can print them large, each one on a separate sheet of A4.

Remember the holes on the raised legs of the backplate are for the Intel sockets, so you will have to place the backplate with those legs touching the motherboard at the holes for the CPU cooler mounting pins. In the illustration, if the background is the motherboard, that is how the backplate needs to go.

It's a little late for me to be saying this, but it's a lot easier to test the basic components while the MOBO is out of the case (the process is known as benching). There are fewer things to go wrong, making troubleshooting much easier, not to mention getting at components is much easier. This video will give you, among other things, detailed instructions on how to bench a new MOBO, should you (or anyone else) be curious. It's also usually easier to install the CPU cooler while the MOBO is outside the case (with some cooler/case combinations, it's the only way).

I'm so glad I bench tested my MOBO before putting it in the case. After I had installed the MOBO, etc. in the case, I ran into a problem. Had I not benched it first, I would not have known if the problem was with the MOBO, the CPU, the RAM, the GPU, or something else. Since benching had already told me the MOBO, CPU, RAM, and GPU played well together, I knew it had to be something else and didn't have to waste time ripping everything out trying to figure out what was wrong (it turned out to be a reversed front panel switch connector, which was weird since those connectors aren't supposed to be polarized; whatever, it worked after I "unreversed" it and I never argue with success).

While I got my little notebook (and its netbook predecessors) strictly for use when I'm traveling, it's handy to have as a backup computer if my desktop is down.