Just looking before I leap...new PC final thoughts.

ignatzatsonic said:

GARoss said:

I have to say the Solo case is terrific! I was surprised how heavy it was but a look inside explained why. Both sides are lined with plastic sound dampening, the tray for the SSD has rubber screw sleeves to isolate any vibration & all sheet metal is of a heavy gage. Everything is easy to get to. Very nice!

You got that suspended drive mounting thing figured out yet? I've never seen good pictures of it...

I'd have been driven nuts by the lack of RAM over a weekend---probably keeping you from mounting the motherboard.

The plan was to finish everything this weekend. Now...I gotta wait until the RAM arrives. I want to be able install it properly & don't think I can do this with the motherboard installed. Maybe it's no big deal. It would be great to have everything ready for Monday; just plug in the RAM & go. But, I've planned & waited a long time so what's a few more days?

I have some old DDR2 RAM (removed after an upgrade) that is about the size of the incoming Patriot RAM. It looks like the Patriot RAM will be easy to install with a little interference but would clear the fan without too much effort.

The Solo came with 4 pairs of HDD mounting slides. I have two 300Gb data drives to install & figured all along that I'd try the suspended mount 1st but can always fall back to the slides. I'll try to get some good close-up pics for you.

Front fan. Rubber isolators makes it easy to install & hopefully, quiet running.

What is that fan going to blow onto--a few inches from it?

Normally, you try to get it to blow on a spinning hard drive and I'm wondering if that fan location is better for that purpose than the one above it? Might be or might not be, depending on the Solo layout and where you plan to install drives.

Good high quality pic.

ignatzatsonic said:

What is that fan going to blow onto--a few inches from it?

Normally, you try to get it to blow on a spinning hard drive and I'm wondering if that fan location is better for that purpose than the one above it? Might be or might not be, depending on the Solo layout and where you plan to install drives.

Good high quality pic.

That's where the spinning drives will be; on the bottom. Should be no problem to move upwards if necessary.

New RAM finally installed. Got at least 5mm clearance. MB is mounted as well as Graphic card. Photo has lens distortion so disregard curvature in photos. Steady as she goes.:)

Got a question. It appears that the Seasonic power supply (Welcome to Seasonic USA) has an unused EPS 12v 8P connector. I don't see any connector for this to be plugged into & I'm guessing that the PSU is used on servers or other types of MB that would need this.

Am I correct or am I missing something?

GARoss said:

Got a question. It appears that the Seasonic power supply (Welcome to Seasonic USA) has an unused EPS 12v 8P connector. I don't see any connector for this to be plugged into & I'm guessing that the PSU is used on servers or other types of MB that would need this.

Am I correct or am I missing something?

I think you are correct.

It's probably for a dual CPU motherboard?

All you should need is:

Main 24 pin to the mobo

Auxiliary 4 pin to the mobo (note: the motherboard connection for this could have 8 pins--in which case you will use only 4 of the 8. In my case (recent install of Seasonic 560 modular), I used the top 4 pins of the 8 pin on the mobo. The lower 4 pins were in fact unusable (keyed the wrong way).

Fans: molex cable if not direct to the mobo

Drives: the SATA cable. If you are lucky, you can get all of your drives to fit on one cable. Try to mount your HDs close to each other so the connectors on a single PSU cable can reach them. Normally, those SATA connectors are only 5 or 6 inches apart, so if your drives are 7 inches apart, you would have to use a second cable.

If your video card has power inputs, you should have something to connect to it as well.

I have ATX 24P / 20P plugged into the ATX of the MB. I'm at work but I think I have the ATX 12v 4P plugged into the ATX_12V_2X4. This is a single 8 prong plug that I assumed went there.

There is another cable with a couple smaller connectors that I thought was EPS 12v 8P. When I get home I'll take a better look.

I think those 2 circled in red are all you need on a normal setup.

The smaller one is an auxiliary 12 volt. On my Gigabyte board, I used ONLY 4 pins of it. The connector from the PSU was an 8 pin split into 4 plus 4. The unused 4 are left flapping in the breeze. You'll have to check very closely regarding the keyways on the plug to see which 4 pins from the PSU will match up to which 4 pins on the mobo connector. At least, that is how it was on my very similar board. For all I know, your entire 8 pin may connect.

I connected my exhaust fan to a molex, but I did connect the RPM sensor on it to the sensor connector on the sys fan 2 header located at 7 oclock. Get out your eyeglasses to read which pin that is on your header in the manual.

Note that sys fan 2 is the only 4 pin connector you have, so it is probably the only fan header other than CPU for which you can monitor RPM.

When are you gonna actually flip the switch and see if it fires up?