Alright, so it is time once again to continue the review of my home-built system, the "Master Chef." As stated, this time I'm going through the building process and doing detailed reviews of the products.
The first box I opened was the lovely
Cooler Master RC-690 case. I chose it on a whim for its looks, included power supply, and at the time of purchase it was on sale for only $99. I'd never had personal experience but had always heard good things about cooler master and this was the time to give things a shot.
The case came in a fairly well made cardboard box with Styrofoam fittings to keep it safe and in place. The box it comes in is important because if you ever want to travel with your computer, this is likely the box you're going to use. Nothing special here, but nothing appalling. The case was sturdily built and was light on the plastic bits. There was a neat screw repository system included on it, where any screw you would need for the hard drives and motherboard, had their own little screwed in place near the external media drives. It made it simple and convenient during the build to use and place screws. Anything not having to do with motherboard or hard drives was thumb-screwable, which was pretty welcome.
though not all was perfect. The hard drive bays had these pretty innovative "slide in, slide out" holders that made it easy to install them. However, the way the sliders worked when you wanted to plug the drives in, the sockets were on the opposite side of the case, facing the wrong way. This made overall drive installation difficult and any future hard drive installations would be met with even more difficulty. Also the case panels were made up of the flimsiest metal, which resulted in them slightly bending during the build process.
The fans were a little more conservative than I was used to. I usually tend to use something around the Antec 900 class, so a 250mm fan and more is standard for me, though this case just had 3 120mm fans: one in the front bottom, one on the side and one exhaust fan. Surprisingly, though, the case cooled extremely well, there were parts where there was ventilation, but no fan, and those seemed to work very well. The PSU was also on the bottom, which reduces overall heat and increases airflow. The fans had no speed adjust, which I was pretty disappointed about, since that limits a lot of flexibility in overclocking. Temps measured very cool after the build, though, and I couldn't argue with that.
Getting the motherboard in was the most annoying part (as it often is), and the RC-690 offers not much relief on that front. Many of the screw sockets were badly made so that the screws were loose and uneven. This is typical of cases in this class, but this was especially finicky. Though it did have a ton of room, which sort of made up for these flaws.
The PSU I really have not much to say about, It came not fully screwed in so I had to redo it, but other than that, I re-screwed it in, plugged in the parts and boom, I was off fraggin'. There's mesh around the cords to cut down on clutter (which it does fairly well) and sturdy clips on the end of each plug. The PSU worked great with no problems whatsoever.
I give this case a lot of props for looks. It's sleek and sexy, but not overly flashy or exotic. The blue fan in front is a subtle touch that gives the case a fast look. The silver lines running along the case and curved corners set it apart but not so much as to make it distracting. Of course looks are all personal preference, but for me at least it does well.
Overall I'd give this case a solid 7 out of 10. It is pretty sturdy, and has everything you could really ask for, save a few quirks, lack of fan speed adjust, and finicky screws. For a budget box with a great included PSU you can't go wrong.
Moving on to the motherboard, I chose the
MSI P7N-SLI motherboard for mostly its price compared to similar ASUS models. To be honest I stick pretty exclusively with ASUS when I build stuff for myself as they've never given me a problem, but Tom's Hardware had always touted MSI as being a pretty big competitor with comparable features at a lower price. Turns out they're spot on.
The most difficult part of this build was fitting the motherboard into the case, the thumbscrews that you put on the back of the motherboard so that the back doesn't touch the case were extremely finicky. I finally got the motherboard in, then remembered I forgot to connect the peripherals panel, so I had to go through that whole process again. I give a lot of credit to MSI for having a sturdy board that well survived my frustrated abuse.
I'm afraid I can't judge the board on overclocking as I did not this design this rig to overclock. I can say, however, that Pheonix AwardBIOS offered tons of options and did very well in configuring devices and manually setting memory timings. I hadn't had much experience with AwardBIOS was was impressed at how intuitive the interface was, no digging through submenus looking for what I wanted, everything was neat.
To its discredit I can say, that the included software is complete and total useless buggy shit. The only thing you should use from the included CD is the drivers. Though I'll finish this next time, this whole thing is turning out to be a little longer than I thought it would be. I wonder if anyone who reads this can even understand this shit anyway. owell.
Alright, so it is time once again to continue the review of my home-built system, the "Master Chef." As stated, this time I'm going through the building process and doing detailed reviews of the products.
The first box I opened was the lovely Cooler Master RC-690 case. I chose it on a whim for its looks, included power supply, and at the time of purchase it was on sale for only $99. I'd never had personal experience but had always heard good things about cooler master and this was the time to give things a shot.
The case came in a fairly well made cardboard box with Styrofoam fittings to keep it safe and in place. The box it comes in is important because if you ever want to travel with your computer, this is likely the box you're going to use. Nothing special here, but nothing appalling. The case was sturdily built and was light on the plastic bits. There was a neat screw repository system included on it, where any screw you would need for the hard drives and motherboard, had their own little screwed in place near the external media drives. It made it simple and convenient during the build to use and place screws. Anything not having to do with motherboard or hard drives was thumb-screwable, which was pretty welcome.
though not all was perfect. The hard drive bays had these pretty innovative "slide in, slide out" holders that made it easy to install them. However, the way the sliders worked when you wanted to plug the drives in, the sockets were on the opposite side of the case, facing the wrong way. This made overall drive installation difficult and any future hard drive installations would be met with even more difficulty. Also the case panels were made up of the flimsiest metal, which resulted in them slightly bending during the build process.
The fans were a little more conservative than I was used to. I usually tend to use something around the Antec 900 class, so a 250mm fan and more is standard for me, though this case just had 3 120mm fans: one in the front bottom, one on the side and one exhaust fan. Surprisingly, though, the case cooled extremely well, there were parts where there was ventilation, but no fan, and those seemed to work very well. The PSU was also on the bottom, which reduces overall heat and increases airflow. The fans had no speed adjust, which I was pretty disappointed about, since that limits a lot of flexibility in overclocking. Temps measured very cool after the build, though, and I couldn't argue with that.
Getting the motherboard in was the most annoying part (as it often is), and the RC-690 offers not much relief on that front. Many of the screw sockets were badly made so that the screws were loose and uneven. This is typical of cases in this class, but this was especially finicky. Though it did have a ton of room, which sort of made up for these flaws.
The PSU I really have not much to say about, It came not fully screwed in so I had to redo it, but other than that, I re-screwed it in, plugged in the parts and boom, I was off fraggin'. There's mesh around the cords to cut down on clutter (which it does fairly well) and sturdy clips on the end of each plug. The PSU worked great with no problems whatsoever.
I give this case a lot of props for looks. It's sleek and sexy, but not overly flashy or exotic. The blue fan in front is a subtle touch that gives the case a fast look. The silver lines running along the case and curved corners set it apart but not so much as to make it distracting. Of course looks are all personal preference, but for me at least it does well.
Overall I'd give this case a solid 7 out of 10. It is pretty sturdy, and has everything you could really ask for, save a few quirks, lack of fan speed adjust, and finicky screws. For a budget box with a great included PSU you can't go wrong.
Moving on to the motherboard, I chose the MSI P7N-SLI motherboard for mostly its price compared to similar ASUS models. To be honest I stick pretty exclusively with ASUS when I build stuff for myself as they've never given me a problem, but Tom's Hardware had always touted MSI as being a pretty big competitor with comparable features at a lower price. Turns out they're spot on.
The most difficult part of this build was fitting the motherboard into the case, the thumbscrews that you put on the back of the motherboard so that the back doesn't touch the case were extremely finicky. I finally got the motherboard in, then remembered I forgot to connect the peripherals panel, so I had to go through that whole process again. I give a lot of credit to MSI for having a sturdy board that well survived my frustrated abuse.
I'm afraid I can't judge the board on overclocking as I did not this design this rig to overclock. I can say, however, that Pheonix AwardBIOS offered tons of options and did very well in configuring devices and manually setting memory timings. I hadn't had much experience with AwardBIOS was was impressed at how intuitive the interface was, no digging through submenus looking for what I wanted, everything was neat.
To its discredit I can say, that the included software is complete and total useless buggy shit. The only thing you should use from the included CD is the drivers. Though I'll finish this next time, this whole thing is turning out to be a little longer than I thought it would be. I wonder if anyone who reads this can even understand this shit anyway. owell.
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