new puter... Skyhawk case.. WTF ?!~

[rakki]

Okay, last week I finally decided to get a new puter after two years of muddling along with a celeron... and for this one I decided it was going to be something special and seeing as how the Skyhawk case was on special, I went for it.

Well, I get home, open it up to start rearranging things and..

hmm. the MSI board took up most of the internal space so now the two lower 5 and 1/4 bays will basically "rear end' the mobo and leave maybe a cm or more sticking out the front.

No wonder EYO put my HDD rack in upper bay 2 instead of lowest bay as I requested.

I am impressed with the extra fans (including the one mounted directly over the CPU and exhausting out the back) but I think you would find it just as ridiculous as I did that I'm going to have trouble putting my optical drives back in along with the rack !

An inch of extra length in the case would've made all the difference, or do I blame this on MSI ?!

[brad]

MSI's ATX style boards are about the same size as anyone else's so it it likely just the design of the case. If it is a small case and you're going to build a P4 or Athlon system in it then you'r going to need extra room to aid cooling and I'd recommend exchanging it for a larger one. Besides, a larger case is less cluttered and thus easier to work in.

Brad

[rakki]

well, this case is alright but i'll definitely have to get another case for the next "heart and soul" upgrade of the system (or replace it with a smaller mobo)

the latest in the ongoing saga is a failed bios flash using MSI's Live Update ! (more like Live @#$@#$ !!!!). Thanks for EYO giving me a clue as to where to look, and I managed to get the other computer online to do a bios recovery (I like AMI Bios' recovery procedure.. hell, why use flash program at all ?!)


now the burner works, the net works... sound works.... time to set up the homeLAN properly....

[MagicWilly]

Originally posted by rakki
(I like AMI Bios' recovery procedure.. hell, why use flash program at all ?!)

Was that where you set up a boot disk and press some key on startup?

Regards,
William

[rakki]

yep... in thise case you just rename a rom binary to AMIBOOT.ROM, stick it on a disk, insert the disk and when it powers up, hold down ctrl home.

when it beeps to signal success, reboot... voila. had to readjust the bios settings back to optimal but apart from that it was a painless process.

much better than their so called Live Update. (hate programs which don't run properly first go... particularly something vital like motherboard bios !)


I think my system is jinxed... I just spent the entire afternoon trying to get my LAN to work and.... it turns out the OLD netgear card is out of it. Pulled the AcerLAN out of the "retired" computer, plugged it in, and it worked first go ! Luckily it's the old netgear i got from Chatswood that is kaput.. coz I don't think I can tolerate waiting for snail mail to shuttle the new Netgear from EYO back and forth...

And to add insult to injury, I cut my finger on the skyhawk side panel while replacing it after installing the AcerLan.

Any moment now something else is going to break...