The first box arrived last Thursday, the case on Monday, and the rest arrived yesterday! Unpacked everything and now it’s spread out across the dining room table. I’ve found my SilverStone LC16B-M case didn’t contain the bag of screws and risers for the motherboard which was disappointing after spending $200+ on a case. Thankfully I had two bags of spares lying around which solved that issue.
Next, after opening the motherboard box, I got a little concerned if the huge 120mm Zalman CPU fan I got was going to clear a rather large heatsink for one of the on board chips. After carefully opening the fan packaging (in case it needed to be returned), I set the fan in place and was pleasantly surprised that it did in fact clear the motherboard heatsink… granted it only cleared by 2mm or less, but it cleared!
Another thing got me: the case had QUITE a few more cables coming from the front of the case than what was shown in the manual (aside from the missing screws… grrr). I didn’t realize that every single port in the 3.5” module that contains 4 USB2.0, 1 Firewire, and audio out had it’s own cable to connect to the motherboard. That’s the first time I’ve connected a pin-based USB device! I ~think~ I have all the jumpers in the correct place… once I turn it on I’ll know based on how the front buttons respond. One didn’t match up with the instructions: power LED… it showed it was supposed to have cables, but it actually had three. Oh well, we’ll see soon enough!!!
I didn’t get a chance to install everything has I had a little more stuff to address. Maybe later tonight we’ll be booting, partitioning, and installing!
Took a few snapshots up to this point:
All parts have been received, ready for the buildout!
Empty case… now let’s get started! Hmm… sure are a lot more wires coming off the front of the case than what’s shown in the manual…
The motherboard, PSU and all drives installed, as well as the cables coming off the front of the case. All that’s left are the cards, CPU, and memory!