Assembly of Ungoliant

I updated my hardware recently, so I'll tell all the interesting details here.

I first bought a new case with 500W power supply for a motherboard I planned to buy from my fellow worker. Unfortunately, the chipset fan on the motherboard had gone bad and created great amount of problems when playing games, so I made a quick purchase at local hardware store.

• Intel Core 2 Quad q6600 G0 2,4GHz processor
• Abit IP35 ATX motherboard with Sata2, Gigabit LAN and so on
  
• MSI GeForce 8800 GT 512MB OverClocked graphics card
• 4GB of 800MHz DDR2 RAM
• DVD-RW drive (I needed a new one in black - oh the vanity)
• Antec Sonata III case with 500W power supply
  

The Quad is the model with G0 stepping, making it ideal for overclocking. In even simple tests, some have gotten some 35% overclocking. I might overclock it to 3GHz (+25%) at some point. The MSI 8800 GT is factory-overclocked by 10%.


The Antec Sonata case was a really pleasant surprise. First of all, it looks good, which its shining black finish -- the primary reason for naming the machine Ungoliant. Unfortunately, the black finish is very tender and I got it badly scratched very easily. Maybe I should have bought some lacquer to protect it from the environment. Another pleasant thing was the organization of hard drives so that they are loaded on sleds and are easily accessible from the side. The side panel opens easily with a handle. On the back there is an adjustable case fan. On the front panel there are two beautiful blue leds, one for power and one for hard drive. This case is a dream.

So, I got the stuff, piled it on my desk at work, and started unboxing.

The Core 2 Quad processor was really small and had an enormous fan. Here, I have removed the bottom cover and all the connectors are visible. In the center, there are some small components.


The cooler element had interesting pattern. At the bottom, it had the paste already spread, so I just needed to attach it on the processor.

Mounting the processor in the socket was easy. Mounting the cooler+fan on the processor wasn't. It had to be fastened to the motherboard with four hatches and I have to say, it was really hard and needed a lot of muscle. Fortunately, my fellow worker with more experience in assembling machines helped me with the cooler a bit so I got it fastened safely.

The rest was easy. Below is the motherboard with just the graphics card missing. The chipset is cooled with a heat pipe. I later noticed that the 2x2GB RAM combs were actually just 1GB. I returned them to the store and got my 2GBs.

Below is Ungoliant ready to be transported to its lair: