I finished my build. It was fun as hell, despite the limitations of the cheap case driving me insane.
However, there is no output being displayed on the monitor. The monitor just goes to sleep.
I didn't realise there was no DVI-D to DVI-D cable included with the monitor. So I've connected the DVI-I to VGA adapter to VGA.
The PC otherwise seems to be working. It powers on, all fans are working, LEDs are working, and it stays on until I power off manually. There is no internal speaker, so I couldn't say if I get any warnings.
The videocard is a Powercolor Radeon 7850 PCS+ 2gb, outputting to a monitor with VGA and DVI-D connectors only.
I haven't installed any motherboard or video drivers yet, as there is no OS. And I cannot install OS until I have video output.
Please advise what might be causing this. I'm very keen to have this up and running finally.
Now that I have a working system with an OS installed. The only thing that worries me is temperatures.
I have 3 fans (120mm intake in front, 120mm intake on bottom, 120mm exhaust on rear).
I'm using stock AMD heatsink on the 4300, and I did not apply thermal paste as it already had some on it. I do have a tube of arctic silver lying around somewhere if needed.
Could somebody please make sense of this for me and let me know if I'm seeing any temperature issues:
Good sir, go into BIOS and tell me what temp your CPU is at there, then please throw a light game at it and post a screenshot back here. Also please take a look at what the room temp is as well.
For the case fans, a vacuum will always cool better then a positive pressure system(like you currently have configured). If you can move that 120mm intake on the bottom and move it to the top, it would drop your temps a small amount but introduce more dust. Let us get some BIOS temps and load temps first and see what they are and go from there.
Idling on BIOS for 30minutes: CPU 45c, motherboard 30c, room temp 21c.
We're in Melbourne summer right now, and any given day can range between 20c and 43c room temperature. I suppose I can expect problems if I want to play games on a very hot day.
Here's temperatures at load (Borderlands 2 @1050, for 45 minutes):
I have a Coolermaster 140mm I can attach to the top of the case. I didn't put it in while I was building because I'm routing a bunch of cables along the top, but I can try and move them elsewhere.
Currently a Gentle Typhoon is intake at the bottom and a Nexus Real Silent 120mm is exhaust at rear. But I just read earlier that the Nexus only pushes, realistically, ~10cfm. Would it be more ideal to run the Gentle Typhoon exhaust at rear, Coolermaster Silent 140mm exhaust on top, and leave the Silverstone 120mm intake at front?
The PSU is exhausting out of the bottom, and the VGA card is exhausting rear as well.
Is it worth putting the Nexus 120mm as intake from the bottom? There's removable dust filters on top and bottom, so it seems like a shame to waste decent fan space, however if that ruins optimal airflow I don't want to do it.
The case is sitting on small side table that is steel mesh, so there should be plenty airflow available from underneath.
The BIOS temp is a little warm, it must be that factory heatsink that's doing that. I will take the highest temp you have which is 49c and use that as your CPU temp as it is the one with the most sense. Your package temp is 8c idle, that is quite a bit off. Your temps look pretty good, you may want to try out different programs that monitor temp and see if they give you more clear Core temps. Heck even your graphics card is within a really nice temp range as well, just try to add the 140mm on top while leaving all the other fans the same and see if it makes a difference on your temps.
The 3k+rpm brings back memories of the Phenom II coolers and how loud they were. How loud is your stock heatsink at idle?