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Installation & Testing
Installed System
- Abit
IC7-MAX3 motherboard
-
Pentium 4 3Gig 800Mhz FSB
- I
Gig DDR 3200 RAM
-
Liteon 52x CD-RW
-
Western Digital 120Gig 7200 RPM hard drive
- ATI
Radeon 9800 Pro
-
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum
-
Super Flower Fan Master
-
Mitsumi 7 in 1 card reader
The installation went very smoothly. Even
with the lack of cable hiding space behind the motherboard, the finished
install was pretty clean. The tool less PCI system worked very well and I
liked it more than the setup on the Z-Alien, mostly due to the ease of use.
Basically it is just a clip that hinges down and locks into place, and then
you hit a small button at the top and it pops loose. There is a small hole at
the bottom of the motherboard that makes hiding the chassis connectors
easy…unless your MB headers are not exactly above the spot. That could be a
big problem, and the wires should be a bit longer.
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**click to enlarge** |
**click to enlarge** |
The
tool free bay system also worked pretty well. I still had to put one screw
into the Fan Master to get it to sit right, and the system did not work very
well with my Mitsumi 7 in 1 card reader (it needed two screws). The system
worked perfectly with the standard hard drives and CD-ROM however. The door
has a notch in it to allow the door to close even with a 3.5” floppy in the
drive, and space at the top bay to accommodate the knobs of a fan controller.
**click to enlarge**
The
noisiest component turned out to be the tri color 80mm in the side panel…
something was physically loose inside the spindle and it made quite a racket.
I ended up removing it to install a Thermaltake Blue Eye 80mm fan, and then
ended up swapping the tri color back in to take another picture. This time,
the tri color fan was quiet…so the mounting of the fan was not that secure.
**click to enlarge**
Normally, this is the part where I run BurnInTest 4 and post some MBM 5
numbers. However, I don’t trust the stock sensors on the IC7-MAX3 board, so I
was forced to rely on a sensor attached to the Fan Master. Most people
complain that the MAX3 sensors run about 10 degrees hot, and that they’re not
placed close to what they’re claiming to represent. I let the probe sit
outside the case to get the room temperature, then let it sit in the middle of
the case with the covers on for an idle temp after the computer had been
running for an hour, then I fired up BurnInTest 4 for a 30 minute bake cycle
and took the temperature at the end of the run.
|
Ambient Temp |
Idle Temp |
Load Temp |
| 22.2ºC |
27.4ºC |
28.5ºC |
The
Guardian hardly twitched. Very nice!
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