One computer, lots of doubts...

[cron]

Same. I tend to listen buy and listen to FLAC wherever possible. It's a good archive format from which I can make my own compressed versions for on-the-go listening. I still use mp3 for that too, mainly because it's tried and tested and I know it sounds good.

Access to a good AAC encoder means using iTunes as the free encoder situation seems a bit of a crapshoot when it comes to quality (although maybe this has improved in the years since I last checked). And yeah, my experiences with iTunes have been universally negative. Otherwise I'd go for ogg (or ideally Opus) but, alas, I have no players that support them.

Funnily enough, despite not really liking dealing with Apple, I own 4 iOS devices - a first gen iPod touch, and iPad 3 and Air, and an iPhone 6 plus, all of which have been given to me for free by people upgrading their old devices! Well, except the Touch which was a present. My phone had been "the cheapest Nokia in the shop" since about 2011 and a few months back (same Nokia all that time) when I got the 6 plus. Ah, to have decent money again...

[fluffy_little_something]

Crazy, I don't even have my components, yet, but today all of a sudden modern times entered my life. Since my old computer completely died today, I simply decided to buy a netbook ^^ And that came with W10, touch screen and touch pad, none of which I had ever used before.
So weird to use a computer that doesn't make any sounds, except of course when I play a video.

[fluffy_little_something]

Got all my components now
Putting it all together, I was wondering where to put the 3rd chassis fan. I have one at the front sucking air in, one at the back ejecting air. I have one left, and my side panel has two fan openings, one above the other. The upper one is right behind the CPU, i.e. at the same height. The lower one covers the lower half of the motherboard.
So, should I put the third fan in the upper or lower position, or not use it all?
And in which direction should it blow? In the upper position and sucking air in, it would basically help the stock CPU fan, which does the same thing, right? But maybe that would interfere with the CPU fan control, who knows...

[Steve Bolivar]

I've read some that current thinking is you want to have more air being pulled in than exhausted as long as the air being pulled in is though filters. This will reduce dust and improve component cooling. If you have more air being exhaust then air will be pulled in through non filtered inlets.

[nIGhT-SoN]

@fuffy_little_something If you can have two of them in front and one on the back would be the best, if not, you can use one on the side to blow air into the case. You can test out, see if is it worth adding it and where, if not you can leave those 2 only. Usually on the side is used for the GPU mostly.

[jdnz]

So, should I put the third fan in the upper or lower position, or not use it all?

upper position (over cpu) and blowing in. Front fan probably hits the hard drives/ssds before getting anywhere near the motherboard, so idea is to have one fan shoving ambient temp air directly to where it's most needed

what brand fans? Most that come with cases are junk - I always biff them out and put in noctuas (quieter and a million times more reliable)

[fluffy_little_something]

@fuffy_little_something If you can have two of them in front and one on the back would be the best, if not, you can use one on the side to blow air into the case. You can test out, see if is it worth adding it and where, if not you can leave those 2 only. Usually on the side is used for the GPU mostly.

Yes, since I have a passively cooled graphics card, I think it might make sense to use the lower position in order to blow fresh air right onto it and also the surrounding components on the motherboard (I suppose it's the south bridge under the big passive cooler in the lower part of the board).

[fluffy_little_something]

@fuffy_little_something If you can have two of them in front and one on the back would be the best, if not, you can use one on the side to blow air into the case. You can test out, see if is it worth adding it and where, if not you can leave those 2 only. Usually on the side is used for the GPU mostly.

Well, it only has one fan at the front, this is the case:
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com ... SX522_.jpg

[fluffy_little_something]

Funny that they still use those tiny, irritating mini plugs for the front panel.
I have to connect them tomorrow as I don't have a microscope. The sunlight will be bright enough.

I accidentally tapped into the stock cooling paste, so it was spread unevenly. I carefully twisted the cooler slightly several times in order to spread it evenly again. When installing the cooler, the pressure squeezed some of that gray stuff beyond the border of the chip's border. I hope I don't have to uninstall it again and apply new paste because of possible air bubbles.

[jdnz]

Yes, since I have a passively cooled graphics card, I think it might make sense to use the lower position in order to blow fresh air right onto it and also the surrounding components on the motherboard (I suppose it's the south bridge under the big passive cooler in the lower part of the board).

it's a HD6450 passive right? I've got one here, believe me, you do NOT need a fan on it, barely gets warm even when fully loaded (which makes sense as it only draws 20-30w max)

[fluffy_little_something]

No idea how much power it uses. But it does not have an auxiliary power input or PCIe power input.

Basically I am finished now, but I am scared of turning it on
Took me ages to fiddle all those tiny plugs into the respective connectors Not too mention the motherboard into the case because of those tiny springs of the I/O panel.

What tool can I use to check the temps? And to see what memory speed is supported?

[Kaine]

What tool can I use to check the temps?

http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/
https://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/

And to see what memory speed is supported?

The manual.

[fluffy_little_something]

I meant what speed is actually used, i.e. to see whether the memory is as fast as it should be.

[Kaine]

Ahh, right, sorry... it did confuse me.

Normally you set it up in the BIOS and it'll confirm in there. It's always worth running memtest86 to ensure the memory is fine https://www.memtest86.com and that is dos based and run from a pen drive.

If you want to then check in windows that it's still running right then cpu-z should show the timings: https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

[cron]

Bear in mind that CPU-Z will show half the RAM speed you might be expecting, since DDR stands for double data rate. Or it showed half speed last I checked anyway. That one tripped me up.