Installation Continued
Next, wire up the motherboard both with power cables and the case header wires. All of the case wires are plenty long enough to perform some cable management.
THERE IS ACTUALLY A CASE SPEAKER TO HEAR YOUR BEEP CODES!!!! Sorry for my excitement.most of the cases I have received in the past few years offer no speaker, mounted or pigtail. I built over 20 rigs last year, and I depend on the beep codes to troubleshoot POST issues. Likewise when overclocking. I have ended up cannibalizing old cases for speakers, and am down to just a couple. I don’t know why the case manufacturers have decided to stop including speakers, but I thank Ikonik very much for including one.
Connecting the SIM module will take up one of your motherboard USB connectors, if you only have two like I do, that will mean connecting only one pair of the case I/O panel USB ports. If you find that an issue, a cable is included to connect the SIM to one of your rear motherboard USB ports. How you run it outside of the case is up to you, either via an empty expansion port, or one of the hose openings for an external radiator. Actually, I have a spare LAN opening in my I/O shield that would work perfectly, leaving only a couple of inches of cable outside of the case. At this time, I am going to connect only one pair of the case USB ports, I never need more than two at a time anyway.
You will need to connect a 4-pin Molex connector to the SIM module.
Now it is time to fill the liquid cooling system and check for leaks. Ikonik recommends that you use only their coolant, use of any other coolant or liquid in their system will void your warranty.
I am not an expert on PC liquid cooling, but I do know that the major concern on use of coolant is the possibility of galvanic corrosion. When a liquid passes metal, such as going through the waterblock or radiator, microscopic amounts of the metal are dissolved in the liquid. The problem is that many different types of metal don’t like each other, two of these being copper and aluminum. The presence of copper will cause aluminum to corrode, and this is called galvanic corrosion. This process is also exacerbated by the presence of various minerals, some of these being found in tapwater.
Place the fill cap on the bottle of coolant, and fill the reservoir will coolant. Start the PC. There is a coolant level shut-down in the reservoir, so the rig will shut down in a few seconds. That’s ok, refill the reservoir and restart the rig. The rig may shut down a third time, if so, fill the reservoir again. By now there should be enough coolant in the system for the rig to continue to run. Fill the reservoir to about 1/4″ from the top, replace the reservoir fill cap, and let the rig run. While watching all connections for leaks, watch the tubes for air bubbles. It will take several minutes for the bubbles to move into the flowing coolant. Larger bubbles just past the outlet of each component can be removed by “thumping” the area with your forefinger.
How long you let the rig run is up to you, I let it run for about 45 minutes. Power down the rig, connect the cables to your drives if you haven’t, and install your video card.
I usually end up not using tool free PCI locking solutions, they usually don’t hold very well, and I prefer a screw. The Ra X10’s PCI locking device holds very well, the GTX 260 is a pretty heavy video card. And after you have the “door” closed, if you still aren’t happy, you can still insert a screw without changing anything.
And that’s it. The build was relatively clean, I’ll probably clean it up a little more later, but then again maybe not.
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