Deep Thought - Enclosure

Lian Li V1010. I fell in love with this case about a year ago. The case is compartmentalized for heat management, the high heat components (Mobo, expansion cards) sit at the top, and the low heat components (PSU, HDDs) sit at the bottom.

PSU and drive bays.Top panel connections cleverly hidden under a flap.
Modular design, mobo tray slides out.

More hardware mounting than you can shake a stick at.
More info at http://www.lian-li.com

Deep Thought - Power Supply

Cooler Master 850 watt powerhouse.I got this because it has enough power for everything I'm going to plug into it, and the build quality is exceptional.

You even get a little pack with the extra cables in...

...which plug in here.


More info at http://www.coolermaster.com.

Deep Thought - Motherboard

The MicroStar DKA790GX

Oooh, it's like Christmas!!

Some heavy duty north / southbridge cooling. Interesting heatpipe design, shame it's gotta go so I can fit the watercooling.

Heatpipe removed showing AMD 790GX chipset.

I need to find a water block to replace the heatpipe. For this chip:

and this one:
Enough connections on the back?

More info at http://www.msi.com.tw/.

Deep Thought - CPU

Hardware - CPU

I've never used AMD processors before, so time to find out if the new Phenom X4 is as good as the I7. The 125 watt black series.

Pretty good quality, I thought. The core (or cores):

More info at http://www.amd.com.