Parts parts parts

Boy I love getting parts in the mail. Makes me feel like it's Christmas opening up boxes from Newegg and NCIX to be greeted with two new XFX PRO550W 80+ Bronze power supplies, two sets of Mushkin Blackline 2x4GB kits, and two Western Digital 1TB Caviar Blue hard drives all of which are going into Charlie's duplicate rigs. I also ordered two Bitfenix 140mm Spectre Pro Blue LED fans and one Bitfenix 120mm Spectre Pro Blue LED fans to install into my own rig (because the two top mounted Xigmatek XAF fans are making a bit of vibration noise and it's really annoying me).

Contents of the NCIX shipment

I've installed everything already into the one In-Win rigs, just need to get the SATA cables that came with the motherboards (which are in possession by Charlie at this moment) to hook the CD drive back up. I managed to fit the excess cables neatly behind where the 3.5" hard drive bays are allowing the system to have the most efficient airflow without extra cables getting in the way. I hope this will start to clear up stability issues and BSOD's because now the system has more than enough wattage for all the components with a fair amount of room for future improvements as well as better quality RAM. Fingers crossed!

The inside of the In-Win rig with the upgrades installed

The new hard drive installed into the In-Win rig indicating proper storage size

What was also neat was that NCIX had a promotion going on with the XFX power supplies that you get a free copy of Dirt 3 and FarCry 2 for each power supply, so I ended up receiving two copies of each game! I already own FarCry 2 though, so I can give both copies away to friends to play as well as give away a copy of Dirt 3 (which I may consider doing a giveaway on this blog for it).

Top Bitfenix Spectre Pro 140mm Blue LED fans installed

Side panel Bitfenix Spectre Pro 140mm Blue LED fans installed

Side panel re-installed with the system off

Side panel re-installed with the system on

Side panel re-installed with the system on and lights off

Back of the Bitfenix Spectre Pro 120mm Blue LED fan box

Back of the Bitfenix Spectre Pro 140mm Blue LED fan box

The new Bitfenix fans look pretty nice in the system. A bit darker than the Xigmatek CLF fan, but that's simply because the housing and impeller on the fan are smoke colored rather than completely clear. However, I think it looks excellent on the system having the fan be a bit darker as it doesn't overly light the rig and my room up at night but still adds a good ambiance of lighting to my rig. Also, I think that the fully blue LED accent lighting looks a fair bit better now rather than the blue LED + white LED combo. One thing I saw that was a bit odd is that on the 140mm box it doesn't display the accessories that come with the fan, but it comes with the exact same accessories that are listed on the 120mm fan box.

I may consider getting another for the front of my case, considering my case has a button that can be used to turn on and off the front LED fan, but I'm not sure if I want to sacrifice CFM for looks, as I used to have the front Coolermaster fan LED off 90% of the time. In any case, my rig is starting to look pretty sharp. Next thing to upgrade is my graphics card from the GTX 460 (the one that is still working) up to a GTX 670. But I think that may not happen for a bit, or at least until I can get some more money to pay for one.