The shipment arrives, someone grab the scissors.

One of the best feelings after buying anything on the Internet is the sound of the UPS truck arriving outside your door.

Such was the case a Monday ago for me, except there was also road construction nearby which led to many false alarms.

The boxes did arrive from NewEgg eventually though, a much later time than we used to get packages, the route must have changed.

So if Part One was “Let’s Go Shopping”, part two would have to be putting it together.

So without further adieu, let’s.

It's much nicer to look at the components when they're out of the shipping box.

Part Two: Let’s Put It Together

A reminder on the parts list.

System:

Case: Antec Twelve Hundred
Power Supply: Antec EarthWatts 650W
Motherboard: Asus P6T Deluxe V2
Processor: Intel Core i7 920
CPU Cooler: Vigor Monsoon III LT
Graphics Card: Gigabyte HD4870
Memory: OCZ Platinum 6GB (3×2GB) DDR3 1600
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB
Disc Drive: Pioneer Black 20x DVD Burner

You can get the full rundown on why I went with each component if you swing back to part one.

It’s been quite some time since I last built a tower PC, dating back to 2006, but I had recently put together a Home Theater PC so I was hoping there wouldn’t be too many issues for the build.

The first thing I did was grapple with the case, the Antec Twelve Hundred is a full tower case, which is pretty large compared to consumer PCs.

Taking the Antec Twelve Hundred out of the box was a fairly painless process.  It is definitely a large case, with lots of cable bundles hidden inside.  There’s plenty of room inside for everything I wanted to put in, and down the road almost anything I want to add.

The Twelve Hundred also came in its own box, as it wouldn’t make sense to re-box something like a case.   The shipping weight was actually 12 lbs heavier for the case than for the rest of the components.

I saved a lot of the cabling ties in a box, just in case they were needed later.

Eager to jump in the first thing I wanted to do was add in the motherboard and start plugging away, but I probably should have slowed down and opened everything first. Screwing in the motherboard, before I had the processor and CPU cooler attached actually set me back.  The mount for the large heatsink needed to be attached from the bottom.

The motherboard, before being put in and taken out of the case and then put in again. It was so simple then.

Take your time, read everything, or you might forget something like I did. I ended up having to take the motherboard out to fix a problem.

System Guides:

• Ars Technica Budget Box
  A  system for those on a budget.
• Ars Technica Hot Rod
  Spend more, get more but still a PC that doesn’t break the bank.
• Ars Technica God Box
  Novices need not apply, the God Box sports thousands of dollars worth of components and is really more of a dream than anything.
• ExtremeTech Bang for the Buck PC
  The guide I used as a basis for my build.

Screwing in and then unscrewing the motherboard. It really didn't set me back too much, but it was an annoying problem because I could have avoided it by reading the instructions for all of the products first.

Once the heatsink was attached to the motherboard, the rest of the installation went pretty smoothly.  The Gigabyte card is actually pretty long, but the Twelve Hundred is plenty of room for it.  I am actually looking to add a second 4870 videocard when the prices come down to the sub-$100 dollar level.  It will add a decent amount of performance to the system.

Speaking of room in the Twelve Hundred, when I finally got my hands on it, I was pleased with the case immensely.  You can actually take the back panel off of the case and feed cables up the back side.  This does wonders for keeping the interior of the case clean and manageable.  It also does wonders for airflow.  There are three intake fans on the front of the case that suck air in, a massive fan on the top of the case along with two back fans to suck air out of the case.  I really have no fear of the eventual overclocking that I will do.  The extra heat from adding another videocard to the case doesn’t worry me either because the airflow in the case is exceptional.

The case puts the powersupply on the bottom, which is new to me, but pretty standard fare in a lot of cases these days.

The Antec Earthwatts case I chose has plenty of plugs for everything I needed in the case as well.  The large number of fans in the Twelve Hundred aren’t a problem, neither is having the P6T Deluxe V2 motherboard or even two videocards (eventually).

The power supply has a fan that will push air up over my cards, but isn’t an integral part of the cooling solution.  As mentioned before, I used the Twelve Hundred’s rear panel to hide my cables, and the case is pretty tall.  The cables were just long enough to reach the needed plugs without any much tension.

A look inside with all the plugs connected. As you can see there is a lot of room left.

As you can see to the left, there’s a mass of cabling at the bottom.  It ended up not being a problem though, because with some cable ties I was able to clean it up and keep it compact.

One thing I tried to prepare myself for was the size of the CPU Cooler.  I’d read that the Monsoon was large, but after checking its measurements I knew it would fit inside the Twelve Hundred.  It may, however, not fit inside a smaller case, so make sure to check it out for yourself if you’re going with a different case.

Right now, I only have one hard drive in the case, but do plan on adding more.  Each hard drive bay has three slots in it.  I’d probably only put one hard drive in each bay, to keep the airflow going strong.

So how’s the performance? What’s the final product look like? Will I finally be pushing the processor by overclocking?  All this and more coming in Part 3.  I hope you enjoyed reading Part 2 Let’s Put It Together.

Feel free to leave your comments on the build below.  If you have any questions about what it takes to put a PC together, I’ll try to answer them.  Look for more frequent, shorter updates by checking out my Twitter page.