Cooler Master Elite 430 review

The Elite 430 is a very popular case from case manufacturer Cooler Master.

Below is a picture of it

The case looks quite good from the front. The front of the case is made out of plastic and the 5.25 and 3.5 inch bays are covered by metal mesh. The case has 2 USB 2.0 ports , HD audio and an optional firewire.
The power and reset buttons have a chrome finish which gives the case a nice look.

The case comes with one blue 120mm fan although CM could have thrown in one more.
NOTE: The front fan spot of the case also supports a 140mm fan.

Lets move on to the back of the case

On the back of the case we can see a spot for an additional 80,90 or 120mm fan.
Then we have 7 expansion slots.One thing I like about this case is that the PSU mounting is at the bottom which makes the case harder to topple over.


Lets move to the inside now:

Inside we can see the three 5.25 drive bays and five 3.5 drive bays and an additional 2 external 3.5 drive bays. These are all tool less.

The motherboard tray is also solid and all black like the rest of the case and has a decent sized CPU cutout which will allow you to install aftermarket CPU coolers without removing the motherboard. However the motherboard tray as a whole is not removable.

We have a total of 6 fan mounting areas and they all support 120mm fans. The two fan mounts on the top will also allow you to install certain radiators.
NOTE: One of the fan mounts is on the window.

This case does not have any cable management features but for the price we're paying I wouldn't expect any in the first place.
The case also supports long graphics card and it also specifically states on the box that it supports a radeon 5970 too. The only cards that won't fit would be the MARS II and the 6990. However the GTX 690s and Radeon 7970s will fit without any problems.

Lets finally go over the features of this case
Material - Steel, Plastic and Mesh
Fan Mounts - Six
Tool less design - Yes(drive bays only)
PSU Placement - Bottom
Fan(s) Included - 1x120mm blue LED
Removable Motherboard tray - NO
Cable Management Holes - NO
Window - YES


The lack of cable management does make a build in this case look messy but if you know your stuff you can get away by hiding your cables in places like empty drive bays.

Thank you for reading this review .If you have any questions feel free to message my or email me at jaideeptw@yahoo.com

Does Video RAM Really Make a Difference?

So guys would you like a 1 GB Graphics card or would you like to pay a little extra and get a 2 GB version.


Many people think of Video RAM or VRAM as " The more the merrier" but is this really true?
Lets find out!

Many manufacturers make weak GPUs with an enormous amount of vram. Just the other day I saw a Nvidia GT430 with 4 gigs of memory. Most people have also fallen prey to this marketing gimmick. Ask any of your "less hardware conscious" friends about their system specs and you'll find that they would almost always say things like "I have a blah blah processor and a 1GB video card or a 2GB video card"
This shows that most people only card about the GBs.
Little do they know that the manufacturers might have tricked them into buying say a radeon 5450 with 2 gigs of ram or so.

Finally let me answer the question!
Is vram really important

And the answer is that at resolutions like 1080p and below you really don't need more than 1GB of vram maybe 2 gigs at the most. More vram is only needed when you have resolutions above 1080p or if you are doing an eyefinity or surround setup.

Coming to lower end cards there's really no point in putting more than 1 gig of vram into them and a consumer shouldn't buy a 2 gig low end card like a GT520 or a Radeon HD6450. Don't get ripped off by the "Special Edition" low end cards that have something like 4 gigs of vram.

As far as higher end cards go,they require a bit more vram since they are capable of loading high res textures. Recently there was a 6GB Radeon HD7970. Now is this card good for a person with a single 1080p monitor? The answer is a big NO!

However If I was to ask the question "Is this card good for a person who runs 3 30inchers with a 2560x1600 resolution on each? And then the answer would be HELL YES!

In case I out of the 6gigs only about 2gigs would be used during the most intensive gameplay.

However in case II the 6gigs would find their true potential and the second person would greatly benefit from the 6gigs of vram

Bottomline
On a low end card, more than 1gig of RAM is just pointless and a waste of money. On a mid to high end card you may be good to go with 2gigs of RAM and the crazy 6gigs is only meant for monster resolutions like 7680 x 1600!


Thank you for reading this guide.If you have any questions feel free to message my or email me at jaideeptw@yahoo.com

How to put in a new HDD/SSD in your computer

Running out of storage? Wanna upgrade to something better and faster?
Then it might be time to buy a new SSD or HDD. Its easy to buy them but to install them in your pc can be a headache for some people so I'm gonna show you how to do it!

First decide on what you want a HDD or an SSD
For more info on SSDs and HDDs read one of my previous posts

http://neptunecustomsystems.blogspot.in/2012/08/what-are-ssds-ssd-vs-hdd.html

Also note that SATA standards are backwards compatible so a SATA 3 drive will work in a SATA 1 slot however its speed will be affected.

Now lets assume that you have got yourself a new HDD/SSD from a good manufacturer (WD,Seagate,Samsung,OCZ,Intel,Crucial etc) and you are ready to install it into your system

Follow these steps:

Step 1: Take the SSD/HDD out of the packaging and check if it came with a SATA cable or not. If it does not contain a SATA cable you can still use your old HDD/SSD's cable provided your PC is relatively new and has SATA and not IDE or PATA. Alternatively you can also buy a SATA cable for cheap.

NOTE: When unboxing a HDD do not to shake it around too much as it contains some fragile moving parts!

Step 2: Open up the side panel of your PC and locate the existing HDD. It should have 2 cables attached to it. One of them is power and the other is data.

It should look something like this:

The thicker red cable is the data or SATA cable and the other one is the SATA power cable

Step 3: If you are going to replace the old HDD then just remove the cables from your old HDD and remove it by unscrewing it from the HDD cage.Once done,just screw in your new HDD/SSD and then reconnect the same cables.

If you are adding a new SSD/HDD without removing the old one screw in your new device into an empty slot and then locate a SATA power cable coming out of your power supply unit and connect it to the drive and then connect one end of the SATA data cable to the HDD and the other to the headers on the motherboard. Don't worry about putting in the wrong cable as each cable can only go into a specific slot


A SATA power cable looks like this:

A SATA power cable

A SATA data cable looks like this:

A SATA data cable

Motherboard SATA connectors:



Once you have done that then just close up your pc case and boot it up. If you have replace your HDD you will need to reinstall windows. If you have added an extra drive then windows should automatically detect it.


Thank you for reading this guide.If you have any questions feel free to message my or email me at jaideeptw@yahoo.com