Setup and Installation
When the Define Mini came in I was preparing for LanOC V9.0 and was not really looking forward to packing up my full sized rig to drag it to the event. I decided that this would be a good chance to put together a powerful PC in the Define Mini that could also be quiet. Here is out part listing.
Fractal Define Mini
Corsair HX620 Watt PSU
Nvidia GTX 560 Ti
Corsair H50 Water cooling
OCZ Fatality DDR3 Dual Channel RAM
Intel i7 2600 Sandy Bridge CPU
Intel DH67BL Motherboard
Western Digital Velociraptor 300Gb HD for games
Mushkin SSD for OS
To get started I pulled the hard drive trays out and installed both of our drives. With the velociraptor we mounted the drive using the included rubber mounts to keep vibration and noise down. With the SSD on the other hand, there isn’t a similar option. So it is mounted directly to the tray. Not that we have to worry about vibration from an SSD, but it would be nice for people using laptop platter drives.
Installing the motherboard was simple. But first we had to install the motherboard standoffs and the rear I/O panel. With them installed I went ahead and secured the H50 mount loosely and installed the motherboard. Once installed, I removed the stock fan from the H50 and attached the H50 to the rear fan included with the Define Mini. Mounting the pump/heatsink of the H50 was easy with the radiator mounted. Of course before that I did drop in our i7 2600 CPU with a little thermal paste.
Before installing the video card I went ahead and started on wiring by installing the Corsair HX620 PSU. Routing all of the cables through the bottom hole was easy with the PSU’s thin cabling. I was able to hide everything behind the motherboard tray and keep everything cleaned up and free for good air flow. Sadly this is the only time it can be seen with no side panel window.
Before buttoning everything up I finished the build off by installing the Nvidia GTX560 Ti. Even though this is a powerful card, I didn’t even have to remove the second hard drive cage for extra room. Unless you plan on packing in a GTX 580 or 590 you shouldn’t have to move anything around.
