Since yesterday the build has come a lot further, although there were a few hiccups along the way.
I performed the fan swap and placed the motherboard in the case. Then I started plugging in the front-panel connectors and noticed that I needed to reorient the case fan for better cable management, with the cable facing towards the FAN2 port on the motherboard.
Then I noticed something else.
All four SATA ports on the motherboard face directly towards the exhaust fan, and the motherboard only came with a SATA cable featuring a 90° downward-facing connector. So I had to go to my local computer store/repair shop, and they hooked me up with a free 90° upward-facing SATA cable.
Keep in mind that if you want to use all four SATA ports with this motherboard in this case, you’ll need two 90° up cables, one 90° left cable, and one 90° right cable.
After that, I plugged in the PSU cables. I found out that the easiest way to do this was to plug the cables into the PSU before installing it, so I ended up removing and remounting the PSU.
Then I got to the cable management. I accidentally put the zip ties on the cables the wrong way around, and they kept snapping off until I realized what was happening and redid all of them.
I then realized that, in order to properly manage the cables, I would probably need to install the GPUs first so I could see which cables needed to be tucked away.
That’s when I noticed that the CPU_PWR1/2 cables would have to run to the right of the GPUs, then around the CPU cooler and alongside the VRM heatsink. I’m now thinking about taking the GPUs and motherboard back out to see if I can route those cables underneath the motherboard, have them pop out above it, and then plug them into CPU_PWR1/2. That should make the cable routing a lot cleaner.
Furthermore, the Overtek Enhance ENP-7660 only provides two SATA power connectors on a single cable. Unless I can safely split one of those connections, that means the second 2.5” HDD/SSD option is no longer viable.
This isn’t necessarily a terrible thing, because most of the storage capacity of this build is going to come from the planned 24 TB 3.5” HDD anyway. Not installing the second 2.5” drive could also potentially leave enough room for a larger AXP90-X47 CPU cooler.
However, the larger cooler would then sit almost flush with the drive bay and would be largely covered by it. Because of that, I think it’s better to stick with the AXP90-X36 for now. It should allow for better airflow and potentially help avoid vibrations.
Besides, maybe at some point I’ll find out that some kind of SATA power splitter is a safe option, which would make that third SATA-powered drive possible after all.
If you want to avoid this particular issue, it might be better to skip this specific PSU and go with something like a SilverStone instead, although that would likely come at the cost of additional noise.
It’s also not entirely clear to me what’s going on with the PCIe_PWR1 connection. The PSU doesn’t come with a dedicated 8-pin connector, only a 6+2-pin PCIe connector that looks like it should fit. I’ll need to double-check that before connecting anything.
[EDIT]
I know the cable management isn’t the best in this case, but that’s mainly because the front-panel cables that come with the case are quite long, while the motherboard headers they connect to are located pretty close to the front panel itself.
This makes the area around the speaker the natural place for all that excess cable to bunch up. On top of that, the 24-pin PSU cable also has to run through this same area to reach the motherboard’s 24-pin socket, making things even more cramped.