My parts for my new rig have been confirmed all have arrived. And the new system will be undergoing quite a number of tests and overclocking. And this will be the first for anything in terms of:
- First Water Cooling System
- First Computer I built from the ground up
We'll start with the individual Components: and the Value I paid for the rig that's just a couple bucks below 1,000 dollars, as a result of purchases and sales of my current and former parts.
CASE: Fractal Design Define R3 - Pearl Black - FOC
Old Case I've offloaded from a Friend, and it's still a fairly high end ATX Mid Tower case. It's a case meant for silencing. He only had one ModuVent, those attachable panels that reduce the sound signatures at the fan mounts. As to where the rest of em' are, I have no idea. However, everything else, including additional Case Fan screws are there. There was a lot of room inside when I built it and getting the rig built inside the case was no issue.
CASE COOLING: 120 x 2 Fractal White Fans, 1 140mm Thermalright X-Silent
The white fans came with the case, and there are 2 of them in there. And I finally have a use for the Thermalright X-Silent after the NZXT 140mm fan Andrew provided started to produce a lot of clicking noise, either from Dead bearings or who knows what. So the X-Silent 140 is in there, and the fan is actually VERY quiet.
OPTICAL DRIVE: LG DVD BURNER - FROM OLD RIG.
Andrew did throw in another DVD Burner with the case and Motherboard. However it didn't have a front bezel. It didn't occur to me to switch it for the other one till after the installation. And the switch took me 10 minutes. Got that up and running, no problem at all. The Drive without the Bezel still works no problem, but looks ugly when I opened the door of the case so it went to the old rig instead.
CPU: Core i7 2600K (3.4GHz, 8MB Cache - Unlocked and unleashed) - $270
Old technology, yeah I know. But is it good? Hell yes it is. When the Sandy Bridge Overclocking CPUs arrived nearly 3 years ago, they were a game changer as far as performance goes. The K Designation implies that they are ready to be overclocked provided you have the right board. Even the Core i5 2500K was great, and when overclocked heavily the gaming performance can still push past stock i7 3770(K) and i7 4770(K). With that in mind, the i5s were and still are always a great choice today in Haswells. But you owe much of this performance to the Sandy Bridge Architecture. The i7 is needed for that extra bit of power. And currently it's being run at 4.4GHz without problems.
CPU COOLING:
Corsair H70 (120mm Square Radiator at 50mm Thick with 120mm Fans) - $80
Thick 120mm Radiator, biggest 120mm in the Corsair Hydro Series. Perfect for my needs because the case doesn't have support for 140mm Rads at the exhaust and I plan to keep the noise down. Reason I'm going Water Cooling is because of one: The RAM, and two: Overclocking. The Corsair Vengeance RAM is a big problem because of the tall Heatsinks and since I'm gonna overclock the baby, I'll want something that will give me impressive performance. I would have gone with the Thermalright Silver Arrow or the Noctuas but it'll be way too big especially the tower height to the Define R3. The H70 however is a good space saving alternative, and makes the interior look much cleaner. The H70 I bought however didn't come with 2 fans, just one. No worries, I got a tonne of 120mm fans and with Blue LED which lights up the interior bright with Blue. Great for this scheme.
MOTHERBOARD: ASUS P8P67 PRO M Motherboard - $60.
Old Tech I know. However, This came with the case and Andrew threw in a lot more for $60 than just the case and Motherboard. The P67 technology was good and is still good despite its age. It's an mATX board, but you can still overclock it. And for a board like this, the features are still pretty extensive.
MEMORY: CORSAIR VENGEANCE 16GB AT 1600MHZ RAM (2 PAIRS: 1 BLACK PAIR, 1 BLUE PAIR) - $75
8GB was salvaged from my Old Rig and leaving 8GB back there is still fast enough for the old rig as long you don't fill up the hard drive with too much things. However, knowing I would like 16GB in there, I bought a different colour pair for the blue-black general colour scheme. RAM timings are the same so the RAMs run with no issues.
GRAPHICS CORE: ZOTAC GEFORCE GTX 780 AMP! EDITION - $738 - $350 from sale of GTX 680 = $388
The only thing I bought new. The Zotac GeForce GTX 780 AMP! is not bottlenecked by a Core i7 processor that is 3 Generations old. A lot more so after overclocking the CPU. The GPU is extremely powerful with the potent GK 110 Core.
For the article of the GTX 780 I bought from BeyondGeek, see this article.
http://paulstechinsights.blogspot.sg/2013/11/zotac-amp-edition-nvidia-geforce-gtx.html
STORAGE: OCZ VERTEX 4 128GB (FROM OLD RIG),
500 GB WESTERN DIGITAL CAVIAR BLUE: $50
500 GB SEAGATE MOMENTUS: FOC FROM OLD LAPTOP
2TB WESTERN DIGITAL CAVIAR GREEN $60
Great Proven speeds and adequate space for some stuff make the OCZ Vertex 4 my primary boot drive. Rest of the storage is pretty damn extensive, more than enough for games and movies. I mean seriously, what is it like to have a total of 3 freaking Terabytes of Hard Disc Space? Bloody awesome. The Laptop Drive isn't wiped because of the Data that I'd like to keep. So to get access to old data from my Laptop that died earlier, I use it as another bit of storage. That said all my SATA ports are already almost used.
EXPANSION: 4-USB 3.0 PCI-E HUB - $15
Since my casing needs a USB 3.0, I decided to add 4 more USB 3.0 ports via PCI-E and Molex. Now with 6 USB 3.0 ports, 2 on the motherboard and 4 on the card, should have more than enough USB 3.0 Connectivity.
WIRELESS: TP-LINK MICRO USB ADAPTER - $15
Small Baby Sized Router but has proven pretty good. Small size makes it a bit fiddly to install and the older TP-Link Drivers and Utility Software on the mini disc don't detect this Adapter till I downloaded the latest definitions of the driver. After I got that settled, The Utilities picked up the device automatically and was up and running. I decided to pop that in front of the case for easier reception. It occupied 1 of the only 2 USB 2.0 ports at the top of the case. No worries However, because I'm getting a PCI-E front USB 3.0 Hub which I need anyway.
POWER SUPPLY: CORSAIR HX-1000 1000W 80+ CERTIFIED - FROM OLD RIG.
Rugged, high-cap, looks tough and lasted a good while, and SLI / Crossfire Ready. Semi Modular but those cords are quickly taken up anyways. The old Flagship PSU when it first launched is longer than a standard PSU, but fits in both my old and other rig no problems. I just have to unscrew out the bottom filter in order to fit, no issues otherwise. A former Heavy Weight and if tested now, should lie somewhere between an 80+ Bronze and 80+ Silver. It's not the best now, but still respectable despite its age. And noise levels are still pretty nice when loaded. It's actually internally 2 500W Power supplies using 2 Transformers cramped to a single unit, just FYI. And the Blue Accented Stickers are great for this Black - White Theme Build. And it has been validated to be Haswell ready so if I want to upgrade to that, this can still be used.
