Andre's Z77 Personal Rig

Very nice and clean build andrevautuor , It gives me ideas about what to do on my build . It will be my first build , I have the same case and I think I am going to use the same cpu you have, and an msi z77a-gd65 board. So reading your build log and watching your video has inspired me to do some of the same things as you , even though it won't be exactly like yours. I am still learning.
I like the builds you do , keep up the good work.

Really Nice work Andre! I Love what you've done with the RAM!

Let's face it...with all the noctua fans, you were never going to get a "matching" aesthetic anyway

epeets said:

everything is looking sweet. man its gonna be a bugger replacing the ram with such a huge heatsink. It just towers over everything! O_O lol Keeping an eye on this one!

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i just finished installing 4 sticks of g skill ripjawsz and it was no a problem (partly because the mpower board has memory latches on the top and bottom of the dimm instead of jus the top like some have, so that allows you to place the bottom of the stick in at a bit of an angle, then straighten it out before you press it down into the slot. with those fixed bottom dimm tracks on some boards you would have had to have the stick straight a bit higher up so it might not have worked. (more on the mpower memory latches later)

Mark3Max said:

Very nice and clean build andrevautuor , It gives me ideas about what to do on my build . It will be my first build , I have the same case and I think I am going to use the same cpu you have, and an msi z77a-gd65 board. So reading your build log and watching your video has inspired me to do some of the same things as you , even though it won't be exactly like yours. I am still learning.
I like the builds you do , keep up the good work.

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thank you very much! good luck with your new build! feel free to have a long over at my z58 build if you want to see some more 650D stuff! there will be lots more updates here too in the near future

The Orange One said:

Really Nice work Andre! I Love what you've done with the RAM!

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thanks man but that was temp memory really because it was only xmp 1600 and it was from 2 different sets of triple channel. also it seems like at least one of those sticks has gone bad because i was having trouble with blue screen crashes so i have replaced the kingston stuff (more on this later as well)

Sathos said:

Let's face it...with all the noctua fans, you were never going to get a "matching" aesthetic anyway

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i like the look of the noctua stuff a lot. i like earthy tones. i think the asus sabertooth boards match it quiet well.

Memory

Hello everyone,

I have lots of updates coming up very soon, but here is a small one in the mean time.



For a short time I was using some old xmp 1600mhz Kingston Genesis stuff from my previous X58 build. It seemed fine for a few days but I started getting some blue screen crashes, so I swapped out the Kingston memory for some 8GB G.Skill Sniper stuff I had around. I ran prime 95 with 95% of memory in use and furmark maxed out for 14 hours with the G Skill memory and it ran fine.

The Sniper memory happened to be black, so I took this opportunity to grab a picture of the build with back memory installed.



My dad was nice enough to let me use 16gb of the G.Skill RipjawsZ 2133 MHz stuff that he had in his X79 build.

I have to admit that I was not the biggest fan of the aesthetic of this stuff at first, as I generally do not like any gun, blade, weapon etc designs on computer hardware, but this stuff has definitely grown on me the more I look at it. Still not my favorite heatsink design and red isn't my favorite color, but I'm liking the look of it more and more.

Here is a couple picture's of the kit before I installed it in my own build.







I have since ram about 12 hours of prime 95% memory usage + furmark extreme settings and no issues with the new stuff either. The red is also not really a huge problem either because you can hardly see it in there.


I have my eye on this very sharp looking kit of 2400 MHz Patriot Viper Xtreme stuff that I may pick up in a bit, but for now I will gladly use this G.Skill stuff and then I will give it back to my father when I'm finished with it.










Currently I have had a few minor issues with my Mpower board, luckily it is still within the 14 day exchange period and purpously didn't order it online, so I will go into the store tomorrow or Tuesday and hopefully get it exchanged.


Stay tuned I have some more updates coming including some sound related stuff and plenty more.

Here is a few pictures of the build with the G.Skill RipjawsZ ram installed.

Nice looking rig mate, good job with cable management

Looks lovely jubbly mate, good job

| raVen | said:

Nice looking rig mate, good job with cable management

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hey, thanks!

how do you find the quality of the little latches that hold/eject the memory sticks? one of mine broke after the 3rd ram installation. luckily it's been within 14 days so i should be able to get it exchanged or at least return it and just get another one. Love the board overall but a bit disappointed about that.

Sound Card: ASUS Xonar Essence STX

Yesterday I have a play with the Xonar STX. This is a very attractive looking card and it has one of the best looking boxes I have ever seen, not that the box is very important, but I'm fussy and I like the little things.

This particular card will be going into my dad's system, but I will be adding one into my own system shortly.

Here is a look at the box and the card.
















The installation was easy and fast, the only thing is that it requires a 4 pin molex for power, so that is one extra cable you will have to run into the main chamber of your case. Since the card is also quiet a bit shorter than the average high end graphics card, the cable will also have to run quite a bit further in than the average graphics card. If you have all black cables you should be able to work something out that is quiet neat and possible tuck the power cable along somewhere and hide it pretty well.

Drivers were also fast and easy. I just went to the Asus site and picked the card, picked Win 8 64 bit and downloaded the latest driver which was from Oct 27 2012 I believe, so a very modern driver for Win 8 (the Win7 driver is from Nov 2011)

My sound setup is as follows:

Amplifier: Classé Audio DR-9
Preamplifier: ADCOM GFP-565
Speakers: Klipsch RF-82's
Subwoofers: 2X Klipsch RW-10D's in stereo

If you would like to see more about my audio setup, see the thread here.


I connected my preamp to the xonar card via the Analogue Left and Right RCA jacks using Sumiko cables.





The sound was a vast improvement from the onboard audio, the highs were much more clean, clear, crisp and focused, the soundstage was more well defined, better depth and imaging, and the bass was tighter and more clean.

I was impressed with the sound coming from this and I think is it a great improvement with my own setup. My dad also tested it with his Sennheiser headphones and it was a huge improvement with those too.

I had a really bad experience with one of those ADCOMs but it turned out, that it was just a faulty unit.

This is a very nice setup mate, those RW-10D have a rather controlled low area and I like them a lot. Enjoy

ccaution said:

I had a really bad experience with one of those ADCOMs but it turned out, that it was just a faulty unit.

This is a very nice setup mate, those RW-10D have a rather controlled low area and I like them a lot. Enjoy

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the one i have is definitely old but it preforms extremely well still. I recently read the Stereophile review of it at the time and it was a very good unit for the price and has a great phono as well.

http://www.stereophile.com/content/adcom-gfp-565-preamplifier

The RW-10D's are quite nice for the price I got then a couple years ago now at a good price.

What kind of audio setup do you have?

I'm living between two cities nowadays, and my setup is half packed, half here, half there, but it mainly consists of a pair of Wharfedale Diamonds 10.7, a dirty cheap used FV15HP with a bridged and heavily modfied behringer ep4000 and a Parasound A21.

Source wise, there are a couple of MK2 turntables and Auzentech Auzen X-Fi Forte which used to be lovevly, but starts to piss me off with the drivers and the new windows.

I shall post some photos of the setup, when I finally come to bring it together again

They would not exchange the board in store because they said i would have to send it back to MSI and get it replaced. Obviously I was not going to wait for that, so I just pulled a couple DIMM slot latches from an old dead P6T Deluxe board we have hanging around and stuck them into my board. Later on I may order or find some black ones somewhere, but I don't really care about it for now. The ends of the SATA 3 cables are white, so the white latches match with those.




IMG_1859 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1860 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1861 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1858 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


I have also moved to these black Sniper sticks temporarily just until I get my hands on those 2400 MHz viper xtreme sticks that I have my eye on.




When I had the case open I took the opportunity to sort out some of the ables that were stored around the top front area near the optical bays


IMG_1864 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr





IMG_1876 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1878 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1834 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


Those last few pictures are a few random ones I took yesterday not all in proper order.




I also ordered a longer, lower profile USB 3 adapter for my front panel USB 3 ports. The last one was only a few inches long and so bulky it was near impossible to route it out through the cable management holes and when I did it was bending the USB 3 header and not connecting right.

This one looks a lot better to me and I say people say it worked better so I thought I would give it a try.

If anyone else is interested it is called HDE 2 Port USB 3.0 A Female to 20 Pin Y Cableand you can g et it for $4.96 on amazon













The one I was using before was by Silverstone but it was so short and bulky it was really hard to deal with and it was bending and not making a good connection with the usb 3 header when i routed it around the back

Silverstone Tek 19 Pin USB3.0 Adapter Cable








I'm pretty annoyed with Corsair at this point for not uncluding a proper 19 pin usb header on the front ports instead of that crappy passthrough cable , or at least not offering a replacement front panel I/O with a proper header like this one for the 550D

http://www.corsair.com/us/parts/cas...0d-i-o-panel-replacement-with-all-cables.html

Here's a couple shots to show my "the SATA3 cables have white on them so the new DIMM latch kind of matches that" idea


IMG_1901 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1911 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr





Here are a couple shots I took a few minutes ago showing the current cable layout


IMG_1902 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1907 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1909 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

MSI Z77 MPOWER & Intel i7-3770K: Closer Look

I will most likely be grabbing either 2400mhz or 2133mhz patriot viper xtreme memory later on this evening and i will of course have some pictures of that when it happens.

the viper extreme stuff is my favorite looking memory at the moment because of the gold and back tones as well as the minimal design which i always prefer over tacky guns, knife, etc designs that are fairly common these days.









i still have lots of updates that i am waiting to space out a bit though so here is one in the mean time.


i realize that i only includes a couple of pictures of the motherboard in the begging of the thread and i was planning on posting a more in depth look
at the board and the box etc, so here it is.




IMG_1479_small by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1482_small by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1485 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1486 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1488 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1490 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1491 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1492 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1493 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1494 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1495 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1496 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1497_small by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1498 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1499 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1500 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr


IMG_1501 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr



I also have a more in depth look at the graphics card which I will post here a bit later.

I Like those SATA Cables. They help to make the white latches of the Dimm look slightly less obvious.

The Orange One said:

I Like those SATA Cables. They help to make the white latches of the Dimm look slightly less obvious.

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thanks man! i totally forgot about gigabyte amd board i had around here that i have sold but havent shipped yet so i replaced 2 slots of the 4 with white latches and so now i have black latches on mine and 3 extra black ones for spares in the future.

dont worry the white latches match the gigabyte board very well and it looks like it could easily have some that way from the factory. i showed the guy who is buying it a picture and it said that is no problem so i didnt just do it without telling him

i also got new memory (you can see in my sig) i will have a fairly large update coming up in a few minutes!

Here is what boot time is like with the Mpower board.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G7TOPzrq5s&feature=plcp

Say what, a you on Windows 8 ?