First of all, this Rig isn't mine, it belongs to a friend, but he just started getting into PCs so i built it for him, i also chose all the parts.
Parts:
For the Case i chose the Sharkoon T28, we first thought about the Zalman Z9 which i am currently using, but it gets a bit boring when everyone has the same case, so why not try something new. I chose this case because it is pretty cheap, it has a great side panel window, better cable management options than the Zalman and it just looks nice with the blue backplate.
Since the entire PC is made in a blue colour scheme i chose the MSI HD7870 Hawk, besides it's great cooler and the amazing overclocking abilities. Also it was love on first sight when i saw the backplate and the MSI Reactor (i read loads of people dislike it, i find it looks good), also it has pretty shiny LEDs indicating the load of the GPU, combined with the Reactor i didn't have to put in an LED strip to light it up.
CPU is pretty standard, i5 3570k, with a Corsair H60i and two Corsair SP120 QEs in push pull. What actually made me pretty mad about this is that the H60i only comes with 4 screws for the fans and the SP120 QEs don't bring any as well, i went to the next hardware shop to buy some and they told me that they didn't have screws like those. So basically if anyone didn't know yet, order some extra screws if you want to do push pull!
For the Motherboard i chose the MSI Z77A-G45, it fits in pretty well with the overall colour scheme and i read it had great overclocking potential, but really it was rather disappointing in the end. i will talk about that later.
The RAM is again pretty much what everyone uses, Corsair Vengeance Blue 8GB 1600MHz, it's blue for the obvious reasons
The PSU is a Corsair AX750, i know this is quite overkill but my friend plans on putting a second 7870 in there sometime by the end of the year, so why not give him some headroom for that. Also since i got my PSU i am disgusted my non- or half-modular PSUs, i just think they look like hell.
The SSD initially should have been a Corsair Force 3 60GB, but unfortunately Amazon stopped selling them in germany, so i chose an Intel 330 60GB, at least the Intel logo is blue.
The HDD is a Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1.5TB.
TL;DR
Case: Sharkoon T28
GPU: MSI HD7870 Hawk
CPU: i5 3570k
Cooling: Corsair H60i, 2 SP120 QE
Mobo: MSI Z77A-G45
PSU: Corsair AX750
SSD: Intel 330 60GB
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1.5 TB
I worked some more on the cable management, unfortunately i don't have a picture. It looks similiar to this, just a few more cable ties.
Overclocking and Benchmarks:
As i said before i expected the MSI motherboard to do really good at overclocking, but to be honest it was quite a bitch to handle. I couldn't get the CPU over 4.2 GHz, there was no way. I reached 4.2 quite easily, stock BCLK, 40x multiplier, 1.13V. Whenever i pushed just a little over that it wouldn't boot, in fact it wouldn't even let me enter the BIOS. the first time it didn't boot i was pretty confused, the Voltage was pretty low and usually you got to step it up quite a bit to make your Rig refuse to start up. After trying at least 30 settings and having to push the clear cmos button even more often i was so mad, i just left it at 4.2GHz. That overclock survived Prime95 for hours, it is definitely stable. Temperatures after several hours of Prime95 wouldn't exceed 60°C.
The GPU is pretty much the opposite of the mainboard, i pushed it from 1100MHz to 1250MHz on the core and from 1250MHz to 1400MHz on the Memory at 1.23V, i didn't try to squeeze out every last MHz out of it, but shortly after this Vantage would crash. The Temperatures are reasonable at load, about 65°C and at idle just amazing at 27°C. The only thing i really don't like about this card is the noise, it will spin backwards for a while after boot up to suck out the dust and it does that at 100% speed, the annoying thing is that i was in the BIOS quite a lot and even after this cleaning procedure is done the fans will keep spinning at 100% until you are booted up and have a driver installed. I see that the dust sucking can be quite handy, but the downside is that it is as loud as a hair dryer.
Overall with the overclock the 7870 nearly beats my 7950 at stock clocks, which is pretty good.
Heaven:
Valley (oh god Valley looks so good):
MSI Kombustor:
Catzilla (it's all TTL's fault that i used that):
3D Mark Vantage:
Now you are probably wondering, where is 3D Mark 11?
Unfortunately 3DMark11 would keep crashing at the CPU Benchmark, i have no idea why. i even tried it with brute force (up to 1.2V) and it would still crash. So yea, no 3D Mark 11.
Overall i am quite happy with this build, it looks good, performs (besides the CPU issues) very well and i had a lot of fun building this. Maybe you get an updated version of this at the end of this year when he buys a second GPU
Parts:
For the Case i chose the Sharkoon T28, we first thought about the Zalman Z9 which i am currently using, but it gets a bit boring when everyone has the same case, so why not try something new. I chose this case because it is pretty cheap, it has a great side panel window, better cable management options than the Zalman and it just looks nice with the blue backplate.
Since the entire PC is made in a blue colour scheme i chose the MSI HD7870 Hawk, besides it's great cooler and the amazing overclocking abilities. Also it was love on first sight when i saw the backplate and the MSI Reactor (i read loads of people dislike it, i find it looks good), also it has pretty shiny LEDs indicating the load of the GPU, combined with the Reactor i didn't have to put in an LED strip to light it up.
CPU is pretty standard, i5 3570k, with a Corsair H60i and two Corsair SP120 QEs in push pull. What actually made me pretty mad about this is that the H60i only comes with 4 screws for the fans and the SP120 QEs don't bring any as well, i went to the next hardware shop to buy some and they told me that they didn't have screws like those. So basically if anyone didn't know yet, order some extra screws if you want to do push pull!
For the Motherboard i chose the MSI Z77A-G45, it fits in pretty well with the overall colour scheme and i read it had great overclocking potential, but really it was rather disappointing in the end. i will talk about that later.
The RAM is again pretty much what everyone uses, Corsair Vengeance Blue 8GB 1600MHz, it's blue for the obvious reasons
The PSU is a Corsair AX750, i know this is quite overkill but my friend plans on putting a second 7870 in there sometime by the end of the year, so why not give him some headroom for that. Also since i got my PSU i am disgusted my non- or half-modular PSUs, i just think they look like hell.
The SSD initially should have been a Corsair Force 3 60GB, but unfortunately Amazon stopped selling them in germany, so i chose an Intel 330 60GB, at least the Intel logo is blue.
The HDD is a Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1.5TB.
TL;DR
Case: Sharkoon T28
GPU: MSI HD7870 Hawk
CPU: i5 3570k
Cooling: Corsair H60i, 2 SP120 QE
Mobo: MSI Z77A-G45
PSU: Corsair AX750
SSD: Intel 330 60GB
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1.5 TB
I worked some more on the cable management, unfortunately i don't have a picture. It looks similiar to this, just a few more cable ties.
Overclocking and Benchmarks:
As i said before i expected the MSI motherboard to do really good at overclocking, but to be honest it was quite a bitch to handle. I couldn't get the CPU over 4.2 GHz, there was no way. I reached 4.2 quite easily, stock BCLK, 40x multiplier, 1.13V. Whenever i pushed just a little over that it wouldn't boot, in fact it wouldn't even let me enter the BIOS. the first time it didn't boot i was pretty confused, the Voltage was pretty low and usually you got to step it up quite a bit to make your Rig refuse to start up. After trying at least 30 settings and having to push the clear cmos button even more often i was so mad, i just left it at 4.2GHz. That overclock survived Prime95 for hours, it is definitely stable. Temperatures after several hours of Prime95 wouldn't exceed 60°C.
The GPU is pretty much the opposite of the mainboard, i pushed it from 1100MHz to 1250MHz on the core and from 1250MHz to 1400MHz on the Memory at 1.23V, i didn't try to squeeze out every last MHz out of it, but shortly after this Vantage would crash. The Temperatures are reasonable at load, about 65°C and at idle just amazing at 27°C. The only thing i really don't like about this card is the noise, it will spin backwards for a while after boot up to suck out the dust and it does that at 100% speed, the annoying thing is that i was in the BIOS quite a lot and even after this cleaning procedure is done the fans will keep spinning at 100% until you are booted up and have a driver installed. I see that the dust sucking can be quite handy, but the downside is that it is as loud as a hair dryer.
Overall with the overclock the 7870 nearly beats my 7950 at stock clocks, which is pretty good.
Heaven:
Valley (oh god Valley looks so good):
MSI Kombustor:
Catzilla (it's all TTL's fault that i used that):
3D Mark Vantage:
Now you are probably wondering, where is 3D Mark 11?
Unfortunately 3DMark11 would keep crashing at the CPU Benchmark, i have no idea why. i even tried it with brute force (up to 1.2V) and it would still crash. So yea, no 3D Mark 11.
Overall i am quite happy with this build, it looks good, performs (besides the CPU issues) very well and i had a lot of fun building this. Maybe you get an updated version of this at the end of this year when he buys a second GPU
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wont go past 1180 core but the memory maxes the slider @ 1450. The dust removal thing works great but i can see your point with the noise.
