1st full new build in 5 years

[Gravan]

Hai All,

I'm a 1st time poster but a v.long time viewer. I came across in the good old TJ Harlow days

I'm looking to put a new build together & wondering if you would not mind checking that I have not missed anything, or should I look at changing something.

Colour concept is Red & black as that will suit most of the components. I am thinking of incorperating UV to show off the w/cooling. just not 100% sure as I have not use lighting within a case before. Otherwise I will just use red coolant & red lighting.

Once setup I am intending to have a balance between Noise & O/Clocking, ie O/Clock until it gets too loud & hot

Case: Corsair 650D - Would have loved to to use the white 600T but could not easily W/Cool it

, Also considered the Silverstone RV02 & FT02.

Fans: Switching out original fans to the following - for noise & colour

3 x Bitfenix Spectre Pro 120mm red tint

1 x Bitfenix Spectre Pro 200mm red tint

CPU: Intel i7 3930K

MB: ASUS Rampage IV Formula (Was thinking of using the Gene - but could not see any advantage, & could not see the $/ return benefit of the extreme)

Memory: 16GB G.Skill Ripjay Z F3-14900CL9Q-16GBZL (is there any point considering the 16Gb of the F3-17000CL11Q ? no price difference )

PSU: Corsair AX850

Storage: 2 x Corsair Force GT 120GB (in Raid 0)

1 x WD Caviar Black 2Tb

GPU: Asus HD7970 DCII

CPU cooling: XSPC Raystorm D5 RX240 water cooling kit (the RX will fix in the top of the 650D)

Koolance Fluorescent red (Still not 100% sure if I should go UV or plain red as I have had no experience in that type of lighting)

F/Controler: Lamptron FC6 (Not sure about this either - just looking to control fan speed, maybe pump speed, & turning the lighting on & off)

Lighting: Using 2 x 30cm Bitspower UV Cathodes (Any idea how the UV & normal red LED lights will react with one another?)

Also utilising Bitfenix Red cable extensions

OS: W7 64bit Prof

K/Board: Corsair K90

Mouse: Corsair M60

Monitors: 3 x ?? Something to look foward to in the future

Was thinking in the future to Water cool the GPU, but I'm thinking that is way off

Current cost is approx $3500 AUD ex Freight. Luckily enough it is all from one supplier hopefully should keep the cost down.

Restasured once I get approval from the Boss (Wife)

, I will post some pic's of my new build.

Your thoughts and comments would be much appreciated.

Grav

 

[jamesriley94]

Looks pretty solid - couple of things to consider though:

1) Very little benefit in doing RAID0 with SSDs. Just get 1, 240gb SSD as it is fast enough on it's own.

2) Considering it's just for storage, maybe just caviar green to save energy, and they're more reliable. You wont need the speed of caviar black.

3) As you pointed out, about UV and Red cathodes - UV cathodes dont work at all if there are any other lights in the system, and they work very poorly by themselves anyway. Just stick with the reds alone, they'll be fine.

4) Cathodes usually come with a off switch for a pci bracket anyway, so you wouldnt need the fan controller for that, get a D5 vario pump that will adjust it's speed itself, if not that, then PWM (pretty sure they do them), and just get voltage reducers to keep the fans quiet. There isnt really a need for a fan controller and they just make a mess.

5) You dont mention rad fans? For a 60mm thick rad, you're gunna need very high static pressure fans such as the Scythe AP-15s or the Noctua NF-F12s. If you were intending to use the bitfenix spectres - think again, they dont have any where near enough static pressure to shift through a full thickness rad.

Other than that, it looks ok to me.

Cant remember about the Asus 7970 whether it being a reference board or not, and if not, then you wont be able to watercool it so maybe look at other brands

 

[006409]

um the ASUS DC2 Cards are custom PCB i think so you wouldnt be able to water cool them easily (tho still can be done) and i would go for 250gb SSD as even just using it as a boot drive it will fill with program caches or just stay with the 1x 120gb SSD as i have one and it is RAPID! you wont see much real world benifit from two as shown in the review. Apart from the looks good

i have an RV02-E, nice case and you can do quite a bit with it if your willing to chop a bit

 

[jamesriley94]

EK makes a DCII block. As for the SSD's, how does raid 0 not make them faster? It can double your speeds!

No, it really cant double speeds. Windows does not optimise SSD speed like that. Infact, windows cannot even optimise 1 SSD efficiently. It only show double speeds in benchmarks that are designed to utilise RAIDed systems, but in windows tasks, which only use 4K write cycles (not 1024k like the benchmarks use) there is no difference between 1 SSD and 10 SSDs in RAID. You're better off just getting 1 larger SSD, like in this case the 256gb as that can actually perform faster than 2 as the individual 4K speeds of that will be faster.

You can never really listen to benchmarks in more real life performance. A 3960X can give ridiculous benchmark scores in 3D Mark and PC mark and things like that, but in menial tasks such as browsing the internet and emails, and even gaming to a certain extent, it provides no noticeable performance increase from something as low as an i3, or even in the internet and email situation, performs the same as dual core AMD Athlon

 

[Gravan]

Looks pretty solid - couple of things to consider though:

1) Very little benefit in doing RAID0 with SSDs. Just get 1, 240gb SSD as it is fast enough on it's own.

2) Considering it's just for storage, maybe just caviar green to save energy, and they're more reliable. You wont need the speed of caviar black.

3) As you pointed out, about UV and Red cathodes - UV cathodes dont work at all if there are any other lights in the system, and they work very poorly by themselves anyway. Just stick with the reds alone, they'll be fine.

4) Cathodes usually come with a off switch for a pci bracket anyway, so you wouldnt need the fan controller for that, get a D5 vario pump that will adjust it's speed itself, if not that, then PWM (pretty sure they do them), and just get voltage reducers to keep the fans quiet. There isnt really a need for a fan controller and they just make a mess.

5) You dont mention rad fans? For a 60mm thick rad, you're gunna need very high static pressure fans such as the Scythe AP-15s or the Noctua NF-F12s. If you were intending to use the bitfenix spectres - think again, they dont have any where near enough static pressure to shift through a full thickness rad.

Other than that, it looks ok to me.

Cant remember about the Asus 7970 whether it being a reference board or not, and if not, then you wont be able to watercool it so maybe look at other brands

Hi James, Thankyou for your thoughts,

1. I'm leaning towards your suggestion with this - I saw TTL review a while ago & thought I would love to do this

You don't know if there is any reliability difference if I was to use an Intel 520 instead of the Corsair?

2. The main reason for the black was that I use it for windows Temp files & I think that my current HDD slows down my system (currently a green) atm

3. Thanks for the heads up about the UV - with the interferance from the Fan LEDs, I will switch to all normal lighting - any advantage using LED over Cathode ?

4. I will have to look a little closer to see what they supply with them, & see if I can find some voltage reducers/ resisters from some where. The kit comes with a d5 Vario see http://www.xs-pc.com...voirpump-combo/

5. Some fans are supplied with the Kit, I thought the Pro-version were a little better - It looks like more research for me

FYI This is the water kit i'm looking at http://www.xs-pc.com...tercooling-kit/

I see what you mean about the fans. I think that sort of stuffs if for LED Fans, Looking at the all black Cougar CF-V12HB, Not as good as the Noctua, but close enough. Since I will have not LED's now will switch back to all UV lighting

um the ASUS DC2 Cards are custom PCB i think so you wouldnt be able to water cool them easily (tho still can be done) and i would go for 250gb SSD as even just using it as a boot drive it will fill with program caches or just stay with the 1x 120gb SSD as i have one and it is RAPID! you wont see much real world benifit from two as shown in the review. Apart from the looks good

i have an RV02-E, nice case and you can do quite a bit with it if your willing to chop a bit

I did have a look & EK do make a W/B for that card. - It will depend on when I decide to WC the GPU but it may be time for a new card by then.

Now thinking of 1 x 240 or 120GB SSD - I currently have a old 128GB SSD, seems to work reasonably well, using a HDD as storage & temp file storage.