Hey everyone. After roughly 10 years of running a rig consisting of a random assembly of parts, bought a different stages, I decided that I finally wanted to build a completely new rig, replacing all the parts.
As things usually go when it comes to me and electronics, my budget originally started out at roughly £600, only to replace a handful of parts, to ending up with spending roughly double that with getting everything new.
My full time computer is just the laptop I have while going to uni in the UK, so this is my gaming desktop while at home in Norway.
Here is what I ended up with:
Intel i5-4670K
Asus Maximus 6 Gene
Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB 1600Mhz
Asus GeForce GTX 770 2GB
Samsung 840 Pro 256GB
2x 2TB WD Black
Corsair Obsidian 350D
Corsair AX760i
Corsair H100i
2x 120mm Corsair Quiet Edition SP's for replacing the H100i fans
2x 140mm Corsair Quiet Edition AF's for the front
120mm Corsair Quiet Edition AF for the back
Early on I decided to get the 350D, as quite frankly I don't really need more space than what's offered with this case. Watching TTL's video also helped convincing myself and also to get a few tips on how to install the rig but more on that a bit later.
The words 'Asus Maximus' might be a little controversial on this forum as of late, so I was a little insecure after having ordered it, but I've always had good experiences with Asus plus I really wanted that red/black combo.
The deeper I got into ordering this thing (the numbers were already ugly at that point), the more I realised that I might aswell go for a watercooler, as the H100i fits perfectly in this case and offers great temperatures but also as this would be my first ever watercooler, which was quite exciting.
Building the rig was fairly straightforward, and not as tight as you might expect with an m-ATX rig. The only issues I really came across while building was mostly with the H100i.
To begin with I wanted to set the fans up as pull on the radiator, which in theory sounded easy enough, but it turned out quite fiddly to get the screws through the fans and into the radiator, as I couldn't see where the holes on the radiator were. Got there in the end anyway.
After this I came across a much bigger problem. When I was mounting the waterblock, the spacer screws got bent (!!!!) and after my dad tried to help me with straightening them, they broke completely. He is quite mechanically competent and was really surprised to see screws just snap like that. It doesn't exactly scream high quality. I've never managed to bend screws like that before. This was me when the screws bent: :microwave:
Thankfully, my dad got hold of some other screws the day after and came up with a DIY solution that turned out to be more solidly mounted than what we managed with the original screws. I got there in the end anyway and the block sat nice and tightly mounted.
Corsair RMA'd me a new installation kit aswell (for free), so I now have that hanging around in case I'm ever gonna sell the H100i or move it to another computer.
Is it just me or does the H100i waterblock come with too much thermal paste on it? Seems like quite a large amount compared to what I'm used to...
Aside from the watercooling, everything else went in very smoothly. I still need mechanical drives, so I had to use the two bottom bays, despite blocking a lot of airflow that way. The SSD mount is quite a neat idea. Ended up snapping the 2 extra SSD bays out, just to get that extra airflow into the case.
Cabling went well too. I have to say I hate the way how the H100i block has so many cables coming out of it. Why couldn't they just have ONE slightly bigger cable coming out of it and then split it out after 20cm or something? Looks ugly, but I sacrificed the looks in order to use it as my fan hub for 4 of the fans. The last fan went into CPU_OPT on the mobo.
Haven't really been playing that much around with Corsair Link. It seems alright but I'm probably just gonna leave it alone because the fans are so quiet anyway.
Running the power and data cables for the SSD turned out to be a little bit of a headache, as I didn't want any cables to be visible in the open space underneath the drive. Ended up tying them up into the 5.25" bays at the back.
The only time I felt the size of this case was when I was trying to run the mobo power and PCI-express cables at the back. With this case you kinda have to do some cable tidying just in order to get the back door on properly, because some of the cables do buldge out a bit outside of the case, if you look at the case straight on from the front with no door on, but it does tuck in when you put the door on.
I'd also wish that the fan cables were a little bit longer. The bottom front fan cable was too short to reach the H100i adapter cable without the resistor connected to it...
The fans are set up to intake both at the front and back (bought an air filter for the back aswell) with the radiator set up to pull the air out, to give positive air pressure as suggested by TTL in his 350D review.
Aside from all that I can't think of much else to say. The rig is running super quiet and I've done a reasonable overclock with it too. 4.4Ghz at 1.143V. I don't think it's worth going up to 4.6Ghz because how much performance is that anyway? I've now spent so much testing getting the Vcore exactly right so I just want to leave it.
The CPU idles at roughly 30C and goes up to ~60C when I run OCCT.
I apologise for the slightly crummy pictures, but it's been overcast every single day so haven't been able to take any brighter photos. :frown:
Hope you like it. Feel free to add any suggestions.
As things usually go when it comes to me and electronics, my budget originally started out at roughly £600, only to replace a handful of parts, to ending up with spending roughly double that with getting everything new.
My full time computer is just the laptop I have while going to uni in the UK, so this is my gaming desktop while at home in Norway.
Here is what I ended up with:
Intel i5-4670K
Asus Maximus 6 Gene
Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB 1600Mhz
Asus GeForce GTX 770 2GB
Samsung 840 Pro 256GB
2x 2TB WD Black
Corsair Obsidian 350D
Corsair AX760i
Corsair H100i
2x 120mm Corsair Quiet Edition SP's for replacing the H100i fans
2x 140mm Corsair Quiet Edition AF's for the front
120mm Corsair Quiet Edition AF for the back
Early on I decided to get the 350D, as quite frankly I don't really need more space than what's offered with this case. Watching TTL's video also helped convincing myself and also to get a few tips on how to install the rig but more on that a bit later.
The words 'Asus Maximus' might be a little controversial on this forum as of late, so I was a little insecure after having ordered it, but I've always had good experiences with Asus plus I really wanted that red/black combo.
The deeper I got into ordering this thing (the numbers were already ugly at that point), the more I realised that I might aswell go for a watercooler, as the H100i fits perfectly in this case and offers great temperatures but also as this would be my first ever watercooler, which was quite exciting.
Building the rig was fairly straightforward, and not as tight as you might expect with an m-ATX rig. The only issues I really came across while building was mostly with the H100i.
To begin with I wanted to set the fans up as pull on the radiator, which in theory sounded easy enough, but it turned out quite fiddly to get the screws through the fans and into the radiator, as I couldn't see where the holes on the radiator were. Got there in the end anyway.
After this I came across a much bigger problem. When I was mounting the waterblock, the spacer screws got bent (!!!!) and after my dad tried to help me with straightening them, they broke completely. He is quite mechanically competent and was really surprised to see screws just snap like that. It doesn't exactly scream high quality. I've never managed to bend screws like that before. This was me when the screws bent: :microwave:
Thankfully, my dad got hold of some other screws the day after and came up with a DIY solution that turned out to be more solidly mounted than what we managed with the original screws. I got there in the end anyway and the block sat nice and tightly mounted.
Corsair RMA'd me a new installation kit aswell (for free), so I now have that hanging around in case I'm ever gonna sell the H100i or move it to another computer.
Is it just me or does the H100i waterblock come with too much thermal paste on it? Seems like quite a large amount compared to what I'm used to...
Aside from the watercooling, everything else went in very smoothly. I still need mechanical drives, so I had to use the two bottom bays, despite blocking a lot of airflow that way. The SSD mount is quite a neat idea. Ended up snapping the 2 extra SSD bays out, just to get that extra airflow into the case.
Cabling went well too. I have to say I hate the way how the H100i block has so many cables coming out of it. Why couldn't they just have ONE slightly bigger cable coming out of it and then split it out after 20cm or something? Looks ugly, but I sacrificed the looks in order to use it as my fan hub for 4 of the fans. The last fan went into CPU_OPT on the mobo.
Haven't really been playing that much around with Corsair Link. It seems alright but I'm probably just gonna leave it alone because the fans are so quiet anyway.
Running the power and data cables for the SSD turned out to be a little bit of a headache, as I didn't want any cables to be visible in the open space underneath the drive. Ended up tying them up into the 5.25" bays at the back.
The only time I felt the size of this case was when I was trying to run the mobo power and PCI-express cables at the back. With this case you kinda have to do some cable tidying just in order to get the back door on properly, because some of the cables do buldge out a bit outside of the case, if you look at the case straight on from the front with no door on, but it does tuck in when you put the door on.
I'd also wish that the fan cables were a little bit longer. The bottom front fan cable was too short to reach the H100i adapter cable without the resistor connected to it...
The fans are set up to intake both at the front and back (bought an air filter for the back aswell) with the radiator set up to pull the air out, to give positive air pressure as suggested by TTL in his 350D review.
Aside from all that I can't think of much else to say. The rig is running super quiet and I've done a reasonable overclock with it too. 4.4Ghz at 1.143V. I don't think it's worth going up to 4.6Ghz because how much performance is that anyway? I've now spent so much testing getting the Vcore exactly right so I just want to leave it.
The CPU idles at roughly 30C and goes up to ~60C when I run OCCT.
I apologise for the slightly crummy pictures, but it's been overcast every single day so haven't been able to take any brighter photos. :frown:
Hope you like it. Feel free to add any suggestions.
