Hi everyone,
After almost a year in the "shadows" looking at the wonders happening on this forum, I felt like it is time to finally show my little baby.
Before some history let's go directly to the point, the current specs:
- FX-8350 @ 4.6GHz
- M5A99FX-PRO R2.0
- Crossfire HIS Radeon HD7970 @ 1050/1500 MHz
- 16 Gb HyperX 1600 @ 1800 MHz
- Corsair H60
- XFX 750W Silver Pro Black Semi-Modular
- Samsung 840 EVO 120 GB
- WD Blue 1 TB + WD Green 500 GB
- NZXT Tempest 210
- Logitech G700s & G710+ mechanical keyboard
- Bitfenix Recon Fan Controller
- Linux Mint 16 cinnamon & Windows 8.1 Pro
So this is how it all started...
A year and a half ago I did an internship in an engineering company and one day I saw that they decided to throw away a "decent" desktop computer. So I said why not trying to fix it! I thus took this bad boy, a Dell T3500 with a Xeon W3520 (=i7 920), bought 12 Gb of Kingston HyperX 1600 (the cheapest at the time), a SSD, and it turned out that everything was working just fine.
Then being jealous of my brother who just built his first gaming rig, I bought a 750W XFX PSU (the original one was making a strange noise), a cheap second hand GTX 570 and was good to go for quite some time!
Don't worry, this wonderful case is not the one I am using anymore
After a while I started to hear about the overclocking potential of this chip and I felt quite frustrated with these Dell components, which doesn't allow you to do anything. Then I found a sabertooth X58 for 60$ but unfortunately realized that Dell format factor was not compatible with it, and I bought the Tempest 210 and H60 (even Dell's rad cannot be used with other mobos, I hate them).
And that was it, the upgrade hitch got me and couldn't resist to always add a few things here and there, and a second GTX 570 (for 160$, a year ago).
But as I said the upgrade hitch was there now, so when I found an extremely good deal for a 7970 I sold my 570s, made the switch and even earned 70$:
But that didn't last long... Looking for a new GPU for my brother I found 2 7970 for 300$, so I gave mine to him and upgraded again. The energy consumption was high with my i7 920 OC at 4.2 GHz (+1600 MHz from stock), I was missing some features, and started to have troubles with my system stability...
So this is it, the final step led me to go for the first time in my life with AMD. I am aware that this is almost a side-grade from my highly overclocked old i7 but I am happy with the features brought by the 990fx platform (UEFI, native SATA3, 20pin USB3.0, better pci-e spacing), and especially with AMD's philosophy (which is why I went with them).
So this is it, my little baby who annoys my girlfriend given how much I love it
I don't know why one of my cards has a blue PCB but I like the result^^
And some cable management, which is not easy with this small case:
I did my best considering the "restrictive" budget I had, and it's still my first rig
So this is it, how I discovered myself a new captivating passion. Let me know what you think and especially what can be improved!
And now what's next?
... I am already thinking about home made custom sleeving black/blue for the mobo and CPU and black/red for the graphics cards... maybe a H100i to overclock further this bad boy as well...
Cheers guys!
After almost a year in the "shadows" looking at the wonders happening on this forum, I felt like it is time to finally show my little baby.
Before some history let's go directly to the point, the current specs:
- FX-8350 @ 4.6GHz
- M5A99FX-PRO R2.0
- Crossfire HIS Radeon HD7970 @ 1050/1500 MHz
- 16 Gb HyperX 1600 @ 1800 MHz
- Corsair H60
- XFX 750W Silver Pro Black Semi-Modular
- Samsung 840 EVO 120 GB
- WD Blue 1 TB + WD Green 500 GB
- NZXT Tempest 210
- Logitech G700s & G710+ mechanical keyboard
- Bitfenix Recon Fan Controller
- Linux Mint 16 cinnamon & Windows 8.1 Pro
So this is how it all started...
A year and a half ago I did an internship in an engineering company and one day I saw that they decided to throw away a "decent" desktop computer. So I said why not trying to fix it! I thus took this bad boy, a Dell T3500 with a Xeon W3520 (=i7 920), bought 12 Gb of Kingston HyperX 1600 (the cheapest at the time), a SSD, and it turned out that everything was working just fine.
Then being jealous of my brother who just built his first gaming rig, I bought a 750W XFX PSU (the original one was making a strange noise), a cheap second hand GTX 570 and was good to go for quite some time!
Don't worry, this wonderful case is not the one I am using anymore
After a while I started to hear about the overclocking potential of this chip and I felt quite frustrated with these Dell components, which doesn't allow you to do anything. Then I found a sabertooth X58 for 60$ but unfortunately realized that Dell format factor was not compatible with it, and I bought the Tempest 210 and H60 (even Dell's rad cannot be used with other mobos, I hate them).
And that was it, the upgrade hitch got me and couldn't resist to always add a few things here and there, and a second GTX 570 (for 160$, a year ago).
But as I said the upgrade hitch was there now, so when I found an extremely good deal for a 7970 I sold my 570s, made the switch and even earned 70$:
But that didn't last long... Looking for a new GPU for my brother I found 2 7970 for 300$, so I gave mine to him and upgraded again. The energy consumption was high with my i7 920 OC at 4.2 GHz (+1600 MHz from stock), I was missing some features, and started to have troubles with my system stability...
So this is it, the final step led me to go for the first time in my life with AMD. I am aware that this is almost a side-grade from my highly overclocked old i7 but I am happy with the features brought by the 990fx platform (UEFI, native SATA3, 20pin USB3.0, better pci-e spacing), and especially with AMD's philosophy (which is why I went with them).
So this is it, my little baby who annoys my girlfriend given how much I love it
I don't know why one of my cards has a blue PCB but I like the result^^
And some cable management, which is not easy with this small case:
I did my best considering the "restrictive" budget I had, and it's still my first rig
So this is it, how I discovered myself a new captivating passion. Let me know what you think and especially what can be improved!
And now what's next?
... I am already thinking about home made custom sleeving black/blue for the mobo and CPU and black/red for the graphics cards... maybe a H100i to overclock further this bad boy as well...
Cheers guys!
Last edited:
.
