Aaah, I was actually thinking of building a VERY similar rig in a couple of months. The different things would be a CM Storm Trooper case and 2 x 240mm rads, one in the top and another in the bottom, Corsair Vengeance RAM, Corsair AX850 PSU and a i7 2700k. I would have probably used EK watercooling parts mostly, but eh, now I've decided to wait until the Ivy bridge comes out and see how the GPU's go... The whole thing ads up bloody pricey...
Wanted to ask you, how do you feel about the Asus Matrix GTX 580 and the Extreme-z motherboard? Totally enough? Happy?
I'll still probably choose CM ST case and hope 2 x 240 mm rads will be enough for cooling both CPU and GPU. Although, maybe I'll end up without watercooling anything because of the cost...
Love the looks. The only things that cought my eye were the red Bitfenix wires, I would have probably chose black, and the other is that the Bitfenix Spectre Pro red fan looks more orange than red. Or is it just in the pictures? I'm also planing to use them, but now I'm a bit confused. Maybe it's better to go with the black ones just because the red is not dark enough?
Firstly about the matrix and the Extreme-z : if you wanna even think about WCing, do NOT choose the matrix, get an EVGA 580. I say this because its not a reference design, and so it would be much more complicated to do right. Performance wise, if you keep it on air like i did -> its AWESOME, people say there are better OCers like the msi lightning, but i'm happy with it. I run 2 screens, one is a 1920x1200 (main screen and if i game it's on that), and a secondary screen 1680x1050, just for checking temps if gaming, but more importantly its useful when doing homework. this thing runs anything smooth at ultra setting without OCing it, so if you wanna push it, go right ahead (i did at the beginning but didn't see too much of a difference because once you get past 50-60 even 70 fps it doesn't really matter in MY opinion.
The mobo is great, but probably overkill. I like the way it looks and i think it allowed me to get a nice 4.8ghz at 1.335votls, but its got so much more features that i'll probably never use.
Next the bitfenix fan does look orange in the pics.... IRL it looks more red, mind you its not a very deep red, BUT thats only when its off, i got it pluged in and its got red LEDs so when its in the system it glows red and looks good, it fits right in.
The cables are not too bright, maybe the flash made them look shiny or something? i don't really know, i mentioned before i don't really know how to use a camera other then point and click
umm but yea in person they are friking awesome, and i wouldn't change anything. (but its all person taste, if you buy anything in person you can see it in front of you and can make the decision for urself, also you can go to the review on the fans and cables, 99.99% sure tom did a video on the cables, and a written on the fans, you can check their pics, they'll be better quality)
K well since i'm at home now, i need to start cable tidying
i hate, HATE that ) and then i'll take some more pics with the system running, and also show the front... which i forgot about before