Hello guys, I'm also relatively new to this forum. What better way to introduce myself than to show off my newly-built rig here.
First,a little background on myself with regards to PCs...up until now I've only bought computers off the shelf. I was more of a casual user, the kind that only surfs web, checks email and plays all of his games on consoles (I still do for the time being). 2004 was a golden year for me. I played my first PC titles and even upgraded my stock graphics card in my Sony VAIO to a Geforce 6800 GT! Doom 3, UT2004, CounterStrike. Those were awesome good times, but short lived. I never really got into it for some reason. But then 2009 came and I converted to the dark side; went from PC to Mac. Then my entire world revolved around Apple. For three years. But now I've come back from the darkness. I no longer wish to be tied down to their ecosystem and way of doing things. Now I can count myself among a very small minority; the kind that go back to the PC side of things.
Now lets get on with the build. Not only did I not want my next computer to be anything with an Apple logo on it, but I didn't want it to come with any junk software either. And I really wanted to learn how to build my own system so here I am, after literally hundreds of hours of research on parts and such. There is a reason I chose each part that I did in this build so without further ado..
Case: Cooler Master Cosmos II
Well what can I say, this is the mother of all computer cases. I wanted a case that 1, had good cable management, 2, was elegant and simple, and 3 had good build quality. Initially I had my sights set on the Corsair 800D. It checked all those boxes. And then I saw this. Upon looking at the Cosmos II for the first time it checked all those boxes and so much more. I liked it so much that I willing to put up with the size, weight and $350USD asking price. The "P" in PC stands for personal and it is my opinion that if one should be given the choice to spend more money on one part in particular it's the case. After all it is the first (and in many cases, only) thing that people see.
PSU: Corsair AX1200i
My main considerations for the power supply are flexibility and clean power delivery to the system. I went with the common wisdom in this regard and only looked at reputable name brands. I looked at options from the likes of Antec, Corsair, Seasonic, etc. I eventually found the AX1200 and read reviews for it and the sheer number of people that use AX series in their builds. Again it checked all the above boxes and so much more. Now come the AX1200i. 80plus Platinum certified, DSP, Corsair LINK, and my favorite, a 7-year warranty. All this made it a no-brainer, but why 1200W one might ask? Again flexibility. The case and PSU are the two things in this build that I only want to buy once and use them thru several builds in the future. And who knows I may very well get into extreme overclocking or run 4-way SLI or something crazy like that down the road.
CPU: Intel Core i7-3770k
When I chose the core and the platform that it would run on there was only question that needed asking: Z77 or X79? Ivy Bridge or Sandy Bridge-E? (two questions really) A simple enough question but effin' tough to answer. Then I thought about my priorities. I'm using this system primarily for gaming with some occasional creative work. Then I thought about what each platform brings to the table. Six cores is overkill for all but a handful of games (maybe that will change in the far future perhaps?). Memory controller on Ivy Bridge is capable of higher clocks. Games can benefit slightly from that. IB natively supports PCI Express 3 and USB 3 as well. Thought about those things and blah blah blah and in the end I decided that Z77/Ivy Bridge has more to offer for me right now (sorry AMD
). While an i5 is more than sufficient for gaming I got the i7 anyway simply because I can.
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus V Formula
One thing I didn't mention earlier, but I definitely intend to get into watercooling with my rig. This is only one of the considerations I thought about when I looked at motherboards. It also has to have sufficient PCI Express slots, has to overclock reliably, etc. The GIGABYTE Sniper is a good board but didn't like the green color scheme. ROG at the time only had the Maximus V Gene, which is micro-ATX. While I could put that in my case, why the hell would I want to do that?! So it came down to either the Formula or the Extreme. The main differences being four PCIe slots on the Extreme versus three on the Formula, more overclocking features on the Extreme, but, WHAT, a waterblock on the Formula?! The VRMs on the Formula are covered by a feature called Fusion Thermo, which is a combination waterblock/heatpipe assembly. The Formula also comes with mPCIe Combo, an add-on card with an mPCIe WiFi module and an open mSATA slot. The Formula is easily a winner in my book.
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 612 PWM
I know I said I will watercool my rig but not until I have graphics cards in hand, which I do not at the time of this writing. I'll just have to make do with this for the time being. It's a massive cooler and I easily got 4.6GHz out of my CPU with it. HOWEVER, it's a good buy ONLY if you have low-profile memory, a lesson I learned the hard way I'm afraid. Fortunately for me the fins on my DIMMs are removable so a meet this requirement.
Memory: G.Skill Trident X 2x4GB, 2400MHz, 10-12-12-31
This is probably the one part where I made my decision based on price versus performance. $89.99USD on Newegg gets me the above specs. As an added bonus the cooling fins are removable effectively making these low-profile, a feature I have had to make use of. HOWEVER, as it so happens my DIMMs are unstable at 2400MHz. I am hoping it's because I removed the fin from one of them but if that is not the case I may move on to Corsair Dominator Platinum in the future.
For the time being though I have dialed it down to 2133MHz/9-11-11-28.
Boot drive: Mushkin Atlas 60GB mSATA SSD
I have decided to put that mPCIe Combo to good use here. This SSD in particular has very good performance (for an mSATA SSD) and is made in America.
Drive for my games: 2x Intel 520 series 240GB in RAID 0
In all honesty I could not care less about how fast Windows boots up because my system is almost constantly on. What I do care about is how fast my games load. When looking at SSDs I only looked at stated specs at first. I initially considered the OCZ Vertex 4 SSD. 120k IOPS sounds good right? As I have learned manufacturer specs do not tell the whole story. In choosing an SSD I also looked at both synthetic benchmarks and real world tests to see how it performed versus other SSDs. Needless to say the Vertex 4 fell behind other SSDs in read performance. On the other had its write performance is in the stratosphere. But like I said earlier I care about how fast my games load so I based my buying decision on read performance. Granted synthetic benchmarks are not truly indicative of real world use and SSD controllers perform differently even between different models with the same controller. In the end the Intel 520 series was consistently near the top of all the tests that I have seen in read performance and write performance is also considerable as well. As a bonus they based on 5k NAND and come with a 5-year warranty.
ODD: ASUS 12B1ST 12x Blu-Ray Writer: I'm probably wasting time writing about this but I got this because I have a sizable collection of movies I'd like to back up. Spent five bucks extra to get burning capability.
Graphics card: None yet. See http://forum.overclock3d.net/showthread.php?t=45667
Conclusion:
I really love how this build has turned out so far (memory notwithstanding). I'm sure I've spent a lot more money than was needed to achieve the same results but I am fine with that as this is a high end build that I can be proud of for many years. So please share your thoughts on this. Could I have done anything better? Anything I missed? Is the name "Paradox" a registered trademark? Am I just a noob waiting to get pwned? All criticisms welcome.
First,a little background on myself with regards to PCs...up until now I've only bought computers off the shelf. I was more of a casual user, the kind that only surfs web, checks email and plays all of his games on consoles (I still do for the time being). 2004 was a golden year for me. I played my first PC titles and even upgraded my stock graphics card in my Sony VAIO to a Geforce 6800 GT! Doom 3, UT2004, CounterStrike. Those were awesome good times, but short lived. I never really got into it for some reason. But then 2009 came and I converted to the dark side; went from PC to Mac. Then my entire world revolved around Apple. For three years. But now I've come back from the darkness. I no longer wish to be tied down to their ecosystem and way of doing things. Now I can count myself among a very small minority; the kind that go back to the PC side of things.
Now lets get on with the build. Not only did I not want my next computer to be anything with an Apple logo on it, but I didn't want it to come with any junk software either. And I really wanted to learn how to build my own system so here I am, after literally hundreds of hours of research on parts and such. There is a reason I chose each part that I did in this build so without further ado..
Case: Cooler Master Cosmos II
Well what can I say, this is the mother of all computer cases. I wanted a case that 1, had good cable management, 2, was elegant and simple, and 3 had good build quality. Initially I had my sights set on the Corsair 800D. It checked all those boxes. And then I saw this. Upon looking at the Cosmos II for the first time it checked all those boxes and so much more. I liked it so much that I willing to put up with the size, weight and $350USD asking price. The "P" in PC stands for personal and it is my opinion that if one should be given the choice to spend more money on one part in particular it's the case. After all it is the first (and in many cases, only) thing that people see.
PSU: Corsair AX1200i
My main considerations for the power supply are flexibility and clean power delivery to the system. I went with the common wisdom in this regard and only looked at reputable name brands. I looked at options from the likes of Antec, Corsair, Seasonic, etc. I eventually found the AX1200 and read reviews for it and the sheer number of people that use AX series in their builds. Again it checked all the above boxes and so much more. Now come the AX1200i. 80plus Platinum certified, DSP, Corsair LINK, and my favorite, a 7-year warranty. All this made it a no-brainer, but why 1200W one might ask? Again flexibility. The case and PSU are the two things in this build that I only want to buy once and use them thru several builds in the future. And who knows I may very well get into extreme overclocking or run 4-way SLI or something crazy like that down the road.
CPU: Intel Core i7-3770k
When I chose the core and the platform that it would run on there was only question that needed asking: Z77 or X79? Ivy Bridge or Sandy Bridge-E? (two questions really) A simple enough question but effin' tough to answer. Then I thought about my priorities. I'm using this system primarily for gaming with some occasional creative work. Then I thought about what each platform brings to the table. Six cores is overkill for all but a handful of games (maybe that will change in the far future perhaps?). Memory controller on Ivy Bridge is capable of higher clocks. Games can benefit slightly from that. IB natively supports PCI Express 3 and USB 3 as well. Thought about those things and blah blah blah and in the end I decided that Z77/Ivy Bridge has more to offer for me right now (sorry AMD
). While an i5 is more than sufficient for gaming I got the i7 anyway simply because I can.Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus V Formula
One thing I didn't mention earlier, but I definitely intend to get into watercooling with my rig. This is only one of the considerations I thought about when I looked at motherboards. It also has to have sufficient PCI Express slots, has to overclock reliably, etc. The GIGABYTE Sniper is a good board but didn't like the green color scheme. ROG at the time only had the Maximus V Gene, which is micro-ATX. While I could put that in my case, why the hell would I want to do that?! So it came down to either the Formula or the Extreme. The main differences being four PCIe slots on the Extreme versus three on the Formula, more overclocking features on the Extreme, but, WHAT, a waterblock on the Formula?! The VRMs on the Formula are covered by a feature called Fusion Thermo, which is a combination waterblock/heatpipe assembly. The Formula also comes with mPCIe Combo, an add-on card with an mPCIe WiFi module and an open mSATA slot. The Formula is easily a winner in my book.
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 612 PWM
I know I said I will watercool my rig but not until I have graphics cards in hand, which I do not at the time of this writing. I'll just have to make do with this for the time being. It's a massive cooler and I easily got 4.6GHz out of my CPU with it. HOWEVER, it's a good buy ONLY if you have low-profile memory, a lesson I learned the hard way I'm afraid. Fortunately for me the fins on my DIMMs are removable so a meet this requirement.
Memory: G.Skill Trident X 2x4GB, 2400MHz, 10-12-12-31
This is probably the one part where I made my decision based on price versus performance. $89.99USD on Newegg gets me the above specs. As an added bonus the cooling fins are removable effectively making these low-profile, a feature I have had to make use of. HOWEVER, as it so happens my DIMMs are unstable at 2400MHz. I am hoping it's because I removed the fin from one of them but if that is not the case I may move on to Corsair Dominator Platinum in the future.
For the time being though I have dialed it down to 2133MHz/9-11-11-28.Boot drive: Mushkin Atlas 60GB mSATA SSD
I have decided to put that mPCIe Combo to good use here. This SSD in particular has very good performance (for an mSATA SSD) and is made in America.
Drive for my games: 2x Intel 520 series 240GB in RAID 0
In all honesty I could not care less about how fast Windows boots up because my system is almost constantly on. What I do care about is how fast my games load. When looking at SSDs I only looked at stated specs at first. I initially considered the OCZ Vertex 4 SSD. 120k IOPS sounds good right? As I have learned manufacturer specs do not tell the whole story. In choosing an SSD I also looked at both synthetic benchmarks and real world tests to see how it performed versus other SSDs. Needless to say the Vertex 4 fell behind other SSDs in read performance. On the other had its write performance is in the stratosphere. But like I said earlier I care about how fast my games load so I based my buying decision on read performance. Granted synthetic benchmarks are not truly indicative of real world use and SSD controllers perform differently even between different models with the same controller. In the end the Intel 520 series was consistently near the top of all the tests that I have seen in read performance and write performance is also considerable as well. As a bonus they based on 5k NAND and come with a 5-year warranty.
ODD: ASUS 12B1ST 12x Blu-Ray Writer: I'm probably wasting time writing about this but I got this because I have a sizable collection of movies I'd like to back up. Spent five bucks extra to get burning capability.
Graphics card: None yet. See http://forum.overclock3d.net/showthread.php?t=45667
Conclusion:
I really love how this build has turned out so far (memory notwithstanding). I'm sure I've spent a lot more money than was needed to achieve the same results but I am fine with that as this is a high end build that I can be proud of for many years. So please share your thoughts on this. Could I have done anything better? Anything I missed? Is the name "Paradox" a registered trademark? Am I just a noob waiting to get pwned? All criticisms welcome.
