SnowmanFromHell
New member
Hello 
As I already threatened in my introductory thread I'm starting a new build that you should feel free to comment on to help me improve ^_^
First, though, a bit of a background: I'm currently using an approximately six year old laptop which is starting to get a bit long in the tooth. It's a C2D T9300 (2x2.5GHz, 6MiB cache, 65nm process node (Penryn)), 4GiB RAM, Radeon 2600M and a 15.4" 1440x900 screen. It has served me well, but I feel it is now more than time to upgrade.
The new rig should offer better performance (who would have guessed, eh?) and - equally importantly - it should be quiet (the laptop gets very hot so I run it on one of these cooling pad thingies... which is infuriatingly loud
). It will also need to fit in the limited amount of space I currently have available, and if the system is cheap that would be nice as well. Oh, and one last thing: I want to get into water cooling, so... guess what that means for the build 
The system will be used for a bit of everything, some light gaming, occasional photo editing, running a VM every once in a blue moon, and the usual web surfing and other "could be run on a better pocket calculator"-stuff.
My current plan is a mini-ITX system which I'll build in two stages: build the system (air-cooled) first, then add some water later. At least, that's the plan... which might be changed, depending on your comments
For the components, I currently lean towards the following:
Now, before you get all "omg n00b system, get a 4960X/4-way Titan SLI/massive RAID6 array instead", let me explain my choices a bit:
The CPU should be powerful enough for my needs (considering I'm upgrading from a mere C2D it will still be quite a significant step up), and the GPU should also suffice for my gaming needs. And because I'm interested to see what the whole HSA stuff is about, having that is a nice bonus (I develop software for a living, so I'll probably write some code to play around with that, just for the fun of it ).
Regarding the RAM: yeah, 16 GiB is probably overkill, but seeing my current machine struggling when I'm running VMs I'd rather get too much than having the system slow to a crawl. Currently planning to get Corsair Vengeance Pro 2400, not sure though whether the system benefits more from slower RAM with faster timings or from faster RAM with slower timings. Any thoughts/hints/... ?
The mainboard looks pretty solid, and since the selection of mITX-sized FM2+ boards is rather limited I might as well take that one
The PSU should easily be enough considering I don't have a dedicated GPU planned, and even if I were to put one in I wouldn't get a high-end one (I'd probably get an R7 250, which can be used for dual GPU mode according to AMD). I chose this particular PSU because it's modular and only 140mm long, so it should fit the case easily. Short cable kit to keep the rig tidy.
The monitor obviously needs to fit where I plan to put it, so I can't get a huge one... 20" should fit, resolution is good enough (and it means higher frame-rate than FullHD), and you can use it in portrait orientation
Any thoughts/suggestions/tips so far?
Water cooling will be a second step, currently I'm planning to go with mostly alphacool stuff (monsta 240mm rad (P/P), VPP655 (i.e. D5 vario) pump with modified pump top, nexxxos xp³ cpu block, HF 38 cape cyclone 150 res), but I'll have to see how/if that fits into the case, maybe I'll have to use a thinner rad or a smaller res.
Whew, ok, quite the wall of text there, hope it's not too much at once.
Now feel free to tell me what I forgot / what could be improved / what you'd do differently
SfH
P.S.: I know it's not really a build log yet, so if this is the wrong section please do tell me ... or just directly move the topic where it belongs. Thanks
Edit: changed PSU from Corsair CS450M to the SilverStone one, which is fully modular, also 140mm, and has the option of using shorter cables. Thanks to NeverBackDown for the tip
As I already threatened in my introductory thread I'm starting a new build that you should feel free to comment on to help me improve ^_^
First, though, a bit of a background: I'm currently using an approximately six year old laptop which is starting to get a bit long in the tooth. It's a C2D T9300 (2x2.5GHz, 6MiB cache, 65nm process node (Penryn)), 4GiB RAM, Radeon 2600M and a 15.4" 1440x900 screen. It has served me well, but I feel it is now more than time to upgrade.
The new rig should offer better performance (who would have guessed, eh?) and - equally importantly - it should be quiet (the laptop gets very hot so I run it on one of these cooling pad thingies... which is infuriatingly loud
). It will also need to fit in the limited amount of space I currently have available, and if the system is cheap that would be nice as well. Oh, and one last thing: I want to get into water cooling, so... guess what that means for the build The system will be used for a bit of everything, some light gaming, occasional photo editing, running a VM every once in a blue moon, and the usual web surfing and other "could be run on a better pocket calculator"-stuff.My current plan is a mini-ITX system which I'll build in two stages: build the system (air-cooled) first, then add some water later. At least, that's the plan... which might be changed, depending on your comments
For the components, I currently lean towards the following:
- CPU: AMD A10-7850K
- RAM: 16 GiB, not sure about exact specs yet, though
- MB: GIGABYTE GA-F2A88XN-WIFI
- Case: BitFenix Phenom
- PSU: Silverstone SST-ST55F-G Strider Gold Series 550 Watt + short cable kit
- Storage: 250 GiB Samsung 840 EVO
- Monitor: Dell P2014H (20", 1600x900, IPS)
Now, before you get all "omg n00b system, get a 4960X/4-way Titan SLI/massive RAID6 array instead", let me explain my choices a bit:
The CPU should be powerful enough for my needs (considering I'm upgrading from a mere C2D it will still be quite a significant step up), and the GPU should also suffice for my gaming needs. And because I'm interested to see what the whole HSA stuff is about, having that is a nice bonus (I develop software for a living, so I'll probably write some code to play around with that, just for the fun of it
).Regarding the RAM: yeah, 16 GiB is probably overkill, but seeing my current machine struggling when I'm running VMs I'd rather get too much than having the system slow to a crawl. Currently planning to get Corsair Vengeance Pro 2400, not sure though whether the system benefits more from slower RAM with faster timings or from faster RAM with slower timings. Any thoughts/hints/... ?
The mainboard looks pretty solid, and since the selection of mITX-sized FM2+ boards is rather limited I might as well take that one
The PSU should easily be enough considering I don't have a dedicated GPU planned, and even if I were to put one in I wouldn't get a high-end one (I'd probably get an R7 250, which can be used for dual GPU mode according to AMD). I chose this particular PSU because it's modular and only 140mm long, so it should fit the case easily. Short cable kit to keep the rig tidy.
The monitor obviously needs to fit where I plan to put it, so I can't get a huge one... 20" should fit, resolution is good enough (and it means higher frame-rate than FullHD), and you can use it in portrait orientation
Any thoughts/suggestions/tips so far?
Water cooling will be a second step, currently I'm planning to go with mostly alphacool stuff (monsta 240mm rad (P/P), VPP655 (i.e. D5 vario) pump with modified pump top, nexxxos xp³ cpu block, HF 38 cape cyclone 150 res), but I'll have to see how/if that fits into the case, maybe I'll have to use a thinner rad or a smaller res.
Whew, ok, quite the wall of text there, hope it's not too much at once.
Now feel free to tell me what I forgot / what could be improved / what you'd do differently
SfH
P.S.: I know it's not really a build log yet, so if this is the wrong section please do tell me ... or just directly move the topic where it belongs. Thanks
Edit: changed PSU from Corsair CS450M to the SilverStone one, which is fully modular, also 140mm, and has the option of using shorter cables. Thanks to NeverBackDown for the tip
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