Ya93sin
New member
So I need a new PC for Uni at the end of summer
And I'm going to share just about every stage of the build with you all, as of today I have just about everything I will need.
I'm also going to be sharing benchmark results with you, after I'd installed everything, maybe it will help give a rough idea of decent performance when you're using Windows in a 'normal' environment.
Onto the specs:
Core:
)
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
OK, so the build begins, I ordered my CPU, RAM, Motherboard from AriaPC, came promptly the next day.
Pic of it all:
And the CPU:
RAM:
The motherboard:
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The next delivery was from Dabs.com, and I received the PSU, Card Reader, and HDD.
Overall:
The card reader (you can switch between the black fascia and the dodgy beige one, guess what I chose
):
The PSU (thoughtfully with some cable ties, but I have loads of em anyway
):
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I got the monitor from Tesco Direct (staff discount
), I even got a phone call after the delivery asking me why it had come early-it arrived 1 working day after my order, they made it sound like I was in the wrong.
Here is my delivery tracker:
Its very glossy, but very bright, and the 120Hz is great.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Next, a big delivery from OverclockersUK, including the case, surge protector, wireless adapter, keyboard, mouse, NH-D14, mousepad. Although it was the first order I placed, it came last (out of the above 3+this).
Overall:
The Keyboard:
The mouse (very nice rubberized grip on the top btw):
And finally the case, its big, its heavy, a true Colossus in every sense of the word, has a nice coating, but this can scrape off when you replace the side panels often, but its barely noticeable. Also I had to rewire the internal lighting, and the door LEDs were not wired in, so every time I turned the PC on it would click and shut off the power. Stopped using LEDs until I had a proper look at the wiring. The feet came lose, but they screw back in and tighten fine.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
So, onto the initial testing of the Computer, the first POST, making sure I hadn't had any RMA bad luck. Did this on the mobo case.
Overall:
The RAM clearance (initially), and btw the wire no longer touches the heatsink at all:
RAM Clearance after (I moved the 120mm fan down a couple notches, maybe it helps temperatures, maybe not:
And this is me chatting to mates, get distracted easily, I do
This is my netbook that I use at school, I'm in for a bit of an upgrade methinks:
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
And so we come to putting the motherboard into the PC, and here is where I'm going to do it:
This is where I left the PC that night (in terms of progress, I didn't just dump it on the table and stare it down):
Now with the stock fans, airflow was awful, I had high temps (you may have seen my other topic in the Mainboard section), and the front is an intake fan, and the roof is an exhaust fan. Not gonna lie, as far as I'm concerned, the fans are not good, they are noisy and have poor airflow. The best thing about them is that you can switch the LEDs on or off.
/rant.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
And from CCLOnline, I got the graphics card, was a bit worried because the boxing looked worn, and I thought perhaps the card had been used, but no issues with it so far, and the card itself looked in good condition, so I went along on my journey:
And here is the card giving me a cheeky pose:
And finally here is the card installed:
With this base setup I ran Ubuntu for a bit, until I got my new fans/SSD.
Here is a screenshot of my sexy desktop:
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
And so here is the second delivery from Aria, again with good service, and I would recommend them for sure. I've ordered 4 Noctua NF-P14 FLX' and a Crucial M4 128GB SSD:
And the fans. I think they look good, others think they are ugly, but whatever. They ome with 140mm adapters, rubber screw alternatives (you push them in) and a Molex power adapter. The cables on these are very good compared to the somewhat more frail ones from ahem another make:
The first fans to go in were the top ones. Now BitFenix says you only get a 230mm, 140mm or 120mm in there, but I got one fan in with the 140mm adapters and one without, and they touch, but not significantly:
Now to install the bottom fan (intake):
You may wonder what those screws are holding the dust filter are. Basically, the dust filter is now externally positioned, and I used motherboard standoffs to secure it in place, because I don't think they designed it so you can have the fan and the dust cover on simultaneously. But I hate dust, so does my PC, so we figured it out.
A final Pic of the PC (I've also installed the rear fan, but that was hassle free):
And here is the SSD:
Its not much to look at, I actually thought the box was empty when I got it, just goes to show. Maybe we will have featherweight desktop PCs in the future.
And here is one of the Devil's own:
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
So we come to the final pics of my build, then I will post the benchmarks:
My SSD playing Peek-a-boo:
And the setup itself (the rubbish speakers go behind the Monitor, out of view, on the windowsill:
And here is how I feed myself:
All Pictures taken with a Sony DSC-HX5V.
If you've made it this far, then two things:
Any advice on cable management, tips for anything related to this, I welcome it.
Thanks again, and I hope you enjoyed
And I'm going to share just about every stage of the build with you all, as of today I have just about everything I will need.
I'm also going to be sharing benchmark results with you, after I'd installed everything, maybe it will help give a rough idea of decent performance when you're using Windows in a 'normal' environment.
Onto the specs:
Core:
- CPU: Intel i5-2500K (stock clocks/volts for now)
- CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14
- RAM: Mushkin Blackline 1600Mhz, 9-9-9-24 @ 1.35V
- Motherboard: ASUS P8Z68V-PRO
- GPU: MSI nVidia GTX 580 Twin Frozr II/OC to 800Mhz core, 1600Mhz shaders, 2048Mhz memory, arrived out of the box at this spec.
- PSU: Corsair AX850
- SSD:Crucial M4 128GB (now flashed to version 0002, fixes all apparent freeze/lock up issues, as I haven't had any)
- HDD: Western Digital Green 1TB (750GB for storage, rest for Ubuntu and Mac OS X Lion when it comes (experiments ))
- AKASA Smart Card Reader
- 4x Noctua NF-P14 FLX fans (120/140mm)
- 1x CoolerMaster MegaFlow Blue 200mm
- TP-Link Wireless Adapter 300Mbps-in my room for now, no wired connection, at Uni I will be wired up.
- BitFenix Colossus Window Glacier White/Blue LEDs
- ASUS VG236HE (no glasses, 120Hz)
- Logitech G510 Keyboard
- Razer DeathAdder Respawn
- Roccat Sota mousepad
- Surge Protector (Belkin)
- Some 10 year old desktop speakers-will upgrade to Corsair SP2500s for Uni, no need for them tbh.
- Klipsch Image S4's-my workhorse headphones, they go everywhere.
- Samsung DVD-RW Drive (External, 2x USB Powered)-didn't want the optical drive in the end, don't need it.
- Some random SpeedLink Clip On Microphone
- Windows 7 x64 Ultimate (Student discount )
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
OK, so the build begins, I ordered my CPU, RAM, Motherboard from AriaPC, came promptly the next day.
Pic of it all:
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The next delivery was from Dabs.com, and I received the PSU, Card Reader, and HDD.
Overall:
The PSU (thoughtfully with some cable ties, but I have loads of em anyway
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I got the monitor from Tesco Direct (staff discount
Here is my delivery tracker:
Its very glossy, but very bright, and the 120Hz is great.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Next, a big delivery from OverclockersUK, including the case, surge protector, wireless adapter, keyboard, mouse, NH-D14, mousepad. Although it was the first order I placed, it came last (out of the above 3+this).
Overall:
The Keyboard:
The mouse (very nice rubberized grip on the top btw):
And finally the case, its big, its heavy, a true Colossus in every sense of the word, has a nice coating, but this can scrape off when you replace the side panels often, but its barely noticeable. Also I had to rewire the internal lighting, and the door LEDs were not wired in, so every time I turned the PC on it would click and shut off the power. Stopped using LEDs until I had a proper look at the wiring. The feet came lose, but they screw back in and tighten fine.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
So, onto the initial testing of the Computer, the first POST, making sure I hadn't had any RMA bad luck. Did this on the mobo case.
Overall:
The RAM clearance (initially), and btw the wire no longer touches the heatsink at all:
RAM Clearance after (I moved the 120mm fan down a couple notches, maybe it helps temperatures, maybe not:
And this is me chatting to mates, get distracted easily, I do
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
And so we come to putting the motherboard into the PC, and here is where I'm going to do it:
This is where I left the PC that night (in terms of progress, I didn't just dump it on the table and stare it down):
Now with the stock fans, airflow was awful, I had high temps (you may have seen my other topic in the Mainboard section), and the front is an intake fan, and the roof is an exhaust fan. Not gonna lie, as far as I'm concerned, the fans are not good, they are noisy and have poor airflow. The best thing about them is that you can switch the LEDs on or off.
/rant.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
And from CCLOnline, I got the graphics card, was a bit worried because the boxing looked worn, and I thought perhaps the card had been used, but no issues with it so far, and the card itself looked in good condition, so I went along on my journey:
And here is the card giving me a cheeky pose:
And finally here is the card installed:
With this base setup I ran Ubuntu for a bit, until I got my new fans/SSD.
Here is a screenshot of my sexy desktop:
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
And so here is the second delivery from Aria, again with good service, and I would recommend them for sure. I've ordered 4 Noctua NF-P14 FLX' and a Crucial M4 128GB SSD:
And the fans. I think they look good, others think they are ugly, but whatever. They ome with 140mm adapters, rubber screw alternatives (you push them in) and a Molex power adapter. The cables on these are very good compared to the somewhat more frail ones from ahem another make:
The first fans to go in were the top ones. Now BitFenix says you only get a 230mm, 140mm or 120mm in there, but I got one fan in with the 140mm adapters and one without, and they touch, but not significantly:
Now to install the bottom fan (intake):
You may wonder what those screws are holding the dust filter are. Basically, the dust filter is now externally positioned, and I used motherboard standoffs to secure it in place, because I don't think they designed it so you can have the fan and the dust cover on simultaneously. But I hate dust, so does my PC, so we figured it out.
A final Pic of the PC (I've also installed the rear fan, but that was hassle free):
And here is the SSD:
Its not much to look at, I actually thought the box was empty when I got it, just goes to show. Maybe we will have featherweight desktop PCs in the future.
And here is one of the Devil's own:
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
So we come to the final pics of my build, then I will post the benchmarks:
My SSD playing Peek-a-boo:
And the setup itself (the rubbish speakers go behind the Monitor, out of view, on the windowsill:
And here is how I feed myself:
All Pictures taken with a Sony DSC-HX5V.
If you've made it this far, then two things:
- Your internet is decent
- Thanks
Any advice on cable management, tips for anything related to this, I welcome it.
Thanks again, and I hope you enjoyed
