first thing i'll admit to, is although i am happy to spend the money on new hardware i'm rather cheap. i'll be waiting for stuff to go on sale, i don't care if my system looks pretty. if i can keep something going you can bet i will.
please excuse the blurry pics, my phone wasn't cooperating so much. the camera on the htc m8 is kinda crappy.
so here's my tale of woe with my new build. first, my old system:
core2 e8400
4gb ddr2-800
ati radeon HD6850
and some other crap we don't care about. as you can see, it's about had it. still works but it flat out cannot run new games...i've been aching to play witcher 3, fallout 4 and this POS can't do it. it's water cooled, heavily overclocked and done me well. never said she was pretty:
i figured it was about high time to give this old antec 900 case a cleaning and to clean out my water loop. doesn't look THAT bad in the pic, right?? well i started to tear it down and here's what i found:
i had two like this....the two front fans. in my defense, they haven't worked in years. i managed to break the wires around 5 years ago and i was too lazy to repair them until now. so i've had gentile airflow coming in from back fans and those not turning....gross!
i ended up using my air compressor to blast all this garbage off outside. worked well. hope the neighbours didn't mind since that was at midnight-1am.
so now i'm feeling pretty good about myself! cleaned up, wires repaired, time to start dumping the new hardware in! here's what i got:
i5 6600k (skylake)
16GB g.skill 3200 DDR4
asus strix GTX970
gigabyte Z170MX gaming 5
my old hardware i kept:
psu: corsair 650HX (should be plenty, no SLI plans)
LG blu-ray
1x samsung evo 850 250GB SSD
1x WD green 3TB
1x WD 250GB drive...its about8 years old!
now this is when shit starts going sideways...in a bad way. i figured my old apogee GT water block will fit just fine with my new cpu. S775 -> LGA 1151. about the same phsyical size, sure why not? appeared to fit...until i tried to fit them up. turns out the S775 mounting holes are 72mm square spacing.....LGA1151 is 75mm!!
obviously this won't fit. i don't even want to know why intel decided that this was a good idea. maybe just for shits and giggles? i hope someone got a good laugh out of this! the worst part was that this is about 2am now. i want my new parts running! the CPU doesn't come with a heatsink either...well i'll be damned if i'm going to let this old me back! time for a bit of ghetto modding.
searching around the garage, here's the first thing i came across to cannibalize for my insane purposes:
yes, it's an old rusty steel ruler! hello my new friend
cut a bit of clearance on the original plate...
here's the old bottom plate. obviously won't fit....but tinsnips help!
and the final product in all it's glory! F you intel. F you very much.
now with a video card, i like to put them on water but i don't normally do so immediately - i like to stress test them first to see if its functioning correctly or if i have to RMA the card. this leads me to problem #2: THE CARD WON'T FIT INTO MY CASE!!! guess water is the only option since its the length of the heatsink that is the problem.
after all this, yes it works. i was having some problems with the old 250GB drive stalling, but i think i got it working now. i believe that it was the LG optical drive causing this...and a firmware update seems to have solved it. WHAT?!?!? i don't know...it makes no sense but i'll take it. if it comes back i'll try a windows reinstall or some other crap.
needless to say, my wiring is a complete donkey. this case really doesn't have the room for all these parts. not that i tried very hard...maybe one day i'll get a new case with more room in it.....maybe.
so now there's only one thing left to do: load up one of the hottest new games that'll push my new system to its max!
SHABOOM!!!!
please excuse the blurry pics, my phone wasn't cooperating so much. the camera on the htc m8 is kinda crappy.
so here's my tale of woe with my new build. first, my old system:
core2 e8400
4gb ddr2-800
ati radeon HD6850
and some other crap we don't care about. as you can see, it's about had it. still works but it flat out cannot run new games...i've been aching to play witcher 3, fallout 4 and this POS can't do it. it's water cooled, heavily overclocked and done me well. never said she was pretty:
i figured it was about high time to give this old antec 900 case a cleaning and to clean out my water loop. doesn't look THAT bad in the pic, right?? well i started to tear it down and here's what i found:
i had two like this....the two front fans. in my defense, they haven't worked in years. i managed to break the wires around 5 years ago and i was too lazy to repair them until now. so i've had gentile airflow coming in from back fans and those not turning....gross!
i ended up using my air compressor to blast all this garbage off outside. worked well. hope the neighbours didn't mind since that was at midnight-1am.
so now i'm feeling pretty good about myself! cleaned up, wires repaired, time to start dumping the new hardware in! here's what i got:
i5 6600k (skylake)
16GB g.skill 3200 DDR4
asus strix GTX970
gigabyte Z170MX gaming 5
my old hardware i kept:
psu: corsair 650HX (should be plenty, no SLI plans)
LG blu-ray
1x samsung evo 850 250GB SSD
1x WD green 3TB
1x WD 250GB drive...its about8 years old!
now this is when shit starts going sideways...in a bad way. i figured my old apogee GT water block will fit just fine with my new cpu. S775 -> LGA 1151. about the same phsyical size, sure why not? appeared to fit...until i tried to fit them up. turns out the S775 mounting holes are 72mm square spacing.....LGA1151 is 75mm!!
obviously this won't fit. i don't even want to know why intel decided that this was a good idea. maybe just for shits and giggles? i hope someone got a good laugh out of this! the worst part was that this is about 2am now. i want my new parts running! the CPU doesn't come with a heatsink either...well i'll be damned if i'm going to let this old me back! time for a bit of ghetto modding.
searching around the garage, here's the first thing i came across to cannibalize for my insane purposes:
yes, it's an old rusty steel ruler! hello my new friend
cut a bit of clearance on the original plate...
here's the old bottom plate. obviously won't fit....but tinsnips help!
and the final product in all it's glory! F you intel. F you very much.
now with a video card, i like to put them on water but i don't normally do so immediately - i like to stress test them first to see if its functioning correctly or if i have to RMA the card. this leads me to problem #2: THE CARD WON'T FIT INTO MY CASE!!! guess water is the only option since its the length of the heatsink that is the problem.
after all this, yes it works. i was having some problems with the old 250GB drive stalling, but i think i got it working now. i believe that it was the LG optical drive causing this...and a firmware update seems to have solved it. WHAT?!?!? i don't know...it makes no sense but i'll take it. if it comes back i'll try a windows reinstall or some other crap.
needless to say, my wiring is a complete donkey. this case really doesn't have the room for all these parts. not that i tried very hard...maybe one day i'll get a new case with more room in it.....maybe.
so now there's only one thing left to do: load up one of the hottest new games that'll push my new system to its max!
SHABOOM!!!!