My (Almost) Build Log

D

Dullard

2[H]4U
Joined
Jun 28, 2012
Messages
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I was going to post details of my first new build since 2004, inspired by gear I'd read about here. Sort of a tribute to the site, I've been trying to read as much as I could in the last couple of weeks to get up to speed... a lot has changed since '04. But I had some problems with my account and went ahead with the build in the meantime. It is nothing extraordinary, I just wanted a new rig that was quiet and reliable (and not 8 years old).

So thanks to all on the site, I hope to boot it up this weekend!
 
I'll give a better rundown this evening, it was late (for me) last night when I got finished.

I built my first Intel rig after being AMD from K6-III 450, Slot A 650, and Socket 939 3500+, an I7 3770K. In the spirit of the forum, all were OC'd. The Slot A even had to have tiny little SMT resistors moved to overclock it, what a PITA. I'll go for a mild OC on the IB, but squeezing every last drop out of it just ain't what I'm after these days.

I have been out of the rig building loop for a while, and it seems like AMD has sort of fallen by the wayside. Figuring what the heck, I just snagged up the stuff to build an Intel rig.
 
The case is a Corsair Obsidian 550D. I like the stark, no frills black. Mine made it with no damage at all. I added a Corsair AF 140 in the rear fan slot.

Motherboard is a MSI Z77A-GD65. I've had good luck with MSI boards, the review here was good, so that's what I got. Plus the first two PCI-E slots are spaced apart pretty well...

Processor is the Intel I7 3770K I mentioned. Cooler is a Thermalright HR-02. Man, CPU heat sinks have gotten large.

Power supply is the Seasonic 860W. I used to use PC Power and Cooling supplies, but seems like they've been conglomerated and Seasonic seems to get good marks. This supply was on sale, and was actually a few bucks cheaper than the PCP&C Turbo Cool 550 I bought in '04. I hope to be able to use the quiet fan setting. Nah, forget quiet power, sleeved cables, long warranty...I wanted the black bag.

RAM is 8GB of the 30nm Samsung. I bought (2) 8GB kits in case I snapped one in half trying to get it out of the blister pack. Seems like I paid $189 for a gig of RAM last time I built one.

SSD is a Samsung 830, 256GB. Everybody said I needed a SSD, I misunderstood and thought they said STD. Took 2 doses of penicillin last time I got one of those. I made a slick little mounting platform for it to hang off the bottom of the 5 1/4" bays right in the airflow off the top front fan, I pulled all the 3.5" drive cages. I've got a Plextor burner in the top 5 1/4", I'll get a another optical of some sort (I like to burn disc to disc when I can) and a couple of big storage drives to populate the other 5 1/4" bays.

GPU is a pair of the MSI 680 Lightnings. This is where the extra PCI-E slot spacing is nice, quite a bit of room left in between the cards, I even have plenty of room to leave the little Reactor modules on them with lots of room to spare. Using the third PCI-E slot is going to be a challenge if I want to add a soundcard or something later, I guess I'll see about that after I get the cards running. The card I'm running now is also nVidia, a BFG 6800 Ultra OC AGP. So from an AGP 6800 to SLI 680, sounds like a step back.

I hated to learn that BFG went tits up, this has been a solid card. I also had an ATI of the same era, an X600X I think is what it was. I liked the nVidia better and gave the ATI to a buddy. Funny thing, seems like those were $500+ or so cards back then, so it seems like the cards cost about the same.

Monitor(s) are 3X Dell U2412M. I want to try the multi monitor deal. I think multi monitor is what dragged me back in. I was watching the SpaceX launch and their entire mission control had triple monitor PCs at every station. I got to looking around to see what coolness this must be and found out that multi monitor set ups were common nowdays.

Seems like the 2GB 680 SLI set ups are the red headed step children of the game. "You don't need SLI unless you run multiple monitors!" "You can't run multiple monitors with a 2GB 680 SLI, not enough VRAM!". I just hope I can stutter along until better cards come around and are plentiful. And I'd really like to see some 120Hz large monitors that I can buy from established US retail operations. Surely the popularity of the Korean/Catleap stuff hasn't gone unnoticed to the monitor manufacturers.

Oh, and operating system: Windows 7 Ultimate Anal Penetration. Damn near $300 for a full Windows OS? That's why I'm typing this standing up. For about another week.

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Dullard said:
Oh, and operating system: Windows 7 Ultimate Anal Penetration. Damn near $300 for a full Windows OS? That's why I'm typing this standing up. For about another week.
Click to expand...
That's why we usually recommend the much cheaper Windows 7 Home Premium: Not many people will actually use all of the features of Windows 7 Ult to justify the price.

Anyway nice setup. No really bad or poor choices per se but there's a few parts that you probably overspent on.
 
I didn't want Bill to starve on account of me.

Anyway, I really liked the Click BIOS experience. I breezed through that whole ordeal, got the AHCI enabled and all. I don't have the GPUs installed yet, but absolutely painless so far.
 
Uh, I think that was a Steve thing.

(That being the Windows 7 Ana... uh, I mean Ultimate Edition. Come to think of it, that may explain the "Extreme Edition" processors.)
 
OK, got the GPUs installed, working fine and dandy so far. SLI enabled without a hitch. I haven't connected it to the internet yet.

One small annoyance noted. Any time I make a hardware change, I have to totally disconnect the power and let the system sit until the green power button on the MB goes out or the thing won't restart. Let that light die and it'll fire right back up, restart, reboot, no problems.
 
How does the case handle the lightings? I have Xfire R6970s and when gaming the howl of the fans is a bit much was thinking of getting either 550D or Fractal R3 to shut them up a bit.
 
No problems at all, really. Clearance is plenty from the side door, the cards run cool enough with Auto fan selected for normal stuff, like 25°C. I run them up to a manual 65% for the mild OC I have on them, 1250/6100, and you can just hear that outside the case. I hit the 70°C throttle at 55% once, so I bumped it up to 65%. One of the reasons I got these cards was the combination of low noise and low heat, and they've delivered on both accounts.

I don't know what a pair of of reference fan 680's would sound like, but I really like these. And I really like this case. I didn't want flash and all that, plain black is fine. It's a shame, too, cause there are a jillion blue LEDs going off inside there that you can't even see.
 
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