Ceej Posted January 18, 2011 Posted January 18, 2011 (edited) I probably should have started this thread days ago when the parts were coming in, but I just wanted to share my finished* build. *Not actually finished. Started off by winning a Gigabyte X58-USB3 motherboard. I had actually been wanting to upgrade for some time to take advantage of USB 3.0 for my external hard drive. Decided I would buy some RAM, and wait for the i7 950 to go on sale at micro center (as it always does). So for 2 days only, the i7 950 was on sale for $199, so I grabbed it! I did overspend on RAM against advice, but it wasn't at the sacrifice of anything else. Finally, I struggled over what case I wanted. My old case was an original Antec 900 and my biggest complaint with it was the poor cable management. I wanted a case that I would love aesthetically, but also had great cable management. I am a sucker for good looking computers, and I settled upon the gorgeous Cooler Master HAF X Nvidia Edition. Lime green is my favorite color, though I know quite a few hate the look. The cable management is excellent, but it is a bit bigger and pricier than I would have liked. I was considering the Antec 1200v3, DF-85 and Lanboy Air. For the price I just wasn't that thrilled. I decided to pay a little more for something I absolutely loved. For RAM, I ended up with 6gb of Kingston HyperX T1. The fan is gorgeous and it isn't being picky about timings, so I am pleased. I had 8gb before, but I'm not seeing a hit from the "downgrade" Finally, I had a huge problem installing my heatsink. From this forum I won some Noctua thermal compound, but it hasn't arrived yet and so I turned to some 2-year+ old AS5. Worse yet, I had a horrible time of installing the heatsink. I have a Xigmatek Dark Knight S1283V, with a backplate that uses an adhesive pad to stick to the motherboard. I had a very hard time pulling the backplate from my old motherboard, only to find that the adhesive was not sticky any more (go figure). So it took several tries and a partner to screw in the heatsink, and probably messing up the thermal compound job. So a cooler that should be good enough is forcing me to find an overclock with less voltage. I spent hours trying to get my CPU to 4.0+, I would even get stable enough to play games and all. As soon as I ran Prime95 it would BSOD after 2 minutes, and I kept trying to figure out what was going wrong. I thought I had bad RAM or a bad batch. I'd been using Everest on my G15 for years and that said my CPU was at 44c. I downloaded RealTemp, which told a VERY different story. (I had to downvolt at least 1 notch before my CPU would stop hitting 100c in Prime95) I'm hoping that the Noctua compound will help tame the beast, though I'm also hoping I can obtain another sticky pad from Xigmatek. After installing everything, I spent several hours weaving cables through the partitions, but gave up after 5am. A couple of days later I added the lights to finish the job. *I will be selling my old q9550, 8gb of OCZ Reaper DDR2 800, P5Q Pro and Antec 900. Not sure if I should sell it together or separate. I will take the $$$ I get from that and save it for a graphics card when the new ones come out later this year. Edited February 12, 2011 by Ceej Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alexandre Posted January 18, 2011 Posted January 18, 2011 Looking great Ceej! I spy with my little eye an original price tag of $369.99 for the i7 950 and you only got it for $199 NICE DEAL I also love the look HAF X in green and since you love green I could imagine you being every time you see it. Although 100oC would not be fun I'm sure you'll get those temps down eventually. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
IVIYTH0S Posted January 18, 2011 Posted January 18, 2011 I did overspend on RAM against advice, but it wasn't at the sacrifice of anything else. Says he with a 465 looks good, you should have run dual 6850s to throw people off with the green case (even funnier that it's the nvidia edition ) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alexandre Posted January 18, 2011 Posted January 18, 2011 Says she with a 465 Fixed Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ceej Posted January 18, 2011 Posted January 18, 2011 (edited) Right on Alexandre This sounds crazy, but I won the 465 too from Razer before Quakecon. It was quite the year, so I had the video card, sound card, all of that except the case, mobo, CPU and RAM. Plus, like I said, I'm going to sell my old gear and use that money for a graphics card that comes out later in the year. Edited January 18, 2011 by Ceej Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpeedCrazy Posted January 18, 2011 Posted January 18, 2011 I love that case. It looks awesome and i bit the air flow is too. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bosco Posted January 18, 2011 Posted January 18, 2011 Very Nice Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
hermes09 Posted February 3, 2011 Posted February 3, 2011 Very Nice. But could the cable management be more tidy? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ccokeman Posted February 3, 2011 Posted February 3, 2011 Love the lime green! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dr_bowtie Posted February 3, 2011 Posted February 3, 2011 I really like the ram fan...the whole build look great Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ceej Posted February 3, 2011 Posted February 3, 2011 thanks guys! Few things 1. Notice in the 4th pic that blue flashlight in the gutter by the PSU. True story, I didn't realize I had left it in there until a couple days after the build when I saw the pic (and it WAS on too, with dying batteries... grr! ) Just goes to show how wide the gutter in that case is. 2. Managed to push my 950 to 4.2 at 1.36 DVID "game-stable". Also managed to boot and CPU validate at 4.32, not much more than that though. 3. I won the Noctua gear from this site. When it comes I'm swapping out the rear 140mm for the Noctua 140mm and reapplying the thermal paste to see if I can't tone the temps down with it. I think the RAM fan is partially obstructing airflow to the CPU fan, and wonder if I wouldn't get better performance from changing the heatsink orientation. What's the best direction to put that heatsink? Worst comes to worst I might save up for a Noctua D-14. 4. Ah... cable management. You're right it could be better. Especially with this case. The biggest problem is really the fact that my sound card requires a molex. (for the headphone amp) No matter how you slice it it's hard to cleanly put a molex into that upper PCI-E slot. If you look at the video card the 2 PCI-E cables come straight up out of the partition and in, not so with the sound card. Additionally, the front panel header goes into the card as well. Although I'm looking at the pic and if it's long enough I could possibly route it through the bottom and up, but I doubt it's actually that long. The 8-pin is probably most in need of a change. I have the extender pinned to the upper parallel end of the case and going out the back, I should probably have just stuck it down the back. Finally, the USB cables are up top parallel as well... nothing we can do about those 5. I pulled out the VGA blower as it was obstructing airflow and unfortunately doing nothing. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RHKCommander959 Posted February 3, 2011 Posted February 3, 2011 Looks great to me, I wouldn't worry too much about the cables as long as they don't look like a spiders nest your on the right track. I've always loved black & green, and sometimes add blue. My first high-end was a green Raidmax Smilodon with some blue accents. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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