shirousaber
Description
This build theme is too mainstream that everyone might die just seeing it. This is my first ever build and I gotta say it's kinda tiring to build it on my own, but when I saw it all together, it was a thing of beauty for me. This pc was built mainly for gaming and since I'm total newb on this, my part selection might make you cringe or cry.
Update 2/13/16 - bought NZXT Kraken G10 and Corsair H55 to cool my hot running Asus Strix R9 390. Few pictures added.
Update 12/26/16 A year after it was built. - My PC is still going strong and no change has been made except adding an 8GB RAM stick that my friend gave me so now I'm running 16GB's of RAM. The graphics card temp that I put here at first is pretty much not true even after two days of owning the cooling setup it has and it actually goes around 80-83C under heavy load. I reduced my CPU clock from 4.5GHz down to 4.3GHz because even though it doesn't happen a lot the first few months, the computer would crash so I dialed the overclock down but even with the lower clock, it still runs the games I play like a champ.
Update 05/17/2020 - Almost 5 years old now! It currently is still my PC and I still do game on it. I didn’t really feel the need to upgrade this whole time especially since I never chased high frame rates or the craziest resolution. The cheap AIO I used gave up a long time ago now and I replaced that with the Cooler Master Hyper 212 and it gets the job done. The fans also got changed to those cheap 5 pack RGB fans that can be found on Amazon.
Part Reviews
CPU
I went for this because I believe that MMO's are very much CPU reliant. An i5 would've been a more practical option, but I just thought "why not just go for the i7?" Maybe this is also useful for my Adobe Illustrator work. I dunno....
Oh, and -1 star because the price just keeps going up.
CPU Cooler
Very effective cooler and cheaper than most 240mm radiators. Keeps my oc'ed 6700k at around 24 degrees when idle and 62 degrees when I was doing 3DMark Firestrike. It's usually on the low 50's when I play GTA V. The radiator fins are very fragile so be careful when handling it and the red led on the pump/block cannot be changed so this cooler might be an option for those who want a red/balck theme only or someone who just doesn't care about hot rodding their pc.
Motherboard
I had trouble making my pc work because of this guy right here. My pc would turn on but won't post so I did some tests like
- removing all ram
- using only 1 ram stick
- placing ram on different slots
- running without the gpu
- trying with a different cpu cooler
- used a different power supply
- swapped around my psu cables with the extra identical ones
- tried multiple monitor connectors
- removing every connection and carefully place them again to see if there's some wrong placing
- testing with just the cpu, cpu cooler, and the psu for power.
even after the things I did above, it still didn't work so I'm starting to think that my mobo is a bad one. I didn't give up and this time, I removed the battery of the motherboard to reset its Bios and after a few mins, I placed it back and tried to boot my pc up with everything built up and it works! Now that it's working, I proceeded to install the os, and all the other stuff. The UEFI looks nice, but I haven't really tried tweaking things yet so I can't speak about the ease of use for it. The board shows some noticeable flex when I was plugging stuff on it while mounted on the case. The board is light and doesn't really feel high end, but I don't think it has a bad quality build.
For those who plan to use this motherboard, I hope this helps you and it is not my intention to prevent others on buying this since it is a nice looking motherboard for the price. I removed 1 star because of the hassle it gave me before I get it to start working.
Memory
It's ram, it's red, what else can I say?
Storage
I'm using this as a boot drive and I can already tell the difference in boot times between my newly built pc and my laptop that has no SSD. When I informally counted (not using a timer), I counted about 10-12 seconds to boot windows and that to me is really fast! It is plastic so it does feel kinda cheap but it doesn't really matter to me.
Video Card
Powerful card, not a great overclocker. Runs hot (got up to 91 on factory oc settings) and fans starts getting loud at around 55% fan speed. After experiencing it's performance, I can't really recommend this particular aftermarket card and would advice others to just go for the other ones.
The STRIX logo led does a breathing effect and I don't think you can make it static :(
Case
Beautiful case! The psu shroud just makes any build you put on it look clean. Very simple, and the cable management I think depends on your cables, but not too hard to work on. Be careful of the side panel because it scratches sooo easily that when I used my 100% cotton shirt to wipe some finger prints and dust, it left thin scratches.
Power Supply
One year later and it still hasn't pooped on me yet so 5/5. Since this is the first PSU I ever owned, I don't know if there's such thing as a noisy one cuz this thing you won't even hear it running.
Case Fan
Looks cool, pushes (or pull) a lot of air. Not PWM, pretty loud.
Case Fan
Looks cool, pushes (or pull) a lot of air. Not PWM, pretty loud.
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