Description

With the wife about to spawn our first child, I figured this will be my last chance to buy a toy for myself for a while.

The new box is primarily for gaming with virtual reality as a focus, but I also needed photo editing capability (and therefore a monitor able to perform both good colour reproduction AND reasonable gaming). Virtual machines are used infrequently for work purposes, so high RAM requirements. Although not especially portable, I wanted it to be able to be dragged around for VR demos - hence the wireless card. An older HDD migrated over for good measure.

When first built, I had the NZXT Kraken X61 CPU cooler installed - but I got one with a dud pump and a ridiculous amount of gurgling/grinding (despite what their support suggested to fix it). This was promptly returned and as there were no direct replacements in stock, I went for the Corsair option as a replacement. The fans are very mildly noisier - but the pump is silent in comparison at least.

I also had a lot of random crashes with power faults in the logs for no apparent reason. After a bit of diagnostics, I narrowed the cause down to the keyboard. I had it plugged in the BIOS keyboard USB 2.0 ports to begin with, but am guessing that it was drawing too much power (stupid amounts of lights on this thing). Now it has been relegated to the USB 3.0 ports and has been golden since.

Mild overclocking to 4.4Ghz.

All now working flawlessly and the rift has been keeping me entertained =)

Comments

  • 41 months ago
  • 4 points

You might want to rotate your fans on the radiator fro the intake. Otherwise, great build

  • 41 months ago
  • 1 point

Thanks for noticing that. I'll open it up and make sure they flow right tonight =)

  • 41 months ago
  • 2 points

anytime:) it should decrease your temps a bit

  • 41 months ago
  • 1 point

Hi there,

I came across your build and was wondering if you could explain to me what vitexo meant by rotating your fans? I currently have mine set up the same as in your picture (FAN:RAD:CASE) with the fans oriented so they're blowing towards the GPU. Is there a better way to set it up? Thanks in advance!

P.S. what temps have you been seeing on your GPU? I have a very similar setup and just wanted to compare.

  • 41 months ago
  • 3 points

+1 for "Spawn"

I hope you and your wife have healthy beautiful.... tadpoles?

Anyway, great build! I had an amusing line of thought about how absolutely crap my dad's gaming PC circa me and my brother being born is compared to a modern computer. It would be funny if you kept this top of the line computer around 10 years to show them how VR gaming was back in the good old days so they can tell you how much it sucks. XD

  • 41 months ago
  • 3 points

I like that idea!

  • 41 months ago
  • 2 points

Great idea! I still fondly remember learning to program on my dad's Commodore64 which was blazingly fast at the time. The 300 baud modem could download text faster than I could mash the keyboard!

"Geeze dad, you aren't still using screen-based virtual reality are you? Why don't you cut the cord and get a bio-fueled corneal implant for augmented reality like everyone else?"

  • 41 months ago
  • 2 points

True story, our dad let us try gaming on his old Atari 2600 that he and his brother used to play on when they were teens. The game we played was Superman. I believe my exact words were "Dad, this sucks!" when he asked me what I thought about it. XD

To be fair, that wasn't really the Atari's fault as Superman is just a horrible game in general. It would be like showing your kids Ride to Hell: Retribution to educate them on gaming now.

  • 41 months ago
  • 2 points

Hey how is the gpu?

  • 41 months ago
  • 1 point

I did only very conservative overclocking on it as I live in Australia and don't want it cooked when winter finishes and I forget to downclock in time for the heat. That said, it has performed very well so far. My original intention was to wait for the next gen of AMD graphics cards for better MGPU support in DX12 - but with the timing of the rift and baby arrival, the best available card was the 1080.

I haven't tested it extensively yet - but it maintains a constant 90fps in the Rift for all of the games I have tried so far (although they have been fairly basic - I don't have Elite Dangerous or other more taxing VR games), and it easily maxes out on the monitor for Fallout4 at 3440x1440 with all settings on 'ultra' with AA turned off. I didn't push that one further because I couldn't be bothered with further tweaks after all the editing I had to do to the .ini files to get it to work at that aspect ratio.

I plan to install Witcher 3 soon, and I am sure that will tax it more fully.

  • 41 months ago
  • 2 points

nice clean build!! love it!

  • 41 months ago
  • 2 points

You BETTER be running sli in the future with a power supply, scratch that, 4 way sli. BTW love the way you handled that radiator mounting, looks really sexy.