Description
TY again pc part picker for the 4th home page feature! You guys are one of my main inspirations and motivators. With all the great builds this week I really didn't see this coming : P
Hello PCPP people. I have a tail of a great upgrade and two friends learning how to PCMR.
This was the first PC I ever built for someone other then myself. Years ago, my buddy commissioned me to make him a gaming PC like the one I had. The catch... I had very little PC building knowledge and he had no tech savvy at all. Regardless we pressed on using the same CPU I had good luck with, the fx-8350. Mid way threw the build the GTX 1080 came out and he just HAD TO HAVE IT. Now we have a classic CPU bottleneck. World of Warcraft (a game he favors) didn't run well at 2k resolution. Manny modern games actually ran quite well but in WOW the hit was hard due to how it leverages the CPU. Over the 2 years I've stepped up my building game quite a bit and he has really come a long way as far as using a PC and doing his own troubleshooting and such.
Now my buddy is expecting his first child, joining me in the daddy gamers club. Before the hammer of financial responsibility slams down we wanted to pull off what could be his last big upgrade for quite a while.
Aiming for the best gaming performance available (at the time) I set my sights on the 8700k and would put all my modding and part picking tricks to the test.
THE OLD:
The CPU cooler, Mid size case, PSU, hdd and obviously the graphics card where more then adequate to keep.
Can't really complain about anything here. This PSU was my main concern but it passed all the stress tests even tho it has been in 4 PCs over its at least 5 year life.
The Phantechs case is actually his second case. We swapped it out because it had option for fans on top and was a big improvement overall. His old case was a cheap closed off furnace. I learn then not to cheap out on your chassis.
THE NEW: With the CPU being an 8700k we needed ddr4 RAM and a new motherboard. I think the choices I made offered the most in value, features and ascetics. We can go SLI with another 1080 so the upgrade path is still wide open. 8gb system memory is all you need when you have a 1080 and all you ever do is game. The fact they are bathed in anodized red was also a selling point : P We also grabbed a bigger ssd for the boot drive.
Decided to try out some cheep fans from amazon... at this point we are running out of money for frills but I still want to make it sexy. As it turns out I was pleasantly surprised and these fan aren't that bad. Not silent by a long shot but really tolerable and they don't wobble or anything. He always blasts his audio and fans anyway when gaming so no silence concerns here. If you can live with a single color they actually do look as good as the photos.
His original cables where missing a cpu 8 pin leaving a blue clip from the PSU showing! UNACCEPTABLE a new set was mandatory!
The MODS: turnover had to be fast on this one. My buddy was getting the shakes without his warcraft. I decided to just focus on the front panel and adding something to the GPU without painting and killing his warranty.
Shout out to JP modified for teaching me the trick with the CPU cooler. The corsair logo can be sanded off so you can paint on your own logo. FRESH. https://youtu.be/vquaIjYtnVo?t=412
The paint work on the front panel took a lot of time. I first sanded it to get some metal to show thru and make the paint stick. Hit it with some stencils I made and and used 3 different kinds of paint and effects. Then a clear coat to protect the whole thing even tho it has a battle worn look.
On the GPU I opted for a simple bold red with the wow logo. This can be popped off easily his he ever has an issue with the card. I faded out the red on the end so you can still see the light from the asus logo.
The RESULTS: Wow runs anywhere from 60 to 200 fps depending on surroundings with graphics at a 10 out of 10 so you can see all of what Azeroth has to visually offer. A huge improvement. Both him and his brother (long time players of the game) said they had never seen the game run anywhere close to this good on any PC before. My buddy was blow away by the look of the machine and really appreciated the work. I'm still editing the footage but you can check out my playlist of this build here: https://youtu.be/TNqPXJs1rZg
My buddy has really gotten good at fixing issues I walk him thru over the phone. You have to realized just the fact that he can do his own driver updates is an amazing step up for him. He watches his temps. and fan speeds, and as you can see... has a killer collection of corsair gear.
Thanks for checking out my work. I'm sure I forgot to mention something so if you have any questions ask away in the comments.
-For the HORDE!
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