So the last time I did a full build on my PC was like 10 years ago. I bought the E8400 when it first came out, it was a major change and required me to do a complete overhaul. Over the years I did new ram, video card, and SSD's to keep it running fast enough to keep my happy. Well I got that ITCH, that little devil inside that says, Its Time to build something.
So after research I decided, new MB, new CPU, new RAM. I went with
CPU 6700K I7 stock 4.0ghz with turbo to 4.2, (currently stable at 4.8ghz OC) CPU Cooler Corsair i80GT Water Cooling system. Asus Maxiumus VIII Hero board. S1151, Z170 chip set. Natively supports Water Cooling settings in the Bios, as well as LN2 if you want to get NUTS. Yes the bios has a setting for Liquid Nitrogen cooling. WOW. Ram, I knew was going to be DDR4 amount was hard. 8gb was the bar minimum. 16gb would be enough for now, but for tomorrow, I decided 32gb would be perfect. 64gb would only be for showing off just to say I had it. Hard Drive would be a larger 240gb SSD, and just for kicks a 4tb internal and another 4tb external drive. (in addition to the 10tbs of internals I already have) I wanted lots of USB3 and USB 3.1 ports. So I bought a front panel USB3 / Media card reader. It plugs directly into the PCI Bus. I lost one PCI-E slot but it was a small trade off. PCI-E Sata controller card. 6ports, (4 internal and 2 E-Sata)
Then the stuff I already had. Antec 750psu, GeForce 760GTX video card. Antec 1200 Tower 8 Hard Drives (10tb of data storage) I am now around 20TB of storage, and I already think I need another 4TB drive. I really need an 8 bay NAS box)
I went down to the local Mom/Pop computer shop and explained what I wanted. Sales guy was also a system builder, so he knew what he was talking about. He got in all the parts for the rig. It was totally cool as able to deal with the same person through the entire process of getting parts in, to all the last little bits I chose to add.
Well here is the end result. So far it, far exceeds my expectations. The ease of Overclocking was amazing. The board has the ability to not only slow down the fans to be quite, it can actually shut them off, and/or turn on a single fan depending on what component is heating up. It makes for a great machine.
As to the Overclock, I am running 100mhz x 48 multiplier to get the 4.8ghz on Water Cooling. Even at that temps are below 50c so I am happy. I have not really done anything to LOAD the CPU up yet. However I am going to do some testing on Video compression, as that was the only thing my old E8400 was really lacking in.,
Well enough chatter here are the pics.
What better place to start then START, you can see a corner of the PCI-E adapter that goes to the front panel header.
The BEAST
32gb of Hyper X DDR 4. (can't remember the speed off the top of my head.)
Radiator for the water cooling. We chose to go internal vs external rad even though the Antec 1200 supports an external system.
Love the waterblock. The logo can change colours, and even be set to change with CPU Temp.
Giant 200mm Top exhaust.
Front panel card, and USB3 ports.
E-Sata Audio, USB 2.0 ports.
The Stack, I have 9 or 10 drives installed right now. Tower supports 12 drives.
Each 3 bay drive cage has its own 92mm fan each fan can be controlled separately.
Well that is the RIG.
So far I am happy with it. I do have some questions about Overclocking this CPU, I had my old E8400 at 3.2ghz from day 1, and as high as 3.6 on air. Can anyone think of anything that I should add to the system or change. I don't really game, I have not even loaded a single game yet, but I am thinking I should at least try a few on this to see how they play, So that being said, Any suggestions on new / good racing games, or First Person shooters that are like Unreal Tournament 2k4? Maybe even something like Fear. (Its been a long time since I played games)
So what do ya all think?
------------------ 857GT Part 85GT Part 87GT Part Caddy, 93 Eldorado 4.9, 5spd Dual O2 Custom Chip, Custom Exhaust. MSD Everything Now with Nitrous. Capt Fiero --- My Over View Cadero Pics For Sale $4000, Yellow 88GT 5spd Full Poly Suspension, Lowered 1/2" in front, Corner Carver.
[This message has been edited by Capt Fiero (edited 01-31-2016).]
I would swap out to the PCI-E SSD. Those things go hard in the paint. New GPU would be nice, but if you don't game, I've been using that one for 2 years and it still holds strong. I've got 32GB of DDR3 and idle at about 12GB used. Amazing how much more resources are used than used to. I wanna go 64, but no reason for me either. I'm not into a bunch of HDD space, but I think I've read that you store a ton of media for your house.
I don't really know what I would use more power with, but I wanna upgrade some things in my current rig. Just an e=peen thing really though for me.
I too spend a fair amount of time on cable management.
I don't spend any time on it. You can't see in my cases so I just need them working. Not a hobby for me anymore. Phones used to be, but now I just need it to work too. How is the SLI holding up with newer stuff? Is it better than the 760GTX he is running? You could use some RAM.
1. How is the SLI holding up with newer stuff? 2. Is it better than the 760GTX he is running?
1. Well, they're pretty good, but I really need to update them badly. Price-point wise, maybe 2 - GTX 750's...but you know me, I gotta' have duals. 2. Probably not.
[This message has been edited by Boondawg (edited 02-01-2016).]
1. Well, they're pretty good, but I really need to update them badly. Price-point wise, maybe 2 - GTX 750's...but you know me, I gotta' have duals. 2. Probably not.
Mine maxes out the WEI test on 7. I see you aren't using 10 either, any desire to "upgrade" ever?
No, but than again, I was plenty satisfied with & swore I'd never leave XP...
Would NEVER have left XP if it wasn't for the driver support going away. I loved networking on it. Vista started making issues with proper SAMBA. As far as work, well Quickbooks stopped working, so three was that. I won't be going to 10 until it isn't an option not to.I used it, didn't bother me as an O/S just all the nanny stuff and things they can see. Microphone on by default. Data mining. Store.
@Alchemist and Boonie Thank You. It was a serious hobby at one time, now I just build every so often.
@Stubby, ya in a few years these will be cheaper and nearly outdated. If I was building a PC every 3-4 years I would buy a generation or 2 from Top Shelf, but I prefer to buy the latest and most future proof stuff I can, IE choosing a DDR4 board / CPU combo so I don't have to worry about a new board any time soon.
@Monkey Man, yep, I do love the size, and you can comment on this, as it was mentioned a few posts down, cable management on the 1200 can be a nightmare. @Fiero Fan 88, due to the drives pointing back instead of to the side, adding to the fact that I have 9 fans, 10 drives and a SATA card that requires cables shoot straight across the board. Then there is the whole size thing, all the cables have to be super long to simply reach some of the bays. It can be extremely difficult to do any type of cable management. Even as rough as it is now, I have a ton of stuff routed behind the back panel, to the point that I have partially screwed myself, I can't simply unplug a drive cage and slide it out the front without pulling the back panel to unplug the fan for the drive cage. I did the best that I could without making my own power wires from scratch. (yes I do on occasion have to snip, lengthen and solder some cables to work in this case.) Its a labour of love so I might try some other tweaks to see if I can't clean it up some more, when I have time. Thanks for the compliment on parts selection.
@LS3 Mach, I have only heard about the PCI-E SSD's but really don't know much about them. I may investigate them further if you think there is enough of a performance boost. The video is the weak point in the rig, and it will probably be the thing I upgrade in the next 6-12 months. How in the world do you use 12gb of ram at idle? Yes I do, I host all the media for our home network. I stream it to all the TV's in our place, lots of Kids stuff (with no commercials) Then I download all the TV shows instead of PVRing them. Like all 21 seasons of Top Gear, from UK, US and Australia. There are several shows in the world that I simply can't get in Canada, or if they do air in Canada they are a year or 2 behind. Like Shameless, So I simply download them online and watch them streamed from PC to the TV. Street Outlaws and Top gear are both at least a year behind. Even some of the Motor Trend stuff can't be watched in Canada unless you get a pirate copy. As its not legally able to be aired in Canada for some dumb reason.
At Boonie, come on make the jump, I loved XP, skipped Vista all together, went to 7 and kept that until 10 was pretty clean, then made the jump to 10, its a fairly steep learning curve but I like it because it simply works. No muss no fuss, just works. I did have to toss a few pieces of equipment for 10, like my outdated MS Webcam that was for Video chat over Messenger, and my Colour Laser printer from the old XP days. Only thing I miss in 10 is my desktop gadgets. As I had an awesome set of Hardware monitoring gadgets as well as my Earthquake monitoring software. (yes I am an earthquake geek, I try to follow all the ones over a 5.0 around the world, living on/in the pacific rim of fire, I like to keep updated.
------------------ 857GT Part 85GT Part 87GT Part Caddy, 93 Eldorado 4.9, 5spd Dual O2 Custom Chip, Custom Exhaust. MSD Everything Now with Nitrous. Capt Fiero --- My Over View Cadero Pics For Sale $4000, Yellow 88GT 5spd Full Poly Suspension, Lowered 1/2" in front, Corner Carver.
@Monkey Man, yep, I do love the size, and you can comment on this, as it was mentioned a few posts down, cable management on the 1200 can be a nightmare.
That's about my only real complaint on the 1200. Antec needed to make the cable "side" bigger and they should have added a few more holes in the backboard. Other than that, I've never had any complaints with it (except when I've had to move it ). Superior air flow. I've never been on water and have never had any issues with temps. Mine's due to be gutted and hosed out (with an air compressor) as dust is getting in places that are hard to remove with the components in the way.
Look into Kodi. I used to keep tons on my LAN back when storage was at a premium. When I say tons I mean like in the days where an 80GB HDD was expensive and I had a couple full ones. Newsgroup days. I stream everything now. I cancelled my 15 year old NZB account just a couple months ago. XP was good. I just can't get on board with 10. I skipped Vista and 8 also. I had ME forever and always hated that bastard of an O/S. 95, 98 and NT were great. XP was a game changer. 7 has just been solid for me. I too like the full tower setup. My work office is a full and home is a mid, 5/7 prefer the mid. Bonus points for anyone that gets that reference.
Wow, there's DDR4 RAM now? I just recently upgraded to DDR3...
I also used to be a HUGE computer building / modding hobbyist. I played with water cooling, thermo-electric cooling, even made my own home-built thermosiphon cooler. And I built many custom computers and modded cases... some for myself, some for friends and relatives, some to sell. But interest waned, and now I think of the computer as more of an appliance. I still build and upgrade my own, though.
Speaking of which, I last did a complete system build about 10 years ago. I upgrade it every year or so, and it's time for another round of upgrades. This time around, I'm thinking of switching to an Intel i5 processor and a motherboard with the Z97 chipset. Here's what I have now:
MOBO -- Asrock 770 iCafe CPU -- AMD FX-4300 @ 4GHz RAM -- 16GB DDR3 (1866 MHz) VIDEO -- Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition STORAGE -- Samsung 850 Evo 500GB + WD Caviar Black 750GB
That Samsung SSD is rated for SATA3, but my current motherboard only supports SATA2. I'm sure that's leaving some performance on the table. Plus, my mobo only supports USB2. And let's face it, AMD processors are inferior to their Intel counterparts. I don't see that changing anytime soon.
Speaking of cable management... A few minutes and a handful of garbage bag ties can make a big difference.
[This message has been edited by Blacktree (edited 02-04-2016).]
@MonkeyMan, I do that every couple months, unplug it carry it out to the driveway and hit it with the air compressor cranked up to 120psi, blow out every nook and cranny. Once a year or so, I'll tear the entire rig down, and even pull the board to get it all nice and clean, apply new AS5.
Cable management, I am going to start searching eBay for some sort of trick SATA cables that have ends that can twist or rotate and be way longer than the stock ones, so I can actually route them around better. I might even try mounting the hard drives in backwards and running the cables some other way. (not sure if it can be done, but I may try) As for temps you are right, I have never had temp issues, I have always ran a a large copper heat pipe cooler with big fans on the CPU. Post up some pics of your rig if you get a chance.
@ls3mach, what is KODI. Windows 10 is unfortunately about as far as you can get from an NT GUI as you can get without jumping to an ick MAC. However if you want windows its the way its going to have to be. You can always change the GUI to the most basic one you can, but that won't change where things are like settings and such that have been moved all over hell.
@Blacktree, yep, DDR4 is still new, and only really supported on the newest stuff, so don't worry DDR3 will still be around for a while, I only went DDR4 as I wanted to be as Future Proof as I could. I too was a HUGE modder, I had more Neon Lights and fans than a Vegas strip club. One of my oldest FIERO rigs,
I always wanted to dabble in the peltia coolers. (spelling) However never went that far. I watched a TV show called "The Screen Savers" and they had lots of DIY stuff. I can't give you die hard specs on what to buy, but I went with an I7 and Z170 chipset. As I know it will still be around in a few years.
Also it was mentioned that Fan Controllers are a must have. Well check this out. There are 4 case fan headers, one CPU fan header, a water pump header and 2 more for External Fans, which I am not even sure what they do? The Motherboard once you tell it in software where each fan is located, it can alter speed on each fan to maximize cooling while minimizing noise, to the point of even shutting fans off completly. See the video below.
------------------ 857GT Part 85GT Part 87GT Part Caddy, 93 Eldorado 4.9, 5spd Dual O2 Custom Chip, Custom Exhaust. MSD Everything Now with Nitrous. Capt Fiero --- My Over View Cadero Pics For Sale $4000, Yellow 88GT 5spd Full Poly Suspension, Lowered 1/2" in front, Corner Carver.
[This message has been edited by Capt Fiero (edited 02-02-2016).]
Hey, that fan control system is pretty sweet! I wonder if the Z97 boards have something like that?
Yeah, peltier coolers were interesting. I had one water cooled peltier setup that got the CPU so cold, it would cause water to condense and dribble down the board. NOT GOOD! I had to cover the backside of the motherboard, and the area around the CPU socket, with foam rubber. I also had to fill the void in the center of the CPU socket with grease, to keep condensation from building up in there. Fun stuff!
edit to add: so here's what I'm looking at for a CPU + mobo upgrade...
That should do the trick. I was looking to switch to an Intel processor anyway. I had originally hoped that AMD would catch up to Intel, like they used to do in the past. But after 8 (?) years, they're still lagging behind Intel. So FUGETABOUTIT!!!
[This message has been edited by Blacktree (edited 02-03-2016).]
Hey, that fan control system is pretty sweet! I wonder if the Z97 boards have something like that?
Yeah, peltier coolers were interesting. I had one water cooled peltier setup that got the CPU so cold, it would cause water to condense and dribble down the board. NOT GOOD! I had to cover the backside of the motherboard, and the area around the CPU socket, with foam rubber. I also had to fill the void in the center of the CPU socket with grease, to keep condensation from building up in there. Fun stuff!
edit to add: so here's what I'm looking at for a CPU + mobo upgrade...
That should do the trick. I was looking to switch to an Intel processor anyway. I had originally hoped that AMD would catch up to Intel, like they used to do in the past. But after 8 (?) years, they're still lagging behind Intel. So FUGETABOUTIT!!!
Sorry about the HUGE delay in reply, but when you edited to put the new board choices it does not send me a note to come back and check the thread.
My board as an LN2 mode, for running liquid nitrogen cooling. If you go onto youtube, there are a ton of video's showing how to insulate the cpu socket to prevent moisture buildup on the board. I doubt I would ever do it, but its cool to know that if I choose to I can. I would do a fish tank mode before I went LN2. (placing the entire motherboard in a fish tank filled with mineral oil) However for now, this Corsair H80i GT, water cooler is perfect.
Those boards are both great boards, however if there is anyway you can upgrade to a DDR 4 board and S1151 you will save yourself some headache down the lines, as DDR3 boards have already been outdated by ddr4. They are still great boards right now, but you will find that down the line they will quickly become something that will hold you back,. When you have to upgrade your entire system to use the latest chip-set CPU ram combo. I just don't see Intel building many more of the early stuff for much longer. I went a bit over the top with the 6700K cpu, however there are cheaper CPU's out there and less expensive ram. (I did 32gb of overclock friendly ram.)
In either case, DDR3 or DDR4 socket 1150 or 1151 will still be a huge step up. I really doubt there is any noticeable real world performance gain right now going either direction. I am running a decent stable I7 at 4.8ghz with 32gb of ram, and only slightly notice a speed jump over my E8400 at 3.2ghz with 8gb of ram, and they were like 5 generations apart.
A new system build is always a blast, if you plan to do it every year or 2, I totally recommend being one generation behind as the cost savings are momentous, however if you are a 1 and done type of guy, get the newest hardware you can, then upgrade a bit at a time as finances permit.
Hey guys and Gals, when I went looking for my thread, I was scared for a moment if I had used my personal image server or not, as the reason for replying to this thread is I didn't have to have to - Re-Explain my entire build.
I built this machine in late 2015 and posted it here in Jan of 2016. For the most part, I built it, opened it once in nearly 2 years to blow it out and clean it out, and it has ran like a rock. Not a single board, cpu or ram issue.
Now I am starting to wonder, is there any maintenance I should be worrying about with the water-cooling system, like the pump or such. Should I flush the system. It is still working awesome, and I know the rule, "If it aint broke, don't fix it" However in this case, I want it to stay "Not Broke" We used Arctic Sliver for the thermal compound, so I at least that is good to last for a while. The system is stable and runs really cool due to all the intake fans and the water cooling portion of it.
So anyone got an caveats on taking care of the pump/radiator/fluid in it. It was a sealed rig, so we did not have to fill it. I imagine they used stuff that was germ free and some sort of anti fungal in the water, so it should still be clean.
Aside from my questions I just wanted to say this I7 6700K with 32gb of DDR4 ram, has been rock stable, nothing I have thrown at it has even came close to taxing it out. I even setup an 8gb ram drive which loads with windows. I am very pleased I paid up to get a DDR4 board. Its been a great investment. How many people can say their 2 year old computer is still a fast current rig. (obvious exception being tech geeks like me) ------------------ 857GT Part 85GT Part 87GT , 5spd Custom Exhaust. MS3 Gold Box 6.0 LS Turbo.
Price Drop!!! Yellow 88GT 5spd Full Poly Suspension, Lowered 1/2" in front. For Sale $3750 USD
[This message has been edited by Capt Fiero (edited 10-20-2017).]
