First Custom PC Build - "Valiant"

Hi, writing this now, I have technically already begun but not finished my build, but for the purpose of this log, I shall backtrack to where it all began.

Part 1

The first thing I got for this build was the case, a Corsair carbide series Air 540. And I know what some of you may be thinking, this is a large and fairly expensive case for a first time build. Yes, this may be the case and I fully took this into consideration before buying it. But the reason I went with this case in the end was that this it is 'hopefully' going to last me through multiple builds, I wanted something future-proof, so I wouldn't need to shell out for another case later on down the line. Well, at least not for a while anyway. So I bought this case from Overclockers instore around late December 2015, at the time it was around £110-£115 I think, and I was happy with that as It gave me somewhere to start, something to focus my build around. I was very content, I had this awesome looking case and the possibilities could potentially be endless. But this was however my first build so I decided to play it fairly safe.

Hope it goes well

Corsair 540 is an excellent place to start a build.

First of all, thank you to all those wishing me well on this, my first proper build.

Part 2

By January 2016, I was getting bored looking at my empty case, so I decided that I had enough money to get a fairly decent, but also budget-friendly motherboard. I decided on the Asus Z-97 Pro Gamer motherboard as it had support for SLI, something I hope to take advantage of in the future, good overclocking capabilities, useful for when I purchase the i7-4790k, an M.2 drive bay, and support for higher speed RAM. These are just a few of the reasons, but for the price I honestly couldn't see anything with better or even equivalent features.

Again, like with the case, I decided to purchase the motherboard from Overclockers. At the time, it was around £115 for this board, plus the additional £7.50 delivery charge, can't wait to take advantage of the free delivery soon from using these forums. All in all it wasn't too bad and it arrived a couple of days later, and I couldn't be happier to add my first piece of hardware to the build.

I started my first build using this case. Good choice and it has plenty of space when things start to get a bit fiddly!

pics bro, pics! How about some shots of it being built?

You chose probably the easiest case to build in for a first time so good start so far.

sorry to sully your thread but having built pc's before, decided to get the alienware area 51 R2 primarily because of its layout, so easy having access to the hard drives on one side, and the motherboard n videocard etc on the other side,

the layout on this Carbide 540 High Airflow ATX Cube Case looks sweet, now I know where im gonna go if my MB fails on the R2, definitely a sweet case, good luck mate,

on a side note, my missus freaked at the size of the R2, this one could be a divorce paper of sorts

So, I have ordered more parts for this build and they should all be here around next wednesday or so. The parts I have ordered are; Corsair CX750m PSU, Corsair Vengeance DDR3 2400Mhz (2x8GB) RAM, Intel i7-4790k CPU, Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU Cooler, and Arctic Cooling MX-4 Thermal Compound.

Additionally, I have added in a couple of 'older' Western Digital 250GB 3.5" HDDs that I had lying around. I have done this so that once I have built the system I will have something to create as a boot drive and test all the hardware. I will definitely be swapping these out for a couple of WD blacks and an SSD of some sort, possibly a 480GB Kingston v300. Obviously these new drives will be added in when the funds become available to me.

A little side note, I shall be adding pictures of the new hardware as it arrives, so keep an eye out if you wish to follow how my build is progressing. And finally thank you for your kind comments.

DSLR batteries died while taking photos of the hardware, so i'll reattempt later. Look forward to images of all of the above soon.

Just make sure that the DSRL is charged when you get the big boxes of goodies

Petelock said:

Just make sure that the DSRL is charged when you get the big boxes of goodies

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Don't worry, the rest of the pictures will definitely be taken with the DSLR. The batteries are on charge now.

Nice. What DSLR do you have and what lens are you using out of interest (camera nerd)?

Petelock said:

Nice. What DSLR do you have and what lens are you using out of interest (camera nerd)?

Click to expand...

Hi, the camera I use is a Nikon D3100. With regards to the lenses, I tend to swap between the Tamron AF70-300mm and the stock Nikon AF-S Nikkor 18-55mm lens. It's not a high-end DSLR by any means, but it suits my needs perfectly.

Again, apologies for the poor quality of the original images of the motherboard. Here are some better ones... enjoy.

The Memory. 16GB (2x8) Corsair Vengeance DDR3 2400MHz.

The CPU. Intel i7-4790k.

The Power Supply. Corsair CX750M.

IO shield install.

Installing the motherboard.