Enthoo Pro System Upgrade Log

Hi all,
I've been faffing around for ages on the verge of upgrading my system and my original plans have had to be slightly scaled back due to moving house and running out of money but I have now finally got the first stage of the upgrades so I thought I'd put a build log together in case anyone is interested.

My current system is my sig and the original plan was to do a complete replacement with an i7 4790k, R9 290pro etc but with the limited finances I'm now going to do an incremental upgrade starting with solid foundations that I can improve as and when I have the money.

To that end I've gone for the following new items: -

YOUR BASKET
1 x Crucial MX100 512GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter CT512MX100SSD1) £159.98
1 x MSI Z97 Gaming 7 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £139.99
1 x Phanteks Enthoo Pro Mid Tower Enthusiast Case with Window £89.99
1 x Corsair Hydro H75 Performance Liquid CPU Cooler £61.99
1 x Intel Pentium K Anniversary G3258 Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £43.99
Total : £505.55 (includes shipping : £8.00).



The rest of the parts I will carry over from my existing PC, RAM, PSU, graphics card, Blu-ray drive, 2Tb HDD and all my peripherals.

Cpu wise I was torn between an i3 4330 and the Pentium K and although the i3 is possibly better in more modern titles I just fancied trying out some overclocking on the Pentium. Hopefully with my motherboard and cooler I should get a decent result.

Graphics wise I'm sticking with my 6950 but I've also just bought a second one from a well known auction site (alas the Members market here is a distant dream with my posting rate) for £45 so I can try out some crossfire action and see just how limiting a dual core cpu is for multiple gfx cards

So, onto some pictures of my progress so far.

The rather large Enthoo Pro.








The cable management of the Enthoo out of the box.


A group shot.


The Pentium installed.


Motherboard in.


And that's as far as I've got unfortunately. Real life is calling and I probably wont get a chance until the weekend now to get any further but I'll put up some more pictures when I get a chance.

Ross

Looking good mate! You'll have to let me know how that Pentium K overclocks!! been wanting to have a play about with one of those.

Can't wait to see the progress on here!

Looks good

nice mate

Have fun with the build, look forward to seeing it progress.

Love this case... one day, it shall be mine... well, not your case exactly but one very similar to it. Anyway, great build - subbed!

+1 to Luggs, pretty lovely case, I will get one soon aswell. Looking forward too the rest off the build aswell.

Great build mate, I'm really looking forward to seeing this come together. This is much more along the same sort of lines as I build mine system, buy what you can afford to and then upgrade in stages as and when you have the money

Very nice - I have a real upgrade itch now...

I was waiting for a build with this case!

Looks great so far!

At last, I've finally had time to actually do some work on my build and post an update.

So the transplant from my old machine was the next step.

My previous very tidy Antec 900.....


Old meets New


PSU in.

I found out my 8 pin motherboard power cable wasn't long enough to run behind the MB tray so had to get an extension cable.

Fans going in.


The H75 backplate.

I have to say this was a bit of a disappointment. The backplate was easy to fit on but when attaching the pump unit and trying to tighten the screws at the front the little metal bits here on the back (in the 4 corners) just span in the plastic frame.

I tried to get a picture of it here, you can see the little metal ovals have started to turn in the plastic mount.


This meant you can't really tighten the pump screws very tight at all and purely because Corsair have cheaped out and gone for plastic backplate rather than metal

The next problem I met was fitting the radiator for the H75 with Push/Pull fans on. The original plan was to fit it top back but there wasn't enough clearance above some of the little heatsinks on the Gaming 7 board. In the end I moved it further forwards and just had enough room over the RAM slots.





The end result looks slightly odd but seems to work ok. I have the fans on it set to exhaust from the case and it does mean it's now directly above the intake fan at the bottom of the case blowing straight up.


I'll see how it works out here but might consider moving the rad to the back of the case where the pre-installed 140mm exhaust fan is.

Lots and lots of cables run behind the tray but the side panal does still fit on


You can see from that one the 2 drive cages are currently still fitted. I only have 2 drives in there, my 2Tb storage drive and the old boot drive from the previous pc. I'll be removing the boot drive once I've copied off everything I need and I've just got some 3.5 -> 5.25 inch adaptors for the storage drive so I can mount it in one of the spare 5.25 bays and then I can take out both drive cages to really open up the airflow from the front 200mm fan.

The final setup with the xfired 6950's


I'm still unsure whether to fit the PSU cover, it does look quite nice but it's very fiddly to put back on and where it's so long it covers up the intake fan on the bottom so I'm not sure if it would actually hinder the overall cooling of the case rather than help it?

I'm still going through getting everything installed and setup but from just 5 mins in the BIOS the Pentium K is now running at 4.5GHz with 1.23v and max temps in Intel XTU of 64 degrees C so not too bad at all

I think short terms plans may involve a fan controller and maybe a full matching set of red LED fans to brighten it up but then it'll be saving up for the major component upgrades of cpu (maybe 4790K, maybe wait for Broadwell), gfx (290 or 780, still undecided) and a psu meaty enough to power them.

I've just had a very nice custom desk built into my man cave (including a beer fridge) so once I've got that tidied I'll get some pictures of the PC in situ.

Any questions, suggestions or improvements feel free to let me know

Ross

Can we see some gaming benches for that G3258?

Unfortunately I'm a bit short of modern games for benching, no BF, Crysis or Metro. Are there any with free benchmarking tools available? I can run the usual list of synthetic benches, so far I've run Heaven, RealBench and Cinebench so I can try and get those results up.
I've not had much time to actually play much yet either but when I have had some time I've been playing Borderlands 2, Civilisation 5 and WoW and they've all been running fine so far.
I've pushed the Pentium up to 4.6Ghz now with 1.25v and after 4 hours of Realbench stress test the max temp was 65. I might be able to squeeze a little more out but I'll probably just stick with that now.

Picked up one of these good value cases last Friday, really impressed with it so far.

Running it with 2 140mm fans as a front intake (whipped out the 200mm fan, which incidentially you can fit in the top rear of the case), got a Corsair H105 exhausting in the top/roof & the stock 140mm fan as an exhaust at the rear.

Not fitted an intake in the bottom as I am using the psu shroud.

Not sure if you realised but you can fit a 120mm to the rear of the hard drives cages to give your gpus a bit more air if needed from the front intake, not mentioned in the manual but the holes are pre drilled for 2 extra fans.

Will post some pics of mine asap & btw nice tidy build there too!

Cheers all

If you want to, try and download some free to play games on steam. Try benching with ArmA 2/3 if you have it.

Well I've been playing a bit more and have a fresh install of Skyrim heavily modded up and it's been running very well, 60fps most of the time with drops down to around 45 although I do seem to be hitting the VRAM limit of the 6950s now with all the mods

Very conveniently OCUK have also just sent me a code for a copy of Watchdogs as I bought an Asus motherboard for my wife's pc a couple of months back so I can try that out. I'm guessing from reviews that it will give the poor dual core Pentium a bit of a kicking though

Extremely cool new case

Very cool indeed, I'd be interested to hear how it compared to the Fractal R4?

Looks great - really considering getting one of these Pentiums to tide me over till the new Intel releases...