1st Project £700 Gaming Build for a friend! (photos)

[buchtis]

My mate set me a budget to build the best PC that £700 can buy.

He was fine with 2nd hand bits though the majority of stuff here is new from OcUK.

Be prepared for bad pictures!

Code: Green = New, Red = 2nd hand.

Here's the list and rounded up costs of items:

Case:
Cooler Master CM-690 II Lite Dominator Case - Black
£64

Motherboard:
MSI P67A-GD65 B3
£75

CPU:
i5 2500K
£130

GPU:
2 x XFX 5850 Black Edition
£180

HDD:
1TB Seagate SATA HDD
£50

DVD Drive:
Samsung SH-S222AB/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter
£16

PSU:
OCZ ZT 750W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply
£90

CPU Cooler:
Antec Kúhler H2O 620 CPU Watercooler
£47

RAM:
G.Skill RipJawsX 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
£42

Extras:
x2 OcUK Value Blue LED 120mm Fan
£6

x2 OcUK Value SATA-II 45cm Yellow Data Cable
£5.20

Total: £705.20

 

[buchtis]

1st thing that came was the Sammy DVD rewriter, nothing special to see really:

Then the sexy MSi P67A-GD65 B3 Mother board:

The build quality is excellent. Everything looks and feels solid and overall this is a very good looking motherboard with a excellent amount of features. It arrived with all the gubbins intact including a PCIE USB3 add on. Not fitting that as I doubt he'll have a shortage of USB's, the mobo comes with 10 on the back and 2 on the front of the case.

Just waiting on the other bits to arrive, then it'll properly kick off!

 

[buchtis]

The majority of the stuff has finally come today.

Now we've got the CM 690 II Lite. Was looking forward to this and it did not disappoint. I was thinking about upgrading from my current, cramped Antec 300 and I will for sure now after seeing this beast.

 

[buchtis]

The build quality is second to none on this. There's plenty of space and the bottomn half of the HDD bay is removable to either fit a 120mm rad, 120mm fans foot long + 3D cards.

The removable bit for fitting a rad/long cards.

So far got the follwoing:

 

[buchtis]

Excellent, thanks for letting me know James. Once i've got all the bits and I actually start building it properly i'll have a look.

Thanks again.

 

[buchtis]

Yeah it's a beautiful, spacious case. With a 240mm rad I think it'll looks quite stuffed but other than that it'll be fine. Deffo getting this as an upgrade over my Antec 300.

 

[buchtis]

Sorry guys been busy with Xmas & New Year. Will update and post more picture once everything arrives which should be either tomorrow or the day after. The black cable i'm assuming is the HD audio cable?

 

[buchtis]

Apologies as the rest of the stuff (CPU & HDD) have not arrived yet. Not starting properly till they do.

Cards have finally arrived after Parcelforce decided last week they couldn't be arsed to deliver it last week:

Old cards I know, but still very capable even these days and I think budget/performance wise these are very good.

 

[buchtis]

Alright i've done the whole lot today as the CPU and the HDD came. Apologies for the abysmal pictures but it's been horrible and grey all day outside and i've got crappy energy saving bulbs which doesn't help either.

Anyway, the i5 and the 1TB HDD:

2) what is the black cable in the case? can we have a better pic please?

HD audio cable:

It was time to take the bottom half of the HDD cages out:

Came out with ease and the case looks much more spacious with it.

 

[buchtis]

Unfortunately the seller of the i5 didn't clean the old TIM paste off, it spread all over in the bag and got on the edges of the CPU:

No big deal though, just got some nail varnish remover and bog roll and it came out good as new:

 

[buchtis]

Now it was time to fit the backplate of the Antec Khuler. Did this a while ago on my Phenom and it was a breeze:

But I nearly soiled myself when I saw the back. Followed all the instructions, put all the bits in the correct and this is what it looked like:

Then I noticed all the holes actually line up, it's just how they positioned them on the plastic bracket!

Took off the TIM Antec put on and put on some proper stuff:

 

[buchtis]

Sorted some of the wires and went ahead with fitting the PSU:

The 1 5850 for an coming test run:

Result:

 

[buchtis]

Booted fine, I breathed a sigh of relief then I realised I had to tidy all the cables and felt like crying.

Super tight fit, but managed to squeeze it in.

Before:

After:

I think I could have done a better job round the back to be honest, but with the amount of cables and all of them being quite thick it was hard to organize properly but I did my best.

The BIOS on this mobo is amazing, all new motherboards should come with this:

 

[buchtis]

Just a head up to anyone wishing to purchase this case, it's been excellent throughout but there's 1 or 2 minor niggles I have with it.

1) The HDD bay thing, or rather the rubber are horrible to use and don't really feel secure at all.

Ended up taking them off and just screwing it in manually.

2) The 5.25 bays have a clicky lock thing which is an excellent idea if you want to removed your DVD/BluRay drives quickly. The problem is, it's only on one side of the case which defeats the whole point of it. Again, ended up taking it off and putting screws in.

3) I put a push/pull system in with the Antec Khuler. When you do this there is absolutely no space to mount a 140/120mm fan on the top of the outside of the case so i've had to put only 1 fan on the bottom.

And that's it. Currently testing under Prime95 on 4.8Ghz @ 1.35. Been running about an hour without fail and temps were 70c max.

 

[buchtis]

I hope no paste got on the pins of the CPU!

Got to the edge but not on the pins, thank God. General rule of thumb is to clean the CPU before you send it to a customer but unfortunately this didn't seem to be the case here.

 

[buchtis]

Hi mate he's already picked the PC up so it's in his possession now. Will ask him tomorrow to try and get some reading but can't promise anything as he's constantly on it now playing games!