Build Log: Remake

Bexx

Bexx

Bexx

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Build Log: Remake - From AMD To Intel CPU

Hello! :D

2 years ago I built my first PC, it consists of:

Nova tech Vulcan Midi V2 Case
AMD FX-4300 3.8GHz
Asus M5A78L-M
Kingston 60GB SSD
Kingston 8GB DDR3 1600MHz
MSI HD 7750 2GB DDR3
Samsung 21.5" HD monitor
DVD Drive
Toshiba 1TB Hard drive
Corsair CX 500W PSU

With wifi dongles, cables and speakers all cost me about £640. I mention price because for me it's a big factor. I have money for the build but I still will always compare price to product, if it's worth it, and shop around.

Here is my finished product:

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Yes.. I'm terrible at cable management :(

So I signed up for the Final Fantasy: A Realm Reborn beta to test out my new PC and I was hooked from there. Fast forward to now and I've realised my needs have changed. I now see how pixel-y my characters outline can be. Don't get me wrong I'm still happy with it, still very proud of my first build, it's just I know it could look better...

My goal now was to be able to run FFXIV and the new expansion on max settings, and be able to stream to Twitch.

So after questioning you lovely people I eventually decided that my plan would be to buy a bigger SSD for the OS and FFXIV, a new graphics card and a PSU to support it. This would allow me to see a difference in FFXIV until I saved the money to get a new CPU and motherboard. Thus I bought these...

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I figured that 240GB would be plenty for the OS, FFXIV and the expansion, with other stuff on the 1TB HDD.

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Tried my best when doing my research on brands, found out this was made by Seasonic which are great. Some people were saying my 500W was enough, some weren't. Some manufacturer listings were saying both too so I was torn. Decided to go for a bit extra just in case. It was listed as modular so I assumed it was fully modular which it isn't. It has the main power cable built in but the others are modular. Not to worry though I can work with it.

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Tried my best to show the lovely colour :) I was very excited to start using this card as I'd heard so many good things about Sapphire in general as well as this card. The 3 fans for extra cooling and it's meant to be nice and quiet too! I wanted a card that was at least 3GB this time around, the budget was £200 but I felt this was worth the extra £20 :)

Total spent so far: £348.05

Now.. this is where it hit me that what was meant to be an upgrade was going to have to be an almost completely new build :eek:

I fit the PSU no problem, I wish it was more modular but never mind. Though I did see the difference using the other modular cables. I went to fit the TRI-X and it wouldn't fit! :mad: I checked the size of it online before buying to make sure. It said the card was approximately 30cm long but that obviously didn't include the plastic and piping that sticks out at the end! The silly bays are in the way, and are riveted in and we have no way of removing them. I could have gone at it with a saw but it would have meant removing everything from the case to save from the flakes and I just didn't have the patience so I put the old one back in and left the PSU in.

Which meant:

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Stock image because mine is still in the box downstairs :p

I cannot wait to build in this case! It's super slick looking out the outside (and a total fingerprint magnet) but I love the stealth PSU cover the NZXT Source 340 has and really think it will help me out when it comes to cable management. It has no drive bays which is fine by me, I'll just plug the drive in to install Windows. I love the extra space that having no bays gives you, hopefully with this the air will flow better and everything will be nice and cool :)

That's all the parts I have in my possession for now, I have the rest on their way to me but nothing is put together yet. Hopefully it won't be too long :D

Total spent so far: £403.07
 
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That's what I mean I'm by no means a pro at this so with conflicting information I decided I'd rather have more than needed (but not too much) than not enough ^_^
 
Thank you :) It's been going on for a few weeks now but always thought that was too long to be writing anything up. Should hopefully be coming together this week so thought the time was better.
 
All pieces finally arrived and I commenced building last night! :)

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Decided on the i5-4690k as I felt the i3 wouldn't be enough and the i7 was too expensive and overkill for my needs. Went with the k version so I've got the option to overclock in the future but for now I'll be using it at stock

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Wanted a Z97 board with overclock features and also wanted it to be black and orange :) I decided to see if I could colour theme my build only after I'd bought the GPU which is obviously bright orange xD

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I only realised earlier this week that my lovely new case doesn't come with any front intake fans D: I didn't even want to power it on without any cool air coming in but luckily these arrived before my motherboard did.

I decided on the NXZT FX 140mm fans because their noise score was low, air intake score was high and overall good reviews. Plus they are orange LED which I thought I could use to give the inside a nice orange glow :) I originally put them on back to front as there was no indication which way round they went. I've never bought or installed a fan before so just span it next to my face and thought I could feel a breeze xD

Total spent so far: £699.13

I say so far as I'm not sure I'm quite finished yet, I still have a few niggles.

Here's what it currently looks like and I tried to get a good one with the lights too...

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I'm in looove with the cable management in this, it just makes it so easy! Compare it to my first PC it's just unreal! There's a cable on the bottom of the motherboard and the power one that I've put coming from behind the metal cover where the cord is just a bit tight. You worry that the cable is bent too much that it might start to split or something. It was the same with the GPU cables I had them coming out of the holes in the PSU cover but the bend was just too sharp but I think they look good like this I'm really pleased with it.

Here's how it stands

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Sorry for rubbish phon picture, and as I've said the case is a glossy fingerprint magnet which shows up in pictures :(

My only niggles are that the fans are great but the glow I was wanting is not what I've got. The whole left hand side is in darkness so I need more light there. I don't want to physically be able to see LED bulbs so I don't want to replace the rear fan. I'm thinking I'm going to get some LED strips and put them along the top of the case on the window side and down the left to shine on the board and illuminate the inside while facing away from me so I can't see the bulbs.

My RAM is Kingston Hyper X which is a gunmetal grey colour. Maybe I'll get a bright orange one one day but at the moment my RAM is working perfectly fine so no need. Plus is dark in colour so can pass for black it's not noticeable.

I'm considering some Bitfenix orangle cabling. The PSU has some modular cables so there's some I could replace for Bitfenix and some I can't.

My PSU was in my old case and was spinning as normal then speeding up and slowing back down. I assumed it was a heat issue and would sort itself out once in this case and I think it has. It's a bit louder than my old one but it's a steady noise now.

My SSD has the red and black Kingston label on it. Does anyone know if it's peelable so I can take it off? Or know of some good orange colour sticker I can cut to size and stick over it?

My main problem is I'm getting high temperatures. I noticed I was at 700MHz of the stock 3.5GHz which I thought wasn't right and was told it was in 'power save' mode. My OH turned this off while I was at work today and was getting some temperatures that he wasn't happy with. Obviously I was trying to not spend too much money so I thought "I'll see how the stock cooler goes with the added fans and then I'll see if I need a new heatsink because I might not, you never know" Turns out I do xD The CPU fan comes with an ugly green/blue/yellow cable anyway that doesn't match.

I've already ran the FFXIV benchmark and got 10 times the score than I did on my old PC so very happy with that! If you guys could suggest some other tests I can download and get some scores on, see how I match up that'd be great :p

So let me know what you think, not the greatest build log I know but I'd really appreciate your advice on what I could change, or suggestions for parts or any help :)

Thanks guys!
 
I've ran the Fire Strike benchmark and got 8755. Says it's better than 83% of all results but it gave me the achievement "Your GPU is ready to rumble, but your CPU doesn't want to play."

Could there be something wrong?

Graphics Score
10686

Physics Score
7624

Combined Score
4106
 
A lot of people run FireStrike with overclocked CPU/GPU, so having yours at stock speed would be comparatively 'slow'.

Your scores appear to be a little on the low side of things, but I'm assuming this is 'out of the box' with no tweaking done? I think the average scores you see on benchmarks are skewed upwards because most people are overclocking aiming for the highest scores possible.

Assuming there's no problems/crashes in games I would say there's nothing wrong, it's just a case of tweaking to get more performance.
 
It's out of the box, I ran OCCT and it was showing at 700MHz of 3.5GHz. My OH changed it while I was at work he ran Intel Step [something] and turned off the power saving and now OCCT says it's at 3899.1 MHz overclocked by 11.4%
 
Got my LED lights fitted, quite surprised how well it lights up the inside. Annoying extra bulb at the bottom was staring at me so I fixed it with some black tape :P

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I recently built in one of these cases, really is nice to build in. Very nice! Get that stock cooler changed though, is uglying up the build!!!
 
moppy89 said:
I recently built in one of these cases, really is nice to build in. Very nice! Get that stock cooler changed though, is uglying up the build!!!
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Thank you :) I have my new cooler here just needs putting in, waiting for new cables first though :)
 
liking the build, I have been looking at getting the same case when I upgrade mine as my current one is like 12-14 years old lol
 
Luggs said:
Really nice looking build, must be well chuffed with it!
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Thenk you I'm really pleased yeah, still got a few things to add (slowww am*zon delivery) but soon :)

ED209 said:
liking the build, I have been looking at getting the same case when I upgrade mine as my current one is like 12-14 years old lol
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Apart from easily seen fingerprints I cannot fault this case one bit. I've got stock cooler at the minute and with stock fans plus the two NZXT ones I bought for the front it keeps it at good temperatures. Lots of space for airflow. I fell in love with the PSU shroud and the bar that covers the gap in the back, genius cable management tricks and they've worked a treat for me
 
Bexx said:
Apart from easily seen fingerprints I cannot fault this case one bit. I've got stock cooler at the minute and with stock fans plus the two NZXT ones I bought for the front it keeps it at good temperatures. Lots of space for airflow. I fell in love with the PSU shroud and the bar that covers the gap in the back, genius cable management tricks and they've worked a treat for me
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that's one of the things I like about the case is the PSU cover and I liked the idea that the SSDs sat on top of it as well.

in my current case there is no such thing as cable management ad its a mess! lol

I may do a build log when i get my case and even get a H100I or H80I AIO cooler as well but will depend on funds etc
 
ED209 said:
that's one of the things I like about the case is the PSU cover and I liked the idea that the SSDs sat on top of it as well.

in my current case there is no such thing as cable management ad its a mess! lol

I may do a build log when i get my case and even get a H100I or H80I AIO cooler as well but will depend on funds etc
Click to expand...

Same, that's why I posted a picture of my previous build to compare. I just knew this one was going to be better. The old one was a case of shove it all in the top corner and hope it stays out of the way lol
 
Bexx said:
Same, that's why I posted a picture of my previous build to compare. I just knew this one was going to be better. The old one was a case of shove it all in the top corner and hope it stays out of the way lol
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my case doesn't even have any SSD slots, they are just resting up against the side hoping they stay there and continue to work lol.
 
Andygully said:
First off nice build :).
You can get carbon wrap to cover the ssd over thats what i did and it was pretty easy.
Maybe spend £20 on a air cooler that would stop your heat issues
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-028-XG
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Thank you :)

I had thought about getting a sticker or something to cover up the red logo, but didn't know what to look for, now I have a name, thanks :)

I've got a cooler it's just finding time to put it on. PC has good temperatures without it I just know they can be better. especially under load
 
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