First Build Ever

[weirdGuy]

So in the last few weeks I've had my a harddrive failure, had to replace my CMOS battery, had to replace my PSU fan for the 4th time & had to upgrade to Win8. So I felt it was near time to upgrade my 5 year old beauty for something a bit nicer.

I made a post the other week asking for a bit of help choosing, & ended up with the following items:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i7-3770K 3.50GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £269.99
1 x Corsair Professional Series AX750 High Performance 750W Modular '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply (CMPSU-750AXUK) £139.99
1 x NZXT Switch 810 Big Tower Case - White £139.99
1 x Corsair Dominator PLATINUM 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit with DHX Pro Connector (CMD16GX3M2A1600C9) £119.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance 2000 Wireless 7.1 Professional Gaming Headset £114.98
1 x ASRock Z77 Extreme4 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £109.99
1 x Corsair Hydro H100i High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (Socket /LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366/LGA2011/AM2/AM3/FM1/FM2) £91.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB SATA GB/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1500DL003) £55.99
1 x Corsair Professional Series Gold AX850/AX750/AX650 Individually Sleeved Modular Cables - White (CP-8920010) £52.99
2 x Corsair SP120 Performance Series High Pressure - Dual Pack £25.99 (£51.98)
1 x NZXT CB-LED10-WT 12x White LED Sleeve - 1m £9.98
1 x Thermalright Chill Factor 3 Tube (4g) Thermal Paste £4.99
Total : £1,180.57 (includes shipping : £14.75).



To the build I would be adding my ATI Sapphire 6870 along with an OCZ Agility 240GB SSD & 2 of my old Seagate 250GB HDDS.



I spent a good 2 hours unboxing everything, it was like Chistmas. However, I didn't even get chance to photograph the Haribo thanks to the girlfriend.




The white Corsair cables which are by far my favorite part of the build.




The H100i along with a comparison of the new fans versus the SP120's. They don't seem too dissimilar, although the H100i ones were a lot harder to spin by hand & the build of them is completely different.



Comparing the NZXT to my old Antec 900. I never really realized how much of a difference there is. I love the Switch, it was so amazing to work with. I cleaned out the Antec last week in preparation for the new build & it was such a nightmare to work inside or get any form of cable management going. The Switch was like a dream, however the top panel came covered in what I assume was some kind of wash from the molding process or something. Took quite a while to get it off in all the nooks & crannies.




Test the rig & shoved it in easily. I was dreading fitting a mobo for some reason, I always heard horror stories about people shorting them & its always been the main put off of building my own PC.



This mess, which isn't even half the cables took me a good 3-4 hours to sort. It's not perfect by any stretch yet, but I can at least get the door on now.



This was it finished at 10 last night, I had a load of troubles getting it running. Mostly due to me not plugging the PCI, CPU & HDD power cables back in to the PSU. I wasted a good hour fooling around in the bios wondering what the hell was wrong until the girlfriend asked why those cables down there weren't plugged in. -_-

I'll get round to uploading some more photos later, I couldn't be arsed trying to get the flash gun working in a white case last night.

Anyway, for a first build I'm really glad I made the choices to go modular & get a massive case. Things like that just made everything so simple. As for now I'm really happy with everything from the service OC provided down to the final build. I'm looking to upgrade the graphics card in the next 2 months or so, & maybe put a 360 rad kit in instead of the H100i. It's not that the H100i is a bad cooler, it's doing really well at the moment, but the stock fans were awfully loud & I badly want to carry on working on this rig & that's where I see my plans going. Other than that I can't but praise all of the components, especially the Corsair ones. Everything I had from Corsair just screams quality & I'm going to recommend the hell out of them.

Thoughts, questions & suggestions are more than welcome!

Album of extra photos can be found here: http://imgur.com/a/A4JNJ

 

[weirdGuy]

Finally got round to get some more photos together (More in the imgur album from the first post also), seems OC sent a cold with my order that has slowly been killing me. Really got a bug for building now it seems, keep tinkering with it every day. The cables are a little messy but I'm waiting on the new BitFenix fan controller to come to sort all the fans out.

As for the LEDs they are really make the rig look special at night. I will mention one of them has failed but I'm not bothered for the price. I would mention if you're going to fit them in a case the size of the Switch go for the 2M LED kit, the 1M just doesn't go far enough to show everything off.

On another note, the H100i running push pull with the standard fans & the performance fans is keeping the cpu very cool. I hit a high Sunday of 37 degrees after about 5 hours of Planetside2 on high so thats my benchmark so far. ><

 

[weirdGuy]

what horror stories??? and yeah nice build by the way

I always, always heard stories of people shorting boards really easily. I think I just found the stories on random forums at silly hours, & it just made me go "EUGAH, OH NO". :/

Really nice, congrats on your first build man! Do the corsair fans come with interchangeable coloured rings or did you get them separately?
Cheers

Thanks, & yeah they come with the 3 rings in the picture. Red, White & Blue.

I really like this build well done what is this case like? Is it any better than 500r or 650d

Thanks. The case is really amazing. I'm endlessly looking at it in awe. I can't compare it to any recent cases, but I'd highly recommend it to anyone after a large case.

Thanks all for the comments, really appreciate the kind words!

Hopefully have a little update soon of the fan controller & some more white cabling to finish the build off. Still need to invest in the graphics card, but I think that'll wait til after Christmas. Hopefully going to bench it, overclock it & bench some more once I get the controller really see what its capable of. As for now it's performing well in my everyday use; eg. Large Photoshop edits, AfterEffects rendering, C4D modelling/rendering.

Had a problem with the H100i where the custom LED in the block changes colours randomly, but that is literally the only issue so far. :s

 

[weirdGuy]

You sir just convinced me to get one )

I hope you love it as much as I love mine!

So, I finally got off my arse & fitted all the fans up. I've now got all 10 going, 11 if you count the GPU. With them down low, I can't hear any difference.

While I was sorting the fans out, I managed to cram my old cathodes in the top of the case. I used some double sided foam to attach them to the ceiling of the case, but they had a green tint to them. So instead I put them in the roof, so when the slots are open I have a bit of a light show.