The last one I did was nearly 6 and a half years ago so this has been long overdue, unfortunately cars and buying a house go in the way.
The last one was an AMD Athlon on a 754 socket with an AGP ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, yes I bought it right before the change to PCI and it wasn't that great even playing the games of its day
.. I didn't want to make the same mistake so overspecced some of the components to hopefully give a bit of future upgradability. It's mainly to play Games (Skyrim/Far Cry 3 etc) but also for music editing, website and photograph editing and Software Programming.
Originally I wanted a Corsair case and Corsair 1200 Platinum PSU, they were out of stock at Overclockers so I chose a few different makes, full spec below
Case :Silverstone Fortress FT01 - USB3
PSU : Enermax Platimax 1kW 80 Plus Platinum
M/Board : Asus P9X79 Pro (Socket 2011)
Processor : Intel Core i7-3820 3.60GHz
Thermal Compound : Arctic Silver 5 Compound
Heatsink Cooler : Arctic Cooling i30
Memory : Corsair Dominator 16GB DDR3 Quad Channel Kit 1866MHz
Graphics : EVGA GeForce GTX 680 Classified 4GB
Sound : Asus Xonar Essence STX
HD - 1 : Intel Series 520 SSD - 240Gb
HD - 2 : Samsung 1Gb
Optical Drive : Pioneer BH10LS38
Mouse : Razer DeathAdder
Mouse Pad : Razer Goliathus
Keyboard : Standard Microsoft
Monitor : HP LP2475W (24" IPS Panel)
Some of the bits I had for a while (monitor, harddrives, keyboard) so it's just really the tower and some gaming peripherals. I've had it up and running for about 20 hours on Win 7 32 and 64bit, stress testing and so far it seems to be stable ...
If i'm honest I wished I had waited for the Corsair case and PSU to be in stock before changing them for in-stock items. The Corsair case looks to have better cable management than the Silverstone and options for hooking up the H100i Radiator if going down the Corsair Cooling route .. the Enermax PSU is not fully modular and the pre-fitted cables weren't that long to route the board PSU cables at the top as easily as I would have liked.
I'm thinking i've scrimped a bit on the cooling as although I had no real intention of overclocking, it's nice to have the option and i'm not close to those mid 20's that other reviews of the Arctic Cooler i30 have, 1 core does appear to be consistantly 3-4 degrees cooler than the other 3, have I screwed up on the application of the Thermal Paste / Heatsink
.. I guess I still have the option of putting in an Corsair H80i though to get the temps down even more for future overclocking.
A question I have for the experts on the forum is, are the temperatures about right for a stock i7 3820, have I got enough room to overclock to a modest 4GHz given my higher idle temps (room/ambient temp is 19 Deg C)
it's only my second build so still learning a lot
.. thanks in advance for any advice!
The last one was an AMD Athlon on a 754 socket with an AGP ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, yes I bought it right before the change to PCI and it wasn't that great even playing the games of its day
.. I didn't want to make the same mistake so overspecced some of the components to hopefully give a bit of future upgradability. It's mainly to play Games (Skyrim/Far Cry 3 etc) but also for music editing, website and photograph editing and Software Programming.Originally I wanted a Corsair case and Corsair 1200 Platinum PSU, they were out of stock at Overclockers so I chose a few different makes, full spec below
Case :Silverstone Fortress FT01 - USB3
PSU : Enermax Platimax 1kW 80 Plus Platinum
M/Board : Asus P9X79 Pro (Socket 2011)
Processor : Intel Core i7-3820 3.60GHz
Thermal Compound : Arctic Silver 5 Compound
Heatsink Cooler : Arctic Cooling i30
Memory : Corsair Dominator 16GB DDR3 Quad Channel Kit 1866MHz
Graphics : EVGA GeForce GTX 680 Classified 4GB
Sound : Asus Xonar Essence STX
HD - 1 : Intel Series 520 SSD - 240Gb
HD - 2 : Samsung 1Gb
Optical Drive : Pioneer BH10LS38
Mouse : Razer DeathAdder
Mouse Pad : Razer Goliathus
Keyboard : Standard Microsoft
Monitor : HP LP2475W (24" IPS Panel)
Some of the bits I had for a while (monitor, harddrives, keyboard) so it's just really the tower and some gaming peripherals. I've had it up and running for about 20 hours on Win 7 32 and 64bit, stress testing and so far it seems to be stable ...
If i'm honest I wished I had waited for the Corsair case and PSU to be in stock before changing them for in-stock items. The Corsair case looks to have better cable management than the Silverstone and options for hooking up the H100i Radiator if going down the Corsair Cooling route .. the Enermax PSU is not fully modular and the pre-fitted cables weren't that long to route the board PSU cables at the top as easily as I would have liked.
I'm thinking i've scrimped a bit on the cooling as although I had no real intention of overclocking, it's nice to have the option and i'm not close to those mid 20's that other reviews of the Arctic Cooler i30 have, 1 core does appear to be consistantly 3-4 degrees cooler than the other 3, have I screwed up on the application of the Thermal Paste / Heatsink
.. I guess I still have the option of putting in an Corsair H80i though to get the temps down even more for future overclocking.A question I have for the experts on the forum is, are the temperatures about right for a stock i7 3820, have I got enough room to overclock to a modest 4GHz given my higher idle temps (room/ambient temp is 19 Deg C)
it's only my second build so still learning a lot
.. thanks in advance for any advice!