Associate
- Joined
- 11 Mar 2008
- Posts
- 467
The time came to upgrade from my 2008 build, although I’d been planning to do this in March, the bug bit me over Christmas and I decided not to wait any longer. So, moving on from a Q6600 Quad Core CPU, 8800 GTS512 GFX and 4 GB memory (and windows Vista), it had been a while since I’d really looked at what was available now, so thank you to everyone here that answered my questions 
After some deliberation, I arrived and the part list below:
Case: NZXT Phantom 410
Motherboard: MSI Z77A-G65
CPU: Intel i7 3770K
Cooler: Antec Kuhler 620
Memory: Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600 16GB (2x8)
GFX: Gigabyte 7950 Windforce X3
Storage: Samsung 840 Pro 256GB
Crucial M4 256GB
Seagate Barracuda 3TB HDD
PSU: Corsair TX850
Optical: Pioneer BD-ROM/DVD RW
Ended up with a slight variation in parts from what I had originally intended due to availability, though only major change was the PSU, had originally went for a XFX modular, but that was out of stock with no ETA, so I changed to the Corsair (non-modular) unit – I only mention this as I’ll probably refer to it later on….
First order of the day was to inspect the goods!
I was looking forward to working with this case, will be the first time I’ve used a case with cable management. I removed all the panels and noticed that the top fan was on the inside of the case, while the ‘manual’ shows that it should be on top
Got the fan moved and the initial pieces in place, the MB and PSU, along with getting all the initial cables in position while I didn’t have any obstructions. All seemed straight forward, however I hadn’t realised just how many cables would come with the PSU, there were a lot of them! It took quite a considerable time to get them all fed through the cable management hole in an orderly manner and I started to regret rushing into taking this PSU and not taking a little more time and paying a bit more for a modular one!
So far, so good.
Did I mention the damned cables??
“I’ll tidy them up later”
Next the CPU cooler. Was looking forward to this, never used liquid cooling before and thought this would be so much easier to fit than a huge heat sink (the last one I did was a P.I.T.A. to get attached, and the ones now are even bigger!). 7 steps on the instructions…. Seemed simple, but it wasn’t. First, the backing plate has a variety of holes to support different Intel board sockets, all I had to do was line it up and stick it on (with the adhesive strips provided). Didn’t sound right to me – what if I needed to remove it again? A bit of time on Google indicated that once stuck, you need a knife to get it off again, it sticks strongly.. not something I wanted to have to do.
So, I did a test run to see how it fits, but it didn’t – didn’t matter which holes I was lining up against, 2 would be fine and 2 would be out
Some more searching online revealed that my mistake was lining it up straight, I needed to add it at an angle. Probably a stupid mistake, but it annoyed me!
I got the radiator mounted fine, but getting the block onto the CPU was tough. Without the adhesive tape, the back plate needed help in position, but even with 2 of us doing it still took quite a lot of fiddling to get the thing attached.
Got there in the end, and I certainly think it was worth the effort, it looks so much better than a heat sink!
With that in place, I got the last pieces put in position – memory and storage. The SATA cables were a bit difficult to get into position (as was the USB3 case header), the cable were too stiff to get them through the cable management holes, so they had to fit through the gap between the HDD cage and the back panel, thankfully there was enough room.
For cabling, had a few issues with the case:
1. I only got 4 white cables with the motherboard, but I need 5 (got another data HDD to add later), so had to use an ugly old red cable
2. The 4x SATA power cable from the PSU could not reach to work its way up to all storage devices. The SSDs mounting position on the 3.5” brackets placed them too far back, which meant that the power cable just couldn’t reach properly, meaning I had to use 2 separate cables to power the 4 devices stacked vertically (with the second cable also having to stretch to reach the BDROM.
Now, cable management space is all well and good, but with the number of cables coming out of the PSU and the stiffness of the cables, I just couldn’t get everything packed up in a tidy manner… I really wish I’d not rushed into buying the PSU I got, a modular would have been so much more practical. On the bright side, at least it did come with enough PCIe power cables for a second GFX card further down the line.
With some considerable effort, I managed to get the side panel on over that mess! Out of sight, out of mind…
I got everything connected up and hit the power. First thing I notice if the really nice BIOS interface, so much better than the DOS based interfaces. Second thing I noticed was the noise of the fans! They took a minute to spin up fully, but became very noticeable and after disconnecting them 1 at a time I found that it was solely the Antec fan that was making the noise. It’s not really any worse than my old PC, but I had been wanting something quieter
Other than that, no issues.
Got Windows 8 Pro installed, along with drivers in what seemed to be a very short time, couldn’t believe how quickly it was done – not sure how much of that is improvements in Win8 and how much is the SSD.
No pics of the end result unfortunately as my phone managed to corrupt a large chunk of my apps when I was transferring the above pictures off – so need to fix that problem before I can get more online.
Did take a while to get data migrated over and set up all the profiles for myself and my girlfriend, still got a few non-essential bits to do, but they can wait.
Overall, I’m pretty pleased with the result. Really amazed at how quickly it all boots up, at a working desktop in no time at all.
Installed Start8 and with a few config changes in place I haven’t even seen the ‘metro’ interface for a couple of days (aside from showing the gf how to get out of it if she accidentally ends up in a Metro app!)
Obviously I expected improved performance over the old PC, but I thought it was ‘good enough’ and I was just upgrading for the hell of it (and with the gf being equally impressed, how much I spent isn’t going to be a problem!).
Not tried much else yet but other observations are:
Visual Studio – definitely much quicker to open up and load projects
Outlook – so much more better, not choking and stalling on 2GB+ PST files!
Firefox is much more responsive, and I don’t hear a HDD whiring as I scroll a web page up and down any more!
Games wise, only tried a couple:
FTL – loads almost instantly
Rage – still takes an age to load and still has noticeable texture pop when turning quickly – had this on the old PC as well, though it was down to the 512MB memory, but it would seem not. Even though I think it’s set for high settings, I can’t really tell the difference in the visuals aside from being a little bit smoother.
Planetside 2 – Night and day here… takes a few seconds to load up now instead of at least a minute, so off to a great start. Once in game.. wow. Movement is significantly smoother, made me realise just how poor the ‘good enough’ performance actually was, I could never go back to the old PC for this! And this was running high settings v low settings, so it even looks much nicer as well.
And exiting the game doesn’t take 2 minutes before I have a usable desktop again… added bonus.
What’s next:
1. Want to do something with the cables, thinking of getting white braided power cables for the GFX and main power, possibly some white SATA cables as well. Will have to think about it though, the side window faces away from me, so it’s not like I’ll see inside anyway…
2. Change the fan on the Antec cooler for something quieter. I have a few questions about this that I’ve posted already – would be grateful if anyone is able to give some answers http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18478286 (I’ve got a better idea about the fans now, but still haven’t found anything about the connection and PWM questions)
3. In a month or so (once the current CC bill is cleared) I’ll be popping in another 16GB of memory. I don’t strictly need it right now, but with the last PC I’d planned on upgrading the memory at later stage, but when I came to do it DDR2 memory was daftly expensive (compared to what it was when I go it), so figure I might as well just do it now to get it done. The real question though is: should I get 2 more black sticks to match what it there already, or should I get them in blue to match the colour markings on the sockets?
4. Overclocking. Once I’m happy with the fans (for the cooler, but might add an additional fan or 2 to the case) I’ll set about over clocking. Nothing fancy probably aim for 4.5GHz on the CPU and a modest increase on the GPU (1050MHz?).
Hope that wasn’t too long for you, will post some more pics of the finished build once I’m able!
After some deliberation, I arrived and the part list below:
Case: NZXT Phantom 410
Motherboard: MSI Z77A-G65
CPU: Intel i7 3770K
Cooler: Antec Kuhler 620
Memory: Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600 16GB (2x8)
GFX: Gigabyte 7950 Windforce X3
Storage: Samsung 840 Pro 256GB
Crucial M4 256GB
Seagate Barracuda 3TB HDD
PSU: Corsair TX850
Optical: Pioneer BD-ROM/DVD RW
Ended up with a slight variation in parts from what I had originally intended due to availability, though only major change was the PSU, had originally went for a XFX modular, but that was out of stock with no ETA, so I changed to the Corsair (non-modular) unit – I only mention this as I’ll probably refer to it later on….
First order of the day was to inspect the goods!
I was looking forward to working with this case, will be the first time I’ve used a case with cable management. I removed all the panels and noticed that the top fan was on the inside of the case, while the ‘manual’ shows that it should be on top
Got the fan moved and the initial pieces in place, the MB and PSU, along with getting all the initial cables in position while I didn’t have any obstructions. All seemed straight forward, however I hadn’t realised just how many cables would come with the PSU, there were a lot of them! It took quite a considerable time to get them all fed through the cable management hole in an orderly manner and I started to regret rushing into taking this PSU and not taking a little more time and paying a bit more for a modular one!
So far, so good.
Did I mention the damned cables??
“I’ll tidy them up later”
Next the CPU cooler. Was looking forward to this, never used liquid cooling before and thought this would be so much easier to fit than a huge heat sink (the last one I did was a P.I.T.A. to get attached, and the ones now are even bigger!). 7 steps on the instructions…. Seemed simple, but it wasn’t. First, the backing plate has a variety of holes to support different Intel board sockets, all I had to do was line it up and stick it on (with the adhesive strips provided). Didn’t sound right to me – what if I needed to remove it again? A bit of time on Google indicated that once stuck, you need a knife to get it off again, it sticks strongly.. not something I wanted to have to do.
So, I did a test run to see how it fits, but it didn’t – didn’t matter which holes I was lining up against, 2 would be fine and 2 would be out
Some more searching online revealed that my mistake was lining it up straight, I needed to add it at an angle. Probably a stupid mistake, but it annoyed me!I got the radiator mounted fine, but getting the block onto the CPU was tough. Without the adhesive tape, the back plate needed help in position, but even with 2 of us doing it still took quite a lot of fiddling to get the thing attached.
Got there in the end, and I certainly think it was worth the effort, it looks so much better than a heat sink!
With that in place, I got the last pieces put in position – memory and storage. The SATA cables were a bit difficult to get into position (as was the USB3 case header), the cable were too stiff to get them through the cable management holes, so they had to fit through the gap between the HDD cage and the back panel, thankfully there was enough room.
For cabling, had a few issues with the case:
1. I only got 4 white cables with the motherboard, but I need 5 (got another data HDD to add later), so had to use an ugly old red cable
2. The 4x SATA power cable from the PSU could not reach to work its way up to all storage devices. The SSDs mounting position on the 3.5” brackets placed them too far back, which meant that the power cable just couldn’t reach properly, meaning I had to use 2 separate cables to power the 4 devices stacked vertically (with the second cable also having to stretch to reach the BDROM.
Now, cable management space is all well and good, but with the number of cables coming out of the PSU and the stiffness of the cables, I just couldn’t get everything packed up in a tidy manner… I really wish I’d not rushed into buying the PSU I got, a modular would have been so much more practical. On the bright side, at least it did come with enough PCIe power cables for a second GFX card further down the line.
With some considerable effort, I managed to get the side panel on over that mess! Out of sight, out of mind…
I got everything connected up and hit the power. First thing I notice if the really nice BIOS interface, so much better than the DOS based interfaces. Second thing I noticed was the noise of the fans! They took a minute to spin up fully, but became very noticeable and after disconnecting them 1 at a time I found that it was solely the Antec fan that was making the noise. It’s not really any worse than my old PC, but I had been wanting something quieter
Other than that, no issues.
Got Windows 8 Pro installed, along with drivers in what seemed to be a very short time, couldn’t believe how quickly it was done – not sure how much of that is improvements in Win8 and how much is the SSD.
No pics of the end result unfortunately as my phone managed to corrupt a large chunk of my apps when I was transferring the above pictures off – so need to fix that problem before I can get more online.
Did take a while to get data migrated over and set up all the profiles for myself and my girlfriend, still got a few non-essential bits to do, but they can wait.
Overall, I’m pretty pleased with the result. Really amazed at how quickly it all boots up, at a working desktop in no time at all.
Installed Start8 and with a few config changes in place I haven’t even seen the ‘metro’ interface for a couple of days (aside from showing the gf how to get out of it if she accidentally ends up in a Metro app!)
Obviously I expected improved performance over the old PC, but I thought it was ‘good enough’ and I was just upgrading for the hell of it (and with the gf being equally impressed, how much I spent isn’t going to be a problem!).
Not tried much else yet but other observations are:
Visual Studio – definitely much quicker to open up and load projects
Outlook – so much more better, not choking and stalling on 2GB+ PST files!
Firefox is much more responsive, and I don’t hear a HDD whiring as I scroll a web page up and down any more!
Games wise, only tried a couple:
FTL – loads almost instantly
Rage – still takes an age to load and still has noticeable texture pop when turning quickly – had this on the old PC as well, though it was down to the 512MB memory, but it would seem not. Even though I think it’s set for high settings, I can’t really tell the difference in the visuals aside from being a little bit smoother.
Planetside 2 – Night and day here… takes a few seconds to load up now instead of at least a minute, so off to a great start. Once in game.. wow. Movement is significantly smoother, made me realise just how poor the ‘good enough’ performance actually was, I could never go back to the old PC for this! And this was running high settings v low settings, so it even looks much nicer as well.
And exiting the game doesn’t take 2 minutes before I have a usable desktop again… added bonus.
What’s next:
1. Want to do something with the cables, thinking of getting white braided power cables for the GFX and main power, possibly some white SATA cables as well. Will have to think about it though, the side window faces away from me, so it’s not like I’ll see inside anyway…
2. Change the fan on the Antec cooler for something quieter. I have a few questions about this that I’ve posted already – would be grateful if anyone is able to give some answers http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18478286 (I’ve got a better idea about the fans now, but still haven’t found anything about the connection and PWM questions)
3. In a month or so (once the current CC bill is cleared) I’ll be popping in another 16GB of memory. I don’t strictly need it right now, but with the last PC I’d planned on upgrading the memory at later stage, but when I came to do it DDR2 memory was daftly expensive (compared to what it was when I go it), so figure I might as well just do it now to get it done. The real question though is: should I get 2 more black sticks to match what it there already, or should I get them in blue to match the colour markings on the sockets?
4. Overclocking. Once I’m happy with the fans (for the cooler, but might add an additional fan or 2 to the case) I’ll set about over clocking. Nothing fancy probably aim for 4.5GHz on the CPU and a modest increase on the GPU (1050MHz?).
Hope that wasn’t too long for you, will post some more pics of the finished build once I’m able!
