Associate
Hello,
Over the last few months I've rekindled the love of gaming in particular, PC gaming. I've been slowly upgrading over the last few months and I've at last finished, for the moment.
Here was my original spec which was build in August 2008
Arctic Power 600W PSU
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 Stepping (2.4GHz 1066MHz)
Gigabyte GA-P35-S3G iP35
Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL5(5-5-5-18)
Sapphire HD 4850 512mb
WD Raptor 150GB
Lain-Li PC-60 Case
*apologise for the photo quality*
--------
In 2012 I was getting a lot of headaches whilst playing and put it down to too much screen time in front of the PC......I was wrong.
Later found it was caused by my PSU burning out....
It was filling up the room which toxic air but as I live on my own didn't realise until the girlfriend walked in and smelt it......so could have been 'death' by PC gaming if I didn't have a missus! haha
Anyway, that was removed and changed to: Thermaltake 675W Toughpower XT Modular PSU which I'm still currently using.
--------
Not long after that I was struggling to play a number of games at a decent frame rate so I decided to upgrade the GPU and add more RAM so I got the following:
Sapphire HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 DVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E Graphics Card
Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Kit CL5 1.8v
These were my results on 3DMARK
Again, I was on a budget and wanted to stretch out the life span of my CPU/Board and RAM before upgrading.
-------
October last year my Raptor was getting very noisy so I decided to replace it with an SSD and ended up getting the following:
Samsung 256GB 840 Pro SSD
I must say, what -a-difference! Everything was lighting fast and responsive, even on SATA2, well worth the upgrade!
At this point, the original build was 5 years old!...and it was still capable of playing BF4 at MEDIUM settings with OKish FPS....but it was well over due a complete upgrade, and I had the itch. (I only consider a new build when you upgrade the CPU/Board and RAM so this system was 5 years old!
).
--------
Got Christmas out of the way and treat myself on the following:
Intel Core i5 4670K 3.40GHz Socket 1150 6MB Cache
Gigabyte GA-Z87-D3HP Socket 1150 HDMI DVI ATX Motherboard
DDR3, 1600MHz 16GB 2x240 Dimm, Unbuffered, 9-9-9-24, Vengeance Pro Gold
These were my results on 3DMARK
Going from my 5 year old build to this made a massive overall difference, as you could imagine, but not a huge one where it mattered the most, gaming, so I continued with the upgrade.
--------
I've always spent around £100-£150 on a Graphics Card but this time, I wanted to do it properly and decided on the following this month:
Sapphire Radeon R9 290 Tri-X "BF4 Edition" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Purchasing it from OCuk at the time it was on promotion along with money back from a cashback site plus selling the BF4 game code that came with it I got it for a sweet price of £340.
First impressions this card is MASSIVE and dwarfed anything I've previously had.
Once installed and setup I ran 3DMark, here are the results on a 1st run, on stock
Must say i'm impressed with the results, this card is a complete animal!!
---------
The next issue I wanted to address was cooling and cable management. As you can see cabling is a problem in my current case along with a stock Intel cooler which has to go.
Being a bit silly I overclocked the CPU to 4.3Ghz on stock and saw temperatures in the 80+! lol
After a lot of deliberation I went with the following:
Corsair Carbide 500R Midi Tower Case - Black
At this point I'll be retiring my old Lain-Li which if you can believe, was bought in 2001!! lol
I bought the Carbide for the following reasons: good air cooling potential, cable management, no bling, small foot print, good price, black.
And this for the CPU cooler
NH-U14S Ultra-Quiet Slim CPU Cooler with NF-A15 Fan
Fantastic service as always from OCuk
Here both cases are next to each other, but you can't really tell from this photo; the Corsair is much larger the Lain-Li.
First impressions of the Corsair were positive, and I was glad I made the purchase
Ok, first thing I started with was stripping down the Lain-Li and upon removing the stock cooler was greeted with this.
No wonder it was pulling high temperatures even on stock, so out with the following and cleaned up the CPU ready for the new cooler.
At this stage the build is going well with board and PSU making the transition without issues.
Next stage was to install this lovely NH-U14S
What a difference? lol
And here it is fitted, what a BEAST! LOL
The NH-U14S still gives plenty of room over the DIMM slot which was one reason I bought it.
Also I read that the NH-U14S is very close to the graphics card, which did concern me but as you can see using this motherboard, got plenty of room
And it's complete.
Do like the night shots!
Idle and general browsing these are the temperatures I'm getting which are excellent!
Under full load
That's it for now...must say, I've really enjoyed building this new PC up!
What's next to do?....
Thanks for looking
Over the last few months I've rekindled the love of gaming in particular, PC gaming. I've been slowly upgrading over the last few months and I've at last finished, for the moment.
Here was my original spec which was build in August 2008
Arctic Power 600W PSU
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 Stepping (2.4GHz 1066MHz)
Gigabyte GA-P35-S3G iP35
Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL5(5-5-5-18)
Sapphire HD 4850 512mb
WD Raptor 150GB
Lain-Li PC-60 Case
*apologise for the photo quality*
--------
In 2012 I was getting a lot of headaches whilst playing and put it down to too much screen time in front of the PC......I was wrong.
Later found it was caused by my PSU burning out....
It was filling up the room which toxic air but as I live on my own didn't realise until the girlfriend walked in and smelt it......so could have been 'death' by PC gaming if I didn't have a missus! haha
Anyway, that was removed and changed to: Thermaltake 675W Toughpower XT Modular PSU which I'm still currently using.
--------
Not long after that I was struggling to play a number of games at a decent frame rate so I decided to upgrade the GPU and add more RAM so I got the following:
Sapphire HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 DVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E Graphics Card
Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Kit CL5 1.8v
These were my results on 3DMARK
Again, I was on a budget and wanted to stretch out the life span of my CPU/Board and RAM before upgrading.
-------
October last year my Raptor was getting very noisy so I decided to replace it with an SSD and ended up getting the following:
Samsung 256GB 840 Pro SSD
I must say, what -a-difference! Everything was lighting fast and responsive, even on SATA2, well worth the upgrade!
At this point, the original build was 5 years old!...and it was still capable of playing BF4 at MEDIUM settings with OKish FPS....but it was well over due a complete upgrade, and I had the itch. (I only consider a new build when you upgrade the CPU/Board and RAM so this system was 5 years old!
).--------
Got Christmas out of the way and treat myself on the following:
Intel Core i5 4670K 3.40GHz Socket 1150 6MB Cache
Gigabyte GA-Z87-D3HP Socket 1150 HDMI DVI ATX Motherboard
DDR3, 1600MHz 16GB 2x240 Dimm, Unbuffered, 9-9-9-24, Vengeance Pro Gold
These were my results on 3DMARK
Going from my 5 year old build to this made a massive overall difference, as you could imagine, but not a huge one where it mattered the most, gaming, so I continued with the upgrade.
--------
I've always spent around £100-£150 on a Graphics Card but this time, I wanted to do it properly and decided on the following this month:
Sapphire Radeon R9 290 Tri-X "BF4 Edition" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Purchasing it from OCuk at the time it was on promotion along with money back from a cashback site plus selling the BF4 game code that came with it I got it for a sweet price of £340.
First impressions this card is MASSIVE and dwarfed anything I've previously had.
Once installed and setup I ran 3DMark, here are the results on a 1st run, on stock
Must say i'm impressed with the results, this card is a complete animal!!
---------
The next issue I wanted to address was cooling and cable management. As you can see cabling is a problem in my current case along with a stock Intel cooler which has to go.
Being a bit silly I overclocked the CPU to 4.3Ghz on stock and saw temperatures in the 80+! lol
After a lot of deliberation I went with the following:
Corsair Carbide 500R Midi Tower Case - Black
At this point I'll be retiring my old Lain-Li which if you can believe, was bought in 2001!! lol
I bought the Carbide for the following reasons: good air cooling potential, cable management, no bling, small foot print, good price, black.
And this for the CPU cooler
NH-U14S Ultra-Quiet Slim CPU Cooler with NF-A15 Fan
Fantastic service as always from OCuk
Here both cases are next to each other, but you can't really tell from this photo; the Corsair is much larger the Lain-Li.
First impressions of the Corsair were positive, and I was glad I made the purchase
Ok, first thing I started with was stripping down the Lain-Li and upon removing the stock cooler was greeted with this.
No wonder it was pulling high temperatures even on stock, so out with the following and cleaned up the CPU ready for the new cooler.
At this stage the build is going well with board and PSU making the transition without issues.
Next stage was to install this lovely NH-U14S
What a difference? lol
And here it is fitted, what a BEAST! LOL
The NH-U14S still gives plenty of room over the DIMM slot which was one reason I bought it.
Also I read that the NH-U14S is very close to the graphics card, which did concern me but as you can see using this motherboard, got plenty of room
And it's complete.
Do like the night shots!
Idle and general browsing these are the temperatures I'm getting which are excellent!
Under full load
That's it for now...must say, I've really enjoyed building this new PC up!
What's next to do?....
Thanks for looking
