Project Corsus Thea

CrazyArsedMonky · 23 Jul 2012 at 00:22

Greetings all!

This is a small account of the trials and tribulations of my newest build. It is not going to be nearly as good or as complicated as some of the fantastic projects i have spent half the weekend reading about on these forums! It is however going to be mine and she will evolve as inspiration strikes me and as funds allow

I finally decided to build a new rig as one of my family members was looking for a reasonably powerful desktop for photograph manipulation. This was just one more excuse I needed to 'give' my old rig away, paving the way for a shiny new one

As you can see from this picture the last one I built was a tad messy, it still did the job though! (I am stealing a OCZ Vertex II, 128Gb SSD from this comp. Was going to use it as a boot drive, not sure if that is a good idea though. What speeds does the sabretooth utilize?)

Here are the components I have already purchased;
YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £329.99
1 x Asus Z77 Sabertooth Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £181.99
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - OEM £167.99
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 256GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT256M4SSD2) £152.99
1 x Corsair Graphite 600T Midi Tower Case - Limited Edition White £145.99
1 x Corsair HX 850W ATX Modular SLI Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU-850HXUK) £121.99
1 x Antec Kúhler H2O 920 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366/AM2/AM2+/AM2+/AM3+) £84.98
1 x Asus Xonar D2X 7.1 PCI-E Sound Card £79.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMZ8GX3M2A1600C8) £59.99
1 x Pioneer 24x Internal DVR-S19LBK DVD Rewriter including Labelflash - Retail £20.99
1 x Akasa AK-188-WH 2 x 12" Cold Cathode - White £11.99
Total : £1,376.58 (includes shipping : £14.75).

I was very pleased and surprised to find my free Haribo (cheers OcUk) as well as a strange looking chinchilla in my package...

I was over the moon to finally receive my goodies having waited all week for a day off to build it

All the bits looked fantastic though i was shocked to find the OEM CPU in a half opened wee box!

Sadly i was sent the wrong case so that scuppered my planned marathon weekend of BF3. I am glad it was nice weather however so i was out and about enjoying the weather instead :cool:

Its late now, more pics to come, thanks for reading!

CrazyArsedMonky · 24 Jul 2012 at 01:53

Number_25 said:
I hope I see some more movement on this tonight, really interested in how it goes.

Not tonight, i promise i will finish the log tomorrow

Its been a long night, i had some issues

Thanks for your interest!

CrazyArsedMonky · 24 Jul 2012 at 23:09

As promised here is an update

I had a very frustrating start to my new rig. I had all the bits but because the case was the wrong one i couldn't really do anything!

I did ofc open all the boxes and stare in wonder at all the shiny bits, even the boring DVD drive held a slight wonder for me - how quiet would it be and how fast would it install windows? (very loud and very quickly it transpired)

Thankfully we had nice weather over the weekend so i managed to keep myself busy around the doors during the day. In the evening i sated my building urges by tinkering around; i dressed the mo-bo ready for fitting and i test assembled the CPU cooler.

I was very impressed by the build quality of the mo-bo. It is rigid and heavy, living up to the 'military' credentials that it claims. The only thing that perplexed me was the two 35mm fans that you have to install yourself. I don't know why they give you this little bit of DIY to do, i for one found it a welcome distraction

Arnie CPU Kuhler...

Looking from underside...

Processor put to bed...

Dressed MoBo...

Thanks for reading

CrazyArsedMonky · 24 Jul 2012 at 23:42

When the case arrived on Monday i was over the moon, i managed to calm myself and still take some photo's though

I took some better ones and then dropped the camera. Some of my pictures have now been corrupted, stoopid technology! The camera now won't see the laptop to download photo's either. Thankfully the lappy has a card reader, adapt and overcome

I had a nice sunshine shot of the case to show it off, unfortunately it is fubar'd...

Instead, here is the inside;

The build quality again is fantastic. It is a lot larger than i thought it would be. I was used to the Antec lanboy mini case so this is a massive step up. There are cables galore but everything is nicely labelled up so there is no need for instructions. The case is very versatile, there are many different configurations you can have, just like most modern enthusiast cases. The bendy hard disk caddies are a brilliant innovation, so efficient and secure too. The PSU mounting bracket is quick and easy to use and holds it firmly, I tried to move it once tightened and there was no give. This case has so many nifty features that made the build a lot faster and easier.

As always there are a few niggles. The first is the USB3 integral port does not have a mobo connector. It instead terminates with a proper USB port so you have to take it outside your case and plug it into the back of your mobo. There is a cut out on one of the rear card blanks that you can feed it through, it is far from ideal though. Another would be some scratches on the window of the case and the last one would be the integral fan controller has weird connections to plug your fans into (i have yet to work them out).

More to follow tomorrow, gotta catch up on sleep, got 3.5 hours last night before my ears were assaulted by the alarm

Good night all o/

CrazyArsedMonky · 25 Jul 2012 at 21:29

Thanks Mr 25!

Ok, after the PSU was in i installed the mobo...

Post mobo fit i started on the CPU cooler. I was very surprised by the size of it! The rad is very deep on its own, then with two fans it is huge. The cooler was well designed, the only part i wasn't entirely comfortable with was the two pads at the back. They were there to protect the board i am sure, they just sat on a couple of diodes. This is down to Asus though and not Antec. Unfortunately i had to remove the rad and fans again as i failed to connect up the ATX 8 pin power connector which was entirely obscured by the rad assembly - i was rushing

One thing i did need to do out of the ordinary was remove the rubber anti-vib mounts from the rear fan mount. This was to enable the supplied screws from the cooler to get enough purchase on the rad (through first fan). The rubber mounts just took up a few too many threads preventing a strong install.

After rectifying this i put the hard drives in. The crucial SSD was tiny, too small for the drive caddies so i will need to bungy it in. I inverted one of the caddies and this made a perfect little niche for it to sit. The Vertex slotted in beautifully. As i mentioned before, this case is a dream to work with as it has a lot of clever design features that help and speed up building.

CrazyArsedMonky · 25 Jul 2012 at 23:24

After the hard disks and DVD drive it was time for the mobo connections and then onto fitting the cards and RAM. I took plenty of time tidying the cables away. I think it payed off but i am very biased

After further tweeks and the first power on i took some more photo's...

Then with the case on...

From the front...

And the final arty shot

And that was my build! I thoroughly enjoyed this project. There are still a few bits to do;

Cut hole for light switch
Fit another 670GTX
Polish out scratches on window (or attempt full window mod)
Overclock (dependant on CPU cooler efficiency)
Full water cooled system, subject to funding and requirement
Fix Vertex drive (it is not displayed in My Computer)

However, that is me for the time being. I am enjoying the system and being able to kill everyone on BF3

Take care all, thank you all very much for all your info and advice!

Shalom

CrazyArsedMonky · 27 Jul 2012 at 16:04

Number_25 said:
It's coming along nicely, can I see some readings from the cooler please?

Sure, what medium would you like me to use? I only have the chill control software from Antec atm.

Thank you Spenncerr

Thanks for the advice ZZAC, i am going to look into it this evening.

T345 (Bakht), i presume you were talking to ZZAC?

CrazyArsedMonky · 27 Jul 2012 at 22:05

Number_25 said:
RealTemp gives a nice overview.

Just to put these in context, i get between 32 and 37 on idle, 50 - 60 playing BF3 on max settings (there are normally a lot of sfx very close to me, i am a magnet for sfx). I haven't done any load testing like i have read others doing. Its a games machine after all!

Thank you Mr Muel

I am going to rebraid the connectors myself with white stuff. I want to find a decent one that will be a good solid colour, i don't want it looking washy under the bright white lights.

CrazyArsedMonky · 27 Jul 2012 at 22:14

ZZZAC said:
tried going into drive management and formatting the vertex, either that or i think its called achronis disk quite to force initalize and format if its not bricked
otherwise send it back on warrenty

I have made the windows see the drive, it is also now in my computer

Windows is not letting me format it however.... In disk management it says it is a system disk. Is this because i had Vista installed on it before? I formatted it whenever i installed it in this rig (using windows disk) and windows says it is empty.

CrazyArsedMonky · 27 Jul 2012 at 22:20

Number_25 said:
I can't see the screenshot mate, everything is too small :/

Fixed

CrazyArsedMonky · 28 Jul 2012 at 00:21

Muel said:
Ahh, MDPC braid dude, there's nothing better IMO. I have some bought from here second hand, much, much better than either the Bitfenix or NZXT pre-braided extensions I have.

MDPC, Hmmmm - I will look into that, thanks!

TY Jamsamas

If only the BF3 skill came from the GPU...

CrazyArsedMonky · 7 Jun 2014 at 12:15

Howdy gents o/

I have just whacked some new storage in the rig as i was uber low on space. I now have 2x 240Gb Patriots in stripe for programs and a 2Tb WD for storage.

I was looking to compare the performance between all my drives out of interest but i am not sure what the best program is, or which site to trust.

I trust the opinions of the people who frequent these forums, can someone chuck me a trusted link please?!

Thank you

CrazyArsedMonky · 8 Jun 2014 at 00:48

I would love to grab another 670

Sadly this rig still excels in everything i throw at it, so i can not justify another card. It will just have to be another rig when this one lets me down! Sadly my philosophy of, buy once, buy it properly means stuff doesn't have to be renewed as much as i would like

Bart, was it seriously two years ago??? Jings, doesn't time seem to stand still when in fact it is galloping by...

Anyone any suggestions for a safe HD benchmarker?

CrazyArsedMonky · 8 Jun 2014 at 10:49

I did nothing else

It was too easy to leave it as it was. Lame i know, especially after looking at some of the awesome builds on these forums!

CrazyArsedMonky · 4 Jun 2016 at 16:39

1080 going to be held back??

Hello again folks!

Rather than refer to this post i thought i would just add to it. I hope it doesn't cause too much confusion!

I have pre-ordered a 1080 Strix and am slightly worried that my existing hardware will hold it back.

I did some digging and followed the advice from here. My results were,

The graphs are CSGO, Path Of Exile, Total War - Warhammer and XCOM2 respectively.

The results surprised me as CSGO was very demanding (circa 80%) when compared to XCOM and TW-WH, which I would expect to be tougher on the CPU.

My rig has not changed, I am still running a GTX670. Can anyone explain these results or point me to the appropriate information please?

P.S. CSGO is running @ 4K, all others are running @ 2560x1440.

Thank you in advance!