Project Phoenix

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Joined
19 Sep 2016
Posts
343
Location
Jensen's Leather Jacket
Firstly ill apologise for using a neat name for such a lowly build. :rolleyes:

This has happened pretty quickly but the short story is, I've been out of the game for a long time and got the urge to build again.

Long story is that the last real build I did was about 12 years ago. Half Life 2 was approaching and I was able to take "advantage" of some school loopholes to build an "education" system with the help of my teacher.

What I ended up with was an Athlon 64 based gaming rig, overclocked, custom cooled with 1Gb ram and an overclocked Radeon 9800 Pro. Once I left school, I started working full time and studying Engineering in my spare time and it became too easy just to play on consoles.

Few months ago my Wifes grandma fried her 5 year old computer so I ended up sourcing used parts on eBay and rebuilt it for pennies and that gave me an itch. Now I had initially wanted to spend about a £1K on a build.. but as you might have noticed, there is a key word in the above sentence which indirectly translates to "compromise" - that word being of course Wife.

The compromise is as follows.
I get £300 to satisfy my phoenix rising "phase" and we split the rest between the holiday kitty and re-decorating my home office.

Using every voucher code / ebay offer / legal means at my disposal I am now awaiting the following parts to start my rock bottom build.
 
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£8 under budget.. and very pleased with the bargain R9 280X (thanks eBay Voucher!)

Now... a lot seems to have changed in the past 12 years.. so im sure that I'll be on here pestering you all with ideas and questions as the parts trickle into the office.

Do we still gang on about pixel pipelines?

When did cable routing become a thing?!

Why is everyone now terrified of their PSU?

;)
 
It's on the to do list... Unfortunately the cost would probably also involve the purchase of new high heels as a sweetener..

On the plus side. The missus has agreed to help out on the build this weekend.. I'll turn her round yet :lol:
 
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Parts are starting to trickle in, I have the Motherboard and the Ram sitting in my desk at work. I think the postie will be sick of seeing me by the end of the week.
 
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Parts slowly but surely trickling in now!

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Barging Basement...

Forgot how pants green looked
 
Ugr. I can't stand to see a new PC built without an SSD! Trust me your address and I'll post you one.

P.S. Am serious :)

Well to be honest I am an SSD virgin... so probably dont know what I'm missing.

Does it really make that much of a difference?
 
Looks like I'll need to find some money down the back of the sofa then.

Started on the case tonight.. Was going to wait till the weekend but have a few pieces sitting.

Very impressed with the corsair 88R. A lot of room for such a dinky case.

Hooked up the PSU and now realise why modular supplies are so highly rated. In a smaller form like the 88R, cable routing looks like it will be fun!

I do have a question regarding the main front fan, there are 2 sysfan connections on the motherboard, and one 4 pin fan connection. Does it matter if the fans are in sysfan1 or 2?

I want the front fan on at all times for cooling the HDD / GPU
 
So its now Thursday and only 2 - fairly critical - components are yet to be delivered.

The CPU and the HDD.

Unfortunately after getting in contact with the seller, it looks like they are being delivered by YODEL. So that does not exactly fill me with confidence especially seeing as they were meant to be the first components delivered.. on Monday.

Big decision now is do I return the ones I have bought for a refund if / when they eventually come and buy a processor with next day 12 non delivery (out on site from noon - 2) and then try source a local HDD (or SSD if I can)
 
Well.. I decided to take the plunge and order another cpu with DPD before 12 delivery.

Neither showed up looks like build is on hold till next week :(
 
oh dear :(

cant stress enough the importance of an SSD, I have a very old core2duo laptop with an SSD. which will boot quicker and zip around the desktop quicker than a new pc without.. you only need a 64gb ssd for windows, as long as you install everything else on the HDD

Dont worry.. I bit the bullet and ordered one along with the cpu :D

I'll use the HDD too though :)
 
Sorry folks I've been lazy I completed the build and have been enjoying it. 1080-60 gaming is noticeably better than what I'm used to on consoles.

Can't quite find a killer title to play though.

The biggest pain was windows 7 updates. A good 6 hours was spent trying to update manually since the Automatic update system kept hanging.
 
One thing that's been made clear with this build..

Modular power supplies are a must..
 
Did a little bit of benchmarking last night.

First up is very vanilla.

CPU:- 3.2Ghz
GPU:- 1000Mhz
GPU Ram:- 1500Mhz

Using the Firestrike Demo from steam

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Next up was some simple over clocking using Msi afterburner and changing the multiplier for the CPU.

CPU:- 4.1GHz
GPU:- 1135 Mhz
GPU Ram:- 1675 Mhz

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Obviously I have around 20 incremental changes to get to this point and it does post with higher speeds. I just wanted to keep the temperature optimal.
 
Playing FarCry 3 on ultra at 60fps, gpu hovers around 65°C. Cpu mid 40's.

Guess all that's left now is to flog that second G3258 on eBay!
 
Cable braiding sub project started now. All red.

Also ordered a third 120 aerocool shark fan to light things up a little
 
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Updated with new fan and braided cables.. Tight case and stiff cables though is turning out to be a nightmare to manage
 
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Stripped out the Heat sink this weekend and replaced the Thermal Paste. I wasn't entirely happy with how I applied the stuff that came with the upgraded heat sink when I bought it.

Sure enough, on removal it was uneven. The rig never reached thermal limits on the OEM gloop when running at 4Ghz, but as we all know, the G3258 should be good for that on a standard heat sink. the result of properly applying new paste has been a lower CPU temp at higher clock speed.
 
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