Hello and welcome to my first proper build!
Project; Rush - Named after my original build by Overclockers 'Battlefield Rush'
To start off, I should say this is my first ever 'project' thread, so it probably won't be perfect and I'll more than likely miss things out, but I'll do my best to fix that, so please bare with me.
On to a little background; around February 2011 I decided I wanted to get rid of my old pc and go for something a 'little' more extreme, I didn't really know anything about computers but I was big into gaming online (mainly MMO's) and my old computer really wasn't cutting it anymore. I spent quite a long time browsing Overclockers forums and the main website trying to choose components and put together a machine which would best fit my needs. In the end I decided to go for a pre built machine with a fairly decent spec at the time, that spec was as follows;
Chassis - Corsair 600T in limited edition white
Motherboard - Gigabyte Z68AP-D3
CPU - Intel i5 2500K overclocked to 4.4GHz
CPU Cooler - Corsair A50
Power Supply - OCZ 650w
Storage - 128GB Crucial M4 SSD (Boot Drive) + 500GB HDD
GPU - Reference spec Nvidia GTX 580
RAM - 8GBKingston HyperX Genesis Grey
In all honesty, this was complete overkill for the types of games that I was currently playing, but it allowed me to play pretty much anything I wanted which made me very happy indeed.
At a total cost, including VAT, Assembly, Overclocking and Testing - £1200.
This is how it looked when I got it home and had everything up and running;
I was over the moon with how it turned out, and the performance I was getting from it, bearing in mind my old PC was a budget spec one bought from Currys for £450. The only thing that I actually regretted about buying this PC was the fact that
I didn't built it myself, admittedly I didn't have the knowledge or experience needed to build it myself, but honestly it did play on my mind. Soon after one of my friends bought his first powerful PC and he put his together by himself so that
made me regret buying mine pre-assembled that little bit more.
Fast forward just under a year and I felt it was time for a medium size upgrade, pretty much overhauling most of the components in the PC for something a little higher spec. Realistically I didn't need to upgrade as my old PC was running
perfectly fine, and it would handle anything that I threw at it, but it never really looked as nice as I wanted it to, components looked a bit cheap and it just didn't seem to gel together very well. Again after a lot of research and talking
with my friend I decided to bite the bullet and spend around £600 on my system upgrading where necessary. One thing that crossed my mind was upgrading the CPU to an Ivy bridge processor, but I snubbed that idea because I felt that the performance
wouldn't really be an issue, and since my PC is mainly used for just gaming the i5 2500k would be more than adequate.
These are the components that I did actually decide to purchase;
Motherboard - MSI Z77 MPower
RAM - 8GB Avexir 2400MHz MPower series
PSU - Corsair AX860
Storage - Second 128GB Crucial M4
CPU Cooler - Corsair H100i
Fans - 2x Corsair SP120 + 1x Corsair AF120
Cabling - Bitfenix Alchemy braided cables in white
At a total cost of around £600
Build day; Armed with a wallet, a car and my buddy we gathered all of the components over a period of around three days, the last of those days being incredibly stressful and hectic, involving two trips to Overclockers HQ, two takeaways and a lot of driving.. We didn't actually even start stripping my old rig until around 5pm which was never going to be ideal bearing in mind we were going to do this properly, fully strip the old PC, cleaning the case so it was as perfect as it could be, putting all of the parts together perfectly and of course, eye pleasing cable management.
Here is what greeted us when we got to my house after picking up the parts;
It doesn't look too bad from the picture, but it was filthy inside, rammed with dust and I was pretty annoyed considering it was only stripped/cleaned around two weeks ago.. But as the computer is in my bedroom, and I do spent a lot of time on it, the dust is inevitable and something you just have to deal with one way or another.
Starting off, we moved a small but sturdy desk into the middle of my bedroom, it's quite cramped in there but it was the best thing we could do at the time, but it allowed to both to get around the rig without getting in each other's way. First action was to remove the exterior case panels to allow easier access and prepare them to be cleaned and refitted;
The fan controller cables, all cables from the motherboard, Graphics card, Heatsink fan, optical drive, RAM and PSU were removed showing just how dusty it was within the chassis;
CPU still installed the old motherboard ready to be removed;
Chassis cleaned from 99% of the dust it was covered in;
Corsair AX860 removed from its packaging and mounted;
MSI MPower Motherboard removed from its packaging and admired for a few minutes, very good looking board took about 20 pictures of it using my SLR but I'll only post a few as I did go a bit overboard..
i5 2500k CPU installed onto the motherboard;
Avexir 8GB RAM installed;
Shot of them all together, not a very unique combination by any stretch of the imagination but I do believe there's a very good reason for that;
Then we placed the motherboard onto the box and set up a test bench, ensuring all of the components were working as they should and seeing her come to life for the first time! For this test we just added my old Corsair A50 heat sink as my new H100i was still boxed up and this was the easier option, also the A50 still had thermal paste on it so it saved wasting any as we had already cleaned off the i5 2500k when it was in the old motherboard;
Thankfully everything was working as expected, had the BIOS open on my 27" single monitor setup;
Random picture of the rear IO shield;
Excellent! so with everything up and running, working properly and no issues so far (apart from finding out overclockers mounted my CPU Heat sink incorrectly and they only used 5 screws to mount my old motherboard) it was time to start putting things back together, starting with fitting the motherboard inside the chassis, no standoffs were needed to be added as both motherboards are ATX although the MSI board is slightly wider by about an inch and a half;
After fitting the motherboard securely we encountered our first problem, which admittedly was completely my fault as I hadn't done any research into this and just assumed it would fit - Never a good idea. So to explain the problem was the heat sink on the motherboard sits so high up that I couldn't mount my heat sink with the fans attached to it, being a mid tower case there just wasn't enough room. Luckily the Corsair 600T is an accommodating case so we just mounted the dual SP120's on the top, pulling air through the radiator and exhausting out of the case;
Apologies for the poor picture, you can just about see the screws pointing down ready to be screwed into the radiator of the H100i;
Here is the best picture I could get of the clearance issues with the H100i and the motherboard heat sink, once it is mounted it is literally impossible to top mount the radiator and fans inside of the case, luckily it came together and at the end of the day it isn't really a massive problem, more of a minor inconvenience;
Pre applied thermal compound on the H100i heat sink. One thing that I did notice about the H100i was that the tubing was very firm, from watching video reviews on it, they seem very soft and easy to move around, this wasn't the case when I had it in front of me, not really a problem at all just something that I noticed;
The backing plate was then mounted onto the rear of the motherboard ready for the heat sink to be fitted;
We then realised that fitting the rear AF120 would be quite a chore if the CPU Cooler was bolted up and in the way, so with a little manoeuvring we bolted in the rear fan with the H100i tubes held up near the radiator at the top;
The H100i was then carefully fitted and slowly tightened up ensuring no damage was caused to any of the components, beautiful bit of kit and looks excellent inside the case. They aren't for everyone but the performance is there for everyone to see and personally I would have one of these over a big air cooled heat sink any day;
Fully modular and fully black cables of the AX860 being inserted into the PSU and routed through the rubber grommets to the rear of the case, the cable management room on the 600T is excellent, especially for a mid tower case, in fact most of the case is very well thought out, it's just a shame I'm thinking of getting rid soon;
As with everything else, the front fan was removed and cleaned extensively removing all dust and then remounting it to the case (you can see a small build up of dust in the corner which I didn't even notice until I looked at the picture, it's gone now!)
Graphics card inserted into the motherboard and Bitfenix Alchemy braided cables ran through to the rear of the case;
So finally we feel like we're getting somewhere! Lots of cups of tea and listening to a ton of songs on UKF Dubstep it's time for some cabling, honestly my friend Sam did about 90% of it as it's something that goes completely over my head, but I really should learn.. But hey ho, he did a good job and the cable management is excellent, very tidy indeed;
Next the hard drive cage was relocated to the middle of the case to allow for increased airflow from the front 200mm fan, the two Crucial M4 128GB SSD's we're mounted along with an 500GB HDD which will only be used for backups and photo storage;
Cabling for the fan controller and top IO was then routed to the rear of the case, this was also a good time to see if the top 120mm fans actually fitted. Crisis averted, just needed to check of the top panel actually fitted to the case, was definitely going to be a tight squeeze!
More cable management going on, luckily my mum brought in a HUGE bag of white/clear zip ties (there was literally thousands) so that had us more than covered for tidying up the cables;
The end is near! finishing touches to the cable management then we can start with the boring part.. Loading windows..
And that's it, all cable management done;
Quick snap of all the case panels, all of which were removed, cleaned extensively and then dried before being put back onto the chassis;
And just one for fun, Christmas Maltesers, which fit pretty much perfectly, gave us a giggle;
All panels refitted to the case to ensure everything was as it should be, everything went together perfectly as expected;
Time to plug it in and get this thing booted;
Unfortunately I kind of forgot about the camera at this point, as it was getting incredibly late and we just wanted everything to get sorted. We loaded my OEM version of Windows 7 without any issues, installed all of my necessary drivers and made sure everything was working as it should. During the night we managed to put a 4.8GHz overclock on the CPU which all seemed fine after stress testing, unfortunately this is where the real problems began.. No matter how many settings we changed, how many BIOS resets we did, we could not get the CPU to idle as it should. Also the phase lights on the motherboard seemed to be constantly on rather than flashing as they should. After searching the web for many hours I came across a few other people that were having the same issues as me, the only problem is they didn't have a fix for this nor did anyone else. I have since been informed by a kind member on Overclockers forum that this is a problem with these types of motherboard, and you have to leave the voltages set to 'auto' meaning you can't get any sort of high end overclock without the voltages being far too high. I contacts 8 Pack for some assistance and fair play to him he got back to me within the hour. (thanks a lot for that) If you would like to read the thread I will link it here (http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18476486) To cut a long story short 8 Pack informs me that running my CPU constantly at 4.8GHz should cause no noticeable problems so I decided to just bite the bullet and keep it around there, making sure I was keeping an eye on temps and making sure everything was generally running as it should. I had originally planned on taking my motherboard back to overclockers as I wasn't happy with this at all, but after talking to 8 Pack I had the reassurance that everything would be ok, and even if the CPU does get fried, it gives me that extra little excuse to upgrade to Ivy Bridge.
This is where we left it for the first night, after a VERY long and at sometimes stressful day. The only thing left to do was clean up my bedroom which looked like a bomb site with packaging, screws and booklets scattered everywhere including on my ever inviting bed.. We quickly bundled everything together, made it as tidy as we could and then said goodbye for the night finally finishing around the 6:30am mark.
And now we are here, this is as far as I have gotten. Everything is up and running, I have all of my programs installed and everything seems to be running perfectly (apart from the nonexistent idle) and I still haven't found a fix for the phase light, although it probably wouldn't go off now anyway as it's constantly running at 4.8GHz. It's probably worth noting that we tried running the 'OC Genie' and also running it standard to see if any of the problems fixed themselves. On standard the phase light did flash for a little while, but once it was restarted it went back to being on constantly. The CPU does actually idle when its running as standard 3.3GHz but if you touch any settings it refuses to idle. As for the OC Genie which automatically overclocks your CPU to 4.2GHz, that still had the phase light lit up, and was still encountering the problems with no idle.
As with any long term project, there are changes that I would like to make, and upgrades that I'm looking towards in the future namely;
In no particular order -
× Upgrading the Graphics Card to something along the lines of an MSI GTX 680 Lightning Edition.. Although I'm very tempted to head towards water-cooling in the future so I'm not sure how this will plan out
× Upgrading the CPU to an Ivy Bridge unit. Again not something that is top on my list of priorities because everything is running faultlessly at the moment so it would be completely unnecessary so that'll go on hold until I feel the time is right to upgrade
× Front 200mm fan upgrade. Although the 200mm standard Corsair fan is doing an excellent job, I feel that it could push more air and still be just as quiet, I'm planning on upgrading to an Bitfenix Spectre or Spectre pro, most likely the smoked version with the blue LED lights to keep the theme matching
× Water-cooling.. Something that before this project I would have completely written off as I had no idea at all, but after watching hours of videos on YouTube I feel that it wouldn't be that massive of a challenge to do. I wouldn't go for anything over the top extreme such as RAM cooling etc, but a simple CPU - GPU loop would keep me more than happy, but that's something for the future and not really something that I can justify right now price wise
× The case. I absolutely loved the 600T when I first saw it, it was definitely my favourite case on the market. Unfortunately after staring at it for almost a year solid I have sort of fallen out of love with it and I think it will be time to move on sooner rather than later, I'm not currently sure what I would go for but right now I'm happy with it
I think that's everything as far as future upgrades..
The only thing left to do is say a massive thank you to my friend Sam ('Something Else' on here) for all of the assistance and technical knowledge.. Also for staying until around 7am helping me finish it in one night! Couldn't and most likely wouldn't have done it without you. And I will link you to his project thread here if you're interested (http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18450298)
As a final note, to those of you who are thinking of building your own PC but you're scared to do so because you don't want to damage anything. Personally I'd say just go for it, speaking from experience, although upgrading to my previous first ever 'high performance' computer was one of the best things I had ever done, it left me with a massive sense of regret and I was always reminded that I didn't put it together myself. When you build something yourself you get a massive sense of achievement and I think it's worth doing it for that alone. If you don't have the knowledge to build it yourself but you still want to, watch YouTube videos.. Lots of them! but nothing will help you more than actually getting stuck in and putting your hands on all the components yourself. Easily my biggest tip would be to have a friend there with you, to give that second opinion and watch out for any mistakes that could potentially damage any parts you're putting together. Most importantly have fun with it, it's a hobby.. an expensive one, but it's supposed to be for fun. You can't beat that feeling of ripping open all of those boxes and taking out all your shiny new parts it's like Christmas! but things you actually want
..
For now I'll say thank you for spending your time reading my first ever build thread, and I hope you enjoyed it. I will leave you with some higher quality images of the finished product - Until I get bored and throw some more money at it
*WARNING THESE IMAGES ARE LARGE* If the mods want me to make these images smaller, please PM me and I will do so.
Project; Rush - Named after my original build by Overclockers 'Battlefield Rush'
To start off, I should say this is my first ever 'project' thread, so it probably won't be perfect and I'll more than likely miss things out, but I'll do my best to fix that, so please bare with me.
On to a little background; around February 2011 I decided I wanted to get rid of my old pc and go for something a 'little' more extreme, I didn't really know anything about computers but I was big into gaming online (mainly MMO's) and my old computer really wasn't cutting it anymore. I spent quite a long time browsing Overclockers forums and the main website trying to choose components and put together a machine which would best fit my needs. In the end I decided to go for a pre built machine with a fairly decent spec at the time, that spec was as follows;
Chassis - Corsair 600T in limited edition white
Motherboard - Gigabyte Z68AP-D3
CPU - Intel i5 2500K overclocked to 4.4GHz
CPU Cooler - Corsair A50
Power Supply - OCZ 650w
Storage - 128GB Crucial M4 SSD (Boot Drive) + 500GB HDD
GPU - Reference spec Nvidia GTX 580
RAM - 8GBKingston HyperX Genesis Grey
In all honesty, this was complete overkill for the types of games that I was currently playing, but it allowed me to play pretty much anything I wanted which made me very happy indeed.
At a total cost, including VAT, Assembly, Overclocking and Testing - £1200.
This is how it looked when I got it home and had everything up and running;
I was over the moon with how it turned out, and the performance I was getting from it, bearing in mind my old PC was a budget spec one bought from Currys for £450. The only thing that I actually regretted about buying this PC was the fact that
I didn't built it myself, admittedly I didn't have the knowledge or experience needed to build it myself, but honestly it did play on my mind. Soon after one of my friends bought his first powerful PC and he put his together by himself so that
made me regret buying mine pre-assembled that little bit more.
Fast forward just under a year and I felt it was time for a medium size upgrade, pretty much overhauling most of the components in the PC for something a little higher spec. Realistically I didn't need to upgrade as my old PC was running
perfectly fine, and it would handle anything that I threw at it, but it never really looked as nice as I wanted it to, components looked a bit cheap and it just didn't seem to gel together very well. Again after a lot of research and talking
with my friend I decided to bite the bullet and spend around £600 on my system upgrading where necessary. One thing that crossed my mind was upgrading the CPU to an Ivy bridge processor, but I snubbed that idea because I felt that the performance
wouldn't really be an issue, and since my PC is mainly used for just gaming the i5 2500k would be more than adequate.
These are the components that I did actually decide to purchase;
Motherboard - MSI Z77 MPower
RAM - 8GB Avexir 2400MHz MPower series
PSU - Corsair AX860
Storage - Second 128GB Crucial M4
CPU Cooler - Corsair H100i
Fans - 2x Corsair SP120 + 1x Corsair AF120
Cabling - Bitfenix Alchemy braided cables in white
At a total cost of around £600
Build day; Armed with a wallet, a car and my buddy we gathered all of the components over a period of around three days, the last of those days being incredibly stressful and hectic, involving two trips to Overclockers HQ, two takeaways and a lot of driving.. We didn't actually even start stripping my old rig until around 5pm which was never going to be ideal bearing in mind we were going to do this properly, fully strip the old PC, cleaning the case so it was as perfect as it could be, putting all of the parts together perfectly and of course, eye pleasing cable management.
Here is what greeted us when we got to my house after picking up the parts;
It doesn't look too bad from the picture, but it was filthy inside, rammed with dust and I was pretty annoyed considering it was only stripped/cleaned around two weeks ago.. But as the computer is in my bedroom, and I do spent a lot of time on it, the dust is inevitable and something you just have to deal with one way or another.
Starting off, we moved a small but sturdy desk into the middle of my bedroom, it's quite cramped in there but it was the best thing we could do at the time, but it allowed to both to get around the rig without getting in each other's way. First action was to remove the exterior case panels to allow easier access and prepare them to be cleaned and refitted;
The fan controller cables, all cables from the motherboard, Graphics card, Heatsink fan, optical drive, RAM and PSU were removed showing just how dusty it was within the chassis;
CPU still installed the old motherboard ready to be removed;
Chassis cleaned from 99% of the dust it was covered in;
Corsair AX860 removed from its packaging and mounted;
MSI MPower Motherboard removed from its packaging and admired for a few minutes, very good looking board took about 20 pictures of it using my SLR but I'll only post a few as I did go a bit overboard..
i5 2500k CPU installed onto the motherboard;
Avexir 8GB RAM installed;
Shot of them all together, not a very unique combination by any stretch of the imagination but I do believe there's a very good reason for that;
Then we placed the motherboard onto the box and set up a test bench, ensuring all of the components were working as they should and seeing her come to life for the first time! For this test we just added my old Corsair A50 heat sink as my new H100i was still boxed up and this was the easier option, also the A50 still had thermal paste on it so it saved wasting any as we had already cleaned off the i5 2500k when it was in the old motherboard;
Thankfully everything was working as expected, had the BIOS open on my 27" single monitor setup;
Random picture of the rear IO shield;
Excellent! so with everything up and running, working properly and no issues so far (apart from finding out overclockers mounted my CPU Heat sink incorrectly and they only used 5 screws to mount my old motherboard) it was time to start putting things back together, starting with fitting the motherboard inside the chassis, no standoffs were needed to be added as both motherboards are ATX although the MSI board is slightly wider by about an inch and a half;
After fitting the motherboard securely we encountered our first problem, which admittedly was completely my fault as I hadn't done any research into this and just assumed it would fit - Never a good idea. So to explain the problem was the heat sink on the motherboard sits so high up that I couldn't mount my heat sink with the fans attached to it, being a mid tower case there just wasn't enough room. Luckily the Corsair 600T is an accommodating case so we just mounted the dual SP120's on the top, pulling air through the radiator and exhausting out of the case;
Apologies for the poor picture, you can just about see the screws pointing down ready to be screwed into the radiator of the H100i;
Here is the best picture I could get of the clearance issues with the H100i and the motherboard heat sink, once it is mounted it is literally impossible to top mount the radiator and fans inside of the case, luckily it came together and at the end of the day it isn't really a massive problem, more of a minor inconvenience;
Pre applied thermal compound on the H100i heat sink. One thing that I did notice about the H100i was that the tubing was very firm, from watching video reviews on it, they seem very soft and easy to move around, this wasn't the case when I had it in front of me, not really a problem at all just something that I noticed;
The backing plate was then mounted onto the rear of the motherboard ready for the heat sink to be fitted;
We then realised that fitting the rear AF120 would be quite a chore if the CPU Cooler was bolted up and in the way, so with a little manoeuvring we bolted in the rear fan with the H100i tubes held up near the radiator at the top;
The H100i was then carefully fitted and slowly tightened up ensuring no damage was caused to any of the components, beautiful bit of kit and looks excellent inside the case. They aren't for everyone but the performance is there for everyone to see and personally I would have one of these over a big air cooled heat sink any day;
Fully modular and fully black cables of the AX860 being inserted into the PSU and routed through the rubber grommets to the rear of the case, the cable management room on the 600T is excellent, especially for a mid tower case, in fact most of the case is very well thought out, it's just a shame I'm thinking of getting rid soon;
As with everything else, the front fan was removed and cleaned extensively removing all dust and then remounting it to the case (you can see a small build up of dust in the corner which I didn't even notice until I looked at the picture, it's gone now!)
Graphics card inserted into the motherboard and Bitfenix Alchemy braided cables ran through to the rear of the case;
So finally we feel like we're getting somewhere! Lots of cups of tea and listening to a ton of songs on UKF Dubstep it's time for some cabling, honestly my friend Sam did about 90% of it as it's something that goes completely over my head, but I really should learn.. But hey ho, he did a good job and the cable management is excellent, very tidy indeed;
Next the hard drive cage was relocated to the middle of the case to allow for increased airflow from the front 200mm fan, the two Crucial M4 128GB SSD's we're mounted along with an 500GB HDD which will only be used for backups and photo storage;
Cabling for the fan controller and top IO was then routed to the rear of the case, this was also a good time to see if the top 120mm fans actually fitted. Crisis averted, just needed to check of the top panel actually fitted to the case, was definitely going to be a tight squeeze!
More cable management going on, luckily my mum brought in a HUGE bag of white/clear zip ties (there was literally thousands) so that had us more than covered for tidying up the cables;
The end is near! finishing touches to the cable management then we can start with the boring part.. Loading windows..
And that's it, all cable management done;
Quick snap of all the case panels, all of which were removed, cleaned extensively and then dried before being put back onto the chassis;
And just one for fun, Christmas Maltesers, which fit pretty much perfectly, gave us a giggle;
All panels refitted to the case to ensure everything was as it should be, everything went together perfectly as expected;
Time to plug it in and get this thing booted;
Unfortunately I kind of forgot about the camera at this point, as it was getting incredibly late and we just wanted everything to get sorted. We loaded my OEM version of Windows 7 without any issues, installed all of my necessary drivers and made sure everything was working as it should. During the night we managed to put a 4.8GHz overclock on the CPU which all seemed fine after stress testing, unfortunately this is where the real problems began.. No matter how many settings we changed, how many BIOS resets we did, we could not get the CPU to idle as it should. Also the phase lights on the motherboard seemed to be constantly on rather than flashing as they should. After searching the web for many hours I came across a few other people that were having the same issues as me, the only problem is they didn't have a fix for this nor did anyone else. I have since been informed by a kind member on Overclockers forum that this is a problem with these types of motherboard, and you have to leave the voltages set to 'auto' meaning you can't get any sort of high end overclock without the voltages being far too high. I contacts 8 Pack for some assistance and fair play to him he got back to me within the hour. (thanks a lot for that) If you would like to read the thread I will link it here (http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18476486) To cut a long story short 8 Pack informs me that running my CPU constantly at 4.8GHz should cause no noticeable problems so I decided to just bite the bullet and keep it around there, making sure I was keeping an eye on temps and making sure everything was generally running as it should. I had originally planned on taking my motherboard back to overclockers as I wasn't happy with this at all, but after talking to 8 Pack I had the reassurance that everything would be ok, and even if the CPU does get fried, it gives me that extra little excuse to upgrade to Ivy Bridge.
This is where we left it for the first night, after a VERY long and at sometimes stressful day. The only thing left to do was clean up my bedroom which looked like a bomb site with packaging, screws and booklets scattered everywhere including on my ever inviting bed.. We quickly bundled everything together, made it as tidy as we could and then said goodbye for the night finally finishing around the 6:30am mark.
And now we are here, this is as far as I have gotten. Everything is up and running, I have all of my programs installed and everything seems to be running perfectly (apart from the nonexistent idle) and I still haven't found a fix for the phase light, although it probably wouldn't go off now anyway as it's constantly running at 4.8GHz. It's probably worth noting that we tried running the 'OC Genie' and also running it standard to see if any of the problems fixed themselves. On standard the phase light did flash for a little while, but once it was restarted it went back to being on constantly. The CPU does actually idle when its running as standard 3.3GHz but if you touch any settings it refuses to idle. As for the OC Genie which automatically overclocks your CPU to 4.2GHz, that still had the phase light lit up, and was still encountering the problems with no idle.
As with any long term project, there are changes that I would like to make, and upgrades that I'm looking towards in the future namely;
In no particular order -
× Upgrading the Graphics Card to something along the lines of an MSI GTX 680 Lightning Edition.. Although I'm very tempted to head towards water-cooling in the future so I'm not sure how this will plan out
× Upgrading the CPU to an Ivy Bridge unit. Again not something that is top on my list of priorities because everything is running faultlessly at the moment so it would be completely unnecessary so that'll go on hold until I feel the time is right to upgrade
× Front 200mm fan upgrade. Although the 200mm standard Corsair fan is doing an excellent job, I feel that it could push more air and still be just as quiet, I'm planning on upgrading to an Bitfenix Spectre or Spectre pro, most likely the smoked version with the blue LED lights to keep the theme matching
× Water-cooling.. Something that before this project I would have completely written off as I had no idea at all, but after watching hours of videos on YouTube I feel that it wouldn't be that massive of a challenge to do. I wouldn't go for anything over the top extreme such as RAM cooling etc, but a simple CPU - GPU loop would keep me more than happy, but that's something for the future and not really something that I can justify right now price wise
× The case. I absolutely loved the 600T when I first saw it, it was definitely my favourite case on the market. Unfortunately after staring at it for almost a year solid I have sort of fallen out of love with it and I think it will be time to move on sooner rather than later, I'm not currently sure what I would go for but right now I'm happy with it
I think that's everything as far as future upgrades..
The only thing left to do is say a massive thank you to my friend Sam ('Something Else' on here) for all of the assistance and technical knowledge.. Also for staying until around 7am helping me finish it in one night! Couldn't and most likely wouldn't have done it without you. And I will link you to his project thread here if you're interested (http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18450298)
As a final note, to those of you who are thinking of building your own PC but you're scared to do so because you don't want to damage anything. Personally I'd say just go for it, speaking from experience, although upgrading to my previous first ever 'high performance' computer was one of the best things I had ever done, it left me with a massive sense of regret and I was always reminded that I didn't put it together myself. When you build something yourself you get a massive sense of achievement and I think it's worth doing it for that alone. If you don't have the knowledge to build it yourself but you still want to, watch YouTube videos.. Lots of them! but nothing will help you more than actually getting stuck in and putting your hands on all the components yourself. Easily my biggest tip would be to have a friend there with you, to give that second opinion and watch out for any mistakes that could potentially damage any parts you're putting together. Most importantly have fun with it, it's a hobby.. an expensive one, but it's supposed to be for fun. You can't beat that feeling of ripping open all of those boxes and taking out all your shiny new parts it's like Christmas! but things you actually want
..For now I'll say thank you for spending your time reading my first ever build thread, and I hope you enjoyed it. I will leave you with some higher quality images of the finished product - Until I get bored and throw some more money at it
*WARNING THESE IMAGES ARE LARGE* If the mods want me to make these images smaller, please PM me and I will do so.
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