On Thursday I got the motherboard so i'm now very very close to having everything, late last night I started piecing it slowly together, taking lots of photographs of course. I'll be using an X99M-WS, it was a difficult decision between this and the Micro2 but as i've already used that in a project for a friend I felt that it was time to give ASUS' WS board a chance.
First thing to mount was the HyperX Predator M.2, I could have waited for the faster Polaris drives but at ~£100 less and with a significantly higher TBW rating I thought it was worth sacrificing the speed for what I consider the much prettier Predator. Can't say I find the 480GB version I have running at PCIe2.0 x2 slow!
Separated from it's PCI slot adapter the density is astounding, each individual chip is the same capacity as my first 2.5" SSD!
The huge socket was readied for a CPU!
After a lot of contemplation I decided to go with a Haswell-E chip for this build as the current mATX WS BIOS seems to have stronger memory support for the earlier generation.
With 4 dimm's in two banks the memory would be a real center point of this build but nothing was quite right, HyperX Predator too agressive, Klevv i'm just bored of seeing in WS boards already, G.Skill again just too complex to completely harmonize with the theme. So Dominator Platinum was the strongest candidate for it's symmetry and subtlety.
I'd fallen out of love with them when they changed to a sandblasted finish after the initial DDR3 production run, but, I still had an original quad channel kit! And as this will become my daily system it meant I could mix them up and continue to stare at the ornately machined heatsinks for another few years.
Very quickly I created a graveyard of Dominator Platinum parts, both old and new. I split the heatsinks off two of the DDR4 modules as well so I could swap the white sticker to the inside.
After a considerable amount of time gently prying off thermal pads and fiddling with tiny screws I had a very crisp looking DDR4 kit!
To match the Nickel/Plexi GPU blocks I also picked up a Supremacy EVO in the same finish.
Now the board is filling up the hybrid of original DDR3 and DDR4 Dominator Platinum looks just right with it's beautifully polished faces and machined tops.
Just enough time to try the board in the case for some strategically teasery lit shots.
Tomorrow I will be making two fan extensions from the Aquaero through the mid-plate to the rads so I can permanently assemble the pedestal. After that i'll be needing the PSU to gradually add cables and tubing until it's complete.
JR
