My i7 3770k Build.

[Aexl]

After realising I had spent way too much on Christmas presents for others I've had to skip the cpu cooler, SSD and GPU for now (get paid mid feb -.-) but since gaming is only it's secondary function that's not too much of a problem.
So armed with my awful camera I thought i'd share my current build with you all as feedback from the hexus community helped when picking out my parts.
Also I skipped the whole pictures of boxes, never seen the point in that.


Parts currently owned/thoughts:

Case: Nzxt 410 Glossy black

Firstly when I bought the case the picture seemed matte black so I was slightly surprised when the case was glossy but oh well it looks good.
Unfortunately though, it's a finger print and dust magnet if I touch the case while it's cold my fingerprint seems to stay imprinted there until I wipe down the spot with lens cleaner and a cloth.

On the inside though it was fairly decent to build in reasonable clearance between the mobo tray and back for thick braided cables, even managed to route the power cable for the hdd/dvd drive up the back and poke it out the top of the case to avoid running wiring on the inside. The two holes for the front panel connectors at the bottom are perfectly sized and placed although theres very little room between the psu and mobo so cables on the bottom left are a slight pain.

The case itself looks good, will be adding a blue fan at the front though for extra hotness.

http://puu.sh/1PBoa
HOORAY FOR FLASH LENS FLARE (although it looks like finger prints along the top they're not it's just odd reflections)

http://puu.sh/1PBqk
Heres a pic of the dvd drive cables

http://puu.sh/1PBs8
The front panel connectors.

http://puu.sh/1PBsP
The left over power cables, Nothing I can really do about them but they don't restrict air flow and you can't see them through the window, with the gpu and whatnot in there it won't be as bad. Plus theres 4 pci-e 4+2 cables so I can sli/cf if I want to.

http://puu.sh/1PBuM
The cpu power connector was a bit like threading a needle, i'd recommend you put it through first.

http://puu.sh/1PBw0 the only problem I forsee is having to route the usb 3.0 connector behind the SATA cables which might put a bit of strain on the socket, I could route it around the GPU but it'd look messy.

http://puu.sh/1PBxG
unless I missed something the HDD trays aren't tool less you install them from the back of the case, you slot the hdd in remove the silver pins and screw in the screws.

http://puu.sh/1PBzE
Oh and heres my current mouse and keyboard, great aren't they? Having your car broken into and among other items having you mouse and keyboard stolen really sucks cock.


Motherboard: GA-z77x-d3H

Fairly nice board, looks great which is one reason why I bought it, the locations of all the sockets are fairly standard, the bios is fine, theres slider overclocking if that's your thing and also the old fashioned way, the drivers were a pain in the arse, I had to install the Ethernet driver from the disc but accidentally installed a couple other drivers which somehow completely ruined my windows installation and I had to re-install. (minus the additional drivers) The VIA audio driver is fairly meh and not the most responsive bit of kit the software is called "Vdeck" and is exactly what you expect from on-board sound. Also has a plethora of usb 3.0 ports on the back.

edit: also came with a Bridge + 4 black SATA cables (2 right angle 2 straight)

HDD: WD Caviar Black 1TB
http://puu.sh/1PBK8

Well this was a bit of a kerfuffle, the first one that came; died halfway through the first windows installation and from then on wasn't recognized or accessible was rma'd scan diagnosed it as "the click of death" which is what I expected and received a replacement a couple days ago, took quite a while as apparently this is open season for all rmas . But they were fairly open and honest about the whole situation which made it much better. Apart from the scraping sound for about 5 hours off an on from a cold boot the drive is fine, fairly speedy but of course noisy. (typical caviar black)


DvD drive:

Exactly the same as all others.

PSU: XFX PRO650w Core edition

Was reserving judgement about the psu as I've had a few bad experiences with xfx in the past but since their PSUs are made by seasonic and this particular one came with a rather good warranty I took the risk and i'm glad I did. Very quiet, has kept very cool, cables are sleeved and look great as well as the PSU itself and it's very quiet; +1, really.

Thermal paste: Arctic fox mx-4

Excellent stuff easy going on and easy coming off, it's the one I always recommend.

CPU: i7 3770k

A much larger jump up from my AMD Phenom II x4 965 BE than I was expecting, compressed a fps1 file from 208gb to xvid at about 5GB in around an hour while I was still playing league of legends, fairly awesome ^^
Nothing else to really say, if you want info on it go check the vast amounts of info there is out there. HD4000 seems to run everything I've thrown at it on low so it's fine for now.

RAM: Corsair 8gb Vengeance LP

Looks great, had to change it to 1600mhz in the bios but that's probably more the the mobo than the ram itself, have had zero problems with it so far.


Plan on adding another 8gb ram stick, a h80i, a samsung 830 and an undetermined GPU in the near future i'll update when I do.

Thanks for reading and any questions are welcome,

Alex.

[realstock]

Do you buy much IT equipment on the basis of looks? I could understand buying a car or clothes for the looks, but no-one ever got laid by showing off their good looking motherboard. Features and reliability should be top of your list. But that is just me.

Fairly nice board, looks great which is one reason why I bought it

You will have to put down what monitor you use, for people to comment on what GPU to go for. I would always recommend a SSD for any build. Unless you need the 16GB for work, its unlikely you will require it for any games.

[carvedeye]

Do you buy much IT equipment on the basis of looks? I could understand buying a car or clothes for the looks, but no-one ever got laid by showing off their good looking motherboard. Features and reliability should be top of your list. But that is just me.

Nothing wrong with that i also done the same and it looks awesome heres the pics.

[Thorsson]

You guys need to learn how to focus, or use a better camera.

As for that Formica kitchen top, that seems to rather spoil the look to me, as does the "blingy" Hiper fan, not to mention the Intel stock cooler. Anyway windowed cases are so 2000s...

[KeyboardDemon]

Do you buy much IT equipment on the basis of looks? I could understand buying a car or clothes for the looks, but no-one ever got laid by showing off their good looking motherboard. Features and reliability should be top of your list. But that is just me.

Nothing wrong with that i also done the same and it looks awesome

Same here, I don't just build for my immediate computing needs, but figure that the end product will feature heavily as a fixture in my room for the next three to five years, I don't want it to be an eyesore, I want it to be something that I look on with pride. What other people think of the appearance of my hardware is not as important as what I think when I look up from my desk and see through the side window.

[Aexl]

You guys need to learn how to focus, or use a better camera.

As for that Formica kitchen top, that seems to rather spoil the look to me, as does the "blingy" Hiper fan, not to mention the Intel stock cooler. Anyway windowed cases are so 2000s...

Hey, Intel stock coolers are bad ass! (untill I can afford a h80i) Most of my photos are sort of in focus the camera just spazzes out when doing close ups.

Do you buy much IT equipment on the basis of looks? I could understand buying a car or clothes for the looks, but no-one ever got laid by showing off their good looking motherboard. Features and reliability should be top of your list. But that is just me.



You will have to put down what monitor you use, for people to comment on what GPU to go for. I would always recommend a SSD for any build. Unless you need the 16GB for work, its unlikely you will require it for any games.

Yes, ever since I built my first pentium 4 build at around age 12 and hated how ugly it was I've sourced parts that are aesthetically pleasing to me, normally it comes down to two similarly spec'd items and I go with the better looking one, as simple as that.

I use two monitors when video editing/photo editing and 1 1920x1080 monitor for gaming but I already know the range of cards i'm looking at it just depends on whether the 8xxx series come out by the time I have the money.

[Aexl]

Same here, I don't just build for my immediate computing needs, but figure that the end product will feature heavily as a fixture in my room for the next three to five years, I don't want it to be an eyesore, I want it to be something that I look on with pride. What other people think of the appearance of my hardware is not as important as what I think when I look up from my desk and see through the side window.

Couldn't agree more, it's what I think of it when I look at it more than anything else.

God damn it, accidental double post (if any kindly mod could merge my two posts i'd appreciate it.

[technodean]

@carvedeye you have very good components but I would be concerned about that hiper psu. What power is it? Having to use pcie to molex adapters is never a good sign and the 24pin wires look rather thin.

[carvedeye]

You guys need to learn how to focus, or use a better camera.

As for that Formica kitchen top, that seems to rather spoil the look to me, as does the "blingy" Hiper fan, not to mention the Intel stock cooler. Anyway windowed cases are so 2000s...

I no longer have the stock cooler on my system been replaced by a h100 and OC.d to 4.8ghz

[carvedeye]

@carvedeye you have very good components but I would be concerned about that hiper psu. What power is it? Having to use pcie to molex adapters is never a good sign and the 24pin wires look rather thin.

The hyper type M is 880 Watts and has 4 rails, 2 @ 30amps and 2 @ 18amps which is more than enough to power my system

Have a look at my manhut on youtube link below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3QDSQbgboY

[Thorsson]

It's one of the new Hiper's. Let's hope that they're more reliable than the old.

[eagle123]

did you tie the wires up with cable ties, also have you considered braided cables ?

[carvedeye]

It's one of the new Hiper's. Let's hope that they're more reliable than the old.

Check out this review

http://pcwizkidstechtalk.com/index.p...su-review.html

[carvedeye]

did you tie the wires up with cable ties, also have you considered braided cables ?

I now have braided my cables instead, took me a long while to do each cable but i got there in the end

[DKONE]

Nice build, how much did it cost overall?

[carvedeye]

Nice build, how much did it cost overall?

I had existing parts from my other system, like the drives and PSU but the parts i bought new cost a little over £900