Cano
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- 20,758
- Cephiro
So, my wife and I finally took the bait and this past december we started to dig around in order to build a new gaming/relatively high performance PC from the ground up on a reasonable budget and with plenty of upgradeability in the future. After a lot of digging around and researching, asking for advice on some forums and checking prices and availability of parts -we were tempted to import several pieces due to prices, but errrred on buying all of the stuff localy because warranty-, and having to downgrade a bit on some stuff because of a severe leap in the dollar-to-peso ratio, we ended up with a laundry list that looked like this:
-NZXT Phantom 410 mid-tower case
-Asus AZ97A mobo, chosen for being the best value for the money for all the mobos we saw that were in our budget, and also because of it's Sata Express port, which none of the Maximus lineup we were also eyeballin' had. This will allow us to use it well into the future.
-i5 4440 proc @ 3.1 ghz. Weaksauce, but that's precisely where the upgrading will start once the gen V procs come out, so we didn't want to throw out a too expensive piece after less than one year of use or so.
-Savage Hyper X 8 gb RAM after we couldn't find a reputable G-skill dealer over here. We may upgrade that in the future too, or we may just slide in another 8g one and be done with it. It looks pretty cool too.
-A 240 gb Kingston SSD and a 3 tb Western Digital Green Caviar hhd ffor the stuffs.
-A freakin' big-ass Cooler Master Hyper n520, which will make the poor 4440 catch a cold. This thing is so bad-ass.
-A couple of NZXT 120mm fans with blue leds because my wife's gotta have them blue lights.
We already had a 550 watt Cooler Master PSU that will most likely see upgrading in the future, and an old 550 Ti videocard from our old setup which will also see upgrading in the future, we're waiting for new Asus cards to come out so prices drop a bit on the GTX 760/780 we have in mind.
We picked up the case in early december and found that the store we bought it from carried mostly everything we were going to need and, incredibly, the guy that worked there actually fully knew what was up, so he was a very good source of information and advice. By early january we went to pick up the rest of the stuff. Here's the loot. Ignore the Hot Wheels and the dog food.
Sorry for the bad quality pics, they are all cellphone stuff my wife took on the fly while we put the thing together. Here it is with just power and upper fans. Yes we did take off the tablecloth.
wtf is dis for
No tablecloth. Here's the naked MoBo and the cooler.
And here's the fully dressed MoBo ready to go in.
Oh how I looooove all the cables are behind!
The junker videocard that will be replaced in the immediate future, I hope:
And finally!
We want to paint some stuff in a cool metallic pearlish blue color I have lying around. I told the guy that paints my Hot Wheels about it the other day and he's game. He works with computers too so he's a fan.
We bought this tubular thing to have somewhere to put it on but ended up cutting a piece of plywood to fit as it vibrated too much just standing on the tubing.
And here it is working. I took this last night.
Ricer lighting:
Next update is going to be a card reader and most likely another 8gb ram while next gen procs and the videocard come withn our price range 👍
Oh, and I forgot to say that we had never built a pc from scratch, we had performed maintenance and changed a few pieces but nothing this complex, so it was a major experience for both of us and we enjoyed doing it and learned a damned lot. It was pretty cool working with such a versatile case.
-NZXT Phantom 410 mid-tower case
-Asus AZ97A mobo, chosen for being the best value for the money for all the mobos we saw that were in our budget, and also because of it's Sata Express port, which none of the Maximus lineup we were also eyeballin' had. This will allow us to use it well into the future.
-i5 4440 proc @ 3.1 ghz. Weaksauce, but that's precisely where the upgrading will start once the gen V procs come out, so we didn't want to throw out a too expensive piece after less than one year of use or so.
-Savage Hyper X 8 gb RAM after we couldn't find a reputable G-skill dealer over here. We may upgrade that in the future too, or we may just slide in another 8g one and be done with it. It looks pretty cool too.
-A 240 gb Kingston SSD and a 3 tb Western Digital Green Caviar hhd ffor the stuffs.
-A freakin' big-ass Cooler Master Hyper n520, which will make the poor 4440 catch a cold. This thing is so bad-ass.
-A couple of NZXT 120mm fans with blue leds because my wife's gotta have them blue lights.
We already had a 550 watt Cooler Master PSU that will most likely see upgrading in the future, and an old 550 Ti videocard from our old setup which will also see upgrading in the future, we're waiting for new Asus cards to come out so prices drop a bit on the GTX 760/780 we have in mind.
We picked up the case in early december and found that the store we bought it from carried mostly everything we were going to need and, incredibly, the guy that worked there actually fully knew what was up, so he was a very good source of information and advice. By early january we went to pick up the rest of the stuff. Here's the loot. Ignore the Hot Wheels and the dog food.
Sorry for the bad quality pics, they are all cellphone stuff my wife took on the fly while we put the thing together. Here it is with just power and upper fans. Yes we did take off the tablecloth.
wtf is dis for
No tablecloth. Here's the naked MoBo and the cooler.
And here's the fully dressed MoBo ready to go in.
Oh how I looooove all the cables are behind!
The junker videocard that will be replaced in the immediate future, I hope:
And finally!
We want to paint some stuff in a cool metallic pearlish blue color I have lying around. I told the guy that paints my Hot Wheels about it the other day and he's game. He works with computers too so he's a fan.
We bought this tubular thing to have somewhere to put it on but ended up cutting a piece of plywood to fit as it vibrated too much just standing on the tubing.
And here it is working. I took this last night.
Ricer lighting:
Next update is going to be a card reader and most likely another 8gb ram while next gen procs and the videocard come withn our price range 👍
Oh, and I forgot to say that we had never built a pc from scratch, we had performed maintenance and changed a few pieces but nothing this complex, so it was a major experience for both of us and we enjoyed doing it and learned a damned lot. It was pretty cool working with such a versatile case.
