My little monsters.Finished my main rig!

[1991luk]

Hello everybody!

 

After a long long time I finally finished my gaming PC and I thought I should show it off here.I really wanted to for a long time!

Both PC's have a long history with me.I tried to say a few words about it,not all but it is still too much.Maybe some other time!


The main PC/Gaming"beast":

Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA UD5 rev. 3.0
CPU: AMD FX 8350 @ 4.2ghz stock voltage
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12P SE2
RAM: HyperX Fury 16GB 1866mhz CL10 @ 2133mhz CL11 stock voltage
Video Card: MSI GTX 760 HAWK with decent OC
HDD/SSD: 1x1TB WD Blue, 1x2TB WD Se, 1xIntel 520 Series 120GB SSD
PSU: Corsair RM650
Case: Corsair Graphite 230T window
Fan Controller: NZXT Sentry Mix 2
FANS: 2x Corsair AF120 Blue LED,2x Noctua NF-A14FLX,1x Noctua NF-A14PWM,1x Noctua NF-F12 PWM

I do not have interesting perriferals...I have a Samsung S24D590PL which is more interesting (PLS panel) as an upgrade from Dell S2340L.
I don't think there's any upgrades left for me to do to this PC.I'm looking forward to your opinions

The HTPC:

This is the moment when my desire of having an intel platform kicked in!

Config:

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-B85N Phoenix
CPU: Intel G3258
RAM: HyperX Savage 1866mhz @ 1400mhz (Intel bs)
HDD/SSD: 1x 3TB WD Green,1x 500GB Scorpio Black,1x 128gb Msata Micron C400 SSD
Case: Chieftech BT-03B with stock PSU 180W Chieftech
FANS: 2x Noctua NF-A6,1x Noctua NF-R8 PWM

The HTPC stays connected to my living-room PC and it's great for multimedia content but now that I finished my main PC I'm going to take care of some things about it too!

I want a 4TB Green drive as the main storage and a second 1TB 2.5" blue.

The motherboard will be upgraded with a wireless AC miniPCIe card
I need to change the power supply because I'm thinking of putting a decent gaming graphics card in the future! (maybe a GTX 950?)

That's all there is to it.My main rig does great in games at 1080p.I think I'll go for a better graphics card but dunno about that,I'm really short on money...
Link CPU-Z HTPC: http://valid.canardpc.com/mach1z
Link CPU-Z PC: http://valid.canardpc.com/j0je7c

I want your opinions on everything!

P.S: You guessed! I'm a Noctua fan! *pun intended*

 

The last photo is one of the few stages they went through...

[Nup]

Awesome rigs, they're pretty well put together!  

 

love the notcua theme Congrats  

[SuperPug]

I see you like Noctua

[1991luk]

@huilun02 Actually,there's a reason to all that cooling and much expensive parts.I would've never paid 200 bucks for a motherboard!

 

Most of the parts were bought second hand.I don't mean second hand as in USED but just second hand.If you add all these things up in my country it would cost around 2000 US dollars with VAT (for the main rig only).The HTPC also hits about 500$.

I got everything for a bit more than 1000$ for my main rig! For the HTPC I paid a bit over 350$.

All Noctua fans (without the CPU-Cooler,that was a present for building someone's rig) were bought from people that won them at a contest in my country.They were sealed,brand-new! Half price off!

The motherboard (990FXA) was 120$ also brand new,sealed,with 3 years warranty.The B85N phoenix was about 50$ also brand new,sealed,won by somebody at a contest. And so on...

Some people say I'm crazy because I bought a 2TB Se drive because it's about 140$ but I bought it at the price of a 1TB WD Blue!

 

There are parts that I bought from a local retailer (such as the Corsair Graphite 230T case which was half off and the Chieftec case at a third of the regular price etc....) but I hunted the best offers that I could get!

[1991luk]

huilun02, on 06 Feb 2015 - 12:40 PM, said:huilun02, on 06 Feb 2015 - 12:40 PM, said:huilun02, on 06 Feb 2015 - 12:40 PM, said:huilun02, on 06 Feb 2015 - 12:40 PM, said:

Well good to know. You could look forward to a more powerful card that is second hand or on sale. Maybe The 760 could be used in the HTPC.

 

It doesn't look like it will fit in the conventional position, but with a PCIE riser you could have it in a vertical position or maybe even route it out of the case.

 

Actually I have a buyer on hold for it.He's willing to pay good money for it and maybe I'll upgrade.Don't really know if I'll go for a GTX 970.Maybe I'll save the money and get a good price for a second hand one

I don't want this kind of graphics power on the HTPC.I have 2 wireless xbox controllers with the PC dongle and I'm looking forward to getting the HTPC to run games like Mortal Kombat,Fifa,PES etc... but nothing over that.Solo triple A games are on the "full-sized" rig only

The HTPC fits snuggly in my backpack with a multimedia Logitech K400R keyboard and the 2 wireless controllers.It's not even that heavy too!

 

I'm good to go for a movie night at my friends in a second! It only needs two wires connected to it (HDMI and power) and that's it.The SSD is very fast and makes the overall experience very good! If I can get it up for game nights too it would be awesome and more than enough.

[JTB123]

Man the way everything fits together in that little machine makes me smile. Really nice looking rigs you have there sir 

[1991luk]

Thank you very much! That's what I liked about that case in the first place.Wire-managing is very hard but really pleasing in the end.I had a few struggles but I managed to get through! I'm not a skinny guy but I'm not fat either.I weigh 220lbs (100kg) and I'm 6 feet 2 (1.90m) and instead of regular fingers I have these sausages that sometimes make even wire-managing in the big system hard!

 

All Noctua fans (except for the two NF-A14 FLX's on the top of the main rig) are mounted with those rubber thingys.If you have a second look at the HTPC you'll appreciate even more ).I remember that being a major challenge!

 

It was very challenging hiding all 8 fan cables in the main rig too! The 2 cables from the front fans were an easy task but the rest of 6 FAT sleeved Noctua cables were annoyingly hard to hide.I also had to use 2 splitters because the fan controller only supports 6 fans.

 

 

 

The Micron SSD was mounted on the main rig with a mSATA-SATA adapter but then I bought the 520 series SSD and when I upgraded the platform on the HTPC (H61-B85/G2020-G3258) the GA B85N Phoenix was the only board with mSATA support.I'm very very happy with that choice. 

A buddy of mine,Catalin,helped me a lot during these builds because whenever I saw an offer I had no money and he always lended me the money I needed!

I still have 100$ to pay him back so,shout-out for Catalin for being my sponsor 

[Anthony_95]

Noctua Power !!  

[1991luk]

Hey guys! I'm selling my HTPC HDD's,I think...

I'll get a 4TB Green drive for mass storage but i need a 2.5" drive for games and other stuff.Looking forward to more than 500gigs.

 

Next month I'll install a videocard too.Maybe a gtx 950/950 Ti. Hopefully,it will come with no more than 40-50w tdp.Not excited about changing the psu too...

[1991luk]

So...Guys! I have a problem!

 

I sold my WD30EZRX and my WD5000BPKT off of the HTPC.I contacted a few guys that I saw were selling WD Green 4TB drives but none of them have them anymore.I waited for another Western Digital Green 4TB to appear on the market but it seems like it's going to take a while.

 

Found a WD Purple 4TB that is used for around 140 CAD.I believe it's 240 CAD new.If it has a reasonable amount of power on hours count I am thinking of buying it since it has 1M hours MTBF but don't really know.Should it be okay? I mean,it's only going to keep movies and tv shows on it...

 

 

@R2D2_WD What's your take on this?Should I use a Purple drive on my HTPC?

[nicon]

@1991luk The htpc is literally screaming for a Noctua l9i or nh-l12.

[1991luk]

nicon, on 26 Feb 2015 - 12:18 AM, said:

@1991luk The htpc is literally screaming for a Noctua l9i or nh-l12.

 I knoooow.I calculated the dimensions in there and i reckon a NH-C14 will fit and will look beast.

[nicon]

 I knoooow.I calculated the dimensions in there and i reckon a NH-C14 will fit and will look beast.

You should do it. I have a spare stock cooler and just for fun, I plugged it in to a 9 volt battery and I could hear it across the room.

[Slayer1443]

Build looks really nice ;D

[1991luk]

@nicon it's still in progress.Of course I would like to keep it with a C14 fanless but it's going to cost money.Right now my attention goes to the HDD's and the future GPU.

 

BTW I ditched the WD Purple drive for a brand new AV-GP drive.It only has 19 power on hours and seems very very fine ( 60%off retail price ).I'm waiting for it.I'll be back with toughts on it.

[nicon]

@nicon it's still in progress.Of course I would like to keep it with a C14 fanless but it's going to cost money.Right now my attention goes to the HDD's and the future GPU.

 

BTW I ditched the WD Purple drive for a brand new AV-GP drive.It only has 19 power on hours and seems very very fine ( 60%off retail price ).I'm waiting for it.I'll be back with toughts on it.

I understand why it wouldn't be your first priority. I hope the AV-Gp drive is good.

[1991luk]

I understand why it wouldn't be your first priority. I hope the AV-Gp drive is good.

Thank you!

It arrived! Check it out!

 

I'm transfering my movies and what-nots on it so I can put it in the HTPC!

 

I'm very pleased,I think I made a good choice by not sticking with the purple.The price was the same but that one had about 2-3K of power on hours.

P.S. I also registered it and I have it under warranty 'til late february 2018!!