snpr1992

So although aging gracefully, I decided it was time to upgrade my hardware. I started out with a 4820K on an x79 Classified motherboard with 2 760s in SLI. Last year I purchased a 1080Ti prior to the start of the mining craze for less than $500 USD thanks to Massdrop and a bit of a mix-up with cards. Some of you may have seen the build that spawned out of the 2 free graphics cards I provided for my wife's build. In short, my wife told me I had to get a smaller case. Unfortunately the x79 classified from EVGA is an XL-ATX motherboard. Very few cases seem to fit that XL-ATX form factor and even fewer that were smaller than my goliath NZXT Phantom 630. So I took to eBay. My thought was the first motherboard of a decent platform that came up at a decent price I would go with that whether that be Ryzen, Kaby lake or Coffee lake. So comes the build. Motherboard: The most important and pivotal piece. I found an ASUS Prime Z270 A E-ATK board. The experience I had with building with the prime X370 for Wifey's build made me pick another ASUS board and for $90 it was a steal and came with a low end intel CPU with cooler. Next most important part was what CPU to put in the case. As I'm sure you can guess the only one that would efficiently accompany my new platform would of course be the i7-7700K. I pulled for another eBay seller and picked up a silicon lottery i7 for less than retail. I have been able to easily get to 5 Ghz stable with no hiccups and temps in the 60s on water. CPU cooling: I went with Cooler Master's masterliquid ML240L in RGB of course to keep my 7700k nice and cool especially when overclocking. Ram is unfortunately an unavoidably expensive piece of the puzzle. However, I found G.Skill had a relatively new cheaper option on the field in the form of the Aegis. I grabbed up 16 GB for $154 and went to town. I might mention the kit was even 3000 Mhz speed! Video Card: I of course re-used my 1080Ti from my old build and it has yet to show any weakness or be beaten by a new card. It is the Gigabyte 1080Ti Turbo, which at some point I plan to either do a hybrid mod or water cool as reference designs of course run hot. The power supply I re-used from my old build as the EVGA Supernova is a fantastic power supply and at 1000W it can handle any system or cards I might put in the case. Storage: I had to go NVME as only the best could accompany my 1080Ti and 7700k. The WD Black 500GB seemed within my budget and has outstanding reviews with great read/write speeds and durability. I left my old 240GB system SSD as a scratch disk or for fast loading for important games I might have. Finally, my trusty 3 TB Toshiba hard drive followed into the new build keeping my Steam library close at hand. Fans: I picked a cooler master RGB fan to match the radiator for the rear exhaust and 3 fractal design silent series white and black to tie to my theme for the filtered bottom intakes. Finally, the wifey decreed case change. I searched and searched attempting to find the best case with a small form factor and value that would provide a good enclosure for the high end hardware that I chose. I leaned for NZXT's H700 or H400. However, I spotted the InWin case I ended up choosing. The unique pattern on the side of the case in hexagons for airflow out the side, top mounted power supply shroud and small form factor led me to make the purchase. However, thats where the good news ended. I received the case threw the standoffs in and went to stick the motherboard in and low and behold the case was only to hold an ATX form factor. However, the case had the stand-offs to fit E-ATX and the case was just millimeters large enough to slot the board without hitting anything so I figured I would give it a try. Things were super tight in getting the fans that I picked and the front IO hooked up and together, but with fans hiding cables, I had just enough slack and room to get everything cleaned up and inside the case. It seemed the troubles were over and the white and black build came together nicely. The last piece, which I installed this morning were the inclusion of sleeved cables from @CableMod to polish off the look. Let me know what you think of the refresh. Part Picker list

Man that build is beautiful. Nice work. Love the custom stuff with the silhouette.

Awesome build. Fantastic job on getting the tubing put together. And those custom backplates. Wow. Lastly, the fluid you picked is fantastic. JayZTwoCents used it and has had some great results.

@Zeuligan I've been following this build for a couple of months now and I can't help but be super impressed. The acrylic work you have done is fantastic. I look forward to seeing what the finished product looks like.

@Revan654 Is there any way that you could take a few pictures of the completed build and put them in the first post, or create a list of links to pictures showing progress. It's kind of a pain to dig through every page trying to see what your build looks like! Look forward to seeing what you come up with. The parts list at least looks killer, I can't imagine what kind of performance you get.

Disappointed that you didn't stick with Ryzen. Have really liked their processors so far. I understand why though with two DOA boards. Got a ASUS x370 bored myself and have not had any issues. Grabbed it in a pack with the CPU and RAM for a great price. The 7700K is still king for strictly gaming though. Desk looks great so far, look forward to seeing how everything pans out!

So the finalized pictures of the build are attached. You can definitely now tell who it is that owns it Thus far she loves it. The 760s are powering 2 ASUS VX238Hs at 1080P and have yet to find a slowdown. Highly recommend Ryzen and even this old hardware can keep up 1080p frame rates if I really had to fall back on it. However, the i7 4820k with a 1080Ti(which due to Massdrop's screw-up I got for $550 with Destiny 2 so sub $500!) outperforms it a bit. @CableMod I ran into an interesting problem with the led strips. The initial 30 cm strip that I got was foam backed and the second 60 cm strip was the magnetic version. I attached them together and found that the cables do not have the same pin outs. One strip was R G B, the other was B G R which made for a really confusing first install. I did figure out the problem and happened to have a loose 4 pin extension cable so I could swap the two offending pins around without having to break or re-solder anything which was nice. However I did want to pass along the trouble. You guys still make awesome products.

So on the basis of this kind of technology, I can only assume that bio-computers are the next logical step. We have our storage device, now its a matter of making it work and being able to do many processes at the same time rather than one at a time like our silicon dinosaurs. Will be fascinating to see where this technology ends up. More info on Bio computers and bio computers vs quantum computers.

This is a fact, back when they were all unlimited they would call and warn you that "tethering is not allowed with your current package, we would be happy to transfer you to a capped plan that supports tethering." In fact they automatically migrated my account to a different plan after I was tethering for a while. They can detect it on their network somehow. I assume its the way the packets are handled or that it comes from a different IP. And Hari is completely correct, AT&T are a bunch of jerks. They are only in it for the money. On a personal note, my plan now allows tethering at anytime up to the amount of "high speed" data we pay for. My experience with tethering with unlimited led to significant speed throttling after 2 or 3GB of usage. Hope this helps.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A0HZUEO/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apis_1499768413933 External 3.0 drive various sizes 72 for 2 TB and 92 for 3 TB

LG 34" curved monitor 1080p 144hz. $499.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LW5CGIS/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_apis_1499766034018 LG 29" Ultrawide 1080P IPS $199.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01B67KAQ4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apis_1499766162459 Edit sorry for the double post but found these two after searching for monitors. Really eyeballing that 34". What do you guys think of it? Rolling with a 1080Ti

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071CFCQQF/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apis_1499765818319 Samsung 32" curved monitor. $229 Not a bad price but found it at Sams club US for $250 new

So was browsing Amazon, if anyone is in the market for a new 4K monitor. Amazon is selling Samsungs U28E590D for $280. Great price for what you get. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00YD3DBOC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apis_1499739536371

Review of Eluktronics laptops. 15.6 or 17.3" or a selection of each. Model # P650 is one I happen to have.

That is quite a ridiculous overclock. His setup on a test bench is crazy as well, a hair dryer? If you haven't seen it, you should take a look. Craziest part is the temp probe at -110.1 C and that there are other builds, multi processor Xeons to be exact, on air that beat his numbers. Top 10 List