Tech_Dreamer

Thank you! Follow the PCPP link for more info and pics and maybe a upvote if you like it

Just some beautiful pics I got done with today! some of the RGB effect i had running and the loop is filled! nut im only 80% finished as you can see. Still waiting on cables to be done
 
Enjoy

ill leave you with this wonderful view! and yes the whole thing lights up RGB (Really Great Build) lol
 
Enjoy!

As for my new and beautiful Custom backplate from JJMods for his wonderful laser work which i wish i could do enjoy for your pleasure. 

Just for pleasing you all lol Enjoy

Now for the beautiful ram that was sent to me! i've had a set before i was sponsored lol. Also a brief review about them.
 
First off, I must admit that Team Group Night Hawk RGB Memory is one of a kind! Extremely beautiful and appealing to the eye. The alumni material is very sturdy and is heavy and gives it that premium feel to it. They are built with quality! The RGB is amazing and has a great range of colors, lighting effects, and a As appealing as it is to me while ignoring the orange trim along the side if it doesn't bother you enjoy it. Coming in colors of black and white and setup on their software is pretty user friendly to a point. the Performance is good enough for me getting a 16gb kit with speed up to 3200 i cant complain and is the perfect option for the everyday gamer who loves ascetics. ]
i will have pics up of them later with their rgb in effect
 

And now for the fun part we all love and hate but at the end ENJOY! which was a success!

This is a shot of the front and side res

Just a few more wonderful shots!

So here is the final look of the completed case with the built in Res and psu. Honestly me and him agreed that it came out perfectly! 

I failed to mention the custom psu cover with the etched koi fish on top just for show!

For the Geisha being drawn out, it was laser etched into the acrylic for leds illuminate the whole side of the res 

These were the renders done for the the custom res and pumps

https://pcpartpicker.com/b/Q3NQzy
 
This is my first build ever and I could not be more happy with it! Any suggestions would also be appreciated. The PCPP link has the entire background and customizations done in this build!
 

Congratulations to Final Fantasy for being cracked 4 days BEFORE release, a very fun day for them I bet.
 
Crackers in China called 3DM did find an encrypted executable in the Origin version of the pre release, but in the steam version the executable was fully encrypted. 
So a huge congratulations for Square Enix and of course to Denuvo for being massive idiots and overlooking such a major issue. Can we have a huge round of applause for them.
Source is DoS gaming - https://www.dsogaming.com/news/final-fantasy-xv-has-been-cracked-four-days-prior-to-its-official-release/
Crackwatch also posted a little bit of information:
 

Just a note, it should be Tbps not TB.
Little b = bits per second
Big B = Bytes per second
 
 
On topic:
I can definitely see these types of attacks getting more frequent and more powerful over the next several years. Going to take a lot of careful planning to be able to stop them swiftly without impacting user experience as well.

OP: https://www.wired.com/story/github-ddos-memcached/
 
Using memcached servers, allegedly chinese state sponsored hackers were able to launch a massive DDoS attack to the Github servers for over 1Tbps of load. When github realized this they relay all the traffic to their DDos Mittigation service with Akamai Tech.
 
The whole attack lasted between 15-20 minutes. ThousandEyes was able to determine that the traffic payload was over 1.3 Tbps.
 
Known as an amplification attack, this type of DDoS has shown up before. But as internet service and infrastructure providers have seen memcached DDoS attacks ramp up over the last week or so, they've moved swiftly to implement defenses to block traffic coming from memcached servers.
"Large DDoS attacks such as those made possible by abusing memcached are of concern to network operators," says Roland Dobbins, a principal engineer at the DDoS and network-security firm Arbor Networks who has been tracking the memcached attack trend. "Their sheer volume can have a negative impact on the ability of networks to handle customer internet traffic."

does anyone else find this freaky...
i know multiple heads on one body is a fetish (can't remember what it is called but thats not something that these forums should know)
did the person who made this know that? also WHAT THE FUCK WAS GOING ON IN THEIR HEAD WHEN MAKING THIS?!?!?!?!?!

I can see a problem in the methodology. Their question is whether or not US representatives actually represent their constituency. 
They then proceed to answer (or attempt to, at least) from only one angle; that of pure populism. 
What they then answer is whether or not a represemtative represents their constituency's political opinion. What they don't answer is whether or not the representative represents their constituency's best interests. 
 
See, one of the features of a representative democracies, like the one in the US, is that it safeguards the republic from rampant populism, where a piece of legislation can be passed based on popular opinion rather than it being based on anything factual. 
 

"Professors Martin Gilens (Princeton University) and Benjamin I. Page (Northwestern University)
looked at more than 20 years worth of data to answer a simple question:
Does the government represent the people?
Their study took data from nearly 2000 public opinion surveys and compared it to the policies that ended up becoming law.
In other words, they compared what the public wanted to what the government actually did.
What they found was extremely unsettling:
The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all."
 
Original paper...
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf
 
When voting for representation doesn't work, what is left?

Looks extremely clean & professional looking . i like it.

Chapter One – Planning or ‘Lack Thereof’

On a spur-of-the-moment decision on a trip where I was originally “just looking”, I decide to buy a 4k monitor at Fry’s. I took it home to replace my aging 30” HP zr30w. Boot it up. Damn, does the screen look sweet. Time to try a game. I throw PUBG and Star Wars: Battlefront 2 at it. Wow, gaming on it with my current setup isn’t ideal. Low frames, load times, etc. I’ve been putting it off for so long, but I guess it’s finally time to upgrade.


My Original System

It’s been awhile since I’ve done a new build. Heck, the last time I did a computer build was before they had hard tubing commonplace in water cooled systems. This was a record for me; the longest I’ve ever held on to one system (CPU/MB almost 6 years, GPUs 4 years). So, with tax season at hand (and a well-deserved bonus work paycheck in my grasp), it was finally time to treat myself to a new system.

First thing I ever do with picking out a system is look for a case. It may seem a bit strange, but I want it to look pretty, and it’s the thing that will be standing out the most. There was a case I’ve been eyeing for a while online, and on my previously mentioned trip to Fry’s I saw it out. The Thermaltake Tower 900. That thing would look sweet with two reservoirs and some slick water cooling setup. Checked online. Yup, they were looking pretty sweet indeed. Most of the builds I’d seen were sporting the Snow edition, I decided to pay the extra $20 and go for the black, and do an inverse with a black and white theme. Hopefully it’ll turn out sweet, but we’ll focus on that more later. It’s time to start picking the components!
 
Initially, I couldn’t decide which chipset, Intel x299 vs z370 or AMD x399. After refreshing myself with a few different articles and videos, comparing benchmarks between the different formats, and a few dozen more articles later, I removed AMD from the running (not to say they are terrible, but I’m trying to squeeze every bit of performance out as I can, even if it costs a bit extra). So that left me between x299 and z370. I decided that I was going to go for the x299 format because I could later upgrade to an 18+ core processor later on down the road. Then all logical reasoning went out the wind.
 
I go on Newegg to proceed to make system purchase. Check prices on everything CPU/MB combo-wise. There was a solid combo offer on Newegg for an ASUS ROG Strix Z370-E motherboard with an Intel i7 8700k. Done.

Well, instant change of mind. I thought initially it would have been more of a sidegrade from my previous i7 3960x processor, but performance numbers online showed otherwise. Besides, one of the reasons I went with x79 in the past compared to whatever consumer end systems at the time was the plan to run multiple graphic cards with more PCI-E lanes. Since I don’t plan on doing that again, it became a non-issue.  

Speaking of graphic cards, in my current system, I have four watercooled AMD 290x video cards. When I first had this setup, games looked amazing on it, but slowly after time, AMD started supporting four-way crossfire less and less. It got to the point where in order to run quite a few regularly played games, I would need to disable crossfire completely in order for the game to run. And whenever a new game came out, this was 90% always an issue. In addition, when I finally bumped the resolution to 4k, it was the final nail in the coffin. I would need to upgrade my system in order to play games maxed out again. I needed a GPU that would be able to give me better performance than what I currently had. Well, you all know what card that is; the Geforce GTX 1080 TI.

Damn, video cards are expensive. Silly alt-coin miners, taking all the supply and jacking up the prices. Nothing was reasonable online, and the reasonable ones that popped up were quickly bought up fast. I only have X money, I need this card without breaking the bank. I could have probably settled for a Geforce 1070, but then I found it: The Gigabyte Geforce GTX 1080 TI Turbo, and it was “only” $899. I instantly bit. My god is it ugly with its white and orange color scheme, watercooling will fix that issue, so it was again, a non-issue.
 


I hit the purchase link, and after a decline on my card and a phone call to my bank, and another click, all the sweet gear was heading on its way.
Here’s the breakdown of what I purchased:

System:
Thermaltake Tower 900...Tower
Intel Core i7-8700k CPU
Asus ROG Strix Z370-E Motherboard
G.Skill TridentZ RGB Series 32GB DDR4
Gigabyte Geforce GTX 1080 Ti Video Card
Corsair HX1200 Power Supply
Samsung 960 EVO 500 GB M.2 SSD
WD Blue 4TB HD
LG Blu-ray Rewrter Optical Drive (What? I use this.)
 
At this point, I’m pretty excited, no, STOKED, for this build, but staying up late ordering this bad boy and bank phone calls wore me out. Besides, I also had to work really early. I decided I’ll order all the cooling tomorrow on separately. Time to take a break.
 
A work day passes, come home, I start getting notifications of stuff getting shipped out, nice! Time to start working on the cooling.

The idea is to do two separate loops – one for the CPU and one for the GPU. They will be opposing colors and stand out from the case. The CPU was going to be a black block, black radiator, black fittings, and clear hard tubing with PrimoChill Opaque Sky White liquid premix. Picked out an EKWB EK-CoolStream SE 420 radiator and an EKWB EK-Supremacy EVO CPU block. The GPU was going to be a white block, white radiator, and clear hard tubing with Liquid.cool CFX Opaque Black. It’s going to be epic. But there’s a slight problem…

The graphic card PCB wasn’t reference.

F***!!!! F***!!!! What a n00b mistake. This is what happens when you haven’t done any of your favorite hobby in years!! Public service announcement – don’t get rusty, you’ll miss something. But another PSA – we can fix any problem.

Looked online, nobody makes a full cover block for this card. I could go for a universal block, but I’ve had bad experiences with those in the past. It’s ok. I’ll just sit on this graphics card for a bit until either I find a deal on a reference GTX 1080 TI or wait it out for when the 2080 GTX comes out and just flip it to the miners (right, RIGHT?).



Because of this small little update, at this time, I’m going to hold off on the liquid cooling for the video card, and just do the CPU loop. That means a few temporary changes. I still want to do my color scheme in the long run so I’ll keep the CPU side black still, and since the card is white, it’ll substitute nicely in place of my original plan. I’ll use RGB lighting to make it glow orange to make it match for the time being as well. It’s working(-ish). Major decision was a change to hold off on the hard tubing for the time being. I don’t want to have to redo any of that, because it’s a bit more expensive and it’ll be the first time I’ve ever used it. For the flex tubing, I went with some PrimoFlex Crystal Clear tubing.

Time once again to do that buying thing, so I hit the purchase link. Decline again. Sigh…my bank hates me. Another phone call to my bank, and after 20 minutes on the phone I finally do the last click, and the final pieces are on their way:

Cooling:
EKWB EK-Supremacy EVO CPU block
Thermaltake Pacific PR22-D5 Reservoir/Pump Combo
EKWB EK-CoolStream SE 420 Radiator
PrimoFlex Crystal Clear tubing 10 FT Pack
PrimoChill Opaque Sky White liquid concentrated premix
XSPC Black Matte Compression Fittings (8 qty, overkill, but cheaper with the pack)
3x MASTERFAN PRO 120Air Pressure RGB w/ Controller (Gotta add that orange color to match that ugly GPU cooler)
MasterAccessory Universal LED Strip – RGB (This counts as cooling? No? Ok, but I purchased it at the same time, yikes, get off my back).

Future Purchase:
Gallon of Distilled Water (or could watch money burn and just throw the concentrated mix into the reservoir).

Well, that’s a lot to write for just the planning step. I can’t wait to go over the journey of actually building this bad boy with all of you (I also like to write – guess that helps). Anyways, thanks for reading all this, if you did. To give you a preview of what’s to come, here is a picture of some of the parts just arriving to my place. DAMN, the Tower 900 is a lot bigger than I remembered seeing in the store. I think I saw a different case at Fry’s…

Here I present to you, another system I built with spare hardware that I don't need but really wanted.

Backstory:
The motherboard, processor, and graphics card were used in my second system for mostly plex, and backing up of some data but once I upgraded my main rig I downsized that computer to matx and gave it my Xeon E3-1230 v3. I always wanted to find a purpose for the old hardware that was retired. I decided I wanted to do a sleeper build and one of my friends had this lovely Gateway K7-700 shell that he used for his system that he had done some simple things to. These include: USB and audio on front, and painting the interior black. He finally upgraded it so I picked it up from him asap.
 
Specs:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: AMD - FX-8120 3.1GHz 8-Core Processor  (Purchased For $54.00)
CPU Cooler: Corsair - H50 57.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  (Purchased For $40.00)
Motherboard: Asus - Crosshair V Formula-Z ATX AM3+ Motherboard  (Purchased For $130.00)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  (Purchased For $0.00)
Storage: Western Digital - Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  (Purchased For $47.49) Seagate - BarraCuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  (Purchased For $0.00) HDD Theft (Update 1)
Video Card: Asus - GeForce GTX 680 4GB Video Card  (Purchased For $130.00) Asus GTX 780 3GB (Purchased For whatever the 760 2GB was 3 and a half years ago?) GPU Upgrade (Update 2)
Power Supply: EVGA - 600B 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  (Purchased For $14.35)
Other: Gateway GP7 ($0.00)
Total: $415.84 $368.35 $???.??
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-03-03 10:42 EST-0500

I also had another friend give me a kit of ram and @TheSLSAMG gave me a EVGA 600B
Also still waiting for the HDD to arrive before I can do anything with it

EDIT: Pictures!!!!

 
Assembly:
 
The Rest:
 







 
 

This is my new rig!
Moved from a i5 2400, GTX 780 (that broke down) and no SSD in a 2008 $20 case to this... I'm very happy.
 
Specs:
- i7 8700k
- GTX 1080 Ti (EVGA GAMING)
- Cosrair Vengeance LPX (3200 MHz) (2x8GB)
- Samsung 960 Evo (500 GB)
- AsRock Fatal1ty Gaming K6
- Corsair RM850x
- Lian Li PC-O11WX
- 6x Noctua NF-F12 PPC PWM, 2x Noctua NF-A8 PWM
 
The cables were hand made in my kitchen.
Thank you everyone that helped me with my questions, there was a lot of first timers for me with this build!
 
CPU runs 5.0 GHz @ ~1.33v at the moment, temps are unknown as I'm still having some little problems, most likely the delid went wrong, so needs fixing in about a week.
GPU runs 2050/6055 MHz in the 44C range on full load.