My Very First Build

[MrTomnus]

MY FIRST BUILD

 

Hey there guys! The moment I have been waiting for has FINALLY arrived! I get to build my first PC! I'm super excited and thought I should document it, so a forum post will do nicely for that. If you just want to see pictures, scroll for a little bit - I'm just gonna talk about my reasons for building and choosing parts.

 

Here is my PCPartPicker list if you would like to see:

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

 

CPU:  Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£161.99 @ Aria PC) 

CPU Cooler:  Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler  (£25.20 @ Aria PC) 

Motherboard:  MSI Z87-G43 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  (£77.06 @ Aria PC) <==== NOW CHANGED TO GIGABYTE Z87-HD3 DUE TO RMA

Memory:  Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  (£65.00 @ Amazon UK) 

Storage:  Sandisk  128GB 2.5" Solid State Disk  (£58.79 @ Aria PC) 

Storage:  Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£39.98 @ Aria PC)  

Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 290 4GB Video Card (£334.29 @ Dabs)

Case:  Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case  (£47.98 @ Dabs) 

Power Supply:  EVGA SuperNOVA NEX750B BRONZE 750W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  (£69.07 @ Scan.co.uk) 

Operating System:  Microsoft Windows 8 (OEM) (64-bit)  (£71.91 @ Ebuyer) 

Monitor:  Dell U2212HM 60Hz 21.5" Monitor  (£149.99 @ Aria PC) 

Total: £1102.95

(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)

(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-02-18 16:31 GMT+0000)

 

So, onto why I am building this!

 

Since 2011 I have had my first computer - a MacBook Pro. Yup. I was in love with Apple at the time (ha, how things have changed) and I had no knowledge of PC building - I didn't even know it was possible to build a PC yourself until I came across, believe it or not, Linus TechTips So recently I got into gaming on my MacBook. It's actually a pretty nice little machine for gaming - Portal 2, Borderlands 2 and games like Killing Floor run pretty smoothly at native res and medium details. But it's been so inconvenient having to play on it. It never moves from my desk and I have to crane my neck down while I play games, so I had it perched on some books with a external keyboard and mouse connected! Here's a picture of that:

 

 

So yeah - not really a nice way to game. Add to that the fact that not a huge amount of games are made for macs (I have 75 steam games and can only play 34 of them), it makes it slightly worse. Which is when, in 2012, that I learnt about proper PC gaming by stumbling across one of Linus' videos Since then, I have never learnt so much about anything in such a short space of time. I went from knowing roughly what a CPU and GPU are (let alone what they look like), to knowing the ins and outs of a motherboard and how to overclock. All in all, I am very glad I found this community. Everyone is really friendly and it's a great place to hang out. Just a shame the WAN show is on at 12am local time for me so I can never watch it live... :'( 

 

Anyway, I am super excited to start playing the rest of my games in my library and to have a computer that isn't locked down to anything and can run pretty much any program

 

I did have a budget for this build, although I still haven't got everything and it's come to £1007 already The focus for this build is going to be performance for a great price. So with the Kingston SSD to make the OS snappy (it was a steal at £40, on sale!), an i5 4670k which I will overclock at a later date, and an R9 280X to provide the graphics horsepower, I think I'll be okay with this build for a long time. By the way I do plan to add a second R9 280X once the bitcoin/litecoin craze dies away (hence the large PSU). Currently the card is still out of stock and I am in a queue to have one delivered. It won't arrive until the 7th of March though... So it won't be featured in the build until later. Hopefully the intel HD4000 graphics will suffice... haha... ha. I also bought Windows 8 because of DX11.2 and the fact that I prefer the aesthetic more than 7. But I hate metro. So I'm buying startisback once I get the OS up to date and installed.

 

So I don't quite have all of it so far. The Dell monitor, Seagate HDD, EVGA PSU and the Corsair 200R will arrive tomorrow, fingers crossed that they arrive early! Still to buy is a pair of Audio Technica Ah-M50s, a CM Storm QuickFire Pro cherry MX brown keyboard, a Blue Snowball mic and Powerline adapter.

 

I have a reserved post below that will be updated (hopefully live ) to include pictures of everything as I do it. Pictures are also in the next post.

 

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you enjoy the build! This is going to be a voyage of great discovery for me, so for anyone new to building, I hope you learn something too!

 

Please feel free to leave comments about what you think of my first build.

[MrTomnus]

LIVE UPDATES

 

18/2/2014

 

Right, so it's the eve of build day. I thought to pass the time I'd take some glamour shots of my hardware to make it seem better than it is Plus it would be nice for people who haven't seen a custom PC (like myself) to get a good look at all the individual parts.

 

So, here's everything I have so far.

 

 

Now lets get into the different parts. The RAM is such a nice colour, and it matches the mobo nicely. My HTC One couldn't quite get the brightness of the blue, it tends to oversaturate a lot so it looks slightly darker.

 

 

Here's my mouse, the Razer Abyssus. My first gaming mouse, and it's pretty nice. It has a DPI switch on the bottom and the mat I bought for it makes it glide nicely.

 

 

Next is the place where everything fits together - the motherboard. It looks like it's black on the internet, but actually the PCB is very dark brown with lighter brown for the circuits. It shouldn't be noticeable in the case. And here are some other nice shots of the CPU socket and the design.

 

 

Here's the CPU heatsink that will never be used... As well as the CPU itself! A lot shinier than I thought it would be. Hopefully all those connections look in good shape!

 

 

19/2/2014 - BUILD DAY

 

9:00

So today's the day! I've been really excited all morning. The delivery man should arrive any minute now!

 

9:10

He's here! Can't wait to get this stuff open

 

 

9:20

Having some trouble with the heatsink... I thought it didn't support LGA1150 but it turns out it's the same as 1155. Phew! It was tough to get on but I managed it eventually. I used the pea method for the thermal paste

 

10:00

Well it's been a while now, and it's taking longer than I thought. RAM, CPU, PSU and drives are all installed. Sorry for the lack of pictures, but I couldn't take them at the time.

 

10:10

Got most of it in there now. Just need to do some cable management!

 

10:20

A lot of mess in the room I'm working in...

 

10:35

Been doing some cable management and started to plug the SATA cables in. Turns out the two SATA 3 ports are flipped so one is a different way. This really sucks because the right angled connector that would go at the edge will be facing the wrong way, which is how I wanted it... Never mind.

 

10:50

So now everything is together and it's time to install the OS. It POSTed first time which was great! But I'd forgotten to plug the front fan in I did run into a problem however. The I/O shield has some small prongs on it (supposedly for support) that got wedged into some of the connectors so nothing will go into them. The ethernet cable is worst. Looks like I'll have to take it out...

 

11:10

Got that fixed now! I just bent the prongs upwards. They weren't doing anything. At least I don't think they were. And another problem. The monitor came with an EU plug, not a UK one... But luckily my old PS3 uses the same AC cord, so I've just used that!

 

12:00

I've been installing all my programs etc and have been downloading steam games too. Windows 8 is taking some getting used to, but overall I like it a lot! The PC is super quiet and my CPU has stayed at 30-40 degrees which is awesome! My MacBook usually idled at 50. I've tried some games with integrated graphics and they actually work pretty well! It'll be enough to keep me happy before my R9 280X arrives. 

 

19:00

So I've been installing drivers etc now. It's gonna take a while for all 75 of my games to download, even with a speedier connection. So I'll spend some time lurking on the LTT forum

 

Overall I've really enjoyed this build. My next step will be to buy another monitor when I have the money! For now I have no way of connecting to the internet upstairs, so I have to use my MacBook's wifi as a shared network :') glad I still have the thing here to be honest! The powerline adapter will be here in a few days to solve that problem.

 

FURTHER UPDATES

 

13/03/2014

 

So it's been two months since I ordered my R9 280X... I'm a bit fed up of waiting now. Damn the cryptocurrency craze!! I've decided that, since I got paid, I might as well bump up to a beefier GPU. So why not go with the 290? I've ordered it today, and it should arrive tomorrow! I can't wait!

 

14/03/2014

 

There's been a problem with the delivery... Apparently the order was dispatched in time for delivery, but Parcelforce came along too early, meaning my card won't be delivered today. I rung customer support and they said it should arrive on Monday, and that once it arrives I should ring them to get my postage refunded. They were very helpful! Just a shame about that really, I got all my homework done in preparation for playing with the 290 all weekend, and now I have nothing to do... Oh well. I'm just glad I have a confirmed delivery date at last!

 

17/03/2014

 

My R9 290 arrived today, yay! It arrived at the start of school though so I had to wait the whole day before I could use it, and I only had one lesson... I plugged it in, downloaded the drivers and I was ready to go! Boy do the games look beautiful now Here are some pictures of the card, along with the completed build. Sorry I don't have a picture of the card on its own, I realised I hadn't taken one as soon as I'd put the thing in the motherboard... 

 

I'm glad it's finally finished though! 

These are some new photos I took of my build, now I have a nice camera to take them with! Click for full resolution

 

 

Here are some rough game benchmarks so you can see how it performs! Everything is on maximum settings. Also I am running Skyrim with a TON of texture and lighting mods which is why the fps is bad, I think there are about 120 mods in total...

 

THANK YOU FOR CHECKING OUT MY BUILD

[nukem]

your parts look good to me man, btw classicstart for win8 is free, i dont use win8 anymore but when i did thats what i used and i found it good.

[MrTomnus]

your parts look good to me man, btw classicstart for win8 is free, i dont use win8 anymore but when i did thats what i used and i found it good.

Thank you! Okay, I might check that out

[Classics]

your parts look good to me man, btw classicstart for win8 is free, i dont use win8 anymore but when i did thats what i used and i found it good.

 

Classicstart is horrid, you'll want to use Startisback.

[Prokart2000]

classics why do u have a h100 on a 8320 non ocd and good build

[ForsakenLive]

Start is Back is cheap and comes with a couple of licenses! Get that one, is much better than classic start.

[MrTomnus]

Start is Back is cheap and comes with a couple of licenses! Get that one, is much better than classic start.

 

 

Classicstart is horrid, you'll want to use Startisback.

 

Haha okay, thank you for the advice guys

[Polyvalent]

This is quite a nice starter build.  You picked a pretty solid lineup, I'm impressed!

[MrTomnus]

This is quite a nice starter build.  You picked a pretty solid lineup, I'm impressed!

Haha thank you! I've really enjoyed it. Can't wait to play some games!

[adriel604]

Nice build  I have the same mobo and I want your ram!

[Classics]

classics why do u have a h100 on a 8320 non ocd and good build

 

I got the h100 because I had the intention of overclocking, but my motherboard is broke in the sense that I can't access my BIOS. So I can't change any settings in there. It works in every other respect though. 

[Prokart2000]

oh maybe reset it or update?

[MrTomnus]

Nice build  I have the same mobo and I want your ram!

Thank you very much! Cool! I think I heard a tiny bit of coil whine from my mobo. But when I have headphones on I won't hear it at all, so I don't mind. Yeah the RAM is a lovely colour and there haven't been problems with it, or anything in the build for that matter!

[Polyvalent]

The coil whine should go away after a few days.  Also, I noticed skyrim on your list of games.  If you end up heavily modding it (like any skyrim enthusiast should) you're really going to appreciate that 3GB 280x - skyrim can use up to 3GB of video memory when heavily modded. Look forward to seeing the build with the card in there.

[MrTomnus]

The coil whine should go away after a few days.  Also, I noticed skyrim on your list of games.  If you end up heavily modding it (like any skyrim enthusiast should) you're really going to appreciate that 3GB 280x - skyrim can use up to 3GB of video memory when heavily modded. Look forward to seeing the build with the card in there.

That's good to hear. And I've never played Skyrim before so I'll probably put the mods on first. I remember Logan from Tek Syndicate doing a video of his mods - some of them looked good so I'll try them! And I can't wait either! Expected delivery date is the 9th of March.

[Guest]

Nice budget build!

[TheSLSAMG]

Solid rig. Is the PCB of the motherboard really that brown?

[MrTomnus]

Nice budget build!

 

Haha... I suppose you could call it budget. I used most of my savings on it though

 

Solid rig. Is the PCB of the motherboard really that brown?

I think my camera makes it looks more brown than it actually is. It's kind of a dark chocolate colour.

[MrTomnus]

Sorry, might be kinda bad reviving this thread but I have an update at last! After having waited two months for the R9 280X to arrive (due to coin mining going crazy it has been out of stock everywhere!), I decided to cancel that order and purchase an R9 290! It arrives tomorrow and I'm very excited to put it in my PC, which will at last be completely built! So long Intel integrated graphics! I will have pictures for that tomorrow

[Father Fuzzy]

that should be a great improvement 

 

get ready to Game!

[NIC ROBERTOOO]

A beast build! Shame it's in a 200r though oh well

[HerEscutcheon]

That's good to hear. And I've never played Skyrim before so I'll probably put the mods on first. I remember Logan from Tek Syndicate doing a video of his mods - some of them looked good so I'll try them! And I can't wait either! Expected delivery date is the 9th of March.

If you're looking to play and mod Skyrim for the first time, here are a few links to help get you started.

 

Skyrim Nexus (the go-to site for mods)

Skyrim G.E.M.S. (a good start for figuring which mods to go after)

Skyrim Mod Sanctuary (Gopher's YouTube playlist of great mod spotlights)

Brodual's YouTube Page (another great YouTube place for spotlights)

[MrTomnus]

So something came up... I ordered the 290 on Thursday, but apparently I ordered too late for next day delivery as Parcelforce arrived before the card was ready to be dispatched. So much for next day delivery. I rung customer support and they said it will be here on Monday instead, and that I should contact them when it arrives to have my postage refunded. I'm annoyed, but I didn't flip out at the lady on the phone, I knew it wasn't her fault

 

If you're looking to play and mod Skyrim for the first time, here are a few links to help get you started.

 

Skyrim Nexus (the go-to site for mods)

Skyrim G.E.M.S. (a good start for figuring which mods to go after)

Skyrim Mod Sanctuary (Gopher's YouTube playlist of great mod spotlights)

Brodual's YouTube Page (another great YouTube place for spotlights)

Thank you for the info, I'll check that out!

 

A beast build! Shame it's in a 200r though oh well

It would have been awesome to get something like an R4 or an nice looking NZXT but I was on a budget and the 200R was the most similar looking for a better price...

[MrRavens]

Glad you got that sorted out. Nice build by the way. I'm about to start my own new build soon. Seeing this is really hyping me up. Not sure if you or anyone else can relate, but when you save those most demanding games on your steam library because you wont dare touch them till you get a beefy computer? OOhhh I can't wait haha!