Adventure of my first build

[Chameleon]

First off, the final pictures and build will be at the end of the post. The computer is built and I'm actually posting from it, but I want to show the pictures and progress I had along the way xD Also I hope I'm not violated any roles by posting any outside links/pictures.

One more thing, this post is strangely formatted when it comes to new line/carriage returns o.O They seem a bit.....excessive. I wonder how it'll behave if I posted from a unix box o.O Very curious.

Introduction

I have always been a software person(Programmer), and I've never actually fiddled around with hardware before this.

Phase one - Learning and selecting parts

I started off just looking for parts and was rather ignorant as to how to go about it so I started off asking for help and researching on forums I was familiar with. Giving them a budget and an idea of what my usage would be like. So then they started giving me build ideas and I started learning how to put things together as well as what I needed in my build. This is actually how I discovered Linus and this awesome community ^^

Eventually I realised that the computer would mean a lot more to me to build for my first time if I had picked all the parts myself. So armed with the bare essential knowledge and many reviews I ventured off onto pcpartpicker, newegg, and ncix to pick the parts myself.

Here is the INITIAL build I threw together(I picked things in this order more or less)

Processor - i7-3770k

Motherboard - ASRock Z77 Extreme4

GPU - Radeon HD 7970

RAM - GSkill Ripjaw 16GB(4x4GB) (This is a point I wish I had gone with 2x8GB in hindsight since I kind of limited my upgradability xD, now I will have to buy 4x8GB ram sticks if I ever wanted to upgrade)

Heatsink - Hyper 212 EVO

Mechanical Storage - 2x1TB 7200RPM Seagate barracudas

SSD - Intel 330 120GB SSD

PSU - Silverstone strider essential series 600W

Sound - Xonar DS 24 bit 192KHz

Case - Corsair 200r (I had to skimp somewhere if I wanted to make the computer within my budget....which I had actually went over several times already XD)

Optical - Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer

Keyboard - MS Sidewinder x4(Another thing I wish I had waited on, but I'm not disappointed at all by this decision)

Mouse - Azio levetron GM2000 (This was an interesting purchase, as it had almost no reviews anywhere so this was an uneducated blind purchase.....it did not let me down at all, but I'm getting a new mouse soon since I want more than 6 buttons xD)

Monitor - Asus VS238H-P 23" LED

This was where I started and I ordered most of them at the same time, save for the monitor which I ordered prior.

Phase 2 - The Wait

After ordering I had been stricken with a sudden case of insomnia, impatience, and restlessness. I spent nearly all day every day waiting, cleaning, preparing, and most of all....watching and reading reviews on literally every single thing I had ordered. I also have a nature of getting side tracked easily so I watched quite a few LAN party videos after I saw their computer assembly.....which they gave some somewhat bad advice in o.o' as well as a lot of Linus' videos. I was so restless I built myself a workbench......made of ply wood. I don't actually have a saw so I cut the wood with the serrated side of my hunting knife and whittled down the edges >.< I wanted to have a clean workspace for my new build. Luckily this phase didn't last too long or I'd likely have died quite literally.

Phase 3 - The assembly(Part one)

My patience had paid off. I had ordered everything on the Wednesday in the week prior to newyears day and EVERYTHING arrived at once on Friday......well....except for my GPU. But hell if that'd stop me from building my first computer!

I uploaded all of the pictures to imgur since they exceed the file limit here.

Picture of the parts when they arrived.

http://i.imgur.com/n5BG0.jpg

So I figured I'd just dive right in considering they arrived at about 10am and I had done nothing but watch other people assemble computers for the past few days so why not.

I started off testing the parts by making an out of case build. I was quite petrified since it was my first build and I was afraid SOMETHING would be DOA. Although I persisted fearlessly and made my first test build on top of the motherboard case.

Picture of the build close up

http://i.imgur.com/Zb4p2.jpg

Picture of my first POST =D

http://i.imgur.com/E8mz9.jpg

So I have my first POST so all of the important pieces of my computer were working and I was overjoyed. Time to get this inside of a case.

This was a fairly painless task as the case came with ATX motherboard standoffs. I just mounted it in there and assembled things very sloppily. I did some minor cable management but it was temporary and pretty poor. I decided to unmount the heatsink while I put the motherboard inside, since I had the actual mount already installed.

Out of focus shot of the inside

http://i.imgur.com/WcSjO.jpg

In focus shot closer up inside(PSU is left out)

http://i.imgur.com/tHDUx.jpg

I remounted my heatsink and just started using it. I got most of the things configured rather quickly and it was pretty painless. I used an old windows 7 retail disk I had for a previous computer. I decided against installing linux because I don't spend much time on it since this machine was mostly meant to be a beast recording and rendering box. I'll install it later down the road since windows is kind of annoying to dev on.

Phase 4 - Post assembly/The wait part 2

After a few hours of testing and installing I still felt incomplete. My GPU still wasn't here and was scheduled to arrive on monday.....So back to the insomnia and restlessness I went. I had to keep moving and tinkering with things. After I built the computer once it was just really addicting. So I started watching a LOT of linus videos and other videos. Something had concerned me though. During the mounting process of the motherboard there was one standoff that didn't seem like it belonged. Yet when I twisted it, it refused to budge or do anything so I left it. Being worried I started looking around for reviews of my case and I found Linus' review of it and he immediately noticed the rogue standoff and was worried, but then he said it was removable! I immediately took my computer apart and removed this standoff. When I first installed it, it seemed permanent since it didn't want to move and it looked the same. Although examining closely showed it was a decagon rather than a complete circle like the rest. So I took a wrench to it and voila.

My woes were eased.....but there was a much larger problem at hand....I was becoming very addicted to modifying my computer. The more I did it, the more natural it became. After awhile I actually knew exactly what I was doing, why I was doing it. Something was kind of bugging me during the down time with no modding. I kept peeking over at my temperatures and I was idling at about 38C with a pull configuration. I started researching some more on thermal compound applications, what it's meant for, and things of this nature. I saw quite a few scientific posts on random forums regarding how thermal conductivity works and what the thermal compound's role is in the heat transfer. Then I started looking at applications for maximum conductivity and I watched a lot of Linus videos with him constantly saying "Less is more", and him putting emphasis on that for the 1155 socket size cpus. I sadly recalled how I had applied it by slapping a 2xpea sized dot on the center and spreading it all around with cardboard(Apologies if that made you cringe.) So I sought to remedy my mistake by searching how to remove thermal compound. I saw a mixtured of people recommending using 95% isopropyl alcohol with q-tips, others arguing how it it left lint residue behind. Others started mentioning how coffee filters were a cheap lint free tool useful for this. So I grabbed some 70% isopropyl alcohol, q-tips, and some coffee filters. I removed it using the alcohol on the q-tips to get it clean, and the coffee filters to dry whatever is left and remove all of the lint left behind. I reapplied the compound this time by a single pea sized drop in the center and reseated the heatsink letting it spread itself around. Then also I tightened the heatsink mount screws so it would sit tighter on the cpu. Also when I placed the fan this time, I put it in a push configuration under the logic that the air strength would cool better pushing heat out with cold air rather than trying to draw the hot air out. My temperatures dropped fairly significantly, I started idling at about 29-32.

The only real issue is that I have high profile ram and my heatsink push fan sits on top of the first slot :3 Although the fan still covers the heatsink so I left it there.

Phase 5 - The assembly(Part 2)

Before I knew it, it was Monday and my GPU was scheduled to arrive! I was pretty excited but not as much as I had thought I'd be. It may have also been due to the fact I had been getting less than an hour of sleep a night over the last week.

When it had arrived I immediately installed it and grabbed the latest beta drivers from AMD. The only pain during installation was trying to find the correct power configuration since my PSU didn't have the exact pin configuration I needed to hook it up.(Instead of having an 8pin connector they had 6+2 pins instead, but they didn't even fit...I had to shave them down)

Picture of the GPU installed

http://i.imgur.com/Kebgt.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Eivhx.jpg

First thing I noticed is my temperatures went way up again. I opened up the case and immediately thought of a likely cause.

I figured it was a mixture between the terrible cable cluster in the front(Partially due to the SSD tray being right there facing the GPU, and mostly due to my poor cable management), and the GPU was adding a lot of heat for itself. It was taking up a lot of air. Now I know it wouldn't matter to most of you if you're idling with 38C, but I absolutely refuse to downgrade anything.

So I grabbed the few twist ties and zip ties that came with the computer parts and completely disconnected everything from the case. I started off just trying to predict where things would go so I could group things together optimally. This was quite easy considering the amount of tweaking and modifying things I had done over the last few days. After awhile I came to a cabling solution I could be somewhat proud of.

Shot of the front

http://i.imgur.com/qdEIJ.jpg

Under the graphic's card facing the front fan

http://i.imgur.com/vaJ4J.jpg

Close up of the front fan's air flow through the gpu/ssd cords

http://i.imgur.com/aYXON.jpg

Shot of the mess I made in the back

http://i.imgur.com/YKII8.jpg

The improved airflow wasn't much but it was still the best I could do, even now I don't think I could improve upon it very much. Although it was enough to cool my temperatures down to

64C at full load and 30-32C idle. Although I wanted to overclock so I knew this solution wouldn't really hold up too well with overclocking so I set out to improve my cooling. Although I had already completely exhausted my budget for my computer so I had to set aside a separate cooling budget. I was looking at things like the h100i and closed loop pre-assembled water cooling systems but I didn't see many people doing it in my case plus I wanted an air cooling system....I wanted to make my PC an AC unit for the summer. So I started doing research on fans. I didn't want to dish out a lot of money on noctuas and things like that right away so I set aside $30 to test out the improvement a couple new fans could bring with some higher quality thermal compound. Now I share Linus' disdain for noisy cooling systems, but my reasoning is that I do a decent bit of recording and background noise would be unacceptable to add.

So I ordered some Arctic MX-4 thermal compound with 2 cheap 1200RPM 120mm low noise fans with blue LEDs. I didn't really care for the LEDs or look of them but I actually really like the leds now. They are kind of like a night light xD

When my new package had arrived I decided not to install the fans right away so I could get a baseline for the new thermal compound. Since the mx-4 has no curing time it allowed me to get right into the heart of testing. So once again I cleaned off my CPU/heatsink and applied the new compound but....it yielded worse performance? The mx-4 actually raised my load temps to 68C quite fast where as the stock cooler master TIM that came with my 212 took awhile to get to 64. So I decided to reapply it, I cleaned and reset that heatsink 3-4 times in a few hours before deciding that my results all reflected the same thing. My load temps hit 68 every time. So I applied it once more and decided this was my last time setting the heatsink down so I took extra caution in doing so, that way I could ensure I had maximum heatpipe contact with the cpu/thermal compound.

Now it was time to install the fans. I had done quite a bit of research on the optimal airflow of a case with diagrams and things of that nature so I was ready. I stared at my case for awhile and decided that no matter what I wanted to mount one fan on the side to feed the GPU some fresh air since it looked and felt like it was starving, and then I had to decide whether I'd use my second as a push/pull for the 212 or a case fan. I tried push/pull with the second one with no temperature change, but then I noticed that my push heatsink fan was actually drawing the hot air from my ram and pushing it through the heatsink fins.....which in my mind didn't make a whole lot of sense to push hot air through something to cool it. So I used the second fan as an intake for the top above the ram to feed the CPU and cool the ram. This was even despite the fact that all online sources recommended using the top as an exhaust, I stuck by my decision and it worked. My temperatures dropped back down to what they were prior, standing at 34idle and 64 under load. I decided it was okay like this since now I have okay airflow and once I started tweaking voltages my temperatures would drop anyways.

Phase 6 - Overclocking

Now that I had sufficient cooling it was time to start getting some real power out of my machine. Although first I'll give you a bit of background on my experience/knowledge with overclocking so you understand my logic. When I started overclocking it wasn't on PCs, it was on phones/mobile devices using the linux kernel. Back then it wasn't entirely about the power either, our goal was to keep the heat and power consumption down as far as possible while outputting as much performance as possible. So performance came second, but couldn't sacrifice too much of it. So I applied this principle here since I wanted to keep my power bill low as well as my temperatures. After all, this won't make for a very good AC unit if it's blowing hot air.

So to start off my overclocking I decided to just see how cool my temperatures would get at a modest overclock like 4.2GHz with a fixed voltage. It was actually really impressive, my temperatures only shifted by 3C on load with my idle decreasing(Decreased due to a mixture of PLL/LLC changing as well). This was just a test run. Now I was going to get into the real fun...I set my VCore offset to +0.005v and turbo offset to +0.004v, LLC to 1, and tried to see how high of a multiplier I could get. I started at 50(5GHz) and scaled my way down til I got a boot.

First successful boot I got was at 4.5GHz. It was pretty good. Temperatures capped at 84C without any voltage tweaking yet. Although even after a bit of voltage tweaking(I only went down), I couldn't get the temperatures below 80C on the 4.5GHz overclock and keep it stable. The stress tests went fine but when I multitasked during them my browser or flashplayer would crash and that was unacceptable(If anything crashes even while you're doing something as intensive as a stress test, you should consider it unstable and start over). Also not to mention in addition to my stress tests, I did my own sort of stress test and rendered some 1080p scenes to see whether Blender or Sony Vegas would crash(and they did). Seeing as that's what this rig is built for, I scaled the multiplier down once more. I got 4.4GHz to boot obviously with the same voltages and it was completely stable after an hour of testing. So I decided it was time to start dropping the voltage. I left the LLC at one and dropped the VCore offset to -0.050v. Which is quite a drop....it didn't boot until about -0.035v but things would crash on boot like catalyst control center so I immediately readjusted until I got a successful boot. First successful boot was at -0.025v. Stress tests went fine by themselves but during my multitasking other things would crash so yet again I increased to -0.020v. Stress tests and everything ran great even while multi-tasking but my renders kept crashing, so I went back to the drawing board and increased my voltage once more to -0.010v. This was a magical voltage where everything worked and my temperatures never hit 80C. So I readjusted my LLC and my temperatures now cap at 74C after 2 hours of stress testing(1 hour of P95 blend, 40 minutes of P95 using obscene amounts of RAM with small FFTs, and 20 minutes of IBT on very high for 5 runs). This is today and things are running pretty well. Gaming/rendering goes fine, average load temps are high 50s to low 60s and my idle is high 20s. So overall I am settling on this unless I get any hiccups or I decide to go higher with more voltages(I would need more fans =P)

Phase 7 - Conclusion/Endless build cycle

Now that everything is build and I'm pretty happy with this build I'm only upgrading little things here and there. I've pretty much obliterated my budget but that's okay :3 I am planning on getting a handeful of those cheap fans I purchased that run at 1200RPM with the blue LEDs, since they push a good amount of air and are pretty silent. Plus having other fans while I already have blue LEDs would look strange so I need to stay consistent xD Along with the fans I'm planning on getting a new mouse since I'm getting really found of my two macros on the thumbside of my mouse and would like more :3

I had a lot of fun building it and am kind of addicted to hardware now, I like hardware a bit more than programming to be honest xD Then again that's partially because hardware you see results of things coming to life immediately where as software you spend a lot of time trying to bring something beautiful to life ^^I learned a lot and I'd like to thank you all for reading =) I hope to help out others with their builds in the future to return the favour. Also here are some pictures of the outside of the build(Yes that is this post in the picture on the monitor, and yes I use spongebob blankets as a drape since the kittens ruined the other drapes)

http://i.imgur.com/zji9h.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/dU8jg.jpg

[mnm0710]

Nice job on the build. Just a thought without actually seeing it in person. Is there no chance for you to route more of your cables behind the motherboard tray? In your main picture for example I see a molex connector sticking out. Why can't you connect that towards the back. Same thing for your graphics card power. I can't really see that well but it seems like you're going straight from the power supply to the GPU. If you move it through the back and just come out right behind the GPU then that should get rid of a lot of extra cabling and tidy that up to get more airflow. Speaking of the back, have you tried using zipties to spread the extra cables out? That way they're not just scrunched up together near the hard drive cages. That might help to move some of your cables from inside the case as well. I'm not sure if you have room or not but I have a fan in my 5.25" bays that provide airflow to my CPU, maybe you can investigate that possibility so you can reconvert your top fan for outflow.

Just a couple thoughts. I don't know if you've tried that but just wanted to point out a couple things. Good luck and nice job again!

[Chameleon]

Nice job on the build. Just a thought without actually seeing it in person. Is there no chance for you to route more of your cables behind the motherboard tray? In your main picture for example I see a molex connector sticking out. Why can't you connect that towards the back. Same thing for your graphics card power. I can't really see that well but it seems like you're going straight from the power supply to the GPU. If you move it through the back and just come out right behind the GPU then that should get rid of a lot of extra cabling and tidy that up to get more airflow. Speaking of the back' date=' have you tried using zipties to spread the extra cables out? That way they're not just scrunched up together near the hard drive cages. That might help to move some of your cables from inside the case as well. I'm not sure if you have room or not but I have a fan in my 5.25" bays that provide airflow to my CPU, maybe you can investigate that possibility so you can reconvert your top fan for outflow. Just a couple thoughts. I don't know if you've tried that but just wanted to point out a couple things. Good luck and nice job again![/quote']

I edited the first post to include everything xD The last two phases of the project were left out due to an error.

Also I don't see the molex connector you're talking about :3 Although the GPU cables actually took some thought because if I routed them through any of the other holes rather than straight up, then they quickly ran along the same path as the SSD cables. Even if I tied them all up it made the front pretty conjested. I also did the cabling before I had my extra fans so I tried to do it that way. Now that I have the extra intakes I probably wouldn't mind trying to re-route them through the back.

I have plenty of room for a fan there actually :3 I left my top two 5.25 bays empty. I couldn't fit a 120mm fan in, but perhaps something smaller. Although there isn't anywhere to pull air in from the 5.25 bay so it may look a bit unruly....Do they make intake fans for the shape of 2x 5.25 bays xD? If so that'd be a fantastic addition.

As for the cabling in the back....I ran out of zip ties xD I only had 2-3 of them total. If I get some more then I could clear out the hard drive bays and put another intake fan there as well.

[Dim]

Quite a well-rounded build, and very impressive!

Did you just go with the reference 7970 or did you get another specific manufacturer?

[mnm0710]

Nice job on the build. Just a thought without actually seeing it in person. Is there no chance for you to route more of your cables behind the motherboard tray? In your main picture for example I see a molex connector sticking out. Why can't you connect that towards the back. Same thing for your graphics card power. I can't really see that well but it seems like you're going straight from the power supply to the GPU. If you move it through the back and just come out right behind the GPU then that should get rid of a lot of extra cabling and tidy that up to get more airflow. Speaking of the back' date=' have you tried using zipties to spread the extra cables out? That way they're not just scrunched up together near the hard drive cages. That might help to move some of your cables from inside the case as well. I'm not sure if you have room or not but I have a fan in my 5.25" bays that provide airflow to my CPU, maybe you can investigate that possibility so you can reconvert your top fan for outflow. Just a couple thoughts. I don't know if you've tried that but just wanted to point out a couple things. Good luck and nice job again![/quote'] I edited the first post to include everything xD The last two phases of the project were left out due to an error. Also I don't see the molex connector you're talking about :3 Although the GPU cables actually took some thought because if I routed them through any of the other holes rather than straight up, then they quickly ran along the same path as the SSD cables. Even if I tied them all up it made the front pretty conjested. I also did the cabling before I had my extra fans so I tried to do it that way. Now that I have the extra intakes I probably wouldn't mind trying to re-route them through the back. I have plenty of room for a fan there actually :3 I left my top two 5.25 bays empty. I couldn't fit a 120mm fan in, but perhaps something smaller. Although there isn't anywhere to pull air in from the 5.25 bay so it may look a bit unruly....Do they make intake fans for the shape of 2x 5.25 bays xD? If so that'd be a fantastic addition. As for the cabling in the back....I ran out of zip ties xD I only had 2-3 of them total. If I get some more then I could clear out the hard drive bays and put another intake fan there as well.

Haha my bad. As far as the 5.25 bay fans, the mount that I have is for 3 bays for a 120mm fan. What's nice about mine is that it's internal so you can't see it from the outside. Some of the 2 bay fans (if you search in google) can be seen from the outside. But if you don't mind that, then go for it.

[Chameleon]

Quite a well-rounded build' date=' and very impressive! Did you just go with the reference 7970 or did you get another specific manufacturer?[/quote']

Thanksies, and I went with a Sapphire Dual X card. It was incredibly cheap when I bought it so it left more room for other things. I think at the time the closest two cards to it was the GTX 670 and the XFX Radeon HD 7970 which were both a bit more expensive.

Nice job on the build. Just a thought without actually seeing it in person. Is there no chance for you to route more of your cables behind the motherboard tray? In your main picture for example I see a molex connector sticking out. Why can't you connect that towards the back. Same thing for your graphics card power. I can't really see that well but it seems like you're going straight from the power supply to the GPU. If you move it through the back and just come out right behind the GPU then that should get rid of a lot of extra cabling and tidy that up to get more airflow. Speaking of the back' date=' have you tried using zipties to spread the extra cables out? That way they're not just scrunched up together near the hard drive cages. That might help to move some of your cables from inside the case as well. I'm not sure if you have room or not but I have a fan in my 5.25" bays that provide airflow to my CPU, maybe you can investigate that possibility so you can reconvert your top fan for outflow. Just a couple thoughts. I don't know if you've tried that but just wanted to point out a couple things. Good luck and nice job again![/quote'] I edited the first post to include everything xD The last two phases of the project were left out due to an error. Also I don't see the molex connector you're talking about :3 Although the GPU cables actually took some thought because if I routed them through any of the other holes rather than straight up, then they quickly ran along the same path as the SSD cables. Even if I tied them all up it made the front pretty conjested. I also did the cabling before I had my extra fans so I tried to do it that way. Now that I have the extra intakes I probably wouldn't mind trying to re-route them through the back. I have plenty of room for a fan there actually :3 I left my top two 5.25 bays empty. I couldn't fit a 120mm fan in, but perhaps something smaller. Although there isn't anywhere to pull air in from the 5.25 bay so it may look a bit unruly....Do they make intake fans for the shape of 2x 5.25 bays xD? If so that'd be a fantastic addition. As for the cabling in the back....I ran out of zip ties xD I only had 2-3 of them total. If I get some more then I could clear out the hard drive bays and put another intake fan there as well.

Haha my bad. As far as the 5.25 bay fans, the mount that I have is for 3 bays for a 120mm fan. What's nice about mine is that it's internal so you can't see it from the outside. Some of the 2 bay fans (if you search in google) can be seen from the outside. But if you don't mind that, then go for it.

As I see xD Unfortunately I have only two spare. As for the exposed fan....I'd prefer to keep a uniform look xD If you can see a fan on my case it better glow :3(I've really taken to the blue led lights xD)

Also a lot of the 1-2 drive fans I'm seeing are hard drive coolers with huge RPM and a lot of noise. Perhaps I could get an external dvd drive and free up that third bay? Or would my current drive be fine outside of its bay? I could probably just build a case for it if not.

​

[mnm0710]

As I see xD Unfortunately I have only two spare. As for the exposed fan....I'd prefer to keep a uniform look xD If you can see a fan on my case it better glow :3(I've really taken to the blue led lights xD) Also a lot of the 1-2 drive fans I'm seeing are hard drive coolers with huge RPM and a lot of noise. Perhaps I could get an external dvd drive and free up that third bay? Or would my current drive be fine outside of its bay? I could probably just build a case for it if not. ​

Yea it's sort of up to you on what you want to do regarding the DVD player. Depends on how much you use it too. I wouldn't put your current drive externally unless you have an enclosure because you want it to go through USB or eSata to look good, not just having cables coming from inside your computer.

Maybe at some point, if you want to get lower temps, you can consider getting an H100i or something?

[Chameleon]

As I see xD Unfortunately I have only two spare. As for the exposed fan....I'd prefer to keep a uniform look xD If you can see a fan on my case it better glow :3(I've really taken to the blue led lights xD) Also a lot of the 1-2 drive fans I'm seeing are hard drive coolers with huge RPM and a lot of noise. Perhaps I could get an external dvd drive and free up that third bay? Or would my current drive be fine outside of its bay? I could probably just build a case for it if not. ​

Yea it's sort of up to you on what you want to do regarding the DVD player. Depends on how much you use it too. I wouldn't put your current drive externally unless you have an enclosure because you want it to go through USB or eSata to look good' date=' not just having cables coming from inside your computer. Maybe at some point, if you want to get lower temps, you can consider getting an H100i or something? [/quote']

I actually don't use it unless I'm doing OS installation. Which is done for now until I reinstall linux.

Although I guess I'm just being nitpicky and wanting to improve something bad when I should be seeking to get a new case xD It was recommended that I spend $140 on a new case with more room and better air flow since everything is kind of tight on the 200r. Although I'm already at about $1750 out of my $1500 budget.

I actually considered getting the h100i before I bought a few more fans, but I really prefer air cooling, or at least for this build. Another reason that deterred me is that I'm not sure if the 100i would fit in this case o.o' It's already quite a tight fit. If I did install it I'd have to go with only a pull configuration outside of the case with the radiator mounted on the top inside.

[mnm0710]

Yea then I'd suggest just waiting. I mean I'd assume your temps and everything are not bad. There's always chances for improvement in any situation. Maybe just sit tight and see if you save up some money and want to get a bigger, case. Also another thing that would clean it up would be if you got a better modular power supply. Then you wouldn't have a whole bunch of cables, some of which you don't need. You could just use the minimum amount and tidy it up in the back. At this point your build is good, now it's just time to sit, enjoy it and then in a couple months or so figure out if you want to save to do some of these small upgrades.

[Chameleon]

Yea then I'd suggest just waiting. I mean I'd assume your temps and everything are not bad. There's always chances for improvement in any situation. Maybe just sit tight and see if you save up some money and want to get a bigger' date=' case. Also another thing that would clean it up would be if you got a better modular power supply. Then you wouldn't have a whole bunch of cables, some of which you don't need. You could just use the minimum amount and tidy it up in the back. At this point your build is good, now it's just time to sit, enjoy it and then in a couple months or so figure out if you want to save to do some of these small upgrades.[/quote']

Yeah I don't mind waiting :3 Until then methinks I'm going to buy a few more of the same fans I already have so I can get a more uniform look and improve temps just a bit. $10 per 1-2C dropped? Worth it xD In a few months when I can justify getting a new case(like if I add a second 7970) I'll upgrade and get a proper case and a modular psu. Thanks for all the feedback ^^

[TicTac]

good job man for a first build you did awesome, be sure to keep posting here when u get future upgrades!

[Chameleon]

good job man for a first build you did awesome' date=' be sure to keep posting here when u get future upgrades![/quote']

Much appreciated ^^

By the way, what do you all think about adding a fan to the bottom as an intake? I don't really have room inside the hard drive cage or room for a second side fan(heatsink is too tall), but I can definitely fit a bottom fan in there as well as a second top fan and one for pulling on the heatsink. Three fans aren't really that expensive and they'd definitely be portable to newer builds.

The only downside I see is that I have no more motherboard fan headers so I'd have to use the PSU adapters. Although it won't be difficult since I can easily route the fan adapters behind the motherboard tray for both the top and bottom fans. Then I'd just plug the heatsink pull fan into cpu2(where I have the top intake at)