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1st Build - sort of

btg0002
By btg0002
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What would the community say if I decided to grab a GTX 780 and throw it in this bad boy???  ;) It may end up being purchased when I get off work tonight, and I will let you know then!

With today's technology I often wonder why we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars. Then I go to Wal Mart for 5 minutes and realize the vast majority of the human populace isn't ready for such things.

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UPDATE (FINALLY!!)

Got the CPU in yesterday as noted above and finally got Windows 8.1 (with StartIsBack) 64 bit up and running. I am currently downloading my Steam library but here are the pics:

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The CPU came in this ghetto as hell cardboard box

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There she is in all her glory!  :D

 

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H90 attached

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current setup of peripherals

oh.....and BIG NEWS.......an EVGA GTX 780 with the reference cooler and backplate is on its way!!!!!!  :)

With today's technology I often wonder why we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars. Then I go to Wal Mart for 5 minutes and realize the vast majority of the human populace isn't ready for such things.

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not much of an update really, just that the 780 and backplate have shipped from EVGA (UPS is stating it is expected to be delivered 1-30 which seems like an awfully long time but oh well, until then I can manage with the 7770. I can confirm that coretemp and the asus AI suite (which I uninstalled as it will literally spam your desktop with alerts that you cannot turn off) cannot reliably tell me the temp of the processor, but I was aware of that at the beginning so I just set the CPU mode in the BIOS to normal and have the fans on turbo mode, and I still can't hear the fans, and can barely make out the pump so it's really quiet so far, but I will let you guys know how drastically that changes once the reference blower-style 780 is in the rig

With today's technology I often wonder why we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars. Then I go to Wal Mart for 5 minutes and realize the vast majority of the human populace isn't ready for such things.

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couple of interesting things that were sorted out within the last day or so:

1) I apparently tried for way too much positive air pressure as I didn't have an exhaust fan whatsoever and there was a hot pocket of air collecting at the top/back of the case near the CPU keeping the CPU uncomfortably warm for idle temps, so I flipped the topmost fan to an exhaust and that solved this problem, now the CPU is perfectly cool and I have no heat issues.

ALSO

2) the fan controller built into the Define R4 cannot apparently support 3 fans simultaneously that are different fans, i.e. 2 AF140s and 1 SP120, as it would only power them on if it were set to 5 volts. I plugged the bottom SP120 into the empty motherboard header and now the 2 AF140s in the front are able to go at full 12 volts. Even with the fans on high nearly 100% of the time its still extremely quiet, thanks mostly to the case

With today's technology I often wonder why we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars. Then I go to Wal Mart for 5 minutes and realize the vast majority of the human populace isn't ready for such things.

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not much of an update as with the winter weather down here in Birmingham my 780 is delayed and stuck in Memphis. I slid off the road a few times on the way home from work (I got lucky and made it home although it took me 5.5 hours to go 29 miles as thousands ended up sleeping in their cars). I also just picked up a steelseries 7H refurb unit from newegg as I needed a mic and for 35 bucks I will try this headset with the 7.1 and see how I like it

With today's technology I often wonder why we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars. Then I go to Wal Mart for 5 minutes and realize the vast majority of the human populace isn't ready for such things.

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the GPU should be here tomorrow night as it has made it to Birmingham per UPS. I also ordered the 7H and a WD Blue 1Tb to finish out my storage for the build. Only thing left that I may or may not get is the other 8gb of ram, as I havent used more then 2 per my monitor (I installed the gadgets from windows 7 so I could monitor Ram usage, CPU usage and temps, and GPU usage and temps and per this 8Gb of ram is more than enough for me currently)

With today's technology I often wonder why we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars. Then I go to Wal Mart for 5 minutes and realize the vast majority of the human populace isn't ready for such things.

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Nice to see some updates :) hope that all your stuff makes it to you soon!

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Nice to see some updates :) hope that all your stuff makes it to you soon!

thanks! I'm glad stuff is en route, but also glad the winter weather crap is gone as well. as of right now the FX 9370 has not given 2 shits as to what I throw at it, but we will see if I can piss it off once I have the 780 in the system and not this dinky 7770

With today's technology I often wonder why we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars. Then I go to Wal Mart for 5 minutes and realize the vast majority of the human populace isn't ready for such things.

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UPDATE TIME:  :D

 

UPS delivered my GTX 780 and backplate during the WAN show. Here are the only pictures I took of it as I was really anxious to get it in and running

here is the backplate installed

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front shot of the 780

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another front shot of the 780

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in the system

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overall look at the system with the new card installed (btw it literally dwarfed the old 7770 that I had in there!)

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I have only installed the drivers and EVGA software and so far the only measuring tool I have is that the Tomb Raider benchmark ran at an average of 8FPS on the 7770 and 55 on the 780, so MASSIVE IMPROVEMENT!  :)

With today's technology I often wonder why we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars. Then I go to Wal Mart for 5 minutes and realize the vast majority of the human populace isn't ready for such things.

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Looking good, what sort of temperatures do you get on your 780?

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Looking good, what sort of temperatures do you get on your 780?

I'm using the GPU Boost 2.0 settings so the 780 at idle stays around 30 C but during games it normally is between 50-70 C as that's what it's designed to do (I'm still getting used to it being that hot, but everything else during gameplay stays well below 50 C

With today's technology I often wonder why we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars. Then I go to Wal Mart for 5 minutes and realize the vast majority of the human populace isn't ready for such things.

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just a quick update. I decided to get another AF140 for the top of the case as I kept having issues with heat pockets collecting in the top of the case where the sound-deadening fan blockoffs were. I also grabbed my final kit of RAM and have it installed and will take pictures of it once I get home from work. My 1tb HDD came in, but I am having some issues with it which I will fix tonight. Also my 7H came in and I must say I love this headset and the USB soundcard! All in all the build is now, once the extra HDD is in the case, completed. I will take plenty of pictures of the completed setup tonight and upload them. Thanks for everyone's input and comments as it made a substantial difference in some of the items I bought, like the PSU.

With today's technology I often wonder why we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars. Then I go to Wal Mart for 5 minutes and realize the vast majority of the human populace isn't ready for such things.

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just a quick update. I decided to get another AF140 for the top of the case as I kept having issues with heat pockets collecting in the top of the case where the sound-deadening fan blockoffs were. I also grabbed my final kit of RAM and have it installed and will take pictures of it once I get home from work. My 1tb HDD came in, but I am having some issues with it which I will fix tonight. Also my 7H came in and I must say I love this headset and the USB soundcard! All in all the build is now, once the extra HDD is in the case, completed. I will take plenty of pictures of the completed setup tonight and upload them. Thanks for everyone's input and comments as it made a substantial difference in some of the items I bought, like the PSU.

What sort of issues were you having with the HDD, and have you fixed them yet?

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What sort of issues were you having with the HDD, and have you fixed them yet?

It was an honest mistake on my part that I am trying to fix currently. I selected the blank drive in the BIOS when I was trying to make sure it was being seen and the BIOS booted with the new blank drive as partition 0. So now if I try to boot or do anything with the blank drive plugged in, I get boot loops or errors because it tries to force its way into the top spot of the pecking order where my boot SSD is. To solve this I ordered an external adapter and am going to plug the drive into my laptop to try and reformat the drive on a system that hasn't had this issue yet.

With today's technology I often wonder why we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars. Then I go to Wal Mart for 5 minutes and realize the vast majority of the human populace isn't ready for such things.

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glad to see everything went ok :)
how did the speed difference felt from your previous system to the new one?
You have now a extra H60, any plans on going NZXT G10?
You can still get a cheap mobo on Ebay for the Athlon X2, for maybe a steambox or Nas? 

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glad to see everything went ok :)

how did the speed difference felt from your previous system to the new one?

You have now a extra H60, any plans on going NZXT G10?

You can still get a cheap mobo on Ebay for the Athlon X2, for maybe a steambox or Nas? 

When the motherboard from the old PC bit the dust, it fried the CPU (I tested the CPU at work and it was DOA).

The speed was a drastic improvement as this computer doesn't behave like I am taxing it whatsoever no matter what I throw at it.

I don't really want to mess with the 780 as I love the look of the reference cooler in my system, but I may do something with a G10 at some point down the line.

With today's technology I often wonder why we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars. Then I go to Wal Mart for 5 minutes and realize the vast majority of the human populace isn't ready for such things.

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here are the last pictures of the rig and peripherals. The WD hard drive is completely done (took it to work and had my colleagues within my MIS department try and help me fix it to no avail (I will eventually get a drive to replace it and add another in the remaining 5.25 bay, but probably not until this summer or I run out of room on my current HDD.

here is a pic of the layout with all 4 ram slots populated

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view of the 780 backplate (looks awesome!)

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close-up of the GPU, H90, and ram

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another close-up with the 2 AF140s in the top for exhaust (which eliminated my odd heat cloud issue I previously discussed)

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another shot of the rad

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my nexus 7, nexus 4, logitech sub, and vizio headphones (vizios are only used to watch youtube videos and/or listen to music) along with my external HDD and the thing on top of the HDD is an IR receiver to grab my blood glucose readings (you can see my blood glucose monitor between my tablet and phone) and import them into a SQL table for review and trend analysis (I'm Type 1 diabetic and have been for 23 of my 25 years alive)

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picture of the Asus monitor, Z4 speakers, volume control, mouse, keyboard (Cherry MX Greens are heavenly) with my controller and usb 3.0 hub

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picture of my 7H's on a command hook (used only for gaming)

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random picture of my Linksys by CIsco 24-port gig switch (bought this for when I move into my new house to run cat6 to all rooms)

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another picture of the switch (only complaint about it is that the 2 little 40mm fans inside it are loud and annoying as hell)

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side profile of the PC itself (note the drawer above it is a dummy drawer that gets removed when I game to open up airflow

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front view of the PC

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With today's technology I often wonder why we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars. Then I go to Wal Mart for 5 minutes and realize the vast majority of the human populace isn't ready for such things.

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100_1502_zpscbd3c76d.jpg

 

close-up of the GPU, H90, and ram

 

100_1503_zps4a2ff050.jpg

 

I just want to mention that the fans on your H90 aren't designed for that, you need static pressure fans, I understand that there isn't a lot for 140mm but there are still Noctua's and NB's.

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I just want to mention that the fans on your H90 aren't designed for that, you need static pressure fans, I understand that there isn't a lot for 140mm but there are still Noctua's and NB's.

they haven't been a negative as of yet. I am still open to the idea of different fans for the rad but these work perfectly fine for now and I hate the noctua colors, if they would make black fans I would already own them

With today's technology I often wonder why we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars. Then I go to Wal Mart for 5 minutes and realize the vast majority of the human populace isn't ready for such things.

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well I thought I was done with my build, but not! I got bored and decided to see if the tubing was long enough for the H90 radiator to be mounted at the front of the case, and it is! So now that I have that sorted out (it is getting much cooler air not heated by the GPU now) I am breaking down tomorrow and buying some Noctua AF14 FLX fans to mount to it in the front of the case as well as a brand new WD Blue 1TB drive to finish out my storage. I am also grabbing a 5.25 to 3.5 HDD mount as I will add another drive at some point up there and I am ordering the SIlverstone Tek 24 pin extension as the stock shiny plastic mobo power cable is driving me nuts as its the only NON Tek sleeved cable visible. I will grab some photos once these items are in and show em to you.

With today's technology I often wonder why we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars. Then I go to Wal Mart for 5 minutes and realize the vast majority of the human populace isn't ready for such things.

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I realized no pictures were up of my rad mounted in the front, so here we go! (note the H90 had just enough slack to mount it here safely so that I can still tilt the front fan mount out to remove and clean the dust filter

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With today's technology I often wonder why we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars. Then I go to Wal Mart for 5 minutes and realize the vast majority of the human populace isn't ready for such things.

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this should be the very last update. The WD Blue came in and its now initialized and formatted. Also, the Noctua fans are installed and man are they ugly! I can't see them through the window so it's not a huge deal but geez these things are fugly. Anyway here are the pictures (notice that in the back where the rad used to be, I zip tied 2 AF140s together to block the chrome I/O that I could now see after relocating the rad (they are working fine like this with no extra noise, and actually a small bit of extra noticeable air movement)

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With today's technology I often wonder why we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars. Then I go to Wal Mart for 5 minutes and realize the vast majority of the human populace isn't ready for such things.

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Looks really good, a nice clean build, it looks like a lot of thought went into it.

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Looks really good, a nice clean build, it looks like a lot of thought went into it.

thanks! I took my time with it as I wanted it to look good when viewed through the window on the side panel, and as far as I am concerned I succeeded pretty well for not having to modify anything existing

With today's technology I often wonder why we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars. Then I go to Wal Mart for 5 minutes and realize the vast majority of the human populace isn't ready for such things.

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  • 1 month later...
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Haven't updated this in a while and I have made some big changes, and am planning some big changes in about a week.

1) I swapped my H90 to an H100....HUGE difference in CPU cooling and makes me much less worried about my CPU while gaming.

2) Will be ordering my 2nd 780 to put in SLI on April 15

 

3) purchased a 2nd Asus monitor about a month ago....I have been using 2 screens at work for years and finally got a second for my home PC.

I will post some pictures up once the new GPU comes in

With today's technology I often wonder why we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars. Then I go to Wal Mart for 5 minutes and realize the vast majority of the human populace isn't ready for such things.

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