Personal Rig (best name ever)

[Mateyyy]

Hey guys.

This is my personal rig, here I'll be posting updates with everything that I'll be doing.

 

Here's my rig  (nothing special).

 

I'm using, for my case, the Fractal Design Arc Mini R2.

It's a solid case, but I think that they have some things to improve, in the future R3 version (if it will be released).

There isn't too much space for cable management, so my side panel isn't closed properly, the rubber grommets could be a little higher quality, the CPU cutout could be a little bit bigger, etc.

 

For my CPU, I've got an Intel Core i5 4670K, cooled by a be quiet Dark Rock 3.

 

My motherboard is a TUF series Asus Gryphon Z87. I'm planning to upgrade it and use it for something else, I'm going to talk about what I'm planning to upgrade at the end of this post.

Overall, it's a great board. It looks pretty good, it's very stable, the Ai Suite application runs nicely and shows you temperatures of your CPU, VRM, and even the PCI-E slots, Motherboard, etc. 

Fan control in Ai Suite is also very easy and a very cool feature.

 

I have 8GB of Corsair Vengeance LP black memory. I needed some low-profile memory because I'm using air cooling for my CPU. No complaints, lifetime warranty, stable.

 

For storage, I have a 250GB Samsung 840 Evo SSD, and a 2TB Western Digital Caviar Green.

The 840 Evo is a great SSD, I had some performance problems in the past, but now it's working perfectly fine. It's one of the best consumer-grade SSDs on the market right now.

The WD Green hard drive is a bit of a mixed story. What I like about it, is that it is silent and consumes a small amount of power (but more likely you're not going to even notice the power difference). So that's good, but the problem, is that with some games, you are going to get lag spikes because of it. It's a 5400RPM drive.

 

My graphics card is an Asus Radeon R9 290 DirectCU II OC. For the price, it's an amazing card. I mean, it's not cheap, but when I got it and in my country, it is about 200$ cheaper than the GTX 780 and it has very similar performance and 1GB more memory. Now, I did have some problems with this card. Because of some memory issues (I have Elpida memory), quite rarely, when you are in a game, it will crash and you will get ugly and scary artifacts all over the screen, and you have to restart your computer. Fortunately, there is a very easy fix for it, that won't hurt your performance. In MSI Afterburner, Asus GPU Tweak or whatever you are using, you have to take the Memory Clock from 1260MHz, to around 1200MHz. Since I did that, I didn't have any more problems. But it does have quite a bit of coil whine sometimes.

 

My power supply is a be quiet Pure Power L8 630W CM. It's a good power supply, but it's not that great. It's 80 Plus Bronze, it has 630W, it's semi-modular, and it has crappy sleeving. I don't think that it's a very good value, for the money, but it works fine.

And if you're thinking: "What could be so bad about sleeving?", well, here's a picture of my rig.

(it looks bad because I took the photo with the flash)

Ugh...

 

Fans... Probably you have noticed, I only have one fan in the front as an intake. Normally, the case comes with 3 fans, but I gave 2 fans to my dad for a work PC. The included fans with the case are very good. They go to 5V without any problems, they're very quiet and they have high-quality sleeving, even though they have colored wires. I'm planning to get some Corsair AF fans, and paint the rings gold-yellow, for what I'm going to buy in the future.

 

I have an optical drive, it's just an old Asus DVD reader and writer. I have it in there because I don't have an external DVD drive, and I like to play some old games that I have on CDs or DVDs.

 

 

I know that it's nothing special, but I think that the final version is going to be great! Here's what I'm planning to upgrade:

 

Case: Corsair Air 540

Motherboard: MSI MPOWER Z97

Power Supply: Corsair RM850 with 8pin and 24pin Bitfenix gold and black extensions

Another Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB (just for games)

Fans: Corsair AF fans (going to paint the rings yellow)

 

If you have any questions, leave a comment here 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've written quite a story here...

[BonBon Scott]

Looks like a pretty nice build, and some good plans for upgrades.

 

Also, I've heard the DCUII cooler on the AMD cards is pretty bad, how have you found it to be?

[Manny Calavera]

you could just throw in rgb or one color led and oversaturate color so everything looks same

[Mateyyy]

you could just throw in rgb or one color led and oversaturate color so everything looks same

That could be something too  . What RGB LED strips do you know? I don't really know any...

[PassionFruit]

Well that is a nice build.

 

If you buy the Corsair power supply you won't have the problem with the side panel so definitely go with that first.

[Manny Calavera]

That could be something too  . What RGB LED strips do you know? I don't really know any...

take alook

http://computersandcircuits.com/nzxt_hue_review#.U8FZqJSSyNc

[Mateyyy]

take alook

http://computersandcircuits.com/nzxt_hue_review#.U8FZqJSSyNc

Thank you very much! I hope I can find that in Romania 

[Mateyyy]

Looks like a pretty nice build, and some good plans for upgrades.

 

Also, I've heard the DCUII cooler on the AMD cards is pretty bad, how have you found it to be?

Currently, in games like Battlefield 4, my 290 runs at about 85C, which is about 10C higher than what Asus is saying on the box (20 degrees cooler than stock).

At least, it's quite quiet. I'm very interested to see how it will perform in the future in the Air 540...