Beauty For Amateurs

[AlexisWiiu]

After many weeks of awaiting package deliveries and adding components here and there. My build is finally completed. The main thought about this case was to make beauty per buck. I'm a big fan of a black/white scheme, and therefore I've gone with what I could. This isn't directly a 'budget' build, but I did have limited funds due to me saving for college this spring. With that said, let's start with the past;

 

I moved on from my old build inside a Phantom 410 case.

 

 

Specs: i5-4690k(stock), Asus GTX 670, 8GB Kingston 1333Mhz, 1TB Seagate HDD, 240GB Kingston SSD, 64GB Corsair SSD, Corsair TX650M, MSI Z97 Gaming 3. (This is a picture I posted for the ad where I sold this old build for $500. It has an i5-2320 and is on an Asus Mobo. Hence also why the SSD and HDD ain't there.

 

Isn't it gorgeous??

 

It may not seem like it at first, but I do care a lot about aestethics. The build above was purely made from value components and used hardware I could find online back when I was in high school. 

 

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The parts for this build weren't that difficult to pick. Intel and Nvidia is still the masterrace for me, and the i5-4690k is something I already had. Now do bare in mind that I had to buy some new parts where I could have used old ones instead, but selling an unfinished build is not the easiest.

 

In my new puppy there is;

 

Intel Core i5-4690K (Cooled by a Corsair H75)

 

Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 970

 

MSI Z97 Gaming 3

 

2x8GB HyperX Fury Black(really wish I had gotten the white ones, but the black were on sale :c)

 

2x240GB Kingston SSDNow in RAID-0 (these suck, I wish I had read up on reviews before buying them, and I am considering selling them for around $100 each and getting another 500GB SSD)

 

500GB Samsung EVO 850

 

Corsair RM750W

 

NZXT H440

 

NZXT Grid+ Fan Controller

 

And here she is!

jk

 

This is just the assembly after getting the case, PSU, RAM and GPU in the mail. I figured out pretty fast that I hated the look of the Gigabyte G1, and decided to give it a new look.

 

After getting some paint over at our local car store me and my uncle(who's a mechanic) went painting(spoiler alert: we suk).

 

 

Took around 6 hours to do. Sand papered the parts down after removing the GPU from the cooler. Followed by a wash in some alcohol, and then 3-4 layers before we were happy with the color.

 

The new look of my GPU gave the build as a whole a positive lift(in my opinion).

 

 

But that's not enough!! So, I went over to moddiy.com and ordered some custom sleeved cables, a few sata cables and some lights(the SSD mounts in this case are pretty difficult to use if you don't have the right cables, I ended up having to bend the power connector to my SSD's in a 60 degree angle, which I'm sure wasn't healthy for the cables nor the SSD.

 

With that said, and 2 weeks later(such delivery, much wow) the cables arrived in the mail.

 

 

I'm really happy with the outcome. Still wish I could have gotten another mobo, or gotten rid of the red light near the bottom left.

 

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Onwards we go, how does she perform?

 

The overclock of both the CPU and GPU was relatively easy. Only 1.15V needed to keep the CPU stable at 4.5Ghz, and RAM at 2133Mhz. I usually push the GPU to 1520Mhz without any voltage to add.

 

The computer is powering a 3x24" monitor setup, all at 1080p, with the middle monitor being at 144Hz.

 

 

Here's a head to head comparison with the RAID-0 Kingston SSDNow on the left, and the Samsung 850 EVO on the right(I'm aware that due to the Samsung currently being empty, that may cause inaccuracies in my readings)

 

It topped a Cinebench R15 score of 641, just below the i7-3770

 

 

Sorry for the bad images, I wasn't really planning to do a build log, so they were images I found.

 

What do ya'll think?

[Pikkis]

That's one really beautiful PC. Good job!

[DudeWazap]

Looks great.

[arronleeds]

good clean aesthetics, can see you have taken your time on building this to perfection, 10/10 for that, i just dont like the h80i, i think its over priced for what it is but hey ho its your build the lighting really does give it justice and makes it look really good.

 

ps- good job on the paint, i thought it was a hof for a second.

[AlexisWiiu]

good clean aesthetics, can see you have taken your time on building this to perfection, 10/10 for that, i just dont like the h80i, i think its over priced for what it is but hey ho its your build the lighting really does give it justice and makes it look really good.

 

ps- good job on the paint, i thought it was a hof for a second.

 

It's a H75, don't really know if that makes much of a difference

 

Thanks

[arronleeds]

It's a H75, don't really know if that makes much of a difference

 

Thanks

sorry my bad not much difference.