Evolution of my build [Pic heavy]

[yannickverc]

Hello guys.
On January 2nd 2013, exactly 3 years ago, my parents bought me my first gaming PC. Over the past 3 years the evolution of said PC has been quite impressive, even if I say to myself. 
So this very picture heavy thread will guide you through the 3 year journey my PC has taken with me. The ups and some serious downs. (I will later put this thread in my signature as well)
 
So here goes!
 
I sadly do not have a picture anymore of how my first gaming setup looked like I swear I took a picture and posted it on Facebook but I can't find it anymore
It was my dad's old desk with 1 monitor (a Samsung S22B350H, You'll see the monitor in the next picture) and an Acer Predator G5910) Rough specs of that PC: AMD HD 7770, i5 2500K. 
 
Not that long after I wanted a second monitor. Someone from my mom's work gave one to me. It wasn't a top notch monitor but I was happy with it. The joy of having more than 1 monitor is something you'll never get used to. (Ignore the bottle of Jupiler It was International Beer Day and as a Belgian you gotta celebrate that!)

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Few weeks after using this very, very old monitor it literally burned. Smoke came out and I panicked quite hard thinking it was my PC. (As you can see on the following picture my PC is straight under where the old monitor used to be.) So I bought a BenQ monitor and thus I had a nice 2 monitor setup! (You can see the Acer Predator in the bottom left of the pic here)

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I'm not sure but I think by the time I had my BenQ monitor I had also upgraded my 7770 to a 7870 black boost edition. It broke down after a few weeks so I got a refund and bought myself a nice AMD R9 290 BF4 edition. (I was playing BF4 about 10-12 hours a day during the weekends back then)

 

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Everything worked fine, I had a sweet GPU. So what could I possible upgrade? Yes, it was time for a new case! I got rid of the Predator case and bought a Zalman Z11+.

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The PC itself looked way better now. Some time went by and it started itching. I wanted to upgrade. I wanted a real unique PC. One that would make people go "Wooooow". So I got a 3rd monitor, a new case and an SSD. Now back in the days I was a huge Razer fan. So I made a Razer themed PC. (I even won a contest with my RazerPC and won a unique Razer emblem with it. Only 30 of those in Europe.)

3 monitor setup: (As you can see, literally EVERYTHING was Razer )

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The "famous" RazerPC: (Complete with green LED's, green/black H440, custom green power cables, green fans)

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But then.. My GPU broke. It was still under warranty so I sent it back to the German store I bought it from. (Not sure if I can say the name of said store but the support was HORRIBLE. PM me if you want to know the name of the store.)

It broke end of may 2014, a week before my exams. So I wasn't too sad about it, good results yaay! But time kept going by. I reached out to them and they said they sent it back to Gigabyte. Well ok then, as long as it gets fixed.. 5 weeks later I got it back. (5 WEEKS!!!!) But hey it worked, NP. Below a picture of the fragmenting my GPU had.

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Fast forward little over a month. AGAIN the blue fragmenting. Now I had enough of it. I didn't want to sit through 5 weeks of being GPU-less to receive a GPU that would break again after a month anyway.. So I went ham on the German store's support, bullying them on every front and they gave me a full refund. With that money I switched from TeamRed to TeamGreen. Welcome EVGA 780ti !

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At this point in time I was still rocking my i5 2500K. I absolutely loved the CPU. I had an epic chip and it would go up to 4.8 and 4.9 with ease. It was incredible how good of a chip I had. But I'm a p big hardware fan so I wanted to at least have an i7. So I upgraded my mobo/cpu and cpu-cooler!

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About halfway 2015 I started looking at some monitors and found out about these beautiful things called ultrawide monitors! I HAD to get one. So I did! I didn't get a 1440P one since the price of those was pretty high here in Belgium. So I got a 2560x1080P one. (Which I'm still so happy with, you can't imagine how nice the supported games look.

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This is how the inside of my rig currently looks like:

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The last "upgrade" I got was just a few hours ago. My chair was breaking down so I got that Ikea Markus chair a lot of people seem to enjoy. And I gotta say, it's not a bad chair!

 

OK, This is quite a big upgrade. I ordered parts for a custom waterloop. I think I might have said this above, but my dream-build was a black/white themed custom water loop cooled system. I started looking for parts (also a cheeky GPU upgrade) but I realised that would cost a bit too much  (Was around 2.000€ for that upgrade)

So I let the white/black theme rest and kept going with my green/black. (Also no GPU upgrade, gonna wait till pascal is out) And here is the result!

 

The parts from EK water blocks:

EK supremacy EVO green, Acetal+nickel GPU block and backplate, green tubes, EK xres 100 DDC pump/res combo, 3x120mm radiator with BeQuiet! silent wings 2 installed on it.

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The result:

Ok it's finally done. Buying/installing the water loop has been 4 hassles and a half... I'll try to keep it short.

So I ordered everything from EK waterblocks. Few days later everything arrived, I was hyped AF. Started building right away. CPU & GPU block were installed, so it was time for the pump/res. (It's a combo unit) On the product page it showed you could install it in a 120mm fan spot, with a special bracket. I turned the box inside-out 7 times, couldn't find the bracket....... Turns out you had to buy it separately... Well, Ordered it with express shipping and luckily it arrived 2 days after. In the meantime I prepped my rad by installing and removing it 3 times. (I didn't plan ahead properly so I had to start over a lot of times)

Bracket arrived, finished up the tubing, filled the loop and leak-tested it. NO leaks hurray \o/ Hooked everything up and, wonder o wonder, booted right away, no problems! 

So here is the result

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Sadly the loop didn't perform as I had hoped it would  On top of that the pump was defective.. double RIP. So I refunded the parts and got me 2 Kraken x61's! Installed one on my GPU with the Kraken G10 bracket. (Neat stuff from NZXT!)

The result isn't as epic as a custom water loop but holy moly temps are incredible. (Rocket league max settings, 2580x1080, 100FPS cap at 37°C max haha)

Pic:

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Thanks for scrolling through the whole adventure

[comefightme]

Its so nice to be rich

[yannickverc]

Its so nice to be rich

I'm not really rich. I started doing student jobs from when I was 15. Most of my money went to my PC  

[Alphinon]

Thanks for documenting- looks great now, keep up the good work!

[yannickverc]

Thanks for documenting- looks great now, keep up the good work!

Thanks! Depending how this year goes in terms of work I'll be doing a big upgrade. (Custom water loop and new color theme)

[Charcoal_]

Nice. Bet you had a scare with that smoking monitor!

[0ld_Chicken]

nice! thanks for sharing man.  I had a pretty similar experience, except mine took 10 months and I added a custom loop     severly over budget

[yannickverc]

Nice. Bet you had a scare with that smoking monitor!

Yea I yanked out (is this even english?) the plugs of my computer. Start shaking again when I think back at it haha  

 

nice! thanks for sharing man.  I had a pretty similar experience, except mine took 10 months and I added a custom loop     severly over budget

Custom loop is the current dream. Might throw in a 980ti upgrade in there as well. (Or whatever new GPU nvidia releases)

[Alphinon]

Thanks! Depending how this year goes in terms of work I'll be doing a big upgrade. (Custom water loop and new color theme)

Make sure you document that one as well- I love it so far!

[yannickverc]

Make sure you document that one as well- I love it so far!

Will do! I can keep editing this post.

[SeanAngelo]

looking good!

[Sam Harradine]

You went full razer. Never go full razer

[Najuno]

You went full razer. Never go full razer

What a stupid comment... are you just collecting posts?

 

The whole build looks actually pretty nice.

[Sam Harradine]

What a stupid comment... are you just collecting posts?

The whole build looks actually pretty nice.

calm it. I never said it was shit. It is quite nice. Personally would have kept the aio. But the black heat sink isn't bad. I just don't like razer stickers

[yannickverc]

What a stupid comment... are you just collecting posts?

 

The whole build looks actually pretty nice.

 

calm it. I never said it was shit. It is quite nice. Personally would have kept the aio. But the black heat sink isn't bad. I just don't like razer stickers

Yea, I was a huge Razer fanboy back then. I now realized that quality >>> brand. The stickers are still there because I'm too lazy to remove them. Probably next time when I blow out my PC

[Sam Harradine]

I know how that feels. I like they're mice though

[yannickverc]

I know how that feels. I like they're mice though

Yea, for a mouse I'd always go with Razer. Keyboard I'll probably get a corsair one next time

[Sam Harradine]

I've had the lycosa, blackwidow, naga, 2014 naga, deathadder and now I've got the corsair strafe. I've liked all of them tbh

[yannickverc]

Update 1 added, adding a second one in the next few days.  

[Cloud9 | Åwpii]

Zien er fantastisch uit!

[colinreay]

Good stuff, enjoyed reading through it!

[yannickverc]

Final update added!

[yannickverc]

Sadly had to ditch my loop, hopefully final update now !