Skylake i5 + GTX 970 -- My First Ever Build

[brighteyes890]

I had been thinking about building my own purely gaming PC for sometime, having made use of an Alienware 13 for sometime (which worked surprisingly well). I started to binge watch LTT in the preparation for this build, and after a month or so of shopping around I settled on the following parts. If I was to build again, then I would have probably chosen differently.

 

Parts:

 

CPU: Intel Core i5 6500

CPU Cooler: Corsair H60 SE

Fans: 3x Corsair AF 120's + 1x SP 120 (from cooler) + 1x AF 140 (from case)

GPU: MSI GTX 970

Motherboard: ASRock H170 Fatal1ty **

Memory: Corsair Vengeance 2x4gb DDR4 2133

SSD: Samsung 850 EVO 250gb
HD: Western Digital Blue 1TB

PSU: Corsair AX760

Case: Corsair 450D

 

Firstly, yes there is lots of Corsair. I know it works, I know it fits, I like how it looks. Secondly I CANNOT RECOMMEND THE ASRock H170 Fatal1ty motherboard. It works perfectly fine, looks good, feels solid and is built to a high quality. But it has an utterly appalling layout. And I should have gone with a Z170 chipset but oh well. That being said - here is the final build. I will go over the log in a sec!

 

 

 

Full Build Album: http://imgur.com/a/xM2LL

I suggest checking out the imgur album, the image quality is much better and there a plenty more images there!

 

The build itself was pretty straight forward, took me about a day or so. The two biggest time sinks were fan placement and rear cable management. I opted to use some red sleeved extension cables and this added a lot of bulk to the total amount of cables I had to manage in the back of the case. The 450D, whilst lovely to work on, could use some more room on the other side of the back plate. The hardest thing to manage in this build was the placement of the motherboard fan headers. There were too few and they were positioned oddly. It made it very hard to mount top fans due to there being no fan headers on the top of the motherboard. The motherboard is also slightly skinnier than standard ATX boards and so this meant that the (few) side headers towards the front of the case were a bit of a stretch for the fan cables and I had to be creative with how I managed this. Most of the fan headers are located at the bottom left of the motherboard.

 

I managed to mount two AF120's on the front as intakes, one AF120 in the rear as an exhaust, one stock AF140 on the bottom as an intake and one stock SP120 on top of the top mounted radiator as an exhaust.

 

I felt like sharing, so there it is! If you want more information feel free to ask.

 

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[aPinata]

nice build satisfys my ocd

[ReesZRB]

Finally someone that does not recommend AsRock Boards

[brighteyes890]

1 minute ago, aPinata said:

nice build satisfys my ocd

I really wanted to use the WD Red for obvious reasons, but that would not have been a good idea! Glad you like it.

[wyattzx]

Gorgeous build, mate! Very nice job!

[brighteyes890]

1 minute ago, ReesZRB said:

Finally someone that does not recommend AsRock Boards

To be fair, I did say the quality of the motherboard was high but bloody hell it was a bastard to use because of it's size and layout. Use another board if you aren't an experienced builder, I struggled a bit.

[aPinata]

2 minutes ago, brighteyes890 said:

I really wanted to use the WD Red for obvious reasons, but that would not have been a good idea! Glad you like it.

if you have like $30-40 maybe a little less see if you can pick up an ek backplate for that baby either red or black

[brighteyes890]

1 minute ago, NonaHexa said:

Gorgeous build, mate! Very nice job!

Thanks! I am very happy with the outcome considering I have never built a computer before. The rear cable management was a nightmare but it turned out alright I guess.

[brighteyes890]

Just now, aPinata said:

if you have like $30-40 maybe a little less see if you can pick up an ek backplate for that baby either red or black

Fantastic! I will for sure look into that. Thanks buddy.

[aPinata]

2 minutes ago, brighteyes890 said:

Fantastic! I will for sure look into that. Thanks buddy.

no problem man  again great build

[Enderman]

Great job, very nice colour matching

[brighteyes890]

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Great job, very nice colour matching

Thanks! I really wanted to get a theme going but I don't like LED builds much. The case is pretty understated and I wanted to come out with a clean and organised look! Since that might have been a bit 'boring' I added a little flair with the colour. Just enough excitement for me

[ReesZRB]

13 minutes ago, brighteyes890 said:

To be fair, I did say the quality of the motherboard was high but bloody hell it was a bastard to use because of it's size and layout. Use another board if you aren't an experienced builder, I struggled a bit.

Problem. 2 AsRock's Audio Chips died on me. Now I'm on Gigabyte and works like a charm

[brighteyes890]

1 minute ago, ReesZRB said:

Problem. 2 AsRock's Audio Chips died on me. Now I'm on Gigabyte and works like a charm

Fingers crossed she lasts a little longer but I will see how it goes. It's not the end of the world if I have to get a new motherboard!