[Build log] The Extrion - Always changing

[MoonlightSylv]

Planned upgrades:

Nothing specific as of right now.

The rest of the story:

This mid-high end PC all started from a piece of crap HP Slimline S5220y. No seriously I found it in a recycle pile, ordered 2GB of DDR2 (it had no RAM) and booted it up. It worked and later on I ordered the R7 240 (cringe), bought a Corsair CX 430 PSU, and ordered the Rosewill Ranger M case (which me and my dad modded to have a side panel window). I really didn't know what parts to buy did I? In all seriousness the R7 240 performed surprisingly well on my old 1280x1024 monitor I used at the time and the CX 430 was fine because it was a pretty low-end system. I lived with that for months and then on Christmas I got my Core i3-4170, the H97m Pro4 and 8GBs of Crucial Ballistix Sport memory, and I ordered the Corsair Spec-01 with my Christmas money. Then on my birthday I got my R9 380X Nitro, my 850 evo, an extra 8GB of RAM, and my Cryorig H7, I also got like $280 (I have like 50 cousins) which I'm going to use to buy the RX 480 and then save up for the i5. That's pretty much up to today.

Pictures: Take so long to upload because of my crappy 3mbps internet.

 

Today:

Earlier... yes I ran without a case at one point.

I call this "spaghetti" 

(as you can see my photography skills have vastly improved)

 

I'll update this every time I upgrade my rig (which is every time I can)

 

Edited August 5, 2016 by ShadowTechXTS

[MoonlightSylv]

I made a crappy banner because I can.

And I finally got a real monitor (Ignore the bad cable management, I haven't cleaned up yet)

[AHaskin14]

Love the cryorig cooler. It's a really sleek design. Nice job with the build.

[MoonlightSylv]

40 minutes ago, AHaskin14 said:

Love the cryorig cooler. It's a really sleek design. Nice job with the build.

Thanks

[MoonlightSylv]

The NZXT lighting strips have arrived!

[t24revl]

23 hours ago, ShadowTechXTS said:

The NZXT lighting strips have arrived!

Looking nice with the lighting strips!

[TheCamba]

On 6/6/2016 at 7:27 PM, ShadowTechXTS said:

The NZXT lighting strips have arrived!

Looking good!

[MoonlightSylv]

On 6/7/2016 at 6:33 PM, t24revl said:

Looking nice with the lighting strips!

 

2 hours ago, TheCamba said:

Looking good!

Thanks

[MoonlightSylv]

I'm going to try and order the ThermalTake Core V21 tonight, going to remove or paint the case badge.

[MoonlightSylv]

Major update #1

 

So the ThermalTake Core V21 arrived today and transferring builds was a lot more difficult than it should've been.

 

Why? The first thing that happened was a standoff from the last case was stuck to a screw on the motherboard, I got some pliers and unscrewed the screw and it wasn't that bad. The next thing that happened was when I took out the CPU to clean of the thermal paste it scraped against some of the pins (or so I thought) so I started to worry and I put on the cooler. I kinda rushed the PC build from that point (and ended up bending a USB 3.0 header pin) to make sure I didn't kill my motherboard and then I plugged it in and.... It didn't turn on... So I was worried and then I realized I had not plugged in the PCIe power connectors, I plugged them in and still no POST. Then I looked at the board and there was no RAM... So I put that in and it worked fine aside from a REALLY LOUD noise that I thought was coming from the hard drive, I was worried my hard drive was broken when I realized it was the front 200mm fan. I just so happened to have a 200mm Rosewill fan that I got from my cousin last summer, so I mounted that and ran with it. Until I realized I wanted to mount the motherboard vertically (which looks better imo) so I did that and I could not find a way to mount the front 200mm fan in a way where it wouldn't interfere with the front I/O so I ended up ghetto mounting it and it works great!

 

ThermalTake Core V21 Review

 

The ThermalTake Core V21 is the best mATX case (or case in general) I have ever worked with, cable management is easy with the Corsair Air series style "dual chamber" design, It is VERY mod-able, and air cooling in this case is amazing. Proof? Here.

For some context the GPU temp used to be 40c with %60 fan speed, now it's 35c and the fans aren't even on.

CPU used to be 40c now it's under 30c.

So yeah it's pretty cool (pun intended)

 

Picture of PC

[MoonlightSylv]

Also that case is a lot bigger in person.

[MoonlightSylv]

Going to be 3D printing a logo for my case soon.

[MoonlightSylv]

-Apparently Hackintosh machines aren't allowed on this forum, I stopped using it anyway-

 

Edited July 7, 2016 by ShadowTechXTS

[TheCamba]

11 hours ago, ShadowTechXTS said:

-Snip-

 

Thats fun to find out.   Gotta love it when a plan comes together.

[MoonlightSylv]

1 hour ago, TheCamba said:

 

Thats fun to find out.   Gotta love it when a plan comes together.

Yeah, I might get the 480 but I don't think I need it. Plus osx probably won't work with it for a while.

[TheCamba]

3 hours ago, ShadowTechXTS said:

Yeah, I might get the 480 but I don't think I need it. Plus osx probably won't work with it for a while.

Does AMD make device specific drivers?  I thought they made a universal.  However, I do understand that with a new card and the advancements it is making, Apple would be the last people to upgrade their driver set.  Would be fun to test.  What if you kept the 480 in there with your other card and designate the other to run in OSX - my bad - macOS and the 480 would run on the Windows side.

[MoonlightSylv]

31 minutes ago, TheCamba said:

Does AMD make device specific drivers?  I thought they made a universal.  However, I do understand that with a new card and the advancements it is making, Apple would be the last people to upgrade their driver set.  Would be fun to test.  What if you kept the 480 in there with your other card and designate the other to run in OSX - my bad - macOS and the 480 would run on the Windows side.

I might be able to do that with UNraid but I can't afford that.

[TheCamba]

Well, only way to test it is to stick it in and see if OSX will notice it.  Never hurts to try.

[MoonlightSylv]

 

[MoonlightSylv]

Flipped the motherboard layout and got a 3D printed case badge.

[MoonlightSylv]

To the one person following this, all posts will be continued here:

 

[TheCamba]

On 8/4/2016 at 9:41 PM, ShadowTechXTS said:

-snip-

Thanks for letting me know.