2016 Gaming Rig

[bsodmike]

Hi all,

 

It has been many years since I last had a PC.  I've had 286, 386DX, to Pentium I, II  even Pentium III with ground breaking MMX back in my day.

As memory serves my last PC ran an Athlon 64, and I even owned one of the very first 3dfx Voodoo, then Voodoo 3 to later GeForce cards.

 

I live in Sri Lanka and it is hard to come by quality components, so I've been ordering all these bits from B&H NYC.

 

Anyways, my 2016 build comprises of these components and I go into detail about my selection choices in a YouTube video:

 

 

 

[bsodmike]

Started off with the PSU install:

 

 

I ended up taking the front panel off, so as to remove the caddy holding the 5.24" devices, which I currently have no plans for.

 

 

It didn't take too long to get the radiator installed, and I left the CPU block (AIO cooler) wrapped up to prevent any scratching of the copper side; it came with some goop applied, but before I did the install I removed that and used some nano compound. I normally use Arctic Silver, but tried something different for this build.

 

 

I failed to take snaps of installing the M.2 NVMe Samsung 950 Pro 256GB drive into a recessed slot in the mainboard, although this was documented in video. Here's a close up of the Intel i7 6850K in all its glory...

 

 

 

 

 

POST for the very first time!
 

 

Video of the live build:

 

[bsodmike]

Since the initial build, I've added a second pair of Ballistix RAM to run as Quad-channel and I've posted basic XMP OC results

I haven't even bothered to OC the 1080 card and will run it at this setting for the time being to see how I get on with thermals etc.

 

Mistakes I've made

 

Well, I made one mistake by choosing the Sabertooth TUF X99 given how old the board is (even though new of of the box) - I plan to order an ASUS Republic of Gamers Strix X99 Gaming LGA 2011-v3 ATX Motherboard or a ASUS X99-DELUXE II LGA 2011-v3 ATX Motherboard - I'm leaning towards the Strix though.

 

I will then move the Sabertooth TUF board into another build for a basic home 'server' box, which will run headless.

[bsodmike]

Quick update, the monitor arrived!

 

 

 

 

Got it OC'd to 100Hz with my 5K iMac connecting over HDMI. The GTX 1080 over Display Port.

[smartone29]

Very nice! How do you like the UltraWide aspect ratio?

[bsodmike]

On 9/16/2016 at 0:33 AM, smartone29 said:

Very nice! How do you like the UltraWide aspect ratio?

Pretty awesome, as long as you find a good title that supports it.  My favourite right now is the new Tomb Raider game.

 

Here's a recording of my Twitch stream played at Ultra-high settings - If you'd like to add me on Twitch, https://www.twitch.tv/bsodmike