My PC of Theseus (a running build/rebuild blog)

[Cracklingice]

I finally built myself an upgrade from the old Phenom x4 9750 computer I was using.  The build consists almost entirely of used parts with a few re-used parts and a SSD I bought new but had been using in the old rig. Parts and prices as follows

 

Case - PowerUp AK-27 Blue

PSU -   COOLER MASTER Real Power Pro RS-650-ACAA-A1 650W ATX that was also used in that build.

Mobo - I used a Dell Optiplex 790 mobo because it was only $18 shipped on eBay.  I was not thinking about all the proprietary connectors and additional items I'd have to purchase that would make this mobo with it's required parts as expensive as a normal $40 mobo.  I had to get the power switch, front panel I/O, case fan, and heatsink/fan from a Dell.

CPU - I got an i5-2400 from eBay for $51 shipped.

Ram - I got 4 2gb sticks of generic ddr3 from eBay for $20 shipped.

GPU - I reused the Radeon HD 6870 I got from craigslist for $40 and had been using in the old rig.

SSD - I got a 240gb Team Group L3 EVO from Newegg for $55 shipped that I had been using in the old rig.

HDD - I reused my old 2tb 5900 rpm drive

 

Here is a spoiler with some pictures and captions of where I came from and what I have now and a link to the full album that has a few extra pictures.

http://imgur.com/a/CoyLg

 

Spoiler

 

The donor case

Sadly the optical drive is IDE and the mobo doesn't support it, but I have a USB to IDE and conveniently have an external usb hub inside the case because of the front I/O panel I need to have plugged in so the mobo doesn't complain every time I turn the computer on.  The SD floppy combo sadly doesn't have windows 7 drivers or it has broken because when I plug it in I get an error.  Both were from the old build.

Pile of proprietary Dell parts I have to use because of the Dell mobo.  Seems the temp sensor wasn't needed because I only have one but the board is supposed to use two.  The case fan I got is from the SFF sized Optiplex 790 instead of the desktop version because it's the size fan my case has a spot for and again, if it's not plugged in the mobo will complain every time I turn on the computer.  I took apart the front I/O to learn the pin out and splice the front audio wires into the front panel of the case.  Since the case is so old it uses AC97 audio connector instead of HD audio connector it doesn't support the sense lines that turn the ports on when something is plugged in so I hot wired the ports to always be on.  I think if I did it again, I would have tested the headset plugged into the back ports first.  Cleaner look.  I also had to splice into the power button and wire in my switch.  I tried replacing the switch with my case switch but the mobo complained so I have both switches fully functional with the Dell one being zip tied to the inside of the case.  I also extended the wire on the case fan with some speaker wires so it could reach the side panel.

Yay the CPU finally arrived.  I removed my upgrades from the Gateway, gave it a thorough cleaning and returned it to stock condition.  I did make a mistake here though.  Perhaps you'll notice it in the picture.

First time I've socketed an LGA CPU.  Yeah, I got that far behind.  My last build was a socket 939 Athlon 64 X2 3800+.

CPU cooler installed (yes the fan is supposed to look like that) and test fitting the GPU.

Great.  Who the bleep puts the bleeping SATA ports where a GPU is supposed to go.  Going to need to buy cables as all mine are straight ones.  There's a company that makes a really nice short side exit low profile cable that would be perfect for this sort of situation, but they want 10 bucks each.  No thanks, some 4 dollar right angle and left angle ones will do fine even though I will lose use of my third port that I was going to plug that esata bracket into.  Couldn't find a blank plate, just that esata bracket so I figured why not.

Time to start playing with the spaghetti.  Definitely love my modular PSUs but they were so costly the last time I bought a PSU.  This one was $100 as it was.

Ok, the new sata cables came in, time to get the data off the old computer and onto the new one now that I can use both my ssd and mechanical.  I was using a right angle sata cable I borrowed out of my old Dell.

And it's all done.  I don't think I did that bad for the amount of spaghetti I had to wrangle.  I probably should zip the sata cable on the HDD to look a bit neater and get a blank out plate for the back so that esata cable isn't hanging around, but this case doesn't have a window anyway.

And she's living in her peasant home next to her peasant half cousin that gets turned on a few times a year at best.  This case sucks for front air flow it's all from the bottom so I have put a boxed roll of scotch tape under the front to lift it off the carpet so it can breathe.  I would like to move the computer up to the top of the desk or something now that it's a bit more worthy than the other machine, but it's easier to reach down there.  I would have to stand up to plug in a USB and also have constant fear of the computer being knocked off and falling a few feet.

 

 

[Mr.Meerkat]

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=306&cmp[]=793

 

Well that's a deffo worth upgrade in my opinion...look at the single core numbers!  

[Cracklingice]

This build was not about having something super powerful but about getting a more consistent experience.  The Phenom was a severe CPU bottleneck and would see me getting 3 to 5 fps on the lowest settings in world of warcraft when I'd do a world boss.  I now get 35 or so doing a world boss on setting 4 graphics.  It's just a make life a bit better until Ryzen comes in and shakes things up and perhaps I'll do a full on brand new build at that time if I can afford it.  This entire system including the parts I already had is valued around $250.  To do the core system upgrade (cpu/ram/mobo) set me back about 120.  Definitely worth the investment to me as I see being able to most likely resell the system for that much when I do get around to a new build.

[Cracklingice]

6 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=306&cmp[]=793

 

Well that's a deffo worth upgrade in my opinion...look at the single core numbers!  

Absolutely was.  A hundred twenty bucks for double the raw CPU speed, faster ram, PCIE v2.0 bandwidth instead of 1.0 and sata III bandwidth instead of sata II.  I'm also using the SSD as the boot device now where on the old machine I was just using it for the page file and multiple OS installs.

[Mr.Meerkat]

4 minutes ago, Cracklingice said:

-snip-

Too be fair, Intel at the time released first gen core i5s and let's just say they weren't that much better than the Phenom x4...

 

At least you can now enjoy raids and bosses again  

[r3d3mpt10n]

Nice build

 

I always like seeing things re-purposed and put to good use again

[Cracklingice]

So I found the invoice I thought I couldn't find for some reason.  The case is a PowerUp AK-27 Blue that I bought back in 2007.

[Cracklingice]

On 1/29/2017 at 5:42 PM, Mr.Meerkat said:

Too be fair, Intel at the time released first gen core i5s and let's just say they weren't that much better than the Phenom x4...

 

At least you can now enjoy raids and bosses again  

In a case of irony, I still haven't played wow aside from a few test bosses.  I just got mega burnt out on the grind.  Maybe I'll give it a shot in a bit. 
Mostly I've just been playing the 3 Mass Effects and Overwatch.  I do notice a bump in the minimums and less lag spikes with the new CPU in Overwatch so it was definitely worth the upgrade.

[Mr.Meerkat]

2 minutes ago, Cracklingice said:

In a case of irony, I still haven't played wow aside from a few test bosses.  I just got mega burnt out on the grind.  Maybe I'll give it a shot in a bit. 
Mostly I've just been playing the 3 Mass Effects and Overwatch.  I do notice a bump in the minimums and less lag spikes with the new CPU in Overwatch so it was definitely worth the upgrade.

Yeah, sandybridge the was the place where Intel started to pull away from AMD in perf... 

[Cracklingice]

Just now, Mr.Meerkat said:

Yeah, sandybridge the was the place where Intel started to pull away from AMD in perf... 

Yeah it's still very usable unless you're searching for high refresh or high resolution gaming.  A friend is gifting me his 2500k/z68/ram/gtx970 in a few weeks so I may even get more performance out of sandy in a bit.  I won't use the mobo/cpu until I get a new case/psu and AIO though.  It will probably be the parts I want to use in whatever my next build is.  https://pcpartpicker.com/list/PfxVHN

[Cracklingice]

Candid sneak peak.

[rodrosenberg]

On 4/1/2017 at 10:04 PM, Cracklingice said:

Candid sneak peak.

You can even find this automotive type wire cover in a few colors!

[Cracklingice]

4 minutes ago, rodrosenberg said:

You can even find this automotive type wire cover in a few colors!

I thought about using it in the color of the build, but decided to go with a more stealth look.  Once I get the final thing I'm waiting on then I'll update with more than just a candid sneak peak.

[Cracklingice]

Ok.  After trying to find the budget to buy a new PSU for almost 2 months now, my Windows install got borked and since I had to reinstall anyway, I dropped 5 bucks on a 6 to 8 pin adapter then chopped the zip ties on ole blue to remove the PSU.
Now up and running with an i5-2500 with max turbo OC to 4.7ghz.  Vcore currently peaks at 1.38 and I'm slowly working that down until I lose stability, then bump the offset back up a notch.  602CB
 

Pics hidden in a spoiler like last time so it's not a massive scroll fest for everyone.  As usual with my posts, click the large thumbnails for full resolution.

Spoiler

Got a Hyper 212 LED for 24.99 free shipping minus $5 MIR and a DIYPC Ranger R4 case for $35.98 free shipping minus $10 MIR.  

 

Had to remove the yucky molex connectors from the fans.  The case included 3.  2 LED 120's front and side and 1 120 red fan in the rear.  The side panel per specs should have had a 140 included though.

 

Cooler and ram dropped in mobo.

 

And into case.  Here's a rear shot.

 

Didn't like the rainbow front panel wires.

 

So I did this with them around the time of my last post.

 

The loom goes all the way to the top.

 

I then proceeded to go BDSM on the unused power cables.

 

Pass the 24 pin around the back, get the sata power and data cables sorted.  Unfortunately the 4 pin CPU cable is far too short to route around the back.  I have it routed underneath the GPU and around the CPU cooler.  Probably going to need to get or make an extension when I get a new PSU for this build to route it properly.

 

Time to bring the GPU to the party.  It's amazing how quickly even thoughtfully managed cables start to look like a plate of spaghetti.

 

A couple full shots side panels off.

 

Oh crap I forgot I need at least temporary optical for Windows install.

 

And time to put the side panel on.

 

It's got a red glow.  The Hyper 212 LED barely shows up aside from the light coming out of the sides of the fan (back of the LEDs).  Honestly a bit disappointed with the brightness.

 

[Cracklingice]

On 4/4/2017 at 2:06 PM, rodrosenberg said:

You can even find this automotive type wire cover in a few colors!

Hardly even notice the hidden rainbow front panel wires after putting everything in the case.  Maybe things will be cleaner when I finally get a semi modular PSU so I don't have all the unused wires tied to the bottom.

[Cracklingice]

About two weeks ago, I finally picked up a new power supply.  Now upgraded to a Seasonic M12II 620W PSU.

[Cracklingice]

It's hard to believe the amount of changes I have made with this system in the last two years.  I put a GTX 750Ti that I picked up for a steal in the blue computer and sold it.  I used that cash to pick up a 6800k and X99 Taichi motherboard.  I also got a 5.25 to hard drive cage and an 80mm red led fan to put in it.  Then an absolutely insane stroke of luck hit me and I won an RTX 2080 founders edition from a live stream with a 0.5% chance to win.  Well crap, now I have to upgrade my power supply again and unless I want to actually turn RTX on (lol), my 1080p60 monitor will be a massive bottleneck.  So I got myself a 850w Seasonic Focus Plus Gold PSU and an AOC AGON 24" 1440p144 Freesync / G-Sync Compatible monitor.  Holy crap, 1080p is hot garbage now.  I also got the machine off the floor and utilize both the new and old monitor by turning and facing the side of the desk instead of where they intend you to put a computer.  Oh and a friend gave me an EVGA Z10 with brown keys.  It still messes with me a lot when gaming but typing on this thing is so much better than the crappy old Dell keyboard I used to use.  Oh and most recent upgrade was me being absolutely tired of having only 16gb of RAM and Newegg had a sale on cheap Oloy 2x8GB kits for $45/ea so I got two of them for a total of 48gb of RAM.

 

Here's a teaser - the rest will be in the spoiler.  As with all my previous posts, click the large thumbnail for full res.

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And why not, a picture of Blue as I sold it.

 

[Cracklingice]

I have Theseus'd a bit more in/on to this case.  (Pictures in spoilers to reduce scroll length)

I upgraded my boot volume from the Patriot Ignite 480GB to a WD SN750 1TB.
 

Spoiler

 

I found a reason (adding 2 more NVMEs - Patriot VPN100 1TB) and funds to upgrade my i7-6800k to an i7-5960x for the two more cores and all 40 PCIE lanes instead of just 28.  The problem then became that my Hyper 212 simply wasn't going to cut it for the 8 core - not unless I gave up a pretty substantial amount of single thread performance (both Broadwell-E generations overclock to similar performance levels single threaded).  My cache overclock on that chip resulted in a relatively short life and I replaced it with it's Xeon equivalent about a year later.
 

Spoiler

I won an EVGA CLC280 in their live streams (rip EVGA) but didn't use it for well over a year because I was waiting for a case that fit it.  This cooler would handle the power quite well and I realized that the side 'window' on these older style cases are just held in by some folded metal tabs.  I unfolded the tabs and removed the plastic.  I mounted the cooler to the outside of the 280mm fan intake and wrapped the cold plate around thru the missing plastic window.  I found some stuff to fill in the empty hole where the rest of the window was.  This is a royal pain to service.  The fans that came with the cooler would not work for how I needed to mount the cooler so I used some red led corsair fans.  I later upgraded to push pull Arctic P14 fans.
 

Spoiler

1/2

[Cracklingice]

2/2

 

I got in on the Newegg shuffle almost every time they had EVGA 3080s and finally was drawn for a 3080 FTW3.  Unfortunately it was bundled with an 850W PSU that I didn't need.  I decided bundles roll downhill and sold my other GPU with it.  Installing this thing really pushed this case to it's limit.  Yet another thing that makes maintenance on this PC a royal pain.  This is around the time that I needed to replace the 6950x with the Xeon.  I also got an Optane P1600X 58GB that I use for system page file and a 256GB SSD to get a couple blockchain VMs off my HDD.
 

Spoiler

 

I was able to get a steal of a deal on eight 32GB RDIMMs so the PC now has it's maximum potential capacity, 256GB of memory.  I also shucked my two 8TB external drives to mount them in the case.
 

Spoiler

I also put together a little NAS using a really cool retro PC case my brother in law gave me, my nieces old i3 7100 / gtx 1050 setup and some 4TB drives my brother in law gave me.  Although since she had 8GB of memory, I put in two of my 8GB sticks for 16GB.  Of the eight 4TB drives, three of them were dead.  I should have figured as much since they came out of a network video recorder and they likely set it up as raid 6 and only replaced the drives after it stopped working because of the third failure.  A fourth drive failed after a few weeks of running - leaving me with no redundancy as I set the 5 drives up in RaidZ1.  I used one of the 8TB drives to copy the data off the NAS so I could set it up correctly instead of running a single VDEV.  It's now running two mirrored VDEVs.  I got another of the same from someone on marketplace for just 20 bucks and have it as a cold spare.  Then my brother in law gave me another 4TB drive, this time a Seagate Skyhawk instead of Seagate white label.  I don't want to be in a situation without a spare again so I guess I have two cold spares now.  I really want to swap the red LED fan in the side panel for a blue one so it can be blue for in (cold) and red for out (warm).
 

Spoiler

 

[Cracklingice]

Sadly, my EVGA Z10 keyboard stopped working.  I really liked that thing and it's impossible to get another at a reasonable price (they're like $180 used on ebay at time of post).  I really loved that display with the date and time right on the keyboard and also the windows key being on the right side of the board for WIN + L and WIN + . single hand.  Does anyone actually use windows key shortcuts on the left side of the board for anything?  Got a dirt cheap AOC mechanical board with outemu blue switches that was bundled with a mouse for $19.99.   I'm still using the wrist rest from the Z10 because it too was great, although it is a bit annoying without the magnets to hold it in place.  I also got a V1TECH "Sick Love" XL mouse pad with a gift card I won.  It's kinda nice to have a mouse mat for the first time in over a decade.  lol