Smokey's Fragbox Rebuild + Tech Loadout

[Save|Smokey]

As a consumer I pride myself on my ability to not only choose hardware that fits my needs but are also among the best price to performance options.

 

Here's all the products I committed to in 2017 that I chose based on my technical knowledge and advice from LTT starting PC build

 

-The Fragbox 3.0-

 

Ryzen 7 1700 - $329.99 newegg

ASRock x370 Fatal1ty - $163.49 newegg

32GB 3200Mhz G.skill Trident Z DDR4 Ram - $199.98 newegg

MSI Founder's Edition GTX 1080 - actually not from 2017, got it on pre-order at launch! - $718.54 5/31/2016 newegg

512Gb Samsung Evo 960 NVMe SSD - $279.99 newegg

Computer Upgrade King Continuum Case - $98.99 amazon

Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4 cpu cooler - $64.95 newegg

Gelid GC-Extreme thermal compound - $12.99 newegg

 

LG-43UD 42" 4K Monitor - $700 amazon black friday

Zalman K900M Mech. Keyboard - $49.99 newegg black friday

Steelseries Rival 900 Mouse - $73.00 amazon

Custom print Qck+ Mousepad - $24.00 steelseries

Sennheiser GSP 350 Gaming Headset - $139.95 newegg

 

And I'm still using my Antec 1200w psu I've had for years from newegg.

 

 

Some notes about this build that I don't see mentioned often enough on LTT ect.

 

The Ryzen 7 1700 comes out of the box ready to overclock to 4ghz with little effort on a good cooler. My personal benchmarks often beat out 1800x systems but the 1700 seems to get little attention. I do like to play in 4k as opposed to high refresh rate (until 120hz 4k in 2018 fingers crossed for a good that can run that). I also stream fairly often and the powerful ryzen cores have no issues downsampling 4k to 1080p and streaming 60fps with medium preset as long as I use process lasso to keep it away from my gaming threads. So there's realistically no reason for me to have a hotter, higher power draw Intel processor at this price point which I feel many people might agree with. I'd say combined with the comparable price of an Asus zXXX-A prime board on an itel rig the ryzen 7 + 8 phase power on the ASRock board I have really makes it one of the best values in the higher end market. 

 

 

 

Another thing is the CUK (lol) Continuum case was only $100 but it's soo sick. Love it to pieces. Great infinity mirror and room for water cooling support. The included bracket for gpu looks like it can be repurposed for vertical. Gonna give it a try when my spacer arrives

 

LOOOOVE the 42 inch 4k 'udi' tho. Literally like I'm cheating in csgo/pubg. If you haven't tried large format PC gaming on a desk it's utterly insane. Love it.

 

 

Portables: 

 

What I'm probably even more hype about are these other devices I've purchased. I've gone deep on the Chinese brands this year.

 

 

Huawei Mate 10 Pro - $780 ebay  / Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 - $570 swappa

 

The Huawei mate 10 pro is a gem and definitely my phone of choice! Though after trying the xiaomi mix 2 I have to say MIUI is awesome too! - $780 ebay

 

Currently trying to sell the xiaomi mi mix 2, apparently waterproofing anxiety is real.

 

(needs a more in depth review)

 

 

Coding/Work Laptop

 

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro i7 16gb/256gb - $1100 gearbest

 

also had a 8th gen i7 razer blade stealth for a little bit, which was great except for the 2 hour battery life =[ returned.

 

Another big and proud purchase was a 15 inch work computer. I'm a web developer and I was surprised to find my surface book was slowing down a bit on bigger projects, so I thought maybe a surface book 2 would be a good purchase or a razer blade stealth. Well I was wrong about both. The xiaomi mi notebook pro that was reviewed here is THE choice imo for a ~1k business machine. I ended up purchasing the i7 model which gets closer to 7 hours battery but the extra ram is totally worth it.

 

This mi notebook pro also features something that I think wasn't highlighted enough, and that it's mobile graphics chip is, as far as I know, the most performant mobile gpu that can run entirely off of battery. My max-q gaming laptop by contrast can't even handle cuphead on battery alone, where the mx150 in the mi notebook pro can push 60+ in many games. Totally amazing value.

 

 

 

Gaming Laptop

 

Sager Notebook NP8952 - $1699 base sagernotebook.com

 

As soon as the max-q technology hit the market, I knew it was time to upgrade my dual gt650m lenovo y510p in favor of this breakthrough. While the name brand offerings are nothing to laugh about, this sager max-q 1070 model with 4k display came in at only $1800 with financing and I am truly blown away at the amount of performance delivered by this machine at this price.. A 120hz 1080p display is the only config left out which may immediately write this off for people, but the 4k option looks absolutely stunning even when running in 1080p for certain titles, so I'm actually really happy with the decision here. Not to mention I've seen basically every other max-q laptop at a higher price point where this laptop by sager does better in basically every area for cheaper. Astounding. The only notable comparison IMO is the msi gs63vr stealth pro, which comes in at around the same weight but is more pricy and has FHD display only. Weak.

 

 

2 in 1 Portable do-it-all organizer and entertainment

 

Huawei Matebook E - $709 Amazon

 

To round out my full tech stack, my final purchase was the Huawei matebook E. After much deliberation I realized my surface book just isn't the companion computer I needed. So I've traded it in for the matebook E and well I can't be happier. Purchasing as like new for $700 on Amazon , this tablet performs on par with the surface book in a much thinner and lighter body. It also packs itself into a frame that's hardly bigger than a 10.6inch tablet while having a 12" display. Absolutely great to use with or without keyboard. I'll never be without a way to be productive.

 

I just can't stress how much this device impressed me though. I was really looking for something that doesn't quite exist yet: a windows tablet that can ACTUALLY be used NICELY as a tablet, and has power to back it up. 10.6" tablets are the form factor that works, at least with my hands, with 12" (at the moment) being a bit too big and awkward. Can't get those thumbs to the center of the screen. And you do take some tradeoffs in terms of IO, only headphone jack and usb-c... but in a way that's actually a good thing. I won't be trying to use this device like a computer and the device encourages me to treat it like that. It wants me to use it as a tablet wherever I go, it wants me to use it to keep all my notes and important info in there, it wants me to connect its display wirelessly, it wants me to actually change the way I approach organization and productivity. They basically fit a qhd screen in a 10.6" tablet's body and gave it desktop specs. This thing never slows down and while it doesn't get thunderbolt support for eGPU, again I think it's actually trying to do this on purpose. I know that before I thought about using a tablet like this to focus all the crap going on around me that gets lost in the void of my phone or gaming pc, I would often forget many things and never really felt comfortable. Now I have my mate. 

 

Router

 

I also needed a new router, upgrading from a wireless N Asus n66u to the very impressive TP-Link Archer C5400 for $199.99 on Amazon. Amazing performance for the price. QoS works great with my server and gaming. 

 

 

And that's it for my 2017 hardware commitments. Do you think I could have done better? Let me know in the comments.

 

I also have a quad core xeon server with 12tb of storage which hosts Plex and game servers for Conan exiles, 7 days to die, Minecraft, and Counter Strike GO. But that's getting a bit old, I'll use the ryzen for it I'm sure when I upgrade next!