100th client build

[ImNotThere]

I see these on here so often and i always consider doing one for a client build but never do it, however this is my 100th client build so i figured why not do one!

 

to start with the client isnt my normal student who needs a workstation/gaming pc or an adult who just wants a pc for web browsing; these clients, yes plural, are parents to a nearly 16 year old boy who wants a pc for his birthday, he currently games on a laptop with an old apu in it with 4gb ram and no ssd, i have been told that this is "painful" for their boy, i can sympathise with them on this note.

 

his "gaming list" comprises almost entirely of triple A games with a couple less demanding games like Civ 6, skyrim and the likes of emulation, he wants to game at widescreen 1440p which is close in pixel density to that of 4k which is going to need an impressive system.

 

they tasked me with making the whole tower for under £2700; to say i was a little shocked was an understatement as if that was the kind of present I got onmy 16th, I would be over the moon, but I digress.

 

now for the part you're actually interested in, the parts:

i started by selecting a platform. I initially chose am4 with a 1600(potentially the 2600 if its out by the time I get to build it) however this was rejected due to bad experiences with FX cpus from the father, i took this and suggested a z370 system and they were keen, from here they were fine with al of my other choices. It is worth noting that RGB was a need of theirs.

 

so as stated, z370 was the platform of choice here, unfortunately the h370 boards are not yet out but will be swapped out if they are out when build time comes around, the cpu that will be socketed in is the 8700, at the moment here in the UK you can find the 8700k for around £300 however the 8700 non k goes for around £220, £80 for an extra 800 mhz? no thanks, also this has its perks, i can downgrade from a strix z370 board to the Prime z370-A also the cooling is cheaper!

 

That brings on the next part, the cooling! They requested a clean build, i personally feel as though air coolers are ugly, they can protest if they want and i will throw an air cooler in there but for now there is an AIO, specifically the EVGA clc120 as the block is clean, good looking and most importantly, has RGB; the 8700 abvoiusly runs a lot cooler than the k sku therefore only requires a fraction of the cooling, a 120mm aio is plenty enough to maintain high boosts up to the 4.2 ghz mark.

 

RAM is a tricky part, RGB RAM isn't cheap so i simply looked around until i found a 16gb kit of corsairs vengeance RGB with cas latency 15 and operating frequency of 3000mhz, this is the perfect kit unless they decide they want the trident-z rgb, but thats a hurdle i'll overcome if i need to.

 

Same deal as RAM, graphics cards are not cheap at the minute, it seems as though the UK hasn't been hit by the price rise as much as the US as we only had £50-£100 rise on 1080ti's but again, i digress. A 1080ti is almost a necessity for pushing 3440x1440 gaming due to the aforementioned issue of near 4k pixel density. The most reasonably priced 1080ti in my eyes is the EVGA superclocked card at £820, this might be a lot however the lowest priced ones i could see were the zotac cards and the asus turbo card which i tend to avoid due to either bad rep or in the mini cards case, will look out of place in an atx case.

 

The case is so subjective that I simply couldn't decide on a case for them, i instead sent images of a few cases and asked which would be preffered, the cases i presented were the NZXT s340 elite, the inwin 303, fractal design meshify c and the define r6, these cases to me represent a large difference in types of case ranging from the very basic s340 elite to the out there looking inwin 303, in my mind i was hoping they wouldn't pick the 303 due to the annoyance i have had with that case and how awkward a 120mm rad would look in it. Gladly they chose the meshify C, a solid pick imo combines functionality with looks.

 

The power supply i am going with is an rm650x, only because there is a deal atm to get the rm650x for the same price as an equal quality 500w power supply so it was a no brainer for me, if not a little overkill.

 

The last part of this build is the monitor, I will always stand by the  AOC - AG352UCG which is a 100hz 3440x1440 4ms VA monitor which supports g-sync and is 35 inches, in otherwords,  HUGE improvement over the 60 hz 768p laptop screen, this is still an expensive monitor but still boasts a £100-£200 saving over the asus and acer equivalents

 

all in all this will come to just shy of £2600 and will actually mark my second most expensive client build! (second to an x299 system i built about half a year ago)

 

in conclusion this build will look clean and i will be putting so much effort into it due to it being my 100th client build.

also on a side note i do know the boy personally and because of this will be handing down my old blackwidow chroma as a birthday present to go with the computer

[EPPHO]

It's sad to see people hate Ryzen because of the FX lineup

[DocSwag]

3 minutes ago, frozeNNN said:

It's sad to see people hate Ryzen because of the FX lineup

To be fair, for this build's budget a Covfefe lake i7 would make the most sense. Definitely sad though that people make judgments based on prior products with little relation to the old one in terms of performance and power.

[ImNotThere]

6 minutes ago, frozeNNN said:

It's sad to see people hate Ryzen because of the FX lineup

i agree  i have an AMD cpu and proud

3 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

To be fair, for this build's budget a Covfefe lake i7 would make the most sense.

it is true that with such a large budget you may aswell

[Matthew Waring]

36 minutes ago, ImNotThere said:

i started by selecting a platform. I initially chose am4 with a 1600(potentially the 2600 if its out by the time I get to build it) however this was rejected due to bad experiences with FX cpus from the father, i took this and suggested a z370 system and they were keen, from here they were fine with al of my other choices. It is worth noting that RGB was a need of theirs.

Just curious, what was the experience? 

36 minutes ago, ImNotThere said:

It is worth noting that RGB was a need of theirs.

 

Sounds like a great build but personally the RGB will ruin it. I don't see what the whole interest is with RGB when a simple white LED strip can make a build shine.

I hope to see pictures of this build.

[ImNotThere]

15 hours ago, Matthew Waring said:

 

Sounds like a great build but personally the RGB will ruin it. I don't see what the whole interest is with RGB when a simple white LED strip can make a build shine.

I hope to see pictures of this build.

each to their own

15 hours ago, Matthew Waring said:

Just curious, what was the experience?

experience of what? 

[r3loAded]

16 hours ago, ImNotThere said:

all in all this will come to just shy of £2600

Hi, I'm curious if that's the price of the components only or includes labour as well. Also what would be the fee to build it? I totally understand if you cannot disclose that. I'm asking because I do builds as well and curious about the labour rates. You can PM me if you don't feel comfortable telling me here.

 

Thanks in advance.

[Matthew Waring]

2 hours ago, ImNotThere said:

experience of what? 

Using the FX CPU's.

[stealth80]

On ‎07‎/‎03‎/‎2018 at 2:55 PM, frozeNNN said:

It's sad to see people hate Ryzen because of the FX lineup

 

On ‎07‎/‎03‎/‎2018 at 2:58 PM, DocSwag said:

To be fair, for this build's budget a Covfefe lake i7 would make the most sense. Definitely sad though that people make judgments based on prior products with little relation to the old one in terms of performance and power.

To be fair aswell, the original FX was awesome! I would have loved one of the Athlon 64 FX's with a DFI Lan Party board, they were beasts! 

[ImNotThere]

On 08/03/2018 at 7:51 AM, r3loAded said:

Hi, I'm curious if that's the price of the components only or includes labour as well. Also what would be the fee to build it? I totally understand if you cannot disclose that. I'm asking because I do builds as well and curious about the labour rates. You can PM me if you don't feel comfortable telling me here.

 

Thanks in advance.

im doing it mainly for work experience but I charge depending on the difficulty of the build e.g. if its an sli build in an inwin 303 it will cost more than a single gpu in a nzxt s340

as a general thing i charge around £50-£100 

edit: to answer the first part, they set a budget for the parts not the labour, that was a pre determined cost before they even asked me to do it, people like to shop about and get quotes on prices

[ImNotThere]

On 08/03/2018 at 9:39 AM, Matthew Waring said:

Using the FX CPU's.

he said when doing a modest overclock he managed to damage a core module making an 8350 effectively become 6300 idk how much truth there was but oh well.

[Nocte]

1 hour ago, ImNotThere said:

he said when doing a modest overclock he managed to damage a core module making an 8350 effectively become 6300 idk how much truth there was but oh well.

But that was his fault, not AMD's lol. I am not a fan of the FX lineup, but I surely am one for Ryzen.

 

Anyway, good luck with the build and congrats for the milestone! Maybe post some pics when you are done with it.