8086k giveaway build (not even its final form)

[Fasauceome]

After getting the email that I won the 8086k on a whim, I almost couldn't contain myself. I was in the middle of calculus, so not like I had a choice anyway. It almost seemed to good to be real, and I hadn't even planned on upgrading because of how well my gold sample 4790k was running (4.7GHz on 1.2 V, what a dream). One silicon lottery to the next with me, I suppose, even though it was a different kind of lottery.

To begin with, this build is a trio of triumphs for me.

First of all, it's exciting to have cutting edge hardware. This CPU gave me the chance to have all current gen hardware in my PC for the first and probably only time (I love saving money on used stuff, so future upgrades will likely be eBay.)

Second of all, it's vindictive. I remember reading the comments on a tech news site declaring the leak of the 8086k as an homage to the original 8086. Some snarky asshole in the comments was putting people down for thinking it would be an i7, declaring from on high that given Intel's nomenclature, the number scheme fell into i3 territory. I didn't bother commenting, because I knew as soon as the CPU hit the market, he'd be proven wrong.

And third, this build has a somewhat unique sentimental value to me. My dad told me after I won that he used to have an 8086 powered PC way back in the day, and It made me all the more excited to reintroduce that into the household. I know it's not all that special because loads of people had the 8086 (kind of the reason there's a CPU dedicated to its legacy).

 

Enough of that, let's talk tech.

I started this build in complete agony. On around July 6th, my Z97-AR crapped out. BIOS update said it completed properly, PC went to restart automatically, and suddenly unfixable boot loop. I sent it in to ASUS, they said it was FUBAR, so I paid for a replacement. Thus begun an infuriating song and dance of them sending me a P8H61-I motherboard back and forth over and over again, me getting "elevated" to customer support levels, and generally a lot of phone calls and slow email correspondence. I have always loved the quality and performance of ASUS products, but this was just to much for me.

I decided to go with the EVGA Z370 Classified k. Feature packed, with USB 3.1 type C and an internal header to fuel my expansion card obsessed upgrade path. The only drawback of the Z370 platform upgrade is that it seems every single motherboard disables SATA ports to "share bandwidth" with M.2 slots. Why would SATA bandwidth be needed for M.2? I thought the point was to use PCIe instead.

Regardless, The heat sink design was too appealing to pass up. The surface area is much higher than most boards, with enough room for my Hyper 212 EVO, which I will be using long term now that I see just how well its doing, even on a 6 core chip. Luckily, there is plenty of RAM clearance with that cooler, so using my sexy new kit of G.Skill Trident Z RGB was utterly painless. I went all out because the value of my old parts is much higher than that of my new parts on account of getting the CPU free, so I'm selling them to my friend to break even and splurged on some DDR4 3200 to really round things out.

My concern with M.2 bandwidth stems from the fact that I use a Corsair Force MP500 as a boot drive. My newest and fastest storage device, I transitioned to this as my boot drive but have kept all my old drives as mass storage since (which I have needed because they are all mostly full of games). I have a meme hard drive from an old cheese grater mac, and a DVD drive as well, neither of which can be used at the moment until I can acquire both a new PCIe to 2x SATA internal card as well as a molex to SATA power to reach the DVD drive. I also use an expansion card for my eSATA HDD, which includes an internal USB 3.0 header for my front SATA/compact storage reader. The thing is janky as hell, and I love it (pictured below).

 

Ultimately, this build went almost perfectly. I replaced my old power supply because it had some quirks due to age, and modular has never felt better. Still, I wish the windows install on my boot drive didn't have to get wiped, but I backed everything I wanted up to my old hard drive, so I'm not particularly upset outside of the busywork required to set up my desktop again.