Hello guys, new to posting on the forum but not new too computers, long time lurker.
I recently built a new rig for myself and thought I'd share my progress. I've tried to take pictures each step of the way, but sometimes the mind lapses and I totally forgot.
I needed a new PC as I had been using a laptop for various things and an old 360 for gaming, I really needed an upgrade. Trying to run multiple VMWare or do the basic of editing on a laptop is near impossible and The 360 is getting a little outdated. Xbox ones just don't seem worth it.
I know a lot of people go for the whole Red/Black theme, it's nothing new in terms of colour choices. Though I still think the red/black theme looks sexy so chose to go down that route. It's a medium/high end AMD build, tailored towards Gaming and Editing/VM tasks(hence the 32GB of RAM), so needed Graphical performance and a lot of processing power. Pretty standard in terms of setting up the hardware, though I did custom paint parts of my noctua fans and the bracket for my water cooler(pics down the post).
My build Parts were:
Case - NZXT S340 Black/Red
Motherboard - ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z
CPU - AMD FX 9590
RAM - 32GB(4 x 8) Corsair Vengeance Pro 24000Mhz
GPU - MSI R9 390 8GB
Storage - 2 x 120GB Samsung Evo 850 SSD 1 x 1 TB WD Caviar Blue HDD
PSU - Corsair RM1000w Gold Fully Modular
Fans/Cooling - Corsair H110 Water cooling kit, with the 2 stock corsair fans replaced with two Noctua NF-A14 2000RPM PWM. An the 2 NZXT stock case fans replaced with 1 x NF-A14 2000RPM PWM and 1 x NF-F12 2000RPM PWM. The rad is 280mm.
Other bits -
Gigabyte Wifi/Bluetooth Card dual band
NZXT 1m Red LED kit
Some GELID GC-3 to replace the stock TIM on the corsair cooler
Before I started doing anything in terms of building the PC, there were two parts of my hardware I wanted to modify. The rubber dampeners on the edges of the noctua fans and the mounting bracket for the pump/heatsink of my Corsair Cooler. As much as I praise Noctua for updating the style when they designed and started manufacturing their Industrial line, I still don't like the brown.
I used some Hyperlex Rubber Paint (Same as Plasti Dip), In matte red and was pretty happy with the results. Painting rubber is a tricky task and found that simply laying the dampeners down and painting caused them to stick to the cardboard. Using some pins and tape, I created a makeshift solution to keeping the dampeners in the air. A lot easier to get at all the angles.
After having finished painting what I wanted to modify, I took a short break before starting the next part.... building the actual PC.
I started off pretty standard, installed the CPU, RAM, my wireless card, LEDS, routed a few cables and started installing my exhaust fans.
No problems so far, everything going good.
Next up I installed the top 140mm exhaust fan and installed my SSDs/HDD.
I admit, I really do like the NZXT S340. It was so easy to work with and fit all the components well.
It was time to get to the nitty gritty and install the Radiator/mount the cooling block. I cleaned off the old TIM from the Corsair block, waved goodbye to all the stock fans and got down to installing the fans, radiator and mounting the block.
Even though the stock TIM on the corsair cooler is supposed to be fine, from what I researched Gelid GC-3 is great for being use on water blocks and could shave a couple of degrees.
Now I had finished what I considered the brunt of the work. It was simply time to install my Graphics card, route all my cables and install the PSU and I was done!
If I had taken pictures at every single step, I think I'd have taken 100s. So I've bunched chunks of the build into one.
Here are some pictures of the finished build, I'm pretty happy with how it went.
An that's it folks. Booted up and posted first time, no errors, windows 10 install was a breeze.
Under full load after 1hr -
my max CPU Temp is only 58c with my fans running under 1300RPM (for an FX9590 is pretty good)
Idle temperatures tend to be around 25c-32c essentially ambient room temperature.
My GPU is OC slighlty over MSIs standard OC for the R9 390 Core clock at 1065Mhz , Memory Clock 1530Mhz. No change in voltage. I have yet to test further stable overclocks.
My RAM is clocked at 1866mhz with a stable CPU OC of 5.19Ghz.
In the near future, I'll be swapping out the cables for black/red braided cables. As at the moment the stock corsair cables look pretty shabby and aren't supple enough to bend properly. I went for higher end parts so If i ever choose to upgrade my case, or go for dual graphics, I have the power to be able to do so.
Always find it enjoyable to see others build's, so thought i'd post mine.
Enjoy guys, happy building!