HETEPSENUSRET :: My penultimate PC build

Note: This thread, and also this build, was made to the melody of ancient Egyptian-themed music. Prepare your noses for authenticity my friends.

PCPartPicker Live Build Sheet

Introduction
This is a build that will be started in January 2016, and will serve all of my computing needs – including code compiling, casual gaming, and occasional rendering. Originally I began working on another build called Pwenet, but I got knee-deep into it and decided I wasn't satisfied with the the build's synergy, and on top of that I lacked a proper allocation of cash for it anyway.

So, I'm here with a much more prestigious – and cleverly themed – PC build featuring a Core i7-5820K, a neutrally-coloured assortment of parts, and a plasti-dipped sand-coloured Thermaltake case. Think of it as a pyramid with a granite-black tomb if you will.

The plan
This build will receive $200-$250 a month US in funding, from the gracious benevolence of my mother and company. It will also get a hefty cut from bonuses like income tax refunds and the like. So, you can expect about 1 to 2 unboxings a month, alright? Hope that's not too far apart.

On January 1st, the build begins, with a belated Christmas gift of mine: The CPU. After that I'll be buying the motherboard for certain, and from there I really don't have a whole lot slated yet.

Theme
In case you couldn't tell by the name, this is an ancient Egyptian styled PC build. The case is a Thermaltake Core X9 Snow Edition, plasti-dipped in desert sand colour like so:

Spoiler

I selected this case because it is white and is therefore easier to colour, and also for the brick-like pattern on the front. The EATX motherboard capacity is a nice feature too and the horizontal situating of the motherboard looks good as well. I think I'm going to use a lot of masking tape to cover the grills from the inside, and more tape over the I/O and the window. Yeah, lots of masking tape.

All of the grey you see on the GPU front cover will be plasti-dipped as well. As you'd expect the grey square on the Samsung SSD will also get some paint, and I'm thinking of doing some sort of accented design on the RAM heat spreaders as well.

Rationale

Spoiler

I went with the 5820K because it's pretty much the lowest you can go and still be on the X99 platform, not to mention having 6 cores is pretty darn cool despite the lower clock rate. I wanted to get on the X99 platform while I could for the rather large upgrade path, with both Haswell-E and Broadwell-E being options with no additional changes needed.

Noctua's line of CPU coolers just so happen to fit with our brown, desert-y build, so I went ahead and selected the premier, Noctua NH-D15 dual-fan 140mm CPU cooler.

What's a themed build with out a matching motherboard, right? I'll end up paying a bit of a premium for the design but otherwise it's a great board to have.

The RAM configuration isn't the most cost-effective in the world, but it's pretty damn fast for DDR4 RAM and provides a large upgrade path using 16GiB HyperX Savage modules (of the same speed/latency) later on, say I ever need more RAM for some reason. By the way, the 32GiB won't go wasted should I run multiple VMs at once on my host OS.

The storage selections are a bit of a snooze, but it's worth knowing I will use that space with all of my VMs and whatnot. And, you know, for other things too.

I went with the GTX 960 for its superiour Linux drivers, and with Zotac because their design fit my build the best. I'm also a fan of Zotac's designs in general so that helped things along too.

XFX is known to make really good PSUs, so I went with their 850W 80+ Gold "PRO Black Edition" power supply. It should be plenty to allow for overclocking the CPU/GPU and for adding more parts later on.

Had to go with Enterprise because it's seriously $5 more than Pro on Reddit, and with it I can completely disable Microsoft's telemetry crap plus disable the random forced update scheme. I'll also be dual-booting this alongside Arch Linux.

When it comes to 1440p the monitor was a no-brainer. The display becomes retina at 29 inches of distance, which is pretty nice for how much it costs.

The keyboard and mouse were splurge choices to be honest, but I do find the aluminum chassis of the K70 to be quite pleasing to the eyes and hands. RGB colour lighting is great too.