I'm finally building an over-the-top gaming rig!

I'm finally building an over-the-top work and gaming rig!

Alright so all my life I've built computers that were decent, but always what I'd call "Budget Extreme". I'd go after AMD processors, overclockable components that weren't great stock but could be manipulated to perform the way you want, etc.


Well this school year I've received some extra money, quite a bit extra money, enough where I can invest 3k-4k USD comfortably into a system and still have some left over cash for food and gas to get to class... (tuition's all paid, wooh).

Here's my build:

What I have:
CaseLabs Magnum SMA8, this thing is a beast, is fully modular, (you can even extend the top or bottom by adding more panels, pedestals etc.) This case is on its way and was special ordered on the 5th with customized venting for water cooling/radiators.

EVGA 1000w P2 Platinum 80 PLUS PSU, massive power supply unit that should be capable of handling the load on this system:


What I will be getting (waiting a few months to see if there are better x99 motherboards and to see how DDR4 is, since it's quite new to the market):

intel Haswell-E 5960x 8-core, 16-hyperthreaded beast of a CPU.
Hyper-X 32GB 4x8gb quadchannel 3000MHz DDR4 RAM.
ASUS Rampage V Extreme x99 chipset motherboard, will wait to see how benchmarks go, might change to a different board.
Sapphire R9 295x2 GDDR5 OC'd Radeon card. Because even the next nvidia card is only half the power (if we are talking their GTX line). I may also add a second one eventually, depending on how much power my system eats with a single one.

Storage will be two SSDs mirrored (possibly, I might do a single to start, would love to see the double performance increase of mirrored SSD), and three 4TB drives, possibly mirroring two in RAID for data backup.


My main goal at the moment is to build up the computer case, purchase the water radiators, get everything lined up so that it looks nice. I don't want a half-assed waterloop like the one I've got on my current seven year old PC. This time I'm going to go with PETG tubing, this stuff is a lot better than acrylic, far more brittle than PETG. I am going with D5's for the pumps, as I have a D355 in this one and am not as impressed as I think I'd be with the more powerful pump.

This is going to be a ridiculously fun build when it's done.

Grants my friend are not loans. I mean I could use the money for other things like uh, save it for when I need it when I transfer to a better school, but hopefully I'll continue to get financial aid, grants and scholarships (I've got a 3.95GPA and I've got over 60 credits complete so far, gonna be like 75 after this semester or something? Not very far but close enough to the associates/transfer degree to be happy with my GPA) but honestly, my current PC is 7 years old, it's not going to continue gaming, and its hard drives are old too... I need something good, and I want something... something above what I've ever done before you know?

True. My dream case is a wooden case carved from a single redwood burl. I don't think it's ever been done, and it would take a lot of time, money and effort (also have to find a large enough chunk of redwood burl Legally, as I'm opposed to using poached redwood).

Ever see those lacquered tables made from slabs of redwood? The case would be in that style, it'd be all burled and shaped how nature shaped it, just hollowed out and laquered up for a system inside.

I can do 560mm radiators, I can't realliy find reviews though... Not sure what to go with.

lol.

I'm almost 29 and in college heh. Hey some of us figure it out later in life. I've got amazing grades, working on a degree in chemical and biochemical engineering and synthesis. Much better than serving tables in Hillsboro Oregon at a freakin' Red Robin... A little bitter a little jaded, but I've maintained a 3.95gpa for over two years, I just need to get ontop of things tonight as far as my homework.

Make soap?

I will say I'm glad I'm not doing an AMD setup. I will also miss them at the same time. I've been using AMD since probably 1999 or 2000, when I switched from the Pentium 2 and 3's, to Athlons, man those T-birds were fun.

Intel has come a long way, AMD has too, but has taken a different direction. I will miss them in the overclocking world, they were fun, and that's when squeezing every last MHz out of your system mattered, extra few MHz from the FSB, if stabilized was godsend, etc. I wish I hadn't gotten rid of some of that stuff, I still have an old Voodoo5 5500 somewhere, wish I had kept the 2 and 3...

I was a kid though, hindsight's 20/20, should have thought about that. Now I've kept some old systems, though not a ton of boxes or anything, just my previous generation well built systems. But nothing older than say 2003 besides an athlon CPU and a v5....

Just received my case!

[screenshot]http://oi59.tinypic.com/91m1ag.jpg'[/screenshot]

dwarfs my lian li V2000B

[screenshot]http://oi58.tinypic.com/ml6yk7.jpg[/screenshot]

Ordered two water radiators, an AlphaCool XT45 560mm rad and an AlphaCool UT60 420mm rad, the 560 will go in the bottom, the 420 will go in the front bay (will leave me two bays).

Also ordered 13 Noctuas, it should be a good batch! But yeah 17.50 a piece for NF-P14's instead of their usual 25-28$ range. I figure it was a good deal, 8-10$ cheaper than they usually go for.


The question now is since the 980GTX has come out, should I still go with the 295x2 or should I get two 980GTX's and crossfire them? Also on that note, how would a second vidcard effect the loop's resistance? The rads are low resistance radiators.