My New Rig & Pics!

[NickyBoyJunior]

Well I got my upgrades done, so here it is!

Specs:

Case - Silverstone Fortress FT02B-W
CPU - Intel Core i7 860 @ 2.66GHz (currently OC'ed to 3.73GHz stable)
Cooler - Thermalright TRUE Black 120 (from my old pc) with 2x Akasa Apache 120mm fans
MoBo - Asus P7P55D-E
RAM - 8GB Corsair XMS3 @ 1492MHz (from my old pc)
GFX - XFX HD 5870 1GB
Sound - Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic (from my old pc)
Drives - Sony DVD-RW & 2x 500GB WD & Seagate (from my old pc)
PSU - XFX 650W XXX Single Rail Modular

Now for the pr0n! :D


472 473


474Top View


475My cable management - tbh I stuffed most of the cables into the first hard drive bay ;) although there is plenty of room behind the mobo tray.

483Pic of my SSD + loaf of bread ;) - SSD is mounted on a bracket, on the back side of the 5.25" bays.


Total cost of the upgrades above was about £800, inc. shipping costs. Although that was with a lot of hunting around for deals, which was very time-consuming. Got the 5870, i7 and XFX PSU all from eBay, brand new and sealed for £245, £158 and £75 respectively also inc. shipping. Bargaiiiin :)

I verrryyy nearly went for the Lian Li PC-B25FB on Weets' advice but the FT02B-W's craziness was just too tempting. It's a superb case with great cooling and cable management, very quiet, easy to use and it looks the balls tbh! Very, very pleased with it.

Went for the XFX PSU as it has received some good reviews and was relatively cheap. I couldn't really afford the Seasonic X-650W which I'd originally planned to buy, and the Corsair Professional HX650W was out of stock unfortunately!

Also got a Crucial C300 64GB SSD coming in the post, and that i7 860 is going to be pushing for 4.0GHz soon :)

[Weetabix]

Nice and tidy; just what I like to see :)

But does your mic work on your X-fi?

[TheMunster]

Far too tidy! :)

As a word of caution nicky if you plan to overclock much more I'd think about upping you PSU to a 750 or 700W, I bet you'll be wringing that PSU's neck if you go to 4.0gHz

[Sinnyowns]

Haha I've got nearly the same spec its crazy

You tried using USB 3 or SATA 6gb/s yet? I can't find anything to test it on! lol

Case - almost the same
CPU - same
mobo - same
Sound - same
SSD - almost the same

[NickyBoyJunior]

Nice and tidy; just what I like to see :)

But does your mic work on your X-fi?

Aye, took me a fair while to get it that neat though. And I lost my mic a couple of months ago; I assume it isn't likely to work properly? Seem to remember GoRed saying something about that.


Far too tidy! :)

As a word of caution nicky if you plan to overclock much more I'd think about upping you PSU to a 750 or 700W, I bet you'll be wringing that PSU's neck if you go to 4.0gHz

You may be right - according to this website (http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine) my current setup with 3.73GHz at 1.25V (in BIOS) is using 592W and the recommended PSU is 642W :S

Just calculated it for 4.0GHz on 1.36V (seems to be what most people have it on, at least) and it says it'd take up 648W which would, I assume, put considerable strain on my PSU. Think I'll leave it where it is then.

[EDIT] It reckons that with all components at 100% load it'd need 658W minimum, so when I was stress testing the RAM and CPU I guess I'd have been pushing the PSU quite some way towards that. Seeing as 100% load on everything at once isn't a particularly realistic scenario under normal useage I guess it should be alright as long as I haven't already damaged it...


Haha I've got nearly the same spec its crazy

You tried using USB 3 or SATA 6gb/s yet? I can't find anything to test it on! lol

We obv have great taste ;). I haven't used either of them yet as I haven't got any USB 3 devices but when I get my SSD up and running it'll be using a SATA-III port & cable as it supports that. Should be pretty fast, although the mobo requires the first PCI-E slot to be lowered to x8 mode if SATA-III or USB 3 are turned on. Hopefully my graphics card's performance won't suffer because of it (afaik it shouldn't, fingers crossed!).

[TheMunster]

You may be right - according to this website (http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine) my current setup with 3.73GHz at 1.25V (in BIOS) is using 592W and the recommended PSU is 642W :S

Just calculated it for 4.0GHz on 1.36V (seems to be what most people have it on, at least) and it says it'd take up 648W which would, I assume, put considerable strain on my PSU. Think I'll leave it where it is then.

It reckons that with all components at 100% load it'd need 658W minimum, so when I was stress testing the RAM and CPU I guess I'd have been pushing the PSU quite some way towards that. Seeing as 100% load on everything at once isn't a particularly realistic scenario under normal useage I guess it should be alright as long as I haven't already damaged it...


Also don't forget to take into account current draw of things like your fans, HDD's, USB ancillaries etc As a general rule of thumb I allow my self at least 75W overhead on PSU rating. I doubt you've damaged your PSU but it's worth upgrading if you add to the system or overclock more in the future.

[DragonSVD]

fake! no loaf!

[NickyBoyJunior]

Also don't forget to take into account current draw of things like your fans, HDD's, USB ancillaries etc As a general rule of thumb I allow my self at least 75W overhead on PSU rating. I doubt you've damaged your PSU but it's worth upgrading if you add to the system or overclock more in the future.

Ok, thanks. I can't afford to get another new PSU and I'm perfectly happy to leave the CPU where it is at the mo. Might be thinking about it in a year's time though.


fake! no loaf!

I knew I'd forgotten something! I'll take another pic with some bread later, just for you ;)

[GoRedwings]

I think you will be fine on that psu although cutting it a bit fine.

You be suprised on what you can power if the psu is a well made one. Hell my 4 year old seasonic before I gave it to my brother was probably one of the finest buys I have made pc component wise. 4 years and was amazing considering it only outputted 36a and only a 600w psu. But I used it to drive crossfire and sli setups. From everything from 790i ultra setups and sli 8800's to intel x48 crossfired 4890's and 5770's.

Was sad to see it if I am totally honest. All I am waiting for is for seasonic to release a large capacity psu and I will pick another one up.

[dinozo74]

Haha, so clean. I also have a room for the cables in my case but I was too lazy to put them there ... Thus they are randomly placed all over ....

[Weetabix]

I think you will be fine on that psu although cutting it a bit fine.

Even when gaming, you wont be pulling anywhere near 600W. Individual rail capacity is a different matter tho; you *might* be straining that if you overclock the CPU too far.

[NickyBoyJunior]

Thanks for the power advice :)

Added a pic to the first post of my SSD, complete with loaf of Marks & Spencer Sliced Wholemeal ;)

Oh and also I swapped out my 2GB of Super Talent for 4GB of Corsair XMS3 Classic 1600MHz, so I now have 8GB of RAM =]

[TheMunster]

Even when gaming, you wont be pulling anywhere near 600W. Individual rail capacity is a different matter tho; you *might* be straining that if you overclock the CPU too far.

Agreed, but it's not worth cutting it that close with PSU's IMO, seeing as a ****e PSU will degrade you whole system performance and it's one of the cheapest components.

[GFiSH]

Looks good Nicky, I like the case.

[Darth Gazak]

I really like what you've built, it looks...serious!

I need to get my hands on a PSU with threaded cables, they look far superior to a tangle of colourful wires :)