May 27, 201412 yr UPDATE: Decided to upgrade roughly a month later, purchased a further 8GB Corsair Vengeance Pro, a WD 3TB Red, Akaka K32 CPU cooler, a 120mm Fractal R2 fan, a 92mm Fractal R2 fan and some Creative T10 speakers. PC is running smooth, very smooth. Upgraded to Windows 8.1 Pro using a key from work and couldn't be happier. Decided to ditch the DVDRW in favor of mounting the WD Red at the top and still having somewhere to hide the excess cables (see new pics). ------------------------------------------------------ Hello! I had been toying with the idea of building a PC for around three months since my laptop just doesn't cut it anymore. I spoke to colleagues and friends and came up with a rough idea of what I wanted. I live about ~20 minutes from Scan (scan.co.uk) and delivery is currently not an option for me as I live in a brand new house with an unregistered postcode. So all purchases were made in-store.Mostly this PC will be used for web development and casual gaming. I run multiple dev environments and VM's, this cripples my laptop. Gaming is mostly CSS, CS:GO and whatever Steam sales I pick up. I play RS occasionally which is running much smoother on the PC, laptop struggled with DX and I wasn't keen on OpenGL. Parts: CPU - Obvious choice, I don't plan to overclock but for ~£10 difference thought I may as well get the unlocked CPU.RAM - Seemed like a reasonable price for 1866 overclockable (clocked at 1600 due to MOBO restriction).SSD - Read a lot about various SSD's and my Father/friends recommended the M500.GPU - Came close to buying a 760 but this was a much better price at the Scan store.MoBo - Almost went for Asus H81M-Plus but this looked better quality and had some nice features.Case - wasn't too fussed but heard great things about Fractal so bought the same one as my Father.PSU - Heard that the Corsair CX were bad quality, wasn't bothered about cable management or modular/semi-modular units so decided to spend a bit more and get Seasonic as I knew it would be well-made. 520W wasn't listed.Optical drive - Drivers/Windows, will probably never use again!Monitor - Fantastic for gaming. Was cheap and cheerful.Wireless adapter - Need to get my cat5 cables wired throughout the house, until then this is more than good enough. DWA-127 wasn't listed.Mouse - Already had this, Roccat peripherals are great.Keyboard - Isku wasn't listed - great keyboard.Headphones - Comfortable and replaced my old Creative Fatal1ty headset.OS - Laptop runs Win 8, can't get used to it. Had an old Win 7 key laying around at work. I also have the Roccat Taito mouse pad, Toshiba 1TB USB3 external drive and Sony Z500 speakers. Cable management really isn't an issue, I know it doesn't look great but now that it's built, I probably won't open the case for several months. Cables are now tucked under the DVDRW and tied together with a cable-tidy. Stock CPU cooler seems more than adequate for a non-overclocked CPU. Looked at the 212 evo but seemed excessively large. I quite liked the idea of water cooling but didn't want the hassle, and it really isn't needed. I call this build Dark Sapphire.
May 27, 201412 yr Build looks great, your cable management is far better than mine. Do you plan on getting an HDD for storage?
May 27, 201412 yr Author Yeah probably get a WD Red 3TB at some point. My 1TB external is fine for now though. :-) Thanks!
June 3, 201412 yr AMD can be faster then Intel and the price is lower. But it does have a tendency to run hotter...so I prefer intel over AMD. Looks awesome. Very nice cable management, far better then my first try at it. I want a modular PSU for my computer to help with the cable management a little bit more. [hide=Quotes]Albel/JustinAlbel doesn't say anything anymore, just comes in, leaves an arrow and vanishes into the night :(Probablypractising some euphoniumYou nearly had me fooled, you fooler youEuphonium/10.9/10. To me, always associate Albel with musical stuff in OT.Everyone with a goatee and glasses is Albel now.lmfao albel m8 wat r u doin, hi though. [/hide][hide=Runescape Achievements]99 firemaking(2007), 99 woodcutting(2008), 99 fletching(2009), 99 magic(2010), 99 cooking(2010), 99 farming(2011), 99 construction(2011), 99 runecrafting(2012), 99 Hunter (2014), 99 ranged (2015), 99 HP (2015), 99 Slayer (2015), 99 attack (2015) 99 Defense (2015) 99 Prayer (2015) 99 Summoning (2015) 99 Strength(2015) 99 Herblore (2015) 99 Dungeoneering (2017) 99 Mining (2017) 99 Crafting (2017) 99 Smithing (2017) 99 Thieving (2017) 99 invention (2017) 99 Fishing (2018), 99 Divination (2018), 99 Agility (2018), MAXED (05/17/2018)[/hide]
June 16, 201412 yr Author Meh AMD can be faster for multicore applications, but Intel winds hands-down on single core apps which is most general use (inc gaming). I wasn't too fussed about the most price efficient components either despite AMD generally being better bang for the buck. Upgrading PC this weekend, will post more pics once done :)
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