Pics and vid here - Waiting on cable management until the desk comes in, so things look a bit messy. https://imgur.com/a/cDC1Oab
I came in just under 1500USD for the tower (before tax) and just on my full project budget of 2000USD for everything. Please note the cooler in the pics in a placeholder. I'm trying to focus on every single cost/piece of equipment that I bought or had in this post, as I find often a lot of build budget guides have some "hidden" costs.
Intel - CPU - i5-10600K - 190usd
MSI - Monitor - Optix G271 - 170usd
MSI - MOBO - MAG B460M Mortar - 115usd
MSI - GPU - RTX 3060 Ventus 2X OC - 485usd
Corsair - RAM - 32GB (16x2) Vengeance RGB Pro - 170usd
Light Enhancement Kit - 40usd
Corsair - Case - Crystal 280x (non-RGB) - 110usd
Corsair - Fans - 4X ML120 - 64usd
Corsair - AiO - H100i RGB Pro XT (PENDING) - 110usd
Glorious - KB - Full Size GMMK - 110usd
Glorious - Mouse - Model O- - 60usd
Segotep - PSU - 650W Fully Modular Gaming Power Supply 80 Plus Gold Certified - 72usd
Crucial - HDD - P2 NVE 1TB - free (should be 55, dbl shipped by amazon, sold the xtra)
Crucial - HDD - P2 NVE 500GB - 90usd
Antec - Sleeved Power Supply Extensions - White - 25usd
Microsoft - Xbox One Core Controller - Black - 60usd
Creative - Sound - Pebblie 2.1 - 28usd
DP Cable - 16 bucks at Micro Center
Various velcro/zipties/etc - $25
Pcpartpicker (no periphs) - https://pcpartpicker.com/list/TCrBdD
Pcpartpicker (full project sans desk) - https://pcpartpicker.com/list/qHFrfP
Parts I already owned that I did not include in build list/price:
Multiple customized MadCatz/Hori arcade sticks (XBOX360) - I've had these trusty sticks forever, and still use them frequently on PC.
JBL - Headphones - Live 400BT - I've had these for a few years now. Super solid, if unspectacular, cans.
Inland - HD - 1TB external SSD (used for a portable install of Launchbox/Bigbox retrogaming stuff)
Asus - USB Bluetooth reciever - No idea where this little thing came from but its been in my "parts and stuff" drawer for a bunch of years now. Rusty but still works like a charm.
USB C -> A cable (for MS Gamepad) - Have a few of these I've collected, took one to perm connect to the back of the pc.
To start, my name is Rich, I'm 41, and this is my first from scratch build in a decade. I finished what you see in the pics about a week ago, and once I order my H100i RGB Pro XT and my TOPSKY 55" Computer Desk with Bookshelf/Metal Hole Cable Cover 1.18" Thick Desk (Rustic Brown) the entire project will be complete.
I am bored today and I learned a lot and have a lot to say about building this pc, so I'm going to go long here, feel free to not read, lol. But if you too are bored, and want something long to read and comment on, go nuts. I am going to add in notes that might be especially helpful to someone like me, who has been out of the game for a while.
Broad strokes first. I was operating on a 2000USD budget, and that includes EVERYTHING. Tower, peripherals, monitor, and desk. I was trying to thread what I consider the most difficult needle in pc building, which is building something both powerful and beautiful on a pretty tight budget. In my limited experience and in my research I have found it is somewhat easy to pick parts if your only concern is bang for the buck. You just make sure everything is gonna work together well, no bottlenecks, etc, and then find that price/performance sweet spot. Also, shop around and find deals, learn which parts you can cheap out on, etc. I have also found that it is relatively easy to pick parts if your only concern is aesthetics. You just find what appeals to taste the most, price and/or bottlenecks be damned. When you try and do both, however, its very easy to end up with the worst of both worlds, your budget forces you to make a compromise that either mucks up your machines effeciency, or one that totally throws off the look/aesthetics that you were going for, or both. My fiance and I finally moved in together in November, and we sacrificed space to live right on the beach, so the computer desk is in the main room and this thing MUST look classy and nice. She a wonderful woman, and she would deal with whatever I built, but it is important to her for our living space to look nice and be nice (and to me too) and so more than ever before, I HAD to build something that would look great in our main living space.
(NOTE - I will have a dedicated GPU section below, for most other sections, the whole gpu thing is wholesale ignored, because it is insane and abnormal now.)
Overall I am incredibly happy with how everything worked out, especially in light of the current GPU situation.
(Note, I work in IT and I am in hardware all the time. Thats why I am comfortable doing a lot of this stuff even though I haven't built in a decade (repastes, etc))
My old rig burned out a few years ago (i5-2500k/Radeon HD6950 in a COOLER MASTER HAF 922 BLUE RC-922M-KWN2-GP Black ATX Mid Tower Computer Case with Side window), I couldn't get it to post even after I replaced the psu, so I just trashed it. September 2019 I recieved a 1600ti based Alienware m15 r1 as a 40th birthday gift. Its a beastly little fireball. Thermals are totally, utterly fucked. And I'm saying that as someone who is pretty cavalier about thermals (we'll get to that later). After multiple repastes I accepted that turbo needs to be disabled on the CPU. It's bizarre actually. With turbo off, the thermals are right in what you would consider acceptable range for a gaming laptop, but with turbo on, even opening a browser window causes "power limit throttling" to engage, and putting any % load on the processor for anything longer than a minute or two, causes it to hit 100C and throttle itself. Even worse, they disabled untervolting in the BIOS due to some kind of exploit. Regardless, the machine re-ignited my love for PC gaming, and was super handy for work and gaming as, due to covid tragedy, we had to move in with my father in law for 3 months.
Part One - Gathering the parts
Fast forward to November 2020, we are moving in to a new apartment together (before this we mostly lived together but had our own places). Once all the extra costs from moving etc are behind me, I decide now that I am only living in one place, finally, I want to build, and badly. I'm getting frustrated both working (still working from home due to covid) and gaming on the little gimped fireball laptop, although, like I said, its a beast and its performace is admirable considering the temps it deals with. With that informing my decision I decide to start the project by purchasing items that I can use with my laptop, and when that is done, I will decide if I am going to commit to a full build and what my budget will be etc.
I did a bunch of research and went to Micro Center to get some hands on time, and frankly, it wasn't close between Glorious and everyone else. The GMMK is gorgeous, has a great price, and the ability to swap in different switches is not available from other brands, and is an incredible feature imo. The browns that came in it are great, but I am already gearing up to order some blues and see if clicky is more my bag. I went in thinking I wanted an O- after reading what Digital Foundry had to say about it, and it did not dissapoint. It is a great mouse, and I love the look as well. Both products have very robust, easy to use software, that always works great, but is not needed for the device or the rgb to work. Additionally, I ordered one of their washable fabric mousepads and it is a good surface. A negative note about these products, they are not compatible with any RGB control software besides their own, and they both have their own program, not unified, and you can't even sync the lights between them even though they are made by the same company.
I bought a cooling stand thing for the laptop, that had fans and also functioned as a usb hub. I used it a makeshift dock. Using the new peripherals with the laptop made things much more bearable BUT only ignited my hunger to build rather than extinguish it.
I grabbed the new rev of the XBOX controller as my older one was on the fritz and the new one has a stellar d pad.
(Out of the game a while note: Back when I was building in 2010, "gaming" equipment was usually shitty equipment kitted out with some "extreme" lighting (led's at that point) and was way overpriced and better avoided. That is very different now. Many of the offerings geared towards gamers/enthusiasts these days are high quaility, and have great aesthetics, but are sometimes still overpriced lol.)
Next it was time for a monitor. I wanted something that would work well with the laptop, but at this point I was pretty sure I was gonna build a tower, so I had to figure out what resolution and framerate I was going to target with the new machine. I wanted to go 1440 so badly, but the cost of the panel itself, combined with the cost of the components to run things at framerates I can accept at 1440 was going to be too much. Especially as I had begun to truly accept that acquiring a GPU at any sort of reasonable price was going to be an issue. I am a sucker for pixel density so I was targeting 24 inch 1080/144 VRR IPS non curved. Costco, of which I am a member had a 27inch MSI with all of the exact specs I wanted for the amazing price of 170usd. I could deal with the pixels being not as dense lol (although 27 is the max I would go with a 1080 monitor for sure)
(Costco Note: If you are a Costco member, there is no better place on earth to buy a monitor. Especially if it is one of the ones they carry at their physical store. After a few days with the new monitor I realized that when it was running above 60mhz there were very visible horizontal lines across blues and greys. I would call them scanlines except they werent' moving. At first I thought it was just a shitty pixel density thing, but some research showed it was a defect for sure. I had already thrown out the box, I brought it back, and they take it no questions asked, no box, no reciept, no problem, and they will do that for TWO YEARS. There is no better place on earth to play the panel lottery.)
The G271 is fantastic for $170. The panel is GORGEOUS, and has great viewing angles, the colors pop and are accurate. It is IPS but its fast, I've had no visible issues with response time, even with it set to "normal". The two negatives are a slight coil whine on full black or grey screens and I dislike the stand. You can only angle up down, you can't make it higher or lower and you can't spin into TATE mode. I play a lot of SHMUP and Pinball so TATE is important enough to me that I may look into some kind of aftermarket arm/stand later on.
Gaming on the new monitor was a huge upgrade. The alienware had a 15 inch 144mhz screen but no VRR!?!? Bizarre laptop. 12 more inches and VRR were both great. Now I HAD to build. There were too many things about the laptop I didn't like, especially how it uses the gpu and the internal gfx at the same time and would be weird with some things with the external monitor etc.
So we had spent 400usd so far and committed only to 1080/144 and had some decisions to make. I know that Ryzen is the shit, but I am not crunching video or stuff like that, and I have never really worked with an AMD processor. It may have been cowardly, but I decided to go intel, rather then learn and experiment with something new. I quickly set my sights on the i5-10600k as its 4.1 base clocks seem insane for 190usd. There was a part of me that wanted badly to upgrade to an i7. Not for the additional cores, but for the additional RAM speeds. With the i5, your RAM maxes out at 2666. I think I can perhaps overclock that? I have not done that research yet. This is one of those spots, where if I wasn't spending extra in my budget for looks, I probably could have stepped up to the i7. Regardless, I went with the i5. Under 200 for a badass cpu was too much to resist.
Okay, with the processor decided (or at least Intel had been decided at this point) next thing to decide on was the case. Again, a concession to aesthetics, if I was just going for power I would decide on a mobo next. But I was going to let case determine mobo size this time, instead of the other way around.
(Aside concerning my feelings on RGB: Everyones aesthetic sense is different. I don't want anyone to feel I am shitting on their build, whatever you think looks the best and whatever makes you happy is the best choice for you, hands down. That being said, I love RGB but strongly believe less is more. RGB fans are way too much for me. If I really wanted something lit up, I could deal with white LED fans, or rgb fans with only the outside rims lit up, but my preference for this build was no rgb fans)
After checking out some ATX cases, they were all just way too gigantic for the setup I was imagining in my head. None of them appealed to me, just based on sheer size. As I had no itentions of a crazy top of the line build that needs 1000 fans, etc, I decided that MATX might be the way to go, althought I do not have experiencing with gaming parts and MATX. I fell deeply in love with the Corsair Crystal 280x. Everything about it appeals to me. I love how much glass it has. I love the form factor. I love having room to run everything through the side compartment. Once I found it, none of the other cases I was looking at came close for me. We will talk about the fans in the case and its thermals later, as at this point I bought the case but was still acquiring other parts and not building in it yet, but I just knew I loved it lol.
Okay, NOW it was mobo time. This was a brutal decision for me, even moreso than the CPU. I like MSI and lean towards MSI. I found the B460M Mortar (non-wifi) for 115usd. It is an amazing board for the price EXCEPT you cannot overclock your CPU with it. That is a huge caveat. But it checks every other box. Its is a very nice looking board, extra features and heatsinks, built in heatshield, all kinds of premium features. The Z boards are expensive, and if I did get one I would have HAD to go with the cheapest, possibly messing up my aesthetic. that is the sort of "threading the needle" stuff I spoke about. If I wasn't spending extra money for looks, I almost certianly would have sprung for the Z board.
But really, I don't think the i5 running at stock is going to bottleneck me anytime soon. If it does, it can create an pretty nifty upgrade path for me where I upgrade the board sometime in 2022, to let me overclock the i5, but also gives me access to the next step of the upgrade further down the road, an 11th gen chip. With the additonal bonus of theoretically having to worry less about thermals if I am not overclocking, I decided to go with the locked board.
Grabbed the crucial P2's in an Amazon sale, the prices were too good, I don't mind if they are a tiny bit slower than premium drives, they are a million times faster than the drives I have been using my whole life. One of the two M2 slots on the mobo has its own heat spreader, so that helps too. I got really lucky to save 55 bucks with the Amazon mistake.
(Old timer note: HARD DRIVES ARE UNBELIEVEABLY FUCKING FAST AND UNBELIEVEABLY CHEAP NOW. AND THEY ARE TINY LITTLE STICKS)
I hope I don't sound like a shill for Corsair in this part. Corsair Vengeance Pro RGB is stunningly, unbelieveably, fucking beautiful. It was funny, a couple of years ago a buddy mentioned to me that they had RGB RAM now and I thought it was amusing and overkill. No way. These sticks are stunning. Once I saw them, there was not a chance I would get any other ram, even with the added cost. I went with 32GB of ram, in my many years of working with pc's I have found you would always rather have too much ram than too little. Additionally, these days I hear all these nightmare stories about pairs of ram that have the exact same specs from the exact same manufacturer not working properly together if not bought as a kit, so I didn't feel like going 2x8, with the possibility of going 4x8 later, was a real possibility. Besides it was only a $60 difference between the 2x8 and 2x16. I also bought the dummy ram kit because the thought of having two empty slots left me dead inside.
It's possible I got fooled by fake reviews/etc but the limited amount of info I was able to find on the Segotep psu seemed to indicate it was a quality product and not garbage. You shouldn't cheap out on your PSU. Thats why I went gold, but once I was comfortable with the brand, I didn't mind "cheaping out" in that sense. I wanted fully modular to keep cable nonsense to an absolute minimum. So far, so good, fingers crossed.
I would watch the web and jump on good deals, or wait until I saw that something was getting low on stock on amazon, where it might go soon to other sellers who charged more and would charge me shipping, and then order. I had the case and mobo and hard drives. I went and picked up the CPU at Micro Center and saw just how barren the gpu section was. I saw a random out of box 1050ti for like $210 and actually considered it for a minute. This was sometime in late January. I started having to deal with the reality that this machine needed a gpu. I had already commited money to parts. In my mind, I was building the machine for a 3060ti, as a gpu cost of 400-475 would put us exactly where we want to be, and the performance is insane. Quick shoutout to Octoshop here, as it almost got me a 3060ti FE on two occasions, letting me know right when BB put them up. I got it into my cart, but lost it in the checkout process. I put in an order with shopblt, you get a spot in the queue but don't get charged till it actually ships. But I wasn't even going to be in the next wave, and the date for that wave kept getting pushed back over and over. I don't mind waiting, but when the line isn't moving, its brutal. Lining up at Micro Center, seemed by far the best bet, but was way too hit or miss, and the msrp's had starting getting jacked up, so even IF I waited AND they had 3060ti on the truck that day, there was a possibility it would still be out of my price bracket and I would either have to swallow it or go home empty handed. I swallowed hard, and accepted the only card that I may be able to get at an even semi reasonable price without having to camp out multiple times was a 3060 on launch day.
I finished my taxes on the 22nd and knew I had at least 500usd coming in my return. I marked that as my gpu money. The night of the 24th I monitored the web, and decided to get to MC at 5am (its about 25 minutes away) When I got there I was 25th on line. (There was a very helpful "line keeper" who was taking everyones name and phone number and telling them their spot number and sort of organizing the whole thing. He was a miner who had done all the MC 30 series card launches lol) It was COLD, I was woefully unprepared and alone. They gave out the vouchers a little after 9am. The stock they got in had come up on the website at some point for a little bit, and I had caught it. they had 15 of the EVGA card @ 385 and every other 3060 they had was 475+. Insane. They couldn't sell the cards until noon (east coast, eff you nvidia) so we all had vouchers and were guaranteed a 3060, but not a particular flavor. You could either stay on line, or you could leave, come back at noon, and get on the back of the line. A lot of people left, and if I stayed I probably could have scored the EVGA at an actual reasonable price. But I'm old. Older than I used to be when I would do this kind of stuff. I was tired and cold and hungry and I had to use the bathroom. With no one with me to hold my place in line I had no choice. I couldn't hold out three more hours. I had to go home. I went home, made a bagel with sliced tomato and munster cheese on it, pooped, made coffee, smoked a huge bowl, and felt so so so much better. I went back and went with the Ventus 2X OC. I wanted a two fan card, as that would look best in my case. I also liked the idea of Mobo -> GPU -> Monitor all made by the same vendor. I like how the visible MSI branding on all three parts matches. I later found out that the EVGA doesn't have a backplate. This would have tortured me. Is a backplate worth $100? Nah. Is a backplate + not shitting yourself in public + being super pleased with the aesthetics of your case worth $100? Probably. The card was $485.
I can't settle on how I feel about the whole thing. Compared to what everything is supposed to cost, 485 for a 3060 brutal overpay.
Basing it on power compared to last gen.. the card is a tiny bit weaker then a 2070Super in raw power, but has more mature RT and Tensor cores, so its probably something closer to a wash. Looking at it like that, paying $485 for that is not.. ideal, but not a brutal overpay.
Basing it on actual relative value.. the same way that someone who has to pay VAT, just has to live with and accept they can't get the same level of value as everyone else, anyone buying a card right now, or anytime soon, has to live with and accept the actual cost of these things. Considering I have seen completed auctions on ebay every single day since launch closing at MINIMUM $750usd for my exact card, I feel incredibly lucky to own one and to have paid 485 for it.
There was very little sense of urgency in collecting parts up to that point, I had figured if I finished before I got a gpu I would build it and run the onboard gpu until I found one. But that wasn't very exciting. Once I got the gpu I was crazed, lol. I had just ordered my psu and white power cables and they were set to come the next day. I brought the card out to the car and immediately went back in to MC and bought the final parts that I would need for the build!
A quick aside about sleeved power cables. We often talk about price/performance sweet spots. Its much harder to do so for asthetics, as you can't argue taste. That being said, sleeved power cables have to win some kind of aware for bang for the buck asthetics. They are super cheap, look amazing, and work in any situation. Like, if my buddy has a pure budget build with a green mobo etc etc, and I want to make it nice for him so I buy him some Vengeance RGB ram, the lights will look nice, but it will look really weird too, and not get its full "asthetic value" Sleeved power cables would do a ton of heavy lifting in that situation, and look great, at a fraction of the price. But they also work and look great in the most ornate, high end builds. Its often overlooked, but if you are preparing for your first build, or building for the first time in a decade, don't miss out on the sleeved power cables!!
We have everything we need! Almost. "Rich, you haven't given any thought to thermals yet!" Okay, lets talk thermals. I'm not sure if tower coolers fit in my case. It doesn't matter. I HATE the way they look. Just hate it. It was not an option for me. I figured the included Ryzen coolers get a lot of good word of mouth, and the ones with RGB look amazing, someone must have made a clone for intel by now. NOPE. It was heartbreaking for me. Specifically the AMD Wraith Prism LED RGB Cooler is the one I love. It appeals perfectly to my sense of style. This was such a big deal for me that if I could do it all over I would possibly pick AMD.
Note - I had decided at this point that the only rgb i wanted in the system was the ram and the cooler.
I found the Coolermaster i71c. Its a top down fan, and a lot of the reviews had stuff like "surprisingly good for what it is" etc. and its really really good looking. Its only $20 so I decided I would give it whirl, knowing that even without overclocking my cpu I was going to be running too hot. I then decided not to worry about any of thermals (case fans) until I had the thing built. Then I could make changes and see how effective they are, etc. If I was going to change out the cooler, the only other air cooler I could find that was going to meet my requierements (top down, rgb) was a Scythe Big Shriuken 3 with the included fan swapped out for an rgb fan. Its sold out everywhere, so you are paying extra for it, and then with the fan swap, you may as well just go aio at that point.
(Note on Coolermaster i71c. This is a heartbreaking product. There is nothing else out there that looks like it, and it is super cheap. Sadly it can only cool the type of cpu that would come in a pc without a window/glass pane lol. As you can maybe see in the pics, the spinning motion and the circular shape, next to lit up vertical ram and a tiny bit of exposed heatpipe from the gpu is evocotive of an old hot rod engine, but with a futuristic twist. I think it looks GREAT. They already have a lower profile cooler for SFF builds, they really should re-engineer this thing with some heat pipes at the bottom (expose em a little for that hot rod look! Do a collabo with a car customizing company! You have options!) an make it the go to cooler for people looking for a top down intel cooler for budget enthusiast builds. If they made these changes, even at double the price it would be a fantastic product.)
Part Two - building
Even in these covid times, I couldn't build alone!! My buddy came by and we got to work. We work together in IT so this kind of stuff is second nature for us.
I have seen some people knock my case for 2 of the 3 grommits being covered if you use a matx board instead of itx (it says it supports both). It wasn't really an issue for me, I was able to use the non grommited holes on the top and bottom, and I even ran the big mobo power cable through one of the covered ones, under the mobo, then out the side to the port.
Despite that, I made a terrible, idiotic mistake. I accidentally fed both PCI power cables through even though my GPU only needs one. I didn't realize until I was done building. Being a fucking moron asshole, I decided I could get it back through without taking the mobo off. After some idiotic yanking from the backside, I realized the clip piece got stuck in the usb 3 header and destroyed the pins. Just savaged them. One broke. I probably don't feel as bad as I should about this, and about 1 of the usb ports not working, because I am so impressed I got all the other pins back enough for the wire from the case to plug in, let alone work. They really got wrecked. Also because I've identified the mobo as the first piece I am going to upgreade, anyway. But still, yeah, idiot move, don't be like me.
(Note for old heads coming back to the hobby: Building in these modern cases is a feaking PLEASURE. Some like mine, have an entire compartment on the side for psu, hdd, and wires, others have a compartment at the bottom, and still even have a little space to run wires in the side. Its a WHOLE different thing.)
(Note for old heads coming back to the hobby 2: These M2 hard drives are the fucking greatest. Plug right into the mobo, no sata, no power, nothing. Just pop it in. It's glorious)
Part Three - computing
I posted on the first try! My fan didn't light up tho, I put the rgb extension on it backwards (needed to run wire up and over mobo then all the way back down and around to header. Fuck having a little controller that you run out of the case somewhere, I want no part of that).
The perfornace is great, in line with what I expected if not better. Turbo currently disabled. (we will get to that). Have not messed with the GPU yet but there is a factory overclock.
Control @ 1080 (720 + DLSS) with all effects and ray tracing at max gives me low 70's - 110's depending on the situation and the amount of action.
Destiny 2 @ 1080 with everything max 130's running around 110's in firefights
We are running WAY too hot tho. In additon to being way to hot, we are idling at 35 when I boot, but not getting down below 45 once I go above it. I took that as meaning my ambient case temps were no good, and in addition to my cooler not being strong enough for my cpu, I wasn't getting good airflow in the case.
The 280x comes with 2 120mm fans. One intake up front, one exhaust up top. These fans are hot garbage. Max rpm around 900 and don't move much air at all no matter how fast they are spinning. I don't even think Corsair sells them seperate, they are so shitty. I bought a 2 pack of ML 120's, put them up front, and moved the crappy fan up top to be with its brother. The ML's are badass! Totally different fin design then the default fans and move air like its nobody's business. If I take my side panel off and stick my hand in its like a wind tunnel in there. Not only did this let me quickly get back down to 35 after being under load, but it shaved 10-15 off my temps under load!!!! I was astonished by how much cooler it was. I undervolted the chip .05 (thats the most my bios will allow?) and shut turbo off. With the new fans and the chip undervolted and gimped my temps under load are now right on the edge of what I would consider acceptable. My prime 95 temps are not acceptable lol.
I have no problem running like this for another week or two, just to recharge the wallet a bit. Then I am going to order the H100i RGB PRO. I ordered another pack of the ML's today. Newegg sent me a $10 off anything coupon, and has free shipping should I should be getting it for $110 at the most.
This will be my first experience with liquid cooling. The H100i RGB PRO is perfect for me, as I want my cpu lit, but do not want rgb fans, and it seems reasonably priced. I love the way the Cooler Master fan looks, but it has to go, and of course you don't know till its in there, but all signs point to the aio looking awesome in there, and it will be cool to be able to properly sync it with the ram lights as they will both be native icue.
I will be mounting the cooler in front with the fans pulling air into the case from behind the rad. Even if I lose some effeciency compared to push or push/pull I am more concerned with being able to easily access the front of the rad for monthly blowing/cleaning. I prefer that to putting it up top when it will get hit with all the hot air from the gpu (my case does not have the ability to mount a rear fan). I will have two ML's on the bottom of the case pulling air in, and two ML's on top of the case pushing air out.
I ended up having to go pretty much "max cooling" but I still like how I ramped up to it and made sure I needed it, rather then just spending the max right away. It was a good learning experience.
(Note for returning old timers: Don't believe them when they say the fans are loud!!! they don't know!!! The ML reviews say they are "middle of the pack" with noise. This thing I built is whisper quiet. It's amazing! I can't imaging how they would react to the machine I built in '10 it sounded like a jet taking off)
Part 4 - Conclusions
I am thrilled with what I was able to accomplish while staying right on my budget. I am not as future proof as I would like, based on the GPU and mobo, but I am thrilled with the current performance and the machine looks stunning. I really enjoy building pc's and then using them. I will post an update with benchmarks and more pics once the cooler and the desk are here and everything is ready to go. Thanks for reading, happy to answer any questions you may have!
Submitted by RWGlix | #Specialdealer Special Offer Online Shopping Store 2016
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