Description
This is my new gaming/photography/programming build.
If you wish to checkout larger versions of the photos, I have a Flickr set here http://www.flickr.com/photos/martcatnoc/sets/72157640408071324/ with upto 1440p size images.
I purchased the parts around Black Friday deals week through New Years 2014 from Amazon, Newegg, NCIX and TigerDirect. I added the second video card around mid January after noticing less-than-satisfactory frame rates in current titles such as Metro Last Light.
The final part I added was the cold cathode red light. I wanted the light to have the same hue as a darkroom safe-light and also look something like molten magma in places. I think the cathode light worked great for that and I prefer it to the light of LED strips which look too bright and uneven to me.
There are a few additions/mods I would like to do in the near future - add a closed water loop, add video card backplates, remove top hdd bays and improve cable management etc. I would also like to attempt a more aggressive overclock atleast for the CPU. I can't seem to go over a 42x multiplier at the moment. I don't know a lot about overclocking but i suspect I might be stuck with a middling cpu overclock due to a bad hand of silicon lottery. The RAM is low latency CL7. I don't know how much difference that makes but its about the fastest I could find for a DDR3-1600.
I have heard great things about the onboard audio on Asus X79 ROG boards but I prefer to have my audio removed from the case entirely. I'm running the audio through a usb to spdif converter and out through a dac to a pair of studio monitors. The display is a Korean 27" S-IPS panel I purchased last year on eBay (Achieva Shimian).
The parts marked $0.00 are mostly things I already owned. I got enough credit card cash back with my parts purchases to cover the price of the blu ray drive, so its marked $0.00 even though I bought it new on Amazon.
The Define R4 case has a great minimalist aesthetic. I wish it had more room to fit in the radiator at the top more comfortably but other than that it looks sophisticated and is nearly silent. I have the h100i fans hooked into the case fan controls and at 7V the SP-120s go dead silent; I can basically hear myself breathing.
Overall, the build was great fun to put together and everything appears to be working great. I recently got myself a 60mm m43 macro lens. The photos of the sli bridge were taken at 1:1 macro. If you like them you can grab larger versions from my Flickr page. They are all CC licensed.
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