This build is for a 16 year old boy looking to move away from consoles and an old laptop and into the world of more powerful PCs. He came to me with a very solid list of parts and I took it from there. He wanted it to have a blue theme with black and white accents. Anything with $0.00 he already had or was a gift.

The system was designed to:

1. Game at very high settings on a variety of games. BF4 will be played a lot.
2. Have great support for litecoin mining.
3. Handle all of his audio creation needs using FL Studio 11.

PARTS:

CPU: The i5 4670K is a very popular choice among gamers. FL Studio 11 supports multi-core CPUs, but shows little to no benefit from hyperthreading. The debate between the FX-8350 and 4670K will surely ensue, but I saw Intel as the best choice this time around.

COOLER: The Phanteks PH-TC12DX is one of the only blue colored air coolers that isn’t overly expensive, but still has great cooling ability. I used Arctic Silver 5 thermal past as I do on all of my builds. Temps are very nice with this cooler and it really stands out in the window.

MOBO: The Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD3H is a strikingly attractive board with a loaded feature set for its’ price point. The blue heatsinks, flat black PCB, and all black capacitors made this a great choice just based on the coloring. This board is heavy! I felt like I could battle some orcs with this thing. All jokes aside I would do a thousand builds with it.

RAM: I use G. Skill in my own system and have used them a few times before. I felt safe using them again. This kit is a very solid 1866 at CAS 8. 8Gb was plenty for gaming and the type of audio work he is doing doesn't benefit from more RAM. The blue color fit the bill.

STORAGE: He needed plenty of storage for large audio files as well as games and other media. I started him out with a 2 TB Seagate Barracuda. He may need to add more storage later on, but this should last quite some time. A SSD will likely be a future upgrade.

GPU: The 290X was chosen not only due to its’ great gaming performance, but also because of its’ litecoin mining abilities. It was also the only card available on Newegg that came with BF4 bundled. Luckily the plastic shroud covering the card’s cooling system is easily removed with a few screws without having to remove the entire cooling system and void the warranty. My girlfriend, using some model paint I had, added some touches to the card to make it match the color scheme. The card itself is very nice looking and comes with a back plate. Benchmarks for the card will be posted below as they come in.

CASE: I’ve only had good things to say about NZXT products and I won’t argue that I’m a bit of a fan boy. The Phantom 530 is yet another feature packed case from the company. I love the new window design over the original Phantom line that shows the entire “goodies” area of the PC instead of only the top half. They've implemented the pivoting fan mount from the Switch 810 as well as the heightened top fan mounting area to allow for push/pull configurations. All the intake fan mounts are filtered except for the one over the HDD cage, which is my only gripe with the chassis. I added a few fans I had laying around to really keep the 290X cool.

PSU: Seasonic is arguably the best PSU making company out there. The SSR-650RM is a tier 2 unit with Gold efficiency. It has a blue and black color scheme that just sealed the deal. The system pulls close to 500 watts under full load leaving plenty of headroom. I would have liked the attachable cables to be sleeved, but that’s just me being picky.

EXTRAS:

• Rosewill RNX-N250: I've used these in a few other builds and for a cheap price they work very well for the average sized house.

• ASUS DRW-24B1ST: I usually grab the cheapest DD available, since they are usually used once, but this guy will be burning lots of CDs. Having used this one before I felt safe using it again.

• NZXT Hue: He liked the way my case was lit up so without having to get a bunch of LED fans we grabbed this LED setup. He liked how you can change the colors to fit the mood he was in on a particular day instead of being stuck with one color forever. The adhesive was really sticky and the overall length of the strip was long enough to go around the entire case with a little extra.

• Silverstone Sleeved Extensions: I went with Silverstone on this one because they were cheaper and could get them all through Newegg. He wanted white since there isn't a full set of blue cables. I feel that they really accented nicely.

CONCLUSION:

This build went perfectly. There wasn't a single hitch. I didn't do much of any tweaking and overclocking because the user wanted to try it out for himself. Benchmarks will be posted here later on as he gets some games and such. This will be posted on Reddit in a bit so you can see the high res pictures there. I’m always happy to hear your comments. Feel free to ask questions here or PM me!

Hope you guys like it!

Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/1vtu5c/build_complete_sherlock_i5_4670k_msi_290x_nzxt/

High Res Pictures: http://imgur.com/a/P2FNT#0

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