Its been a while since I last built a pc for myself. Its probably been about 4 to 5 years. So I was due for a much needed upgrade. So after refreshed with whats out on the market and seeing how prices were, I figured it I should buy before I talk myself out of it. The part I loved most about this build would have to be the CPU. I was planning to get the i7-4670 since it was just about $300. However after my night class, there was a "flash sale" (or whatever you want to call it) from Microcenter. They were selling the i7-4770k for just $200 (in-store pickup only). Fortunately I had a friend who was heading to Microcenter the next morning so I just gave him the money. I wanted to go "all-out" for the cpu since I skimped out a bit on my older build (Intel Core 2 Quad Q8330). I'll mainly use it for video encoding, besides it doesn't hurt to have the speed. Instead of the big heatsink/fan combo, I was convinced that I should go towards the watercooling route. I have yet to fully test how effective it is when the cpu is under stress, but idle temps are looking pretty good (C).

I didn't want to spend too much on a MoBo and ASRock was my choice. It had everything I needed and more at my price range. For the RAM, I originally wanted 8GB but a few friends said I would be better off with 16GB (2 x 8GB) and they were right. 16GB of RAM is just great for overall usage and of course G.Skill is my go-to for RAM. I'm using a 1TB WD Black HDD for my main drive (took from my older pc) and bought another drive for general storage. Newegg had a decent deal for the 3TB (wanted 2TB originally). With the money I saved with on the cpu I figured I could buy a new video card. My old pc had a GTS 450 and I typically don't like to spend more than $100 on a gpu lol. However Since I saved $100+ on the cpu, I decided to go for the GTX 660 for a few reasons. It was around $200, so it wasn't hurting the wallet too much with my previous savings. I was also able to keep using my old psu for my old pc (Corsair TX650W; I dont remember how much I spent on that since that was a few years ago). As well as getting 2 free games, Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag and Splinter Cell: Blacklist, for free (Newegg's holiday bundle).

I decided to opt in for a BD Burner since I wanted to watch BDs on my desktop since I'm glued to it. The only BD player in my place was my laptop (BD reader). Perhaps in the future, when blank BDs are reasonably priced, I'll burn some data off. Need to able to future-proof something in this pc. Im also using my old DVD burner as my secondary drive because I like to have two drives accessible. The case was something I picked because it reminded me of my old pc case a bit (cooler master centurion 5 - blue). I decided to remove the side fan because it was too close the H60's tubes and that made me a bit uncomfortable. Everything is still a good temperature regardless. Now I have two spare fans. The case has ample space for me, much easier to access everything on the motherboard, and it has cable management (something my old case didn't have). So yes, this is my first time doing cable management myself with a non-modular psu. It was a pain doing the management system, but I do like how it looks as a final product.

• All the parts, besides the cpu, were bought from Newegg