I built this machine after about 15 years away from building. I wanted to get back into PC gaming and I was attracted by the advances in smaller form factor. My plan was to buy the best components that I could get my hands on in order to get some future proofing. I also wanted to try my hand at watercooling and overclocking.

Case: Fractal Design Core 500

A lot of research went into the case. I wanted one that had good airflow but also allowed for a large GPU and lots of room for water cooling. The Core 500 fit the bill with the ability to house a 280mm radiator (but just barely, more on this later) and GPUs up to 310mm.

CPU: Skylake i5-6600K

I didn't go for the i7 because I was going to mainly use this for gaming and some light photo and video editing and all of my research pointed to only needing the i5.

Cooler: Kraken X61

Everything I read said that this was one of the best AIO 280mm units you could buy. So far I am super impressed.

GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 980Ti 6Gb

I wanted to be able to drive a 34" ultrawide at 1440p, so it was either this or a R9 390. The 390 has lots of heat, so I opted for the 980Ti. Wonderful card so far. Most of the time the fans aren't even on.

Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty Gaming-ITX/ac

It has a M.2 slot on the back, USB-C, all PWM fan headers and tons of SATA ports should I need them. Perfect.

Storage: Samsung 850 EVO 250GB M.2

Fast and no cables. I don't have much more to say.

PSU Silverstone 550W Strider Gold

Thanks to some more research I learned that having a full size PSU would make it difficult to get the graphics card in there. So I opted for this one, which is only 140mm and fully modular. It worked great.

Monitor Dell U3415W

This thing is amazing. Calibration out of the box is perfect and it is so big. Highly, highly recommended.

THE BUILD

I got everything easy installed first, the CPU, memory and SSD. Then I started to try to fit the watercooling. This is where I hit my first snag. I had initially planned on putting the radiator on the top with the fans in a pull configuration as an intake, however as I started to fit this I realized it wasn't going to work. In order for the rad to fit in the case with the included exhaust fan, the fans must be mounted on the top. And even then, to get the rad and the fan to fit, I had to squeeze it in. It was touch and go there for a while, I was almost sure that I wasn't going to get the exhaust fan blades to not hit the end of the rad, but with enough fiddling I finally got it to work. I would say that the Kraken X61 is about the biggest watercooler you can get in a Core 500.

After the fun with the watercooler, I then fit the PSU and the graphics card without any hassle. Powered it up and everything worked first try!

Please note that the cable management is a bit of a mess. I need to fix that up in the future.

All in all this was a fun build, with the only minor hassle being the watercooler, but it wasn't too bad.