Description
---Work in progress---
Friend decided to pre order the Oculus and instead of one of those bundled prebuilt pc's from Asus or Dell, I convinced him that custom builds are the way to go.
With multiple custom water cooled rigs under my belt, I offered to do it for a couple beers simply because I just love putting together computers.
He purchased everything on my Amazon Prime account and got it shipped to my place. Thank god for 2-3 day shipping on everything! I couldn't help but take pics and open everything up the very first night after work at 1 in the morning. I ended up staying up till 4am simply unboxing all the parts, inspecting them, taking apart the case, and starting to set it all up for the process.
Spent the next night installing the M.2 SSD, power supply, 140mm fans, motherboard, and HDD/cage.
Everything's done now, installed, routed, cleaned up. Temp installed a CD drive, threw in the Windows 10 disc, booted up nice and fast. Started the Windows install, then went to the bathroom and take out some trash. When I came back it was completely done...less than 5 minutes. Installed drivers, flashed bios, everything went nice and smooth.
HWmonitor reporting solid numbers, stressed with x264 and xtu for over 2 hours, never exceeds 35 degrees.
I will get PCmark and 3DMark on tonight and check everything else out.
Part Reviews
CPU Cooler
This thing is extremely quiet and cold, expecially on a locked cpu at 1.1 volts
Motherboard
ASrock is my standby mobo manufacturer. I hate to admit I've never used anything else, but they have never let me down so I'll stick with them until they do. This board is awesome, $100 for SLI, M.2, Killer lan, ALC1150, USB3.1, legendary ASrock quality.
Storage
I've recently become a big fan of M.2 SSDs, even though this one is a sata drive capped at about 10gb/s, I have one in my own pc and it is surprisingly fast. Not to mention it is the size of a stick of gum and doesn't require any cables or case space. They're also about the same price as a normal 2.5" SSD nowadays so the choice was clear.
Case
I've never had a Corsair case before, but I loved using this so much that I went and bought a 540r for myself to paint and mod.
Power Supply
Evga 650w P2 is another clear choice. Aesthetic look and build quality, platinum rated, full modular, all for $80.
Case Fan
I've got 1 of these Thermaltake Luna fans in my pc, and a 200mm version, and I love them both. The 200mm moves some serious and the 140's do as well. Not to mention they look great and have rubber corners. Will definitely use these again.
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