The PC build thread

yeah then games there and "here is what I wanna build" here.

 

I don't know if the newegg source parts from 15 years ago still works but here is a workstation type PC that I built about 14 years ago this year for spouse to do whatever. It had one MSI 680GTX 4gb video card in it, gigabyte board with just enough for 32 gb DDR 2 Gskill ram, ordinary timing, 8 RAS etc. Nothing too fancy other than coolers on each over the dimms.

CPU was a standard Intel 4 core chip from that generation, the exact specs escape me at the moment but they were top of the 4 core line at that time back then. Cooled by a 1.3 pound nickel copper tower on the CPU with artic silver and a 120 mm fan on top. Both are original to the CPU and all of the are approaching about 100K hours this year.

Case is a corsair HAFx with the 200mm fans and hard drives is a stack of old Barracuda Blacks. It had four raptors 150's in once but one died, one developed click of pending death and two are still healthy from that original 150 series. Maybe a tera each barracuda. Three of them in there. CDROM is blue ray burner along with the usual USB stuff etc.

Just something for spouse to doodle on, solidare, you tube etc. Nothing fancy. Just reliable and that it has been. It liked to eat power supplies though it;s on it's third corsair 750 watt supply protected by a 1500 AVR 900 watt APU that constantly maintains a clean power to it. I am on a second one for that computer. The original one died after 12 years protecting it from spikes that gave us brownouts after a lighting strike. Just what it should do.

Monitor is a 24 inch samsung, Sort of a HDMI one. But also DVI video. nothing too outrageous just a old original quality syncmaster from those days. Its still beautiful to this day.

Now the gaming tower, that one is about 5 rebuilds worth of older parts approaching 15 years service in some cases. The case is thor, top vents removed and thrown away a 360mm thermaltake radiator on top for CPU, A I7 6 core 3930 series CPU is in there.

The RAM is a Gskill DDR3 64 gig total on 8 modules. Board is a Asus Rampage black edition II three or four MSI 680GTX 4gb video cards on there, one died after 12 years service. Down to two. One in spouse's machine described earlier. One new 1080 or newer card can probably do what I do with three or four video cards now if I choose to. But I always ran three minimum.

SSD's Vertex III 120 gbs team of 6 in Raid 5 stack. About half a tera capacity. Protected by several barracuda two tera blacks. I am preparing a number of Japanese hybrid helium assisted spinners at 5 tera each to replace them. with a array of 5 to 10 in the corner tower over time.

I have 6 more Vertex III's as spares. New old stock. Lost one in the last 12 years. Computer was reimaged in 1 hour.

I do have a Delta Server class 120mm blower in the back capable of cutting your finger to the bone and its teamed with a ultrakaze server class fan on the front feeding it across the CPU and Ram stack. Its capable of spreading dust bunnies 5 feet up the wall behind it. A little wipe now and then is good. Functions as a space heater in winter.

Power is seasonic 1500 watt 15 amp with two CPU cables feeding the dual CPU sockets. I had a electrician upgrade to 30 amp T socket and that frees me up to buy any power supply for computers and drop those in to the future.

Its not a ego build, just a quiet gaming rig for battle. Its got 4 years on so far and I think about 30K hours running 24/7 Power bills is about 35 dollars to feed and cool it every month. Idles at 28C and games at about 42C give or take 5. I used to have a gaming competition rig running at 60C in the past and it burned out the capacitors at the mother board after 10 years of that overclocked service at 4.6 gig on the CPU.

Essentially load first move first to capture the objective before the first three of 32 enemy players load in to start. Later game devs nerfed start times to 30 sec begin clocks.

I could overclock to 4.8 but its not needed. It will step to 4.2 when it wants to. So I just let it go leave it alone.

Pending upgrades is 128 of DDR 4ram from Gskill and video cards. Plus monitor. Thats about it. IF I wanted to build a rig and use 10 to 14 SSD's vertex III in raid 5 that crosses ATTO from bottom to top at about 1400 mb/s then alls well. Load them bloated games and get moving fast. I would need a bigger board with more SATA sockets to support that.

And there lies the dilemna. Do I upgrade here or do I build new? I have been pondering that question for two years now and am planning. When I do it will be the last rig I build in this life time. and not too many rigs will be able to keep up with me. Unless it's a 9 year old who is sharp of eye and fast with draw to take this old doddering dinosaur out. LOL.

A word on the ASUS Platinum Edition Matrix video cars from 5 years ago. I bought a pair new and installed them. Once drivers etc were up and game configured and fired up I touched the face of god with that set. For about a hour until the hellfire heat took my entire home from 72 to 84 F in one hour. Hot hot hot.

I opened the room window to 28 degrees winter to vent the two cards and their heat.

Sold them for the same money I paid on ebay the next day.

Hot hot hot. But the quality and such pretty heavenly video from them.. once in a life time.

 

I hear you, I prefer to say these are what I have built. About 6 systems total. two burned up of the 6. The other 4 became two current systems with parts filling a closet , a bin and another closet and a corner table LOL.

 

I've been building high end rigs for almost 20 years. Grew up with an IBM PC clone in the 80's when you would swap timing crystals to overclock. Started building systems from spare parts in the Pentium 33/66 era. Cyrix came out with the 6x86 procs and started building machines centered around them. Fast forward a few years and I built my first gaming rig on a P4 Soyo Dragon mobo. Went crazy after that and blew $5k on a Precision 330 workstation full of RDRAM and U160 drives. Realized I could do so much more with $5k and never looked back. Not sure i'll be building super powerhouses any more since machines are just so insanely fast but I do build em' pretty beefy at least.

Current build is 5 years old. I'm waiting on Intel's 10th gen X chips with PCI 4.0 support for the new build later this year:

Intel i7-5930K
Asus X99-E WS
Corsair Dominator DDR4 64GB
Corsair H100 Hydro
Corsair AX860 PSU
nVidia Quadro P4000
Samsung 970 Pro M.2 nVME SSD
Samsung 950 Pro SATA SSD
Lian-Li PC-A76 full tower

 

Planning a build has become a little more difficult for me. I tend to stick with what has worked in the past for as long the boards are availible on market. However when they evolve into say PCI 4 support and so forth, its harder to fall back on what I am using now as a way of conserving the expense of a new build. So if I do go PCI4 and other evolving pathways into the next generation its going to require me to reassess what has worked before and choose newer and hopefully faster components that match in some basic way.

The more I put together systems on paper the more I find games, software and other things getting bloated for one thing and somewhat idiot proof for the other. Why bother building these rigs when any old win 10 computer can get into the realm. I have been very reluctant to venture into win 10. I might have to at some point. And that creates another issue to think through.

However I am very leaning towards liquid cooling. When I do the mountain spirituals or other music in the room it competes with that radiator fan set. Its like almost a 70 Db Roar. So Liquid Cooling has some hope of acquiring some silent running with maybe a capacity for absorbing say 60 C gaming. The cooling fluid choice is another issue. It has to be electrically nuetral. Not able to short the machine which would just brick it or burn the home down so to speak considering the power that flows through it. Although the slightest short tends to kill the power supply so very fast these days.

I have seen certain cases that appear to promise cooling by mass of frame, metal type construction the same way I lay down a hot smart phone onto a big armorer's block of aluminum to make it cool down (Other wise it constantly complains of cpu use over 45C. I have stuck the thing into the freezer for 30 minutes before.)

A different problem is I am already into HPTX Sized caeses which stand almost table high now. I wonder if there are even bigger cases with room for TWO power supplies (One to run cooling and the other to run systems CPU, Drives etc. How would I manage to start both up? Two switches? Hum no. It needs to be simple. But two 15 amp lines at 120 volt is a hell of alot to pass through.

Finally but not last. Sound. Age is made me deafer believe it or not. It will require probably a 5th PCI slot with a sound card that has it's own power and amp on board to feed a strong headset.

People would think I have a addiction problem Always bigger stronger systems. However I am fighting to stay with what I learned in the very beginning when I commissioned a very simple pentium 1.6 CPU build and 4600Ti video card 128 mb ram with it's first two gig of DDR ram which required a 4 week wait from Taiwan to ship to builder. That computer lasted 10 years until out classed. The 4600 card made it another two before it finally fizzled. So 12 years on cards.

Do I go into liquid cooling cards too? How about a liquid holding cooling tank for them?

Details, the devil is in the details and in my life details is what sinks ships if I get it wrong somewhere.

For example.

I piss on the Eco green world saving drives pretty green, blue etc. UGH! Get me the enterprise black drives or even the enterprise reds if I can find some. What would be their SSD equivilant? Do I dare pay up for such things? Remember keeping things simple like the famous Raptor 150's in raid zero. 4 of those was absolutely first to load into a map and move. But they burned up pretty much. Cooling? Heck I had a fan on top of each one with a heat sink supporting them. Two drive bays each in that old case. Ugh. That was then.

 

I'd love a nice break down of the budget/mid/high items that go best. Both Intel side and AMD. I'm still an AMD fanboy from way back. But basically a cheat sheet for what's best. I go with what feels right, and so far I've done fine. But I also ask questions.