spent a bit of money on my PC
- This topic has 50 replies, 13 voices, and was last updated 8 years, 11 months ago by .
-
Posts
-
Because my birthday is just around the corner i thought i would treat myself to a few little extras for my pc
please excuse the photo quality as it was hard to get them right due to blue lighting , its not actually that bright in real life. also excuse the state of my desk atm its not normally as cluttered as this.
got myself a new case for under £50 this is a really good buy and has things you would expect to find in over £200 cases , comes with 2 x blue led fans front fitted, white rear fan and a fan managment panel.
added the coolermaster cpu cooling block , picked it up for under £30 which is a bargain due to waterblock IOs being popular atm ,
Added two coolermaster blue led fans to the top of the case (took from old case)
cable managment is a dream with this case also the storage bays for hard drives and ssd are hidden behind the side panel along with the psu sleeved at bottom.
things left to do to this,
would like to swap out the cables for braded blue black white colored ones i have seen them advertised , possibly swap the psu out for the one in my other pc.
might add a second evga geforce 960 4gb super clocked in sli mode , cheapest for the superclocked 4gb is not cheap though lol
need to get another stick of ram currently have 2 x 8gb corsair vengence plus another 4 gb corsair vengence in draw in desk need to see if i can add another 4 gb to it to balance
looking for something to put in the front drive bays ,dvd etc are dead in the water so redundant almost ,i bought a fan controller unit but the case already has one top mounted so going to return it.
going to add the second fan to the heatsync as when i bought it i didnt know if i would have the room , but plenty of space to add to the rear side.
want a nice big sticker/logo at the bottom on the psu box .housing something in blue and white would look sic.
the case came with magnetic dust covers for the top and bottom which is cool as feck and saves a few pounds.
when i switch to the braded cables i will be able to cable dress a lot cleaner.
ref airflow
the two front fans are controlled by the panel at the top front of case settings , off,low,medium,high they are intake fans
the one rear fan is also controlled by the panel with the same settings, i have them on low and the case is silent and keeping very cool rear fan is extraction
the two top fans are different in the fact they are controlled by the bios software , they are off until needed , when the cpu or the motherboard detects a pre determined heat they come on to quickly cool the inside of the case they are of course extracting the warm air , when the job is done they switch back off or throttle down until its cool again.
the psu has its own heatsinc tower that also has a fan , it pushes hot air to the side where the top fans pick it up and extract it if needed.
the psu fan is downward facing in the case bottom protected by a magnetic dust strip so no heat from the psu enters the case.
a bit overkill i know it would be ok with the stock three fans but the two top fans give the added insurance and can quickly kick in automatically.
the whole thing runs silent unless the two top fans are running at 100% then its still is quiet due to coolermaster builds.
how do you play with your monitor to the left? It is not uncomfortable for the eyes and neck?
my missus sits to left of me , so i set the monitor this was as i can still chat to her , also what you cant see out of picture is my big tv is wall mounted just off to the left and above the monitor , i have an hdmi cable running from pc to the tv if i want to use kodi or watch sport , lastly because my missus is to the left of me she cant see my screen
lolprivacy above all!
over clocking
i am no expert at over clocking and until recently its been said that the non -K intel processors are locked to overclocking,
my cheapish cpu is a I5 6400 @ 2.70 ghz that when boosted rises to around 3.2 ghz , this is good enough in my setup to pull 100-120 fps when in high detail mode in world of tanks,
because i dont use the pc for anything more demanding its enough as it is but then i read the other day that if you change the bios you are able to unlock the cpu for over clocking and whats more you can get some massive boosts.
so i read this and thought hmmm……………………. well in the end i had to try it , as it stated it was a 2 min job due to the abillity to flash the bios within the bios no usb trickery needed.
the major draw backs when doing this is not stability , it is that certain items are switched off like fan management and incorrect temp readouts of motherboard and cpu amoungst other things, being i just re housed into a new case i didnt think it
wise to actually keep the over clocked settings until i am certain i am not causing issues.,
so i downloaded the bios i needed for the Asus z170-p my motherboard and saved it where i could get access to it easily from within the bios,
then i had to change a few settings that i had listed from a guide i found on the internet via google (same as link for bios for motherboard to allow the overclock)
saved, and rebooted , ran cpu-z and boom !!!!! 4.519 ghz compared to official 2.7 ghz or in practice 3.2 ghz boosted massive boost of around 70%
i also ran benchmark software and the thing performs better than a low end I7 this is straight up and well documented on the internet if you dig around for it.
first attempt of doing it i found unstable so lowered the ram frequency slightly (think i read to do this somewhere) , and i got it spot on the second time, although my ram was set to slightly slower than it should be.
however after all of this i have reverted back to out of the box settings for now, i still dont know enough about over clocking at this stage and need to find other users that have done this and the settings they have used and also any solution they have used for temp monitoring and fan managment.
anyone here who actually has been able to follow this and knows what i am talking about please add a comment below.
On 2/17/2017 at 11:48 AM, maxthemad said:how do you play with your monitor to the left? It is not uncomfortable for the eyes and neck?
I use 3 monitors. 1 to the left, 1 to the right and a 32″ above them. Very comfortable viewing.
However @ Soulza, that’s a very nice set-up but does it kill more tanks
my white braded power cables came this morning , spent a bit of time mounting them on the cable spredder clips and adding them to the pc , waiting on blue sata cables now then will post pics
pics are not mine but these are what i did with the cables and clips mountings
I also have 2 monitors ,but to play using the center!
Most CPUs or chips if I’m correct already come overclocked hence they are quite cheap to buy.
The issue then becomes overheating when the purchaser of an already overclocked chip tries to increase the speed even further than its maximum. Most players will likely not know how to overclock but all I say to the ones that do, “be careful” and ensure you cool that CPU down.
It would look better with a Leicester City screensaver……
I like the setup — but the headphones on the lamp ………!
LOL
i have ordered decals , new front panel fan control and headphone holders
today i started to make my graphics card back plate and the back panel IO cover , took ideas from this video,
have the shapes cut and the IO panel stuck together , now need to respray and add the decals, i also have the PSU cover to decorate , waitting on my brother to cut the shapes out i need for that , i am working in evenings until thursday so can do that until then ,should have all plates done and new sata cables installed and loomed by the weekend.
still waiting on silver metal decals from USA to arrive but sprayed my templates today and added them to the setup.
NOTE i have now moved my monitor front center,
here are some external shots with lights on.
this is what the pc looks like when i am using it ,its lit and of course side panel is on. but to see work done i needed to switch the pc off and remove panel ,due to lighting coming out to bright in photos
so lets look inside
straight away you will notice the custom white cable loops i added ,these are extensions and very easy to add to your system ,i also added blue SAT cables for my drives.
spayed the psu cover edge rather than the whole cover, this is stuck on only and easy to remove , same with the back ports cover , very easy and cheap to do.
GPU cover i just finished ,may stay with it or change it out when my decals arrive.
all the above modding cost very little indeed infact the case cost the most and that was under £50 ,cables around £25 , plastics i went to my local builders merchants and looked in the kitchen section for the plastics ,far cheaper than ordering acrylic online ,add one can of black paint and a roll of masking tape and thats it. a very cheap way to give your old pc a facelift.
Ensure that your cables are able breathe as there is a phenomenon known in the electrical world as “ventilation” and that is when wires and cables are tightly packed together and the heat inside them cannot be dissipated or dispersed therefore the whole bundle starts to overheat.
Some may argue that it should be lack of ventilation but hey ho.
Hopefully by the look of your set up there is adequate fans to extract all the heat generated.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.