New build...been a while

Started by Calum, October 11, 2015, 10:17:18 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Calum

Thought I'd share my new build, been using a jerry-rigged Dell dual CPU workstation for a while as I haven't had the time to sort out a "proper" PC.  Finally got time to pick up the last few parts on Friday and bashed this together this morning :)

Intel E5-2683 v3 (2GHz with 2.3GHz turbo, 14 cores, 28 threads - this is meant to clock higher on single-threaded turbo but I haven't been able to get it to do that so far)
Gigabyte X99-UD4
32GB Kingston DDR4 2133MHz RAM
Zotac Geforce GTX 780 (have another to run SLI but currently my heatsink actually blocks the first PCI-E slot so I'm going to see how this runs and then either sell the spare card or swap my heatsink to let me use both)
Intel 750 400GB PCI-E SSD (main drive)
2 x 32GB Intel X25-E SLC SSD (for certain write-intensive workloads as the SLC flash will take more abuse, will be running RAID 0)
Fractal Design Define R5 Blackout Edition
Antec High Current Pro 1200 PSU (total overkill, had this spare for ages as it was intended for another machine and I just never got around to selling it)

I just took two pictures after building, they don't appear to have come out very well...

http://imgur.com/a/IiUSw

This is kind of an all-rounder machine done on somewhat of a budget (he says after having just spent £300 on the Intel 750...but it's so purty...).  Most parts were bought used and some have been re-used from other builds I've had.  Planning on using this for gaming, general web browsing etc, and some VM usage for training and experimentation.

So far I've run into a couple of oddities, one being that it was a bit of a pain installing Windows 7 on the Intel 750 SSD, the other being that the Windows Experience Index crashes out if your CPU has more than 16MB of L3 cache as described in this MS article.  Neither has been a show-stopper, just needed a BIOS update to the latest beta BIOS to allow Windows 7 to install to the NVME drive (without the BIOS update, it's not bootable), and there's a hotfix for the WEI bug if it annoyed me, it's not exactly a big deal so I haven't bothered as I'll be upgrading to Windows 10 anyway.  Just thought I'd mention the bug as I've never come across it before!

patio

Sweet !...Congrats...

I've also heard some issues with Win7 installs over 4G RAM...not sure that applies in your instance...
" Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined. "

camerongray

Looks awesome!  Makes me want to tidy up mine now!

Calum

The Fractal case was great for cable management, I made it a bit more difficult to hide the cables by removing the two HDD cages for better airflow but they just weren't needed for my build so I didn't see the point of leaving them in.  It's extremely quiet and holy wow, the Intel drive is fast!  Very impressed with it so far.