MY 6TH BUILD | R.O.G Pure Gaming PC

This rig was requested by a friend who needed a pure gaming PC, but time to time he will use it for 3D modeling and video editing projects. That’s why I have chosen the X99 chipset with the latest Broadwell LGA 2011-V3 CPU. GTX 1080 would be the best and beast of the GPU to pair with this gorgeous curved display at 100Hz refresh rate. A set of gaming keyboard and mouse can sure score some head-shots without a doubt.


PC Specification:
Intel Core i7-6800k 3.4 ghz 6 core processor(BX80671I76800K)
Corsair H115i Liquid cooling 104.7 CFM Liquid
Asus ROG Strix X99 Gaming Motherboard ATX LGA 2011-3

G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory

Samsung 950 PRO 512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive

Seagate Constellation ES.3 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 8GB G1 Gaming Video Card

Phanteks Enthoo Evolve ATX Glass ATX Mid Tower Case

SeaSonic PRIME 750W 80+ Titanium Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply

Corsair K70 RGB RAPIDFIRE Wired Gaming Keyboard

Logitech G900 CHAOS SPECTRUM Wireless Optical Mouse

$ 1400 Gaming PC

This machine ,was just a fun little project for the weekend for a client who requested for one to be assembled within 3 hours of which I did it since I've been itching to build one for a while. This thing can run pretty much any game you throw at it at around 60 FPS. I plan to make some changes to it in the future such as better speakers, more RAM, possibly another monitor or two along with another GPU and maybe switch over to liquid cooling as per the client requested but that will come when he gets the money. Haven't had any issues with it yet and have never had major issues while assembling so I assume I did everything right (built this unaided). One minor mistake I did make was using a micro ATX Mobo in an ATX mid tower but this didn't present any issues so I stuck with it. Any comments are welcome!



The Specification Include:
 Intel core i5-6600K 3.5Ghz Quad core
G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB(2X8GB) DDR4-2400
Samsung 850 Evo Series 250GB 2.5" SSD
MSI Radeon R9-380 8GB
Corsair ATX Mid Tower
EVGA 850Watts
Asusb DRW-24B1ST/DVD/CD Writer
Gigabyte GA-B150M-D3H Micro ATX LGA 1151
Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM
Micorsoft Windows 10 Home OEM(64Bit)

The Bright Light

First of all, I bought the Bitfenix Pandora ATX Core, NCIX had it on sale and it came with a LED light strip, and a blue 6-pin gpu extender. This case is nice but, it has some minor issues.
(1) If you want to mount 3 mechanical hard drives in the bottom, make sure your power supply is standard length. The one I bought is bit longer, which made it impossible to turn the thumb screw to tighten the drive cage to the case. So I end up installing 2 drives in the bottom. (2) I reused my Corsair H100 from my previous computer, you have to install the radiator first, before installing the motherboard. (3) The rubber grommets come out of place very easily, but are easy to put back in place.

For decent sound you must connect your front panel to the motherboard. I didn't do that at first, I plugged my headphones to the rear panel and it sounded like ****. It couldn't even power my Sony headphones. Then I watched a Teksyndicate video where the guy from Asus was talking about the Supreme FX chipset. He said Sonic Studio and Sonic something else only works with motherboard header.

The owner mainly uses this computer to run PLEX server, and he occasionally plays Cities Skyline. He also does some light video editing. He currently requested a HD6870 as the GPU, but at the end of the month he's awaiting for  GTX-970 which i will show him how replace it. Other than the few minor issues with the case everything else works fine. 

specification include
Intel core i5-4690k 3.5ghz Quad Core
Asus Z97 Pro Gamer ATX LGA1150
Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB(2X8GB)

Sapphire AMD Radeon HD 6870 GPU
Samsung 850EVO Series 250GB 2.5" SSD
Bitfenix Pandora ATX Mid Tower
EVGA 750Watts ATX12V/EPS12V

My 5TH BUILD | Velociraptor Extreme (nicknamed City night Light)

This computer is used for everyday browsing by the owner who made it possible for me to assemble it for him, as well as 1080p gaming. Hope you enjoy.

CPU: 4690k that I got brand new from eBay for a great price is overclocked to 4.4ghz at 1.178 volts. I could push it higher, but I need about a .05 volt just to get to 4.5, so I don't think it's really worth it.

CPU Cooler: The Cryorig H7 is a great budget cooler. It is very quiet and inaudible at idle. It looks amazing and cools better than the Hyper 212. Bought from Newegg.

Motherboard: I also got my motherboard from eBay, because it was a great price at the time. It still works great, and has all the features I need. It looks decent, and has a debug LED, which can be extremely useful.

Memory: For ram I went with G.Skill Sniper 1866 and it works great. The reason for the different prices in my parts list is because I bought the first kit about a year ago, and the second kit I bought a few weeks ago, not because I needed more ram, but rather, because it was so cheap.

Video Card: I bought my EVGA GTX 770 4gb from ebay for a fantastic price. I went with 4gb, because my last 2gb card was starting to run out of vram in games like GTA V, so 4gb is just for future proofing. Anyway, this is still a pretty good GPU that can still max out most games at 1080p.

Storage: My primary drive for system is my 120gb Samsung 840 Evo that I got for $40(Kshs.4000). My games are installed on my 320gb Western Digital, and my media files are on the 2tb Seagate Barracuda.

Case: I went with the Define S because I liked how it looked and the features it offered, and even though I have an air cooled pc, it is good to know that I can build a custom loop in it without issue.
PSU: The XFX Pro650 XXX Edition is a tier 1 Seasonic rebrand. It is semi modular and has always worked amazingly well.The only thing I don't like about it is that the extra cables are flat, which makes them very hard to manage in this case.

Fans: The be quiet! Pure Wings 2 are great 140mm fans which are awesome for the price you can get them. They are dead silent and are hardly louder when you ramp them up. I have 3 of them as intake, and the two stock Fractal Design fans are in the back and top as exhaust. I keep all my fans at low settings, and all of them are installed with either rubber padding or rubber anti vibration screw mounts.


LED Lighting: I wanted to do a custom approach to LED lighting for maximum customization. I bought an Arduino Gemma controller board and some RGB LEDs from eBay. I also bought a right angle USB chord so I can plug it in straight on my motherboard, because the Z87 extreme4 has an onboard USB port by the ram slots. I have it set up with power from a sata cable by removing the sata ending and wiring the appropriate wires. Then, I used a fan extension cable so I can always unplug it when I plug in the USB chord to go into program mode on the Arduino. By going with the custom approach, I can do ANYTHING with the LEDs, by simply programming it in the Arduino software. This is basically superior to any NZXT Hue or similar system, for only like $20(Kshs.19,500). Totally worth it. I can get any led to show any color on the RGB spectrum by inputting custom values. Also, I can make different effects, such as rainbow, single color, double color, etc. I can choose how many LEDs I use and can set how quick I want colors to change.

PC SPECIFICATION:

    CPU
    Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core

    CPU Cooler
    CRYORIG H7 49.0 CFM

 
    Motherboard
    ASRock Z87 Extreme4 ATX LGA1150

    Memory
    G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866

    Memory
    G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866

    Storage
    Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5" SSD

    Storage
    Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB 3.5" 7200RPM

    Storage
    Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM

    Video Card
    EVGA GeForce GTX 770 4GB Dual FTW ACX

    Case
    Fractal Design Define S w/Window ATX Mid Tower

    Power Supply
    XFX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V

    Operating System
    Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OEM (64-bit)

    Case Fan
    be quiet! 3 Pure Wings 2 61.2 CFM 140mm

    Case Fan
    $11.90
    be quiet! Pure Wings 2 61.2 CFM 140mm

    Case Fan
    $11.90
    be quiet! Pure Wings 2 61.2 CFM 140mm

    Case Fan
    2 Fractal Design GP14-WT 68.4 CFM 140mm fans



    Custom
Roccat Lua

    Custom
IBM Model M2

   Custom
Creative Labs A250

  Custom
Arduino Gemma

    Custom
    LED Strip
   

MY 4TH BUILD | nicknamed (Pandora)

It's simple and quiet and hits a nice 3.5GHz OC.

The 16 GB of RAM is a bit excessive but necessary for games running a lot of mods and helps with rendering speeds on photo and video work I do freelance from time-to-time.

While I'm not a huge fan of the Pandora case, its selection arose from my desire to have the client's PC look fine. The Pandora is quite literally the width of an ATX power-supply plus two side panels, so it fit nicely. The only oddity I encountered was having to run the 8-pin CPU up between the mosfet heatsinks and the top exhaust fan instead of behind the motherboard tray. It simply wouldn't fit back there. The SSD bracket in front of the PSU in a godsend for hiding the extra lengths of cable in this case. Custom-length cable work would definitely be a bonus to have here.

The 970 holds up pretty well at 2560x1440. There's some minor stuttering/frame drops if I turn everything up to max on really demanding games (AC4, Far Cry, etc.) but I'm pretty happy with the card.

The Bitfenix Alchemy LED's in the case are much more white in person, but any camera I take pictures on saturates them almost to being a light blue. My goal was for a mostly black with white highlights build (thanks for ruining that again with only red PCIe cables EVGA).

But the client was so flabbergasted by his "Pandora"

PC SPECIFICATION:

CPU
Intel Core i5-4690 3.5GHz Quad-Core

CPU Cooler
Cooler Master Seidon 120V 86.2 CFM Liquid

Motherboard
Asus GRYPHON Z87 Micro ATX LGA1150

Memory
Kingston HyperX Fury White 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866


Storage
Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" SSD

Storage
Seagate Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM

Video Card
EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB SSC ACX 2.0+

Case
BitFenix Pandora Core MicroATX Mid Tower

Power Supply
EVGA 750W ATX12V / EPS12V

Case Fan
Corsair Air Series SP120 Quiet Edition (2-Pack) 37.9 CFM 120mm

Keyboard
Corsair K65 RGB

Mouse
Corsair M65 RGB Wired Laser

MY 3RD BUILD | nicknamed (Snow White)

PC gaming has a lot of benefits, but the act of putting together a computer for the first time feels like running the gauntlet. Of course people are going to boast about it after surviving it. Over the years, I've heard people say over and over that building a computer isn't hard. If you've never built a computer before, I don't mean to scare you. 

  PC Specification:
AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor,

Motherboard MSI 970A SLI Krait Edition ATX AM3+ 

Memory    
Corsair Vengeance 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory

Storage     
Sandisk SSD PLUS 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive

Video Card
Windforce Radeon R9 380 4GB Video Card

Case    
Thermaltake Commander MS/I Snow Edition (White/Black) ATX Mid Tower Case
   
Power Supply        
Corsair Builder 750W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply
   
Optical Drive    
Asus DRW-24F1ST DVD/CD Writer

Operating System        
Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit) 

Here comes the world’s first 13TB SSD

There was a time when one of the issues with SSDs was capacity, but that certainly isn't the case anymore – particularly not with the latest offering from Fixstars.
The new Fixstars SSD-13000M is a whopping 13TB 2.5-inch drive, making it the biggest SSD in the world at the time of writing. Fixstars has also launched a 10TB model alongside this one.
Along with the whopping capacity – to give some perspective, if you want to store 13TB on standard DVDs, you'll need around 2,800 discs! – both drives offer read speeds of up to 540MB/s and sequential writes of up to 520MB/s.
Satoshi Miki, CEO of Fixstars, commented: "The Fixstars SSD series has been highly regarded for their distinct reliability on steady read/write performance that lasts over time."
The SSD offers a temperature control system to minimise any risk of heat damage to the drive, and there's also an optional high durability mode which apparently triples the longevity of the drive – although with this on, storage capacity is halved (so you'll only have a mere 6.5TB).
Of course, this drive is priced out of the reach of the average user and is aimed at enterprises and for tasks such as heavy-duty video processing.
How much will it cost? A spokesman for Fixstars told PC World that the drive will run to an estimated (and eye-watering) $13,000 (around £9000, AU$19,000), with shipping expected to kick off by the close of next month over in the US.

If you are a gadget freak and have US$13,000 to burn, this world’s first 13TB solid-state drive could be yours. Japanese SSD company, Fixstars on Wednesday announced the massive 13TB called SSD-13000M, which will ship by the end of February.
For the uninitiated, though widely adopted, SSDs available in markets today have no more than 6TB of storage. Fixstars SSD-13000M will more than double that capacity.
Fixstars announced that a pair of exceptionally voluminous 2.5-inch SSD-13000M at 13TB, and the Fixstars SSD-10000M with 10TB of capacity, can now be pre-ordered. The company expects the shipments for US customers to start in late February.
Previous Fixstars drives managed their capacity feats by employing flash memory chips normally destined for use in small-scale mobile devices. This time with SSD=13000M, Fixstars hasn’t mentioned the tech behind the capacity.
It is estimated that the Fixstars SSD-13000M can be used to record 4.3hrs of 4K uncompressed 60fps video footage, or 823hrs of 4K H.265/HEVC (Broadcast Quality) 60fps video, or 1924hrs of Full HD H.264 (Broadcast Quality) 29.97fps video