TechCrunch

February 17, 2016

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)