My First Solo Build
 

I posted a few months ago about two builds I did with the aid of a couple of engineers (EE & SW) for two of my boys.
Recently I did my first solo build for my other son. Other than bending a pin on the god damned USB 3 slot on the mobo it went well.

I thought about going Kaby Lake then started looking at the 200 series mobos and eventually decided to stick with what I know works well and wait til next time to let any possible kinks with the 200 get worked out by other people.

I went MSI this time, even used their cpu cooler. Install was straight forward.
Went with the Win10 Home version that comes on a thumb drive. Best way ever, I'll never do it any other way again.

MSI Z170A GAMING M5 LGA 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 ATX Intel Motherboard

MSI Radeon RX 480 DirectX 12 RX 480 GAMING X 8G 8GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support ATX Video Card

CORSAIR RMx Series RM750X 750W 80 PLUS GOLD Haswell Ready Full Modular ATX12V & EPS12V SLI and Crossfire Ready Power Supply

Intel Core i5-6600K 6M Skylake Quad-Core 3.5 GHz LGA 1151 91W BX80662I56600K Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 530

PNY CS1311 2.5" 240GB SATA III TLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSD7CS1311-240-RB

G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2400 (PC4 19200) Intel Z170 Platform / Intel X99 Platform Desktop Memory Model F4-2400C15D-16GVR

Seagate BarraCuda ST1000DM010 1TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive Bare Drive

Windows 10 Home - Full Version (32 & 64-bit) / USB Flash Drive

ASUS PCE-AC56 802.11ac Dual-band Wireless-AC1300 PCI-E Adapter

I used to have that case. One tip i can give is to remove the one hard drive slot right between your gpu and front fans. Doing this dropped my temperatures on my gpu by about 4c while the fans also ran 400-500 rpm slower.

Good tip. Thanks man.

Nice. That's a pretty good video card for the money, too. Rates just a hair above the GTX 970.

I have the RX 480 as well Vail.

Do you play games?

It really seems to be a good card at that price. I put the same card in one of my other boys rigs a couple months ago and he's been happy with it. Not as robust as their brother's evga 1080 of course but they can still play all the games.

I built this one so he can upgrade the card later without having to change any of the other components. We'll see how that works out.

I don't game. Seems odd i know but I built them for my three boys. I'm starting to enjoy the building part though.

I recently upgraded from a 970, which is about the same, to a 1080. Should be okay for a while, but eventually you'll want to make the switch.

In other words, Merry Christmas! :D

Nice! I'll bet you're digging that.
The 480s are plenty good enough for my two younger boys fittest builds. They can start there then they'll know and appreciate the difference when they move up later on.

The build world is cool, definitely an art to it.

reminds me of my gateway

Didn't seem worth a new thread, so I'll post this here.

My CPU fan recently crapped out on me, and when I replaced it I decided to upgrade my case as well. Went with a Rosewill mid-tower, which came with LED fans. Got a replacement CPU fan that came with them as well. As a result, my computer now sort of lights up a dark room like a Christmas tree.

<iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/e2fsXdKDbjM" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net...9e&oe=5AE1FEF6

Oh man that is tits. Cases that come with built in fans are so handy. I've been wanting to do another build but those crypto currency pukes have driven gpu prices through the roof.

FYP. :thumb:

I wouldn't know, sweetie. Sorry. :)

Ya. The best option out there right now is to buy a prebuilt and then sell off the rest of the parts and you probably get MSRP on the GPU afterwards but thats a lot of hassle to go through.