So I've Started On a New Build
that's not only sexy but kicks major ass
Friday, February 7, 2014 by starkers | Discussion: Personal Computing
Yup, it's that time of year again, but this time it's not a PC upgrade but rather a complete new build... starting with a real sexy case...

Now this is a full tower and has oodles of room inside for lots of fantastic shit... accommodating extra big graphics cards, enormous CPU coolers and even a magical leprechaun who can fix stuff when it's broken. Orright, maybe not the leprechaun, but it is fechin' huge inside. And what's more, to make it even more fancy, it has keys to get into it... so nobody's stealing my graphics card in a hurry... the innards of the beasty are quite secure.
Orright, so maybe it's not that secure, but there are lots of things to like about this case. For example, the 'hot swap' hard drive bays and the 'daisy chained' power connecters so that only one SATA plug from the PSU is required. Then there's the great ventilation, easy access to everything and the sexiest appearance ever.
Anyhow, enough of all that, let's talk about the innards...
PSU.... Silverstone 1200w 80 Gold
Mobo.... Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD5H [has 10 SATA 3 ports and 10 USB3 ports]
CPU.... Intel i7 4770K @ 3.5ghz [but highly overclockable]
Cooler... Corsair H60 Liquid CPU Cooler.
RAM... G-Skill Trident DDR3 2400mhz x 32GB
SSD... Samsung 840 Evo series 512Gb
GPU... Gigabyte Radeon 7970 GV-R797WF3- 3GD.
Well that's all I got in it for now, but it has been a long, hard day and I've had enough, it's bedtime and the rest will have to wait 'til tomorrow.
Reply #82 Tuesday, February 11, 2014 8:38 PM
Quoting starkers, reply 77Hehe, I almost missed this beauty
Took you a while....
Oi, leave me alone... I'm improving... took me less than a day this time.
As for harvesting a kidney... I'm about to turn off this beasty to harvest some of its internal organs to transplant into my new beasty.
It's a later start than I had anticipated, 11.35am, but I had another rough night with pain, discomfort and restless legs syndrome Didn't get to sleep until gone daylight, which is around 4.45 here, and then it was short lived... was up again just after 9.30am and wasn't feeling so bright eyed and bushy tailed... needing a couple of hours to awaken properly.
anyway... 5-4-3-2-1.... gone [for a while]
Reply #83 Wednesday, February 12, 2014 12:57 AM
I have no clue what you guys are talking about lol ,i just know what looks good and i like the looks of your case starkers.Makes me wish i could make my own good luck.
Reply #84 Wednesday, February 12, 2014 11:58 AM
Thanks Storm, with all the distractions and other annoyances, luck is what I've needed but it has stayed away in droves. Oh well, persitence and determination eventually got the job done... though not before time. I was supposed to have had a free day to finish putting it together, but as always, a distraction or three and I didn't get done until 2.30 am Thursday morning, almost a day later than I'd hoped.
As for not knowing how to, it's a lot easier than you might think. I learned how by familiarising myself with the components and where they went, then practising on an old rig by taking it apart and putting it back together. Really, it's not that hard, and if you are building an Intel machine then you buy only compatible parts... eg, match the CPU and motherboard with the same socket, and vice versa with AMD CPU and motherboard. It doesn't take long to get to know your way around a PC, time and patience and you'll get the hang of it in no time.... and there's always helpful folk here who would help you out should you need it.
Anyway people, it is done, finished complete, and I took photos using my phone along the way. Don't know how good they;ll be but I'll post them when I wake in the morning... just too damned buggered to be bothered with imageshack and all that now, I need some sleep first
Niiiiiggggghhht.
Reply #85 Thursday, February 13, 2014 1:22 AM
Pins and needles...needles and pins. The anticipation builds!
Reply #86 Thursday, February 13, 2014 11:16 AM
Pins and needles...needles and pins. The anticipation builds!
Doesn't it! I just had one of those days I'd rather forget... a day when everything I touched went wrong....a day where imy luck was so bad, if it was raining prostitutes I'd get washed down the gutter with a transvestite. Should have stayed in feching bed...period.... and did eff all.
Turned on the new rig... er, yesterday morning now, and the bastard kept going 'round in this loop: 'No boot device found, please reboot and load a bootable device to start the system'. It wouldn't even let me into the BIOS, so there I was, stuck vin this feching loop. Anyway, dunno what I done, given everything I'd tried had failed, but there was the BIOS homepage, and from there I discovered my SSD/OS drive was not visible. Ya know, I tried everything to get it back online, but nothing seemed to work. I tried different SATA cables, different ports, etc, but none of that worked. I tried using a SATA cable that was working with another drive, no go, I hooked it up to my other rig and it showed up on that using the cable from the other drive. I then tried using the original cable to connect it to my other rig, it showed up.... disconnected it and hooked it to the new rig, no show again, not even when switching ports and/or cables.
Anyway, I have no idea what was causing it... or how it got fixed., but several reboots later it suddenly was there and trying to boot into Windows, which it couldn't bcause it was different hardware and required the installation disc, which I'm not sure will work because the OS is Win 8.1 and the disc is just Win 8..
All in all, it was an absolute #&*@ of a day and I ended up running out of time cos Shaunna was coming around for dinner, and there was no getting back into it with a belly full.... and tomorrow is a new day. At least I can get into the machine now,and if I can get into it I can fix it. If all goes according to plan, I'll use Acronis True Image 2014 Ultimate to restore Windows to the new machine.
So, it's 2.15am, another late night in the early hours of the morning, and I need to get some sleep...nighty night.
Reply #87 Thursday, February 13, 2014 11:45 AM
Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Reply #88 Thursday, February 13, 2014 12:54 PM
HI starkers
I've had the same issue in the past when moving a boot drive that was connected to MB "Y" to MB "X", I believe the problems were related to chipset drivers. If the old chipsset drivers are part of the Ture Image it may not work and the only solution would be a clean install. I now always do a clean install in a new build or rebuild when a different MB is used.
Reply #89 Thursday, February 13, 2014 4:24 PM
Isn't that part of the fun... the challenge to make all those components work... and then the sweet memories of all that frustration and the joy that follows when everything works!
Reply #90 Thursday, February 13, 2014 6:47 PM
Part of my 'ritual' when firing up a machine for the first time is....push the button....close my eyes...and put both fingers in my ears....![]()
Reply #91 Thursday, February 13, 2014 6:59 PM
HI starkers
I've had the same issue in the past when moving a boot drive that was connected to MB "Y" to MB "X", I believe the problems were related to chipset drivers. If the old chipsset drivers are part of the Ture Image it may not work and the only solution would be a clean install. I now always do a clean install in a new build or rebuild when a different MB is used.
Hi Ernie, from what I read about restoring to dissimilar hardware, Acronis doesn't load any chipset drivers but gets Windows to install the new ones for the current hardware. I will give that a try first because the last install of Win 8.1 isn't that old and it would save having to reinstall all my proggies. If I have to bite the bullet and do a clean install, well so be it, at least I can get into the system to set things up, unlike yesterday when nothing went right. It was the strangest thing, I've never had a new build behave lke that, not recognising healthy drives regardless of how nany ports and cables were tried
Thing is, the machine is up and running, so it's just a matter of getting an OS operational and I'm in business....so back to the grindstone.
Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me
But not today, I refuse to let it go that way....I'm calling the shots today, not fate nor luck...ME.
Reply #92 Thursday, February 13, 2014 8:13 PM
It's all a conspiracy....
....to not post photos...![]()
Reply #93 Friday, February 14, 2014 10:53 AM
It's all a conspiracy....
....to not post photos...
I will get around to it.... promise. I will first have to upload them to imageshack in the morning, then I'll post some.
As for not having another absolute #*%@ of a day today... yesterday now, I spoke too feching soon, didn't I! Went out to do some grocery shopping, which went okay, but then it all went to shit, along with my feching ice cream and other frozen goods. Called a cab at 1.49 to pick me up outside the supermarket and take me home. Was told there was a 20 to 30 minute wait... like fech it was. Bastard cab didn't turn up until 5 friggin' 40pm. I kept ringing and kept ringing to find out where the heck my frigging cab was: "car 321 is on it's way....
Twenty Five minutes later I ring back for the umpteenth time: "I was told car 321 was o it's way 25 minutes ago.... where from... feching Melbourne!!!!" I then get a text saying car 376 was on its way.... didn't arrive.... neither did car 741. By then I'm suffering with heat exhastion and was in desperate need of my diabetic meds, so I tell this to the operator, that all my frozen stuff had thawed and I needed to get home urgently to take some medication... 'twas still another 2 hours before I got home, by which time I was quite frazzled and rather ill, so I've done eff all about anything. I feel a bit better now, but it's 1.45am and it can feching wait.
Anyhow, come Monday I'm going to ring the company superintendant and I'm gonna tear him a new arsehole. Well company policy says he is responsible and the buck stops with him, so I'm going to let him have it... both barrels... and if I get no satisfaction there I will go to the state transport dept, the governing body for taxis.
Okay, rant off... for now... we'll see come Monday if it stays off.
Reply #94 Friday, February 14, 2014 3:57 PM
starkers, perhaps you should switch to a 'chain' gun (the ones that have half a dozen(or more) barrels), they just use a LOT more ammo but definitely do a huge lot more damage to the target, and due to the extra damage on the target they can be more enjoyable especially on burocracies and mongrel 'businesses/monopolies' .
harpo
Reply #97 Sunday, February 16, 2014 12:26 PM
Orright, I've not been here for a couple of days because:
a; I took a medical hiatus due to feeling like crap
b; I didn't give a toss about life's doings or anything else
c; I suffered 2 days of the worst feelings of vertigo I can remember
d: I had a visitor named Raaalph and he kept pushing my head in a bucket.
e; All of the above.
If you answered e you are correct, but I'm not giving out cigars.
Anyway, some pics.....in no particular order... and not that flash, either.
But I never claimed to be a feching photographer.









A picture says a 1000 words, so nope, no feching commentary or description.
I figure you's oughta know what's what, and if yer don't, yer got no fechin' business bein' in a puter building thread, right?
Seriously, I made some alterations/adjustments since those pics were taken, so I'll get Shaunna to take some better shots on her DSLR camera when she comes around tomorrow... cos frankly, these shots from a mobile phone are not the best
However, that's what you lot get for being impatient and demanding pics .... so go suck eggs
I added the rear fan to the bottom and I tidied the cabling some because I wasn't satisfied with how it looked. It just wasn't my tidiest build so I redid things to give it that starkers 'neat freak' appearance,, though I'm still not 100% happy with it... but then, there's more hardware with cabling than in previous builds, so I guess I can't have it both ways.
And that's a no, I'm sorry to say. As fast as I run, I just can't set the timer and be in the frame by the time the flash goes off.
I'm still waiting on 2 more sticks of RAM, BTW. They only had 2 in stock at the time, but I placed an order for 2 more and they should hopefully be in within a couple of weeks. I could have gone elsewhere and gotten it quicker, but not at the same great price, so I'm happy to wait
Anyhow, 'tis late at night in the early hours of the morning again, so I'm gonna bugger off to bed.
Reply #98 Sunday, February 16, 2014 1:38 PM
Looking good.......did you ever solve your boot issue?
Reply #99 Sunday, February 16, 2014 10:42 PM
Looking good.......did you ever solve your boot issue?
Boot issue? Hmmm, the old scone don't retain shit like it used to.
The beast boots okay now except for one annoying thing... and for the life of me I haven't been able to figure it out. Every 1st boot produces 1 long and 2 short beeps... PC fails to start up. I have to do a reset and then the machine boots as normal the second time around. There is probably an explanation in the mobo's user manual, but I have yet to lay a hand on it in order to read that explanation. Yup, you guessed it... in the upheaval of everything [having to move all my stuff from the man cave to upstairs] everything is a complete jumble... it's that bad that I can only find my arse if I use both hands and an anatomy chart.
Actually, I have 3 issues with which I could use some help, if anybody has any ideas.
1: The abovementioned boot issue, which also prevents a system reboot after installing software, etc.... have to do a reset in order to reboot.
2: I currently have 16gb of G-Skill Trident X F3-2400C10D-16GTX RAM installed but in BIOS it is registered as 1333mhz, which is nearly half of what it is supposed to be. There is an option in BIOS to upgrade the RAM, but my RAM does not appear in the dropdown of options. So, do I have the correct RAM but need to flash the BIOS for it to be detected correctly... or do I have 1333 RAM labeled as 2400? How could I tell the difference, etc?
3: I cannot connect to the internet via LAN, and nothing I have tried has resolved this issue. The drivers for the Intel Pro100 Network Adapter are provided on the mobo installation disk but they are incompatible with Win 8.1. I tried all the available compatability settings but no go. I also downloaded updated versions using my laptop [which I've been using to post here] and still no joy. I'm currently trying to hunt down a wireless adapter, of which I have 3, and hopefully that will resolve my connectivity issues and allow Windows to search for compatible drivers.
My impression of the 1st Intel build in 10 years or so could be better, given these 3 annoying issues, but hopefully they'll be resolved soon and my 1st Intel experience in 10 years improves some. I mean, it's no faster than my AMD FX8350 build at present, but then that may have something to do with the aforementioned RAM and boot issues
I'm into my 3rd day of extreme vertigo making me feel like I'm disoriented and want to puke all the time, which is not at all conducive to my accomplishing anything, much less resolving puter issues. However, if anyone has any ideas regarding the issues above, I'd be only too pleased to try them out... gotta keep trying, I suppose.
Reply #100 Sunday, February 16, 2014 10:52 PM
Starkers...the beep codes are trying to tell you something. Step one would be a search for info...via Mobo manwell and/or by the net.
After that has some form of resolution/cure then look at the ram. It's likely connected, anyway....![]()
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Reply #81 Tuesday, February 11, 2014 12:16 PM
And here I thought it was a baseball player