The Super Dimension Fortress Macross

As promised, I’m posting an entry about my new PC that I spent the weekend building… well, it only took half a day to build with the rest of the time involving getting Windows updated, installing all the programs I use as well as getting everything personalised just the way I like it. Also, this is only the SECOND computer I’ve ever built in my entire life which meant that I spent most of my time worrying about not fucking everything up instead of taking pictures. I did end up taking a few shots after it was built, though there’s really not much to look at considering it’s a solid black box.

I’ve posted pictures of last PC before in a previous entry but never really gave any details. It wasn’t anything that special though, it ran an older i7 3.06Ghz with a pretty standard motherboard and 6GB of RAM, an 80GB SSD for the OS drive along with a few other HDDs and an EVGA GTX 460… and of course, it was all put into a huge Corsair Obsidian 700D tower which earned it the name MACROSS.

Despite it being the very first PC that I had ever built, I found it really easy to put together even though I had no idea what I was doing and had only referred to a bunch of YouTube videos as a guide. It was quite the experience and I was happy with the results, I had built my first computer and it worked! The first MACROSS was built in mid-January 2011 and it has lasted me over 3 years with many hours of games played.

That PC still has many years of life left in it, however, a series of events led me to decide that I needed to build myself an entirely new PC. The first issue I faced was that I had come across an increasingly common problem that many power users tend to face these days, we’re all running out of RAM. Everything has become a RAM hog in the last few years and while 6GB seemed like more than enough back when I built my first PC, it became clear that I just did not have enough RAM for all the increasingly bloated programs out there, especially when you’re running several of them at once. The second issue came when my EVGA GTX 460 ended up dying on me a month or two ago. The last issue was that my CPU fan, a stock fan, was always loud from the day it was first turned on and even louder now after years of use and dust contamination. Even after cleaning out my PC a couple of months ago, it didn’t help lessen the noise that old PC made even while running at idle.

It was time for an entirely new PC, one made from the ground up to be somewhat more future-proof and have much better components. I also decided that I would give my old PC to my parents to replace their really crappy Dell PC that still ran Windows Vista… they needed a new PC more than I did.

I’ll cut right to it, after a lot of research, this is the list of parts I came up with:

CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core LGA1150 Processor
CPU COOLER: Corsair Hydro Series H100i CPU Cooler
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 760 Superclocked with EVGA ACX Cooler*
MOTHERBOARD: Asus Maximus VI Impact
RAM: Corsair Vengeance Pro Red 16GB – CMY16GX3M2A1600C9R

PSU: Corsair AX760

FAN: Corsair Air Series SP120 120mm High Performance Edition Fan Twin Pack
FAN: Corsair Air Series AF140 140mm Quiet Edition Case Fan with Red LED CO-9050017-RLED

OPTICAL DRIVE: Asus External DVD-RW – SDRW-08D2S-ULB

SSD: Samsung 840 Pro SSD 128GB
SSD: Samsung 840 Pro SSD 256GB

CASE: Corsair Obsidian 250D

* Technically this was bought for my previous PC after my old GPU died, but I consider it the first part I bought for my new PC.

So starting with the combination of the i7-4770K, H100i with the Maximus VI Impact inside the 250D, this is a really common set of parts I’ve seen many people around the net use together. The i7-4770K is extremely popular with gamers who are looking to overclock their system and the form factor of the 250 mini ITX case fits really well when using the Maximus VI Impact along with the H100i. Everything ends up being a tight squeeze, but it’s still a perfect fit for this system and I can see why it is popular with a lot of people. Also, naturally, I’ve replaced the stock fans that come with the H100i and the case with a set of three Corsair fans.

With the RAM, I went for the Vengeance Pro series from Corsair, naturally they’re red ones to match the rest of the system and I opted for 1600Mhz sticks over higher speed ones more because I didn’t see the need to spend the extra money when 1600Mhz will do just fine. Finally, the EVGA GTX 760 isn’t the most powerful graphics card out there, but I did buy it out of desperation due to my last graphics card dying. I needed something cheap but powerful and I wasn’t looking to run super high-end games on this system… at least, not yet. In the future, I’ll end up getting a much better GPU for this system, one that can handle a lot more, but the 760 is a decent card and should last me for its lifetime. Once the time comes, I’ll buy into a much higher-end card down the line for newer and more power intensive games.

Finally, due to a last-minute decision of giving my old PC over to my parents to use, I decided to buy a couple of 840 Pro SSDs to use in the new system. One for the OS drive and the other for the Games drive. I choose to do things this way because I’m not comfortable with running two SSDs in a raid 0 configuration, but that’s just me. It turns out to be a little more expensive, but I have the money to spend at the moment to make this all happen. Oh, and I bought a USB optical drive to use for the rare occasions when I actually need one… like when I installed Windows 8.1 onto this machine. Yes, I know, many people out there are probably shaking their heads in disappointment, but it’s not so bad, especially once you’re running StartIsBack. I’ve never had to look at any of the so-called “modern” UI features with this installed and can take advantage of all the improvements made to Windows 8.1 while still looking like I’m using Windows 7.

Along with the new components above, the following components are reused from my old PC:

HDD: Seagate Barracuda ST3500418AS 500GB
HDD: Seagate Barracuda ST3320620AS 320GB

EXTERNAL HDD: Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Slim 500GB

MONITOR: Samsung S27A950D 27inch 950 Series 120hz LED Monitor
MONITOR: Sony 46inch HX750 Series BRAVIA Full HDTV KDL-46HX750
MONITOR: Samsung PX2370 23inch LED Monitor

KEYBOARD: Logitech G710+ Mechanical Keyboard
GAMEBOARD: Logitech G13 Gameboard

MOUSE: Logitech G600 MMO Mouse
MOUSE: Logitech G700 Gaming Mouse

HEADSET: Logitech G930 Wireless Gaming Headset

As I said before, the first PC I built was inside of the very large Corsair Obsidian 700D which was a pretty easy build since it gave me a lot of room to work with, however, this time around I’ve gone for a mini ITX form factor inside a Corsair Obsidian 250D. I have to say, it was an extremely stressful build due to the size of the case, not really much room to work with, especially when it came to cable management. Luckily, I can hide most of the shoddy cable management job with the 5.25 bay bracket over the top so it looks relatively clean from this view.

It’s a nice case, though I do know a lot of people don’t like the “plain black box” aesthetic. To be perfectly honest, I don’t like the curved aesthetic of a lot of other PC cases that have a lot of flashy stuff attached to it. I’ve chosen to stick with the Corsair Obsidian series because it’s utilitarian in its design. It’s a black box with right-angled corners and it’s designed to just sit there out-of-the-way and have lots of stuff packed inside of it, as it should be. My new 250D system sits atop a small table where my 700D once stood and while it is just a plain black box, it looks awesome in my eyes.

Of course, it would look even better once I’m able to put a UN SPACY kite emblem sticker on the front of it like I did with my 700D case.

Also, with the front panel removed, you can see a red LED fan… I’m not a fan (ugh, as I typed that I realised the REALLY terrible unintentional pun I just made) of LEDs inside my PC case, but I really had no choice in this matter. I wanted a quiet 140mm fan to replace the stock fan and this is the only one available to me at the time. It’s not so bad though, it’s behind the front panel so you can’t really see it. I guess if I want to wow people with it, I can remove the front panel and show people, though I have no idea why I’d want to do that to be perfectly honest.

Also, as always, I have my 1/3000 scale model of the SDF-1 Macross sitting atop of it just like my previous PC. After all, just like my last PC, I’ve named this PC the MACROSS despite its smaller size. I’ll post a pic of it once I’m able to get that sticker I was talking about later.