Warbloke
Bronze Level Poster
So, after only 1 week, my new PC arrived costing just over a respectable £2400
– I thought I would do a little early review and post some pictures.
Spec
Intel® Core™i7 Six Core Processor i7-5930K (3.5GHz)
COOLERMASTER HAF-X FULL TOWER GAMING CASE
Gigabyte X99 Gaming 5P motherboard
16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X PREDATOR QUAD-DDR4 3000MHz
6GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 980 Ti - DVI, HDMI, 3 DP
400GB INTEL® 750 SERIES PCIe SSD (up to 2200MB/sR | 900MB/sW)
3TB WD GREEN WD30EZRX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
CORSAIR 1000W RM SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Corsair H80i GT Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
NZXT Sentry 3 Fan Controller with upto 5 Fitted Case Fans
2x 60cm Green LED Strip - To Compliment The Colours of Your Case
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence
3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Arrived in 1 week (paid for 5 day fast track)
First impressions out of the box
Wow, it’s huge! (That’s what she said)
Well packed
Very tidy cabling job
(perhaps a little bit too tight in 1 place as its pulling down on the X-DOCK sata connector, and I could notice its slightly bent on its little board – I slackened the cable and bent the connector back into position... I think I got away with it. Fortunately, I don’t think I will use X-DOCK anyway)
Less fans than I was expecting
The HAF-X says it comes with 4 case fans, with space for a 5th on top.
The Fan controller said it can control up to 5 case fans, and PCS states:
“As part of the package we will install up to 5 fans inside the case. Most gaming cases come supplied with 3 or more fans by default, and these will count towards the 5 fans in total that will be supplied
You should expect any additional fans to be solid black and 120mm in size.”
I see PCS removed the rear 140mm case fan (and appear to have kept it for themselves) , and replaced it with the CPU cooler I bought; I understand this as I can’t see where else it would have fitted now that I see its size within the case.
There was no extra case fan installed in the space at the top.
On my case, I see the top fans are actually 200mm – so they only supply case fans where they are 120mm. Had I paid more attention to the fan sizes, perhaps I would have expected this.
Don’t know how many case fans are in fact 120mm without checking, so not sure how many fans are actually given away when buying these fan controllers.
I see the side case fan is not connected to the PSU, but I could see a cable hanging, so plugged it in myself. I learned this is disconnected on purpose and is due to the packing which is fair enough.
I also spotted there is no Windows 10 Certificate of Authentication stuck anywhere on the case... so I don’t know my Windows Product Key, which concerns me should I ever need to reinstall Windows, as the PCS welcome manual says I need to activate windows myself as this is not done for me...
(I learned since this is not provided in fact, and instead the product key is now ‘injected’ into the BIOS and so no Official Windows Certificate of Authentication is needed... fair enough)
First Switch On
Connected all my cables and pressed the ‘ON’ button.
It was much quieter than I expected with not much fan noise at all, and darker... where are my green LEDs?
After doing the initial Windows 10 setup options, I found Windows was already activated and I did not have to do this myself as the manual stated.
I popped the side of the case open again.
I found the 2x LED strips, followed their cables... this also was laying loose in the case not connected to any power. This was much harder to find the loose lead coming from the PSU where it should plug into... eventually I found it... we have lights!
My 3TB storage drive was not visible in windows.
I had to go into the storage manager and configure it myself to have a drive letter before Windows could see it – I kind of would have expected this to have been done by PCS so that the PC arrives and can be used without me having to know how to do this.
(Windows 10 is installing updates by itself in the background... I believe it does that now and you can’t stop it)
On the Windows desktop, I decided to open a couple of programs, I could see shortcuts for on the desktop.
Corsair LINK was first – (this I am aware allows you to control the fan speeds of the CPU cooler)
...didn’t open at all. Instead Windows 10 gave a little message from the systray area advising this program is not compatible with this Operating system, so has been stopped from running as it may potentially damage the system. I Don’t know how this made it through being ‘tested’ by PCS.
Also the ‘NVIDIA experience’ does not run... just get a spinning Icon for ages on top of a splash screen window... it never opens so you must kill the task to get rid of the window.
I found a newer version online of Corsair LINK, installed that, and now it opens.
Will need to look more into the INVIDIA experience.
I became aware; none of the 3 fans on my graphics card are actually spinning.
I don’t know if they don’t spin until the GPU is hot... or if the card is faulty – haven’t got as far as gaming yet... just installing Office, and basic settings / exploring Windows 10 etc
I will stress test the GPU, or indeed play a graphically intensive game in time, and hopefully the fans will spin and I can see its not faulty. PCS tell me it’s normal, and the fans won’t spin on the graphics card until it reaches a certain temperature, so this is comforting as I was most concerned about this.
I rebooted, and went into the CMOS/BIOS area.
I needed to set the date in there myself I found as it had not been set and was years out.
After post... it boots up really FAST no doubt due to this PCI-e SSD which is new to me.
(My previous PC had 2 SSDs in RAID 0, so I am used to fast HDD speed so glad this seems very responsive given its price)
Oh.. and a weird windows 10 thing... PC does not shut down properly when you click to shut down.
It ‘sleeps’ instead. (Despite in power options, the power button being set to ‘shut down the PC’ and not ‘sleep’.
Basically, you shut down... you LED lights are still lit, and the fans are still spinning.
You press your power button again... straight at logon screen... it’s only been sleeping.
I have found if I hold SHIFT, and press shutdown... it does actually Power off the PC and shutdown Windows as we have come to expect should happen when you shutdown a PC.
So early days, but, that’s me after day one, installed, setup and running, had to do a little more than I expected to have to do myself to get here to be honest.
I still need to tinker more and improve my learning of Windows 10 and how that works, and also research why NVIDIA experience doesn’t open, assuming my graphics card fans spin one day... all will be well.
It looks great, and I hope it will bring many years of reliability, awesome gaming and fun times!
Here are some photos I below I will try to share:
– I thought I would do a little early review and post some pictures.
Spec
Intel® Core™i7 Six Core Processor i7-5930K (3.5GHz)
COOLERMASTER HAF-X FULL TOWER GAMING CASE
Gigabyte X99 Gaming 5P motherboard
16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X PREDATOR QUAD-DDR4 3000MHz
6GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 980 Ti - DVI, HDMI, 3 DP
400GB INTEL® 750 SERIES PCIe SSD (up to 2200MB/sR | 900MB/sW)
3TB WD GREEN WD30EZRX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
CORSAIR 1000W RM SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Corsair H80i GT Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
NZXT Sentry 3 Fan Controller with upto 5 Fitted Case Fans
2x 60cm Green LED Strip - To Compliment The Colours of Your Case
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence
3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Arrived in 1 week (paid for 5 day fast track)
First impressions out of the box
Wow, it’s huge! (That’s what she said)
Well packed
Very tidy cabling job
(perhaps a little bit too tight in 1 place as its pulling down on the X-DOCK sata connector, and I could notice its slightly bent on its little board – I slackened the cable and bent the connector back into position... I think I got away with it. Fortunately, I don’t think I will use X-DOCK anyway)
Less fans than I was expecting
The HAF-X says it comes with 4 case fans, with space for a 5th on top.
The Fan controller said it can control up to 5 case fans, and PCS states:
“As part of the package we will install up to 5 fans inside the case. Most gaming cases come supplied with 3 or more fans by default, and these will count towards the 5 fans in total that will be supplied
You should expect any additional fans to be solid black and 120mm in size.”
I see PCS removed the rear 140mm case fan (and appear to have kept it for themselves) , and replaced it with the CPU cooler I bought; I understand this as I can’t see where else it would have fitted now that I see its size within the case.
There was no extra case fan installed in the space at the top.
On my case, I see the top fans are actually 200mm – so they only supply case fans where they are 120mm. Had I paid more attention to the fan sizes, perhaps I would have expected this.
Don’t know how many case fans are in fact 120mm without checking, so not sure how many fans are actually given away when buying these fan controllers.
I see the side case fan is not connected to the PSU, but I could see a cable hanging, so plugged it in myself. I learned this is disconnected on purpose and is due to the packing which is fair enough.
I also spotted there is no Windows 10 Certificate of Authentication stuck anywhere on the case... so I don’t know my Windows Product Key, which concerns me should I ever need to reinstall Windows, as the PCS welcome manual says I need to activate windows myself as this is not done for me...
(I learned since this is not provided in fact, and instead the product key is now ‘injected’ into the BIOS and so no Official Windows Certificate of Authentication is needed... fair enough)
First Switch On
Connected all my cables and pressed the ‘ON’ button.
It was much quieter than I expected with not much fan noise at all, and darker... where are my green LEDs?
After doing the initial Windows 10 setup options, I found Windows was already activated and I did not have to do this myself as the manual stated.
I popped the side of the case open again.
I found the 2x LED strips, followed their cables... this also was laying loose in the case not connected to any power. This was much harder to find the loose lead coming from the PSU where it should plug into... eventually I found it... we have lights!
My 3TB storage drive was not visible in windows.
I had to go into the storage manager and configure it myself to have a drive letter before Windows could see it – I kind of would have expected this to have been done by PCS so that the PC arrives and can be used without me having to know how to do this.
(Windows 10 is installing updates by itself in the background... I believe it does that now and you can’t stop it)
On the Windows desktop, I decided to open a couple of programs, I could see shortcuts for on the desktop.
Corsair LINK was first – (this I am aware allows you to control the fan speeds of the CPU cooler)
...didn’t open at all. Instead Windows 10 gave a little message from the systray area advising this program is not compatible with this Operating system, so has been stopped from running as it may potentially damage the system. I Don’t know how this made it through being ‘tested’ by PCS.
Also the ‘NVIDIA experience’ does not run... just get a spinning Icon for ages on top of a splash screen window... it never opens so you must kill the task to get rid of the window.
I found a newer version online of Corsair LINK, installed that, and now it opens.
Will need to look more into the INVIDIA experience.
I became aware; none of the 3 fans on my graphics card are actually spinning.
I don’t know if they don’t spin until the GPU is hot... or if the card is faulty – haven’t got as far as gaming yet... just installing Office, and basic settings / exploring Windows 10 etc
I will stress test the GPU, or indeed play a graphically intensive game in time, and hopefully the fans will spin and I can see its not faulty. PCS tell me it’s normal, and the fans won’t spin on the graphics card until it reaches a certain temperature, so this is comforting as I was most concerned about this.
I rebooted, and went into the CMOS/BIOS area.
I needed to set the date in there myself I found as it had not been set and was years out.
After post... it boots up really FAST no doubt due to this PCI-e SSD which is new to me.
(My previous PC had 2 SSDs in RAID 0, so I am used to fast HDD speed so glad this seems very responsive given its price)
Oh.. and a weird windows 10 thing... PC does not shut down properly when you click to shut down.
It ‘sleeps’ instead. (Despite in power options, the power button being set to ‘shut down the PC’ and not ‘sleep’.
Basically, you shut down... you LED lights are still lit, and the fans are still spinning.
You press your power button again... straight at logon screen... it’s only been sleeping.
I have found if I hold SHIFT, and press shutdown... it does actually Power off the PC and shutdown Windows as we have come to expect should happen when you shutdown a PC.
So early days, but, that’s me after day one, installed, setup and running, had to do a little more than I expected to have to do myself to get here to be honest.
I still need to tinker more and improve my learning of Windows 10 and how that works, and also research why NVIDIA experience doesn’t open, assuming my graphics card fans spin one day... all will be well.
It looks great, and I hope it will bring many years of reliability, awesome gaming and fun times!
Here are some photos I below I will try to share:
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