So close (I hope)

P

poorquality

Active member
Wheeeee my PC is finally in the building stage! I'm so impatient and now so excited! Might as well get this thread kicked off for when it arrives because there will be pictures (especially because I'm in love with the case)!

Spec:

Case
NZXT PHANTOM WHITE GAMING CASE
Overclocked CPU
Overclocked Intel® Core™i5-2500k Quad Core (3.30GHz @ max 4.60GHz)
Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z68-V: USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, NVIDIA®SLI™, ATI®CrossFireX
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT)
Graphics Card
1.25GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 570 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
750GB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD7502AAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX650 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£72)
Processor Cooling
TITAN FENRIR EVO EXTREME HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£39)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC COOLING MX-3 HIGH THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Sound Card
Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ Titanium (£59)
Network Facilities
ONBOARD GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps PCI CARD (£16)
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Keyboard & Mouse
LOGITECH® MK520 WIRELESS KEYBOARD & MOUSE COMBO (£39)
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days

Unfortunately I had to change some spec to suit monetary constraints, for example 16GB RAM down to 8GB, and from a 1.5GB GTX 580 down to 1.25GB GTX 570, I also deliberately switched from an i7-2600k OC'ed processor to the i5 based on reviews of both which made me feel that I didn't need the processing power of the i7 for what I want to do so couldn't warrant the increase in price.

Otherwise I hope it's still able to multi-task well and play BF3 on reasonable settings (current g-card Geforce 9600GT weeps when I play). As I said I will post pictures when it gets here :)

EDIT: Pictures! http://imageshack.us/g/525/p1020141a.jpg/ Please see my last post and help me out though ;)
 
Last edited:
W

Wozza63

Biblical Poster
poorquality said:
Unfortunately I had to change some spec to suit monetary constraints, for example 16GB RAM down to 8GB, and from a 1.5GB GTX 580 down to 1.25GB GTX 570, I also deliberately switched from an i7-2600k OC'ed processor to the i5 based on reviews of both which made me feel that I didn't need the processing power of the i7 for what I want to do so couldn't warrant the increase in price.
Click to expand...

These downgrades will have little effect to the gameplay on any game, only the gtx 570 which will still play max 95% of the time at 30fps+ 1080p
 
W

Wozza63

Biblical Poster
you could always get rid of the sound card if you arent to bothered about it and then you may be able to afford a 580
 
P

poorquality

Active member
Nah can't do that, I want the sound card :) I was gonna get the £107 one but cut down due to budget constraints. It's ok I'll just upgrade in a few months maybe, depends entirely on what settings the current thing can run BF3 and Skyrim on :)
 
P

poorquality

Active member
Woop just an update :D It got dispatched this morning! Was worth being woken up by that text lol excited! Dispatched on the worst day though haha now I have to wait an entire weekend without it :(
 
rudolph93

rudolph93

Silver Level Poster
i know exactly how you feel, mine was dispatched today aswell, now have the horrible wait of another weekend and then am in college on the monday to 5pm so i wont get to see my beast to late at night :( but luckily my mum is in so she can recieve deilvery for it :)
 
P

poorquality

Active member
Yeah I'm at work Monday so won't get to see it until after 5 either :( at least I've got Skyrim and BF3 to get on with this weekend, work on Monday is going to be the slowest day of my life :)
 
P

poorquality

Active member
It came today :D Woop everything looks great, pics to come but first: PCS have disconnected the side panel fans as they said they do for the extra safety foam inside the machine, but I have no idea where to plug them in and can't get through to their technical help desk, can anyone shed some light on where to plug them in?
 
rudolph93

rudolph93

Silver Level Poster
glad to see it came today, so did mine, lookign forward to seeing your pics and review ;) ill post mine when i have time to woop woop :)
 
P

poorquality

Active member
Well as promised here are a few pics:

http://imageshack.us/g/525/p1020141a.jpg/

I included one from the fan control panel because I was hoping someone could shed some light on the issue I posted about before about the side fans being disconnected... now after reading the motherboard manual I believe I've identified all the connectors available for the 3 pin fan connectors, there are 2 wires for 2 fans which makes sense, but while one of those wires meets one of the 3 pin connectors on the board, the other wire appears to be too short... anyone else have any ideas? Or do I only need one of the wires connected?

Either way it's running perfectly at the moment, very quiet even when playing games (Skyrim has taken over my life). I'm slightly concerned that it says the processor is running at 3.30ghz when it is supposed to be overclocked but so far it's been able to max out Skyrim and Battlefield 3 with no problem playing on my 32'' TV.

I have it connected from tower to TV via HDMI so the sound is playing from the TV when it's on which is good, but I also have it connected from the soundcard to my sound system, is there a quick way to switch between the two? For example I want TV sound when playing games and speaker sound when doing music stuff without having to edit the default playback device.

Also my Windows Experience Index is let down by the HDD coming in at 5.9, I thought I would get better results considering it has a 64mb cache and 7200rpm - or have I misunderstood it? Everything else is 7.6+

All in all I've had a great experience with PCS and would buy from them again (hopefully not for a few years!), once I sort the fan issue and have answers to the other questions, then I'm set. Thanks to everyone who helped me pick components, I do love the case though it is massive!

Oh well, back to Skyrim :)
 
M

Manxjason

Silver Level Poster
What are you using to view the CPU speed dude? Download a small utility called CPU-Z. This allows you to view the techy bits of your hardware, including your actual CPU speed in Mhz. Worth noting, if you have the i5 or i7 (i think the i5 does it too, not 100% though) at idle they tick over at approx 1500Mhz and will pump up to speed once you start using it. CPU-Z is almost in realtime - just a couple secs, and will give you your exact speed.

If your CPU speed in CPU-Z is still at stock then contact PCS and let them know that it hasn't been OC'd

Finally, enjoy your rig mate - can't wait for mine!
 
P

poorquality

Active member
1648.3 MHz CPU-Z tells me, what sort of test can I do to check it goes up under load?

EDIT: Actually don't worry, I ran CPUZ in one screen while I played Skyrim, jumps to 4350Mhz roughly
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top