Description
Here is the successor to this build!
Link to buildlog of the new wooden case i am making: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/398078-project-space-saver-a-custom-wooden-scratch-build/
Let me introduce myself. I am Albert and I am from The Netherlands. My English is not that bad, but please do not comment on grammar and such. I am 16 year old and PC building is one of my hobby’s. I have built 10 to 15 PC’s last two year, mainly for friends. I already had a PC, the first PC I built. It worked but it was one big mess. I had a FX-6100 as CPU combined with a 7870 as GPU. Good enough for Battlefield and World of Tanks, the games I mostly play.
A year ago, in the summer holidays of 2013, I said to myself: I love to make things in our garage and I really want a nice PC. Why don’t you make your own PC case? One that no one else in the world has. And the next day I started to make drawings and build plans. At the end of the holiday I knew what I wanted. Gathering materials and actually starting to build started in autumn holidays. At the end of this holiday I finished cutting the wood for the side panels and floors, I still had to cut holes and refine them. This happened in Christmas holidays. After these holidays all the wood work was done. In the beginning of this year the assembly started. I only had time in holidays so it took me four months to assemble him. In May I started to buy PC components. I had everything at the start of summer holidays 2014. Here I started with painting and final assembly of the case. And at last I built the PC and Setup last week.
For the correct prizes, replace the dollar emblem with a euro emblem. Example: 100 dollar in the list is actually 100 euros.
Components: CPU: 4690K It is fast, and unlocked. I don’t need a i7 because I am mainly gaming with this PC.
Motherboard: Gigabyte G1 Sniper Z97 I bought this motherboard for its audio, and holy sh@t, it sounds amazing! My Fidelio’s finally sound like 140 euros headphones. And the bass on my Titan’s sub is much more controlled. O, and it looks kinda nice, always a bonus!
Video cards: 2X Sapphire R9 280x Dual X I could get these two power houses pretty cheap in a combo. They are amazingly fast, especially if you are coming from a 7870. The cooler on it looks good, but the build quality is not that high. They also have blue pcb’s, but in my case (see what I did there?) that is not a problem.
PSU: Corsair RM1000 Corsair. Gold rated. Semi passive. Enough power! And I got him pretty cheap in combo with my GPU’s
RAM: Corsair Vengeance Pro 2x4 gigabyte 2133MHz CL9 The fastest MHz per clock I could get, and they look amazing. And corsair warranty is great, which is another bonus.
CPU cooler: Corsair H80i (Noctua NT-H1) This is an RMA from the H80i I had in my last build. The previous one had small cracks in the connection points for the hoses. And it cools my CPU amazingly well. This cooler in combination with Noctua NT-H1 gets my CPU with prime running for an hour below 55 degrees Celsius. That is with the fans (Scythe Grand Flex 1600 RPM) running at 700 RPM and the CPU at 100% load. When gaming I stay below 45 degrees Celsius.
Storage: Seagate 1TB HDD, Samsung 840 EVO 250 GB Already had the Seagate from my previous build. It works. More I don’t need in a HDD. I bought a SSD to try it out since everybody said they are amazing and what not, and they were right. I bought the Samsung one because it has a pretty good euro per GB rating.
Fans: Scythe Grand Flex 1600RPM These fans are great for the price. The build quality is outstanding. They move a lot of air. They are silent. And they are easily controlled by my fan controllers. I mounted 3 of them on the side for intake and 2 of them in push pull on my H80i.
Sharkoon System Fan 80mm 2000RPM Super cheap, will be replaced any time soon. I mounted two above the rear i/o as exhaust, and one in the bottom part as intake for the HDD/SSD chamber.
Artic Cooling 92mm Cheap and quiet. I mounted this guy on the top cover as exhaust above my GPU’s
Fan controllers: 2X Bitfenix Recon Already had one laying around. They are white so they matched my case. And they are touchscreen, which I think is pretty awesome.
peripherals: Monitor: 3X LG 22EA63V These are some fantastic panels from LG. Extremely good viewing angles (needed with eyefinity) and beautifull colours. Response times are good enough for gaming.
Mouse: Steelseries Rival Beautifull mouse, super fast. It has RGB Led, which suits my case Leds very well. Only downside is the coating they used on top of the mouse. It stains very easily, for me not a problem though.
Keyboard: CM Storm Quickfire TK It build quality is amazing. It has brown switches. The lighting is beautifull. And it is smaller than a standard size keyboard.
Headphones: Philips Fidelio M1 Dutch design and quality. I don't need more words to describe it.
Speakers: Trust Titan Stage 200W Extremely powerfull sound, did not asked for more.
Microphone: Trust .... Cheap, while remaining good quality audio recording for Skype.
Here some features of the case I made: - Two separate chambers, the top one for MB and GPU’s with extreme air-cooling. And the bottom one with the HDD, SSD, LED controls and PSU with most of the cables. - In the bottom part is a separate chamber with air-cooling for the HDD/SSD. This incorporates a 80mm fan blowing air in and the PSU fan taking air out. Since the PSU is most of the passive I drilled some holes in the back for air to escape. - There are two LED channels, one for the top part and one for the bottom part. You can control the top and bottom lighting separately. - This case has a wooden power button, you cannot imagine how good it feels when pressing it. Also, the bottom Led strip runs through the power button. - The top part has triple 120mm intake fans, compatible with 360 rads. - The top part has two touchscreen fan controllers with a total of ten channels. - The top part has seven temperature sensors so you can monitor the temperature in every part of the case. - The rear panel of the top part (where the H80i is mounted) can be easily removed to cut a bigger hole to make room for a 140, 240 or 280 rad. - The panels where the fans are mounted on are powder coated aluminum, made by my uncle. - There are two Plexiglas windows, one on the front and one on the top. - The top part has a double floor. There is a hidden compartment around the motherboard for all the tiny cables, mainly from the fan controllers. I probably forgot half of the cool tiny things of my case, but if you have a question about the case just place a comment down below.
I still have to work a bit on cable management, mainly all the big cables (24pin, pcie cables). The small ones, like fan cables and temperature sensors, are all managed already.
I will update this page when something I forgot comes to my mind.
I love to read the comments on my build so go ahead. Greetz from Holland
Edit: Changed the 280x crossfire for a single 970, i will ad another one in the future. I'm also working on better photo's.
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