[Ecm]

One of my fellow Mod’s over at CB suggested that I should share this with in celebration of the new sub-forum. So here we go.

My old rig served me well, but had seen better days. My wife unintentionally gave me carte blanche when she said “get what you need”, which I interpreted as “get what you want” …

Well, after recently picking up a nice new compact 2-in-1 laptop, I couldn’t go too overboard on a desktop without risking a divorce. So, this is what I settled upon.

Let’s start with the box. Space isn’t really an issue for me, so I went with the big, roomy Corsair Air540. (Carbide Series® Air 540 High Airflow ATX Cube Case) It gives plenty of airspace around the components, comes pre-cabled, and has a nice windowed side panel that begs for LED lighting – so I gave it some.

A stable power supply is a must, and it helps when it’s almost silent. Hence, the Corsair AX 750. (AX760 ATX Power Supply ? 760 Watt 80 PLUS® Platinum Certified Fully-Modular PSU) And since I want to protect my baby, it’s plugged into an old but stable APC for good measure.
The next piece to go in was the Asus Z97-A motherboard (https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Motherboa...pecifications/), i7 4790K processor (Intel® Core? i7-4790K Processor (8M Cache, up to 4.40 GHz) Specifications) and 16GB of cool looking G.Skill TridentX RAM (TridentX - F3-2400C10D-16GTX - G.SKILL DDR3 Memory).

I wasn’t planning on splurging, but the GTX 960 (GeForce GTX 960 Graphics Card | GeForce) was on sale the day I made the leap, and the combination of 3 display ports, HDMI and DVI-I allow me to run up to 4 monitors. (I run 3.)

I went with the Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB SSD (Computing | Memory & Storage | Samsung SSD 850 EVO - 512 GB), , plus a WD Black 4 TB HDD for local storage. Win10 Pro.

I set the new Corsair K95 keyboard (Corsair Gaming K95 RGB Mechanical Gaming Keyboard ? Cherry MX Red) colour to match the in-case LED’s.

You’ll note that I haven’t said anything about sound. Well, since I abused the budget as it was, I decided to go with the onboard audio for the time being, rather than downgrade any of the other components. There’s always Christmas, right? But the Z97-A’s audio through my Bose speakers isn’t half bad.

So, the tl;dr: I managed to put together a fast, efficient, quiet package that should last until the next time my wife is in a good mood again.

[Keith Wallace]

You've got some similarities to my dad's box. He's got the 540 in silver, and he's got a Samsung SSD, I think the 850 Pro, in a 1-TB iteration. I think he went TridentZ for his DDR4 RAM (he is doing a Skylake build off of the 6600K and an ASUS Maximus VIII Hero board).

[overcome7]

One of my fellow Mod’s over at CB suggested that I should share this with in celebration of the new sub-forum. So here we go.

My old rig served me well, but had seen better days. My wife unintentionally gave me carte blanche when she said “get what you need”, which I interpreted as “get what you want” …

Well, after recently picking up a nice new compact 2-in-1 laptop, I couldn’t go too overboard on a desktop without risking a divorce. So, this is what I settled upon.

Let’s start with the box. Space isn’t really an issue for me, so I went with the big, roomy Corsair Air540. (Carbide Series® Air 540 High Airflow ATX Cube Case) It gives plenty of airspace around the components, comes pre-cabled, and has a nice windowed side panel that begs for LED lighting – so I gave it some.

A stable power supply is a must, and it helps when it’s almost silent. Hence, the Corsair AX 750. (AX760 ATX Power Supply ? 760 Watt 80 PLUS® Platinum Certified Fully-Modular PSU) And since I want to protect my baby, it’s plugged into an old but stable APC for good measure.
The next piece to go in was the Asus Z97-A motherboard (https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Motherboa...pecifications/), i7 4790K processor (Intel® Core? i7-4790K Processor (8M Cache, up to 4.40 GHz) Specifications) and 16GB of cool looking G.Skill TridentX RAM (TridentX - F3-2400C10D-16GTX - G.SKILL DDR3 Memory).

I wasn’t planning on splurging, but the GTX 960 (GeForce GTX 960 Graphics Card | GeForce) was on sale the day I made the leap, and the combination of 3 display ports, HDMI and DVI-I allow me to run up to 4 monitors. (I run 3.)

I went with the Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB SSD (Computing | Memory & Storage | Samsung SSD 850 EVO - 512 GB), , plus a WD Black 4 TB HDD for local storage. Win10 Pro.

I set the new Corsair K95 keyboard (Corsair Gaming K95 RGB Mechanical Gaming Keyboard ? Cherry MX Red) colour to match the in-case LED’s.

You’ll note that I haven’t said anything about sound. Well, since I abused the budget as it was, I decided to go with the onboard audio for the time being, rather than downgrade any of the other components. There’s always Christmas, right? But the Z97-A’s audio through my Bose speakers isn’t half bad.

So, the tl;dr: I managed to put together a fast, efficient, quiet package that should last until the next time my wife is in a good mood again.

I use the same Vengeance K95 Gaming Keyboard. All I can say is it is by far the best keyboard I've ever used. I love the mechanical touch and fluidity of the keys.

[Peter1984]

Hey OP - Corsair has some pretty kick *** gear.

The boss also thought I was getting the bare mininium didn't twig when I came home with a a Corsair 750D case, Corsair HXi Series HX1000i PSU 1000w Corsair Hydro Seriesâ„¢ H100i hybrid CPU cooler and 32GB of Corsair Vengenace LPX DDR4-3000 - lol

The hybrid cooler is amazingly simple to install and is working insanely good. Well above spec. The CPU (i7-7700k) does not exceed 50c when under synthetic loads (insane).

The PSU is for when i get another GTX 1080 ti, more coolers, Overclock it all, hardrives and stuff. But it hasn't missed a beat. It definitely exceeds all of its rated values. Great steady throughput.