Any PC Builders Out There?

Yeah, for my HEDT programs I find Ram is extremely workload specific. I have 32 GB right now and that's usually lots for, say, a few hundred images being stitched together. However, when I do anything above 2000 images, I notice I start to reach a bottleneck around the Ram. Only thing is I want to wait a while to see what other vendors jump into making Ryzen specific Ram. Ideally I'd like a 3200 Mhz 128 GB Threadripper ready kit to come out, which I see coming out sometime next year.

 

I’ve built every desktop PC I’ve ever owned. Started back in the mid 90’s. Most of my machines have been dual boot with seperate drives for Windows and MacOS.

I do a little gaming here and there when I find the time. Starcraft, Sims, Sim City, GTA V, Tomb Raider and modded Minecraft.

I have six builds I’m running currently. Five at home and one at work.

My main rig:

Case - Fractal Design Core 500
Motherboard - GA-Z170N-Gaming 5
CPU - Intel i7-6700k
GPU - EVGA GTX 980 Ti FTW
Cooler - Corsair H60
Mac OS Drive - Crucial 256GB SSD
Windows 10 Drive - SanDisk 240GB SSD
Storage Drive -PNY 960GB SSD
Power Supply - Corsair CX750
Memory - Crucial 32GB RAM
Keyboard - Moshi Luna
Mouse - Logitech M500
Monitor - HP ENVY 34C Ultra-Wide
Sound - Vizio SB3821-C6

My 12yo son is running one of my old i5-2500k builds from several years ago and he’s getting more into gaming lately, so soon I’ll pass this one on to him. I enjoy the build process so it gives me an excuse to do another one.

 

Something tells me this isn’t right

 

You’re right! Editing mistake, fixing now

 

I've been building pc's since about 1996.
My 1st build was a kt7a raid board and a 1.33 thunderbird. Running 2x40 gig hard drives in raid 0,
256 or 512 ram and voodoo banshee or 3dfx voodoo 1. It was like $500 in my local mall. Lol.

And my current build which is a couple years old now. And I also have a pair of evga 4 gig, 770 superclocked cards for sale.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/mr-matics-gaming-pc-rig-build.297752/

 

Also have a pair of gently used EVGA 4 gig, 770 superclocked cards for sale if anyone is looking.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/2x-770-super-clocked-cards-fs.473150/

 

I haven't built a new machine in a while. Here is my current build:


My specs:
Intel Core i7-4790k @ 4.8GHz
Asus Sabertooth Z97
Noctua NH-D15 CPU cooler
G.Skill Ripjaw Z series 8GB (x4)
nVidia GTX 550 Ti
Corsair TX750 PSU
Fractal Arc Midi R2 case.
Crucial M4 64GB SSD
WD HDDs in RAID0 = 6TB
LG Blu-ray optical drive.

Cable management is not my strong point.

 

Looks fine to me. That poor little SSD, though. “I’m just in here hanging out, yo!”

 

Despite the much higher cost per gigabyte, I've considered replacing the internal HDDs with external USB 3.0 HDDs. One smaller cord per drive, and easier to swap in/out. I have 3 in a RAID-0 for backup, and it's faster than most SSDs.

 

That cpu cooler is a monster! I thought my NH-U12S was large...

 

I never understood how RAID0 could be even considered a RAID... there's no redundancy. I run two 2TB drives in a RAID1 for backups and data, and have a drive that I drop into a USB3 dock to dump my acronis images to. So I guess I have a backup for my backup?

 

Definitely need a case with room for it. It keeps up with some of the smaller water coolers, without sounding like a jet engine.

 

I don't overclock, so the one I picked was probably a bit overkill. The stock cooler probably wouldve done fine, but I hate the idea of the hot air being blown all over the inside of the case. I prefer the directional cooler that pushes the hot air toward the back for the rear case fan to pull out.

 

I have two external backups for my data. I was always told the redundancy in RAID shouldn't be considered a backup.

 

I've always wanted to build a fancy PC of my own but I dont game on PC so I feel like it'd be a waste for me to sink that much into a computer just to browse the internet (which can be done on my phone) Maybe one day...

 

I used to be mainly a PC gamer, but consoles have stolen that from me over time. The only PC I bought was my first one, started adding/upgrading parts and then was hooked. I've been building my own since the mid-90's as well, and I was working at AMD when the original Athlon was released. Good times.

My youngest daughter is mainly a PC gamer, so I still get to build systems every couple of years. We only run a couple of desktops, and I've been going with the mini-iTX form factor and small Cooler Master cube cases. Compact, quiet, and without the need for a bunch of optical drives, plenty of room for SSD and regular HDDs. You can't do dual video, but I just run one monitor off the integrated and one off of dedicated.

I was a hardcore AMD guy (since I worked there), but was eventually a freelance software developer and had a bad experience trying to get a machine up and running to earn money. Switched back to Intel for stability. Not AMD's direct fault, really, just unstable mainboards at the time I needed stability.

My current setup has been around for a while but was mainly built for video editing performance. I forget all the detail specs, but:

CPU: Intel Core i7-4770 @3.4, 4 cores 8 logical with the video-decoding/encoding extensions
Mainboard: Gigabyte Z87N-WIFI
Memory: 16GB
Graphics: AMD Radeon 7700
Disks: SSD Boot, 1TB fixed HDD, Blu-Ray burner

It does the trick for now. My daughter's is newer (built last year) but is a mini as well with the latest Intel i7, chipset and nVidia video.

 

Or you could swap to a different case with more 5.25 bays and do a mobile rack.

$120 Kingwin SSHD Hard Drive Enclosure Internal Four Mobile Rack For 3.5” Solid State Drive/HDD, SATA Enclosure, Support SATA I/II/III & SAS I/II 6 Gbps

https://www.amazon.com/Kingwin-Tray-Less-Backplane-Enclosure-Optimized/dp/B01BMJ1YHK

Or save space and do SSDs.

$87 ICY DOCK 6 Bay 2.5” SATA HDD/SSD Hot Swap Backplane Cage Enclosure for External 5.25” Bay | ExpressCage MB326SP-B

https://www.amazon.com/ICY-DOCK-Mobile-Comparable-Tray-less/dp/B01M0BIPYC

 

I just put a 3TB home NAS thingy on the network for storing media files, backups, whatever. Easy peasy. Accessible from any network connected device (PS3, PS4, whatever).