My Rig!

It's PINK

altereDad — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 19:21:09 GMT

Daughter's build. I have a 4 year old that seems to monopolize the home PC so I managed to score a pink case. I figured my wife would have loved it but it turns out my daughter is more enamoured and therefore will be seeing her own PC. I want a geek in the family that I can relate to. Below is just a start. As I find the additional parts and make proper upgrades, acquire sleeving, lighting, etc. It's going to start with an AMD APU and Black coloured Motherboard. The rest I want to TRY to get in pink or accented.

My personal paperweight

Kidbest100 — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 04:11:41 GMT

Hey guys, just thought I would post a few pictures of my current rig, if you could call it one.

It's pretty old, outdated, and dusty.

I got the original computer from a friend for free, because ti was broken. I realized the GPU had blew out, and bought a replacement, which solved the problem. Since then I have upgraded the PSU, gotten another GPU, slightly better CPU and cooler, and that's it.

Heres the specs:

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 x2 6400+ (Upgrade from 4000+)

RAM: 2 GB DDR2

GPU: MSI Radeon 6450 2GB (Upgrade from Sapphire Radeon HD 5450 512MB)

CPU Cooler: CM Hyper 212 Plus (Upgraded from Stock)

PSU: XFX Pro 650 Watt Full wired core edition

HDD: Seagate 250 GB

Motherboard:Stock Dell motherboard

Case: Dell inspiron 531 case

Anyway, what do you guys think? Makes a hefty paperweight, don'tcha think?

Corsair Vengeance C70 Build

Dinkman72 — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 00:33:15 GMT

Ok guys and gals,

This is my Corsair Vengeance C70 Military Green Build using an ASUS Sabertooth Z77, Intel i5 3570K, 2X4Gb for 8 Gb Corsair XMS3 1600Mhz, MSI AMD HD6850, Western Digital Green 1TB mechanical Hard Drive (ya I know but I spent more on the MB and lost out on the SSD and Blue drive), and to close it out an InWin 850w Commander II power supply.

I was originally going to get a Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H which was half the price of the Sabertooth but wanted to match the case and theme better. So budget constraints dictated the loss of the SSD and a lower performance drive. So the plan going forward is to add a 60Gb SSD for Intel's Smart Response Caching and clone to a Blue Drive and maybe use the green drive as storage. Also I will be adding a CPU cooler (air) just to work up the funds for a custom water loop and change out the ram for the tan vengeance ram. I will be replacing all of the stock fans and populating the empties with fans.

This is a work in progress.

Some of the bits.

Getting ready to test the motherboard, processor, and memory.

Just fitted the motherboard getting ready for the video card.

Fitted the video card and found an extra 120 fan to fit in the roof for now.

Working on cable management.

Will update soon.

Embracing Windows 8 With A New PC System Build

News — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 15:46:30 GMT

One of the perks of working at a place like HotHardware is that we have access to some of the hottest computer components hardware around. So when I decided to dive into Windows 8 head-first a few months ago, I thought I’d give the OS as much breathing room as possible and install it on a freshly built, ultra high-end rig. Building myself a second system for Windows 8 while tweaking and getting accustomed to the OS’s new interface, and whatever other quirks popped up, would help me remain semi-productive before making the actual transition to the new machine.

Before I show you the hardware I used for the build and discuss some of the issues that I had to contend with along the way, I want to be clear that this is not some sort of build guide or recommended spec sheet. Just because a particular piece of hardware was a good fit for my build doesn’t mean it’ll suit your needs. Then again, if the hardware I use serves me well—considering the beating I put on my rigs—it’ll likely work out for you all, too. So that has to count for something...

Embracing Windows 8 With A New PC System Build

A Novel Idea For My Next Mod

JamesDurr — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:48:00 GMT

I've been contemplating for some time now, building a gaming rig into a Fish Tank. My original concept was to build the fish tank out of acrylic.

It would house a removable MB tray on rails, that stands vertically with the outputs at the top. It would have plenty of channels for air flow along the sides, with fans for induction and exhaust. The power supply would be modular, bolting in the back at the bottom of the tank. The HDD/SSD and Optical Disk Drive would mount in a compartment in the bottom front. The system would be water cooled, mutually exclusive from the water in the fish tank.

All of the electronics in this design would housed in dry compartments, where no moisture could accumulate.

Recently however, a friend in my CISCO class showed me how a system was designed and submerged within Mineral Oil. This concept has completely blown my mind and has me debating re-working my previous design to accommodate for a less complex Mineral Oil submersion.

It would require either the use of a pump inside the tank to push the oil through a radiator outside the tank, or my favored option is to modify an AC unit to allow for phase change cooling to be preformed upon the oil.

I'll be doodling up a storm and looking at parts & costs... but it would be splendid to ... cough... win... cough... a give-away...cough... and focus my investment on the tank design.

I'll add photos later. The design will likely happen, even if it is at a slow pace.

My personal gaming rig

Burritomaster24 — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 00:35:37 GMT

built it with an amd fx 8120 built this in February 2012, allong with it a sapphire radeon hd 6870. The case is my modded up haf 912 standard edition, and the motherboard is the asrock 990fx extreme3 ,(don't buy this motherboard if you intend to overclock a 125 wat cpu I've learned my lesson) G

Getting my 3rd monitor on cyber monday cant wait!

here you can see some of the interior modding I've done. mostly just paint and some lights I've rigged up.

Opinions on my first build.

tompettibone — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 22:24:59 GMT

Building my first computer. What do you guys think? Everything look alright?

ASUS sabertooth 990fx

Phenom IIx4 965 Black

Samsung 840 pro series 128 GB SSD

Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200 RPM HDD

XFX Core Edition Pro550w PSU

ASUS 24x dvd burner

ETS-T40-TB CPU cooler

G.Skill Ares series 8GB 1866

CM HAF 912 painted black inside with 6 120mm fans

Sick as HELL new power rig!

Big White — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 03:59:32 GMT

Just finished my new PC guys! Check out these specs!

400Mhz P2

64mb SDRAM running at 100 mhz

Duel Voodoo 2 cards (90mhz core, 12 mb EDO VRAM)

ATA-2 HD

What do you guys think of this powehouse of a machine?

My custom gaming rig, with an Xbox 360 inside!

GarbageMonst3r — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 19:11:50 GMT

So, before you all kill me- just hear me out.

I really used to be into console gaming. I mean, it was serious business. I couldn't even tell you how many days of game play I have had logged onto Xbox LIVE. Going from playing halo 2's campaign offline for two years, then shooting into Halo 3's multi player- it was addicting.

At any rate, I have played a lot of Xbox. And I've bought and sold too many to count. When I started building computers, I sort of fell out of the console world. My Slim model Xbox was just sitting there, gathering dust. So I decided to make use of it!

I ended up putting it inside of my gaming rig. It was scary.

I have an ASRock 990 FX AM3+ board, with the FX 8120 8 core Black Edition processor (3.1Ghz). An AMD (ATI) 7770, 8Gb of 1600mhz DDR3, a 650 watt PSU, and a white AZZA 9,000 series chasis. I have a combined total of 6 TB of memory, and a 64Gb Samsung SSD. Also my liquid cooler is the Corsair H50.

As far as I'm concerned, that system is more than enough for me. But with an Xbox inside of the case, I feel like it's a custom built version of 'The Big O'. I had a lot of fun doing it, here are some build progress pictures.

In order to get the Xbox to mount onto the plexi, we had to widen the grounding hold in the board of the Xbox. The Milwaulke drill worked nicely, but it was so scary. I was afraid we would destroy the board in the process. Taking our time was vital, but it payed off.

Right after we cut the plexi-glass. Look to the right, and see the mother board standoff. I left that back corner of the board unsecured from the glass, because I wanted some wiggle room for the board. I didn't want anything to break while we would plug wires into it, or if something were to bump against it. Call me paranoid, but it worked nice.

The board right after installation. The case isn't entirely put together yet, so it's sitting slanted on the bolts that are holding the plexi in place. If you look closely, you can see how little of clearance we had. Literally millimeters of space between the plexi and the fans- pushed against the sides of the case. Pretty damn good for guessing on all our measurements.

-We had to use a hole-saw to cut an area out of the case. The wifi card couldn't be on the Xbox with the back cable management side panel. So, we improvised! The only unexpected speed bump we encountered. I must admit, it looks rough in this picture, but we made it look uniform later on.

-Here's the work around for the hole we drilled in the side of the case. A thick plastic jewelry display case was sawed off, and sanded down to fit the notches of the case. Fortunately for us, we took the side of the jewelry case that has a lid. So not only do we have a cool looking wifi card sticking out of the case, but we have a nice clear enclosure for the card- allowing it more signal strength and security.

We used clear coating and invisible caulk to secure the enclosure. Very please with how it turned out.

Another view of the board, as you can see- we mounted the plexi glass on-top of the ventilation canal fans, which are always on when the Xbox is turned on. The Xbox 250Gb HDD isn't in there yet, but it just sits on top of the board. Until I make some sort of mount for it.

An overall view of the Chasis. Notice though, there is no power brick for the Xbox in this picture. I haven't mounted it at this point yet, but right now it's actually put up onto the rear ventilation paneling of the case. I was worried about that brick getting too hot, so I left it as much room to breathe as possible.

The old NZXT chasis, in comparison to the new AZZA 9,000 series. It's too big. But bigger is better, right? Hah. My favorite part about this case is that it supports two PSU's, so I actually had room to mount the Xbox into the computer. It worked out pretty funny, I didn't even know the details of this case when I bought it. I just wanted a huge tower.

-This is how my setup is now. I'm thinking about buying some more monitors, some really nice 27" IPS paneled ones. I haven't decided yet, I'll most likely go with Dell. Those old monitors are from pawn shops. Also, that's a 700+ watt receiver from 1977. Computer audio is hooked up through digital sound, through all four CerwinVegas, Sounds amazing- even in a tile room.

-The Xbox 360's wifi card. As you can see, I put an antenna on the card to boost signal strength. I didn't have a good enough signal to play Xbox LIVE, not with the massive computer case blocking the signal. Surprisingly, the laptop antennas worked.-

The DVD drive was difficult. After some tinkering, and a lot of cutting tempered steel- we finally managed to create a mount. Sadly, we had to use one of my HDD trays. Now I don't have a SSD mount for a while. But I should have one showing up at my house in the next week or so.

Hard Drive and DVD drive managements.

And the mounted power brick. It works nicely with the cable management system I have, and fits perfectly between the case side panels and the GPU. Perfect measurements.

Let me know what you guys think! Don't hate me for mixing console and PC, just think of it as a computer and an Xbox having a baby.

Also, I'm planning on doing away with the power brick. After I get a larger PSU, I'm going to splice a molex to power the Xbox. It's going to be even scarier.

-Will

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Let's Build Some $1000 Rigs!

eunoia — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 07:52:10 GMT

Given that there's never enough a-buildin' in here and following in the tradition of Let's Build Us Some Dream Rigs!

with a heavy debt of inspiration to the

Hot Hardware Z77 OC Motherboard Shootout

here's my $1000 build For Nov. 2, 2012, a serious overclocking gamer that punches way above its weight:

MSI Z77 MPower $169.99 CDN after rebate

Intel Core i5 3570K $229.99 CDN

MSI Radeon 7970 $329.99 CDN after rebate with $170 in bundled games!

There's even a Phanteks PH-TC14PE on sale at $69.99 CDN

O.K. that's not a super responsible choice but a) I've never seen it on sale before, b) Always wanted one and c) it's my fake $1000

Patriot 2X4GB 1600 9-9-9-24 1.5V at $28.99 CDN after rebate

Whoa, whoa, better do a quick add-up since you never want to cheap out on a power supply...

Corsair Professional HX750W at $114.99 CDN

Cooler Master CM690 II Advanced at $59.99 CDN after rebate

O.K. I'm over budget at $1003.93, so I'd have to trade a few of those AMD Never Settle Enthusiast Bundle game codes for a hard drive and a media drive, but even without the free games there's some bang for buck fun here. It strikes me that this isn't giving up a whole lot to the unlimited budget dream rigs, so thanks to all those big spenders for keeping technology rolling along!

How will you be spending your fictitious $1000?

Phantom 410 - my system's new home.

CDeeter — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 03:21:18 GMT

Well I finally went ahead and pulled the trigger on a NZXT Phantom 410. Newegg had them on sale for $80 last weekend, too good of a deal to pass up, and I'd been wanting one since they came out. For a list of the other parts, here's the link to my earlier post when I first put this system together - http://hothardware.com/cs/forums/t/60259.aspx

There may be a Phantom in the house, But Bella isn't afraid!

Ah home sweet home!

Plenty of room for any upgrades.

It's Lives!

A successful transplant. Need to work on my low light photo taking, my camera is quite sensitive to movement in low light.

The only thing I need now is one of those new Piledriver CPU

Because 4 years is to long not to have built a new one

Der Meister — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 01:10:55 GMT

Its that time again! I got the fever the other night and well my 920 just isn't cutting it these days (sarcasm). I orderd the parts the other night and some of them came in today, the rest will be showing up later this week.

New Specs:

2700K

Z77 GIGABYTE G1.SNIPER

GIGABYTE GTX670

G.Skill Ripjaws X 16gb PC2133

Antec P280

Corsair H100

Asus Blu-ray burner

Seasonic X650 PSU

Patriot Pyro 128gb SSD (I won that)

Pics will follow soon this weekend with the build!

My trusty Core i7-950(first gen) build - system feedback/should I move on to newer stuff?

implodeme — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 00:34:05 GMT

Case:
Thermaltake V3 Black Edition VL80001W2Z Black
Antec TruePower New TP-750 750W Continuous Power

Components:
Asus P6X58D-E ATX Motherboard.
Intel Core i7 950 1366 LGA 3.07Ghz
PC3-8500 6GB(2GBx3) + 12GB (4GBx3) Total of 18GB 9-9-9-24
ATI HD 6970 2GB

DIsk Drives:

MAIN OS: 128GB Sata III - OCZ Vertex 3
Storage: WD1002FAEX 1TB Black, 64MB Cache
Backup: HD204UI 2TB Seagate 32MB Cache
Gaming Disk: Perc/5i SAS Controller, RAID5, 400GB (4 x 146GB 10k SAS)

this thing I built - not new but gradually improving

Crawlerz — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 17:18:20 GMT

just treated myself to a Vertex 4 256GB SSD on my recent bday. other then that, this is the most recent it's been.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

New Build

realneil — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:39:18 GMT

I'm gonna start on a build later on tonight.
This will go into my CoolerMaster Storm Sniper Case.

Sapphire Pure Black 990FX Mainboard
Phenom-II X4 980 Black 3.7Ghz.
16GB Mushkin RedLine DDR3-2133MHz. RAM
AMD FX Brand, Closed Loop, USB Controlled, CPU Water Cooler, Modified with Cougar 120MM. Vortex PWM High Flow, Ultra Low Noise Fans
Seagate 1.5TB 64MB Cache 7200RPM SATA-III hard disk drive (for a wee bit of storage)
Kingston HyperX 120GB SATA-III SSD drive (for boot drive)
2 Plextor SATA PXL890SA DVD Burners
SeaSonic 650W SLI/Crossfire Active PFC P3, Certified 80+Bronze, Power Supply Unit
PNY GTX570 Video Card

(Here's a pic of some of the parts)

I plan to save my money and put a Radeon HD7970 into it,..........then I'll add a second card later on.

My Silverstone Tj08-e build

Ikea1 — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 01:13:48 GMT

My Silverstone Tj08-e waiting for my sli cards and better cpu cooler

Rig Specs:

Core i5 cpu

8gb Corsair Vengeance

8500 GT Video Card

Thermaltake 850w PSU

OCZ Agility 3 120gb SSD

Slim Slot Loading dvd rw drive

Silverstone Tj08-e case

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

My I5 Build

BJohnson2 — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 15:11:29 GMT

Thermaltake Dokken Case, Gigabyte MB P67A-UD3-B3, Intel I5 2500k Oc @ 4.2, CoolMaster Hyper 212 plus CPU Cooler, Gigabyte HD 7970 Video Card, Corsair 16 gig memory, Corsair TX650 PSU, WesternDigital 1TB Harddrive. not sure how post a picture but these are the specs.

Let's Build Us Some Dream Rigs!

eunoia — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 06:51:57 GMT

Been spending my time reading about high-end customs and the prices bandied about ($5000 - $8000) got me thinking I can spend imaginary funds as well as the next guy! Since there doesn't seem to be a lot of building going on, why don't we pay ourselves unlimited monopoly money and see what we come up with.

Turns out if I was a bazillionnaire, I still wouldn't spend $4000. Old habits, in my case bang for buck, die hard I suppose...

Here's what I came up with on PC Part Picker, so that's before performing my patented shop fu on it to bring the price down another couple hundred:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/aaAN

I figure the 3770K at a reasonable daily OC, RAID 0 the SSDs, RAID 1 the HDDs and I could have a lot of fun with this balanced beast. I can't say I feel like I cut a lot of corners, just everything I want and nothing I don't. (Maybe a crazy case from a niche place like Mountain Mods, which wasn't on the list, but feel free to link to cool kit.) The PSU is platinum and could easily handle a second GTX 690, if ever. Everything is red and black too, so it has a bit of suh-weet style...

So what you got? Are you a frequency freak? A storage squirrel? A waterworks engineer? Where's your wishlist at HH?

my rig

RSauernheimer — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 15:20:52 GMT

raidmax gaming case

Asus p8z77-v motherboard

intel 2700k OC to 4.4 Ghz

coolmaster hyper 212 evo cpu cooler

16 Gb corsair vengence Ram

gigabyte radeon HD 7870 gig edition

1 TB seagate drive

and dont know what cd drive i have lol

LBowen's 1st Build

LBowen — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 03:52:42 GMT

The time has finally come to build my first pc. After grabbing a great deal off the Intel Retail Site and purchasing some extra components I am almost ready to go.

Case: NZXT Switch 810

Processor: Intel 3930K

MB: ASRock X79 Extreme6

Memory: 32GB GSkill

Graphics Card: To Be Revealed Later :)

Still waiting on the cooler to get here but here are a few pics to start off while we wait :)

Labor Day's Gaming System Giveaway Winner's ! Phantom Rig !

rrplay — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 19:01:36 GMT

Hey Hey !! It's Here ! !

The Labor Day Gaming System that Marco built in the HotHardwares-Two-and-A-Half-Geeks-Webcast

Woo-Hoo !

Nice and Clean !

Another Look at the inside ..*** Two fan connectors are for the 2 @ 120 mm fans on the side panel.

...Another Look at some of the Inside...Just on the outside !

&& I would sincerely like to say Thanks Again to Dave ,Marco,& All the Generous Sponsors:

Processor: Intel Core i5-2400S
Processor Cooling: NZXT HAVIK 140
Motherboard: Gigabyte P67A-UD4-B3 Motherboard
Memory: 4GB Patriot DDR3 Memory
Graphics and GPGPU Accelerator: 2 x EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Power Supply: NZXT Hale 90
Storage: Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD
Secondary Storage: Seagate 3TB HD

Operating System Windows 7 64-Bit *** Along With what ever Customized Linux Boot I want !

As Well as All of the HotHardware Commuity for this Awesome Tower in Black

New case and cooler

fat78 — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 21:40:48 GMT

I found this cool case on newegg, so i decided to upgrade my computer just because i love doing it. At first i was worried because i haven't used any xclio case, but i finished the build and i just love looking at the case. Only problem is the fan module for the side panel is bad (already have a replacement coming) and i had to mount the h100 heatsink fans outside of the case. At the moment i have 13 case fans

Stage One of New Build

CDeeter — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:20:31 GMT

Finally started my new build based around that sweet MSI 580 gtx I won from around Christmas. Thanks again to HH and MSI.

Here are the parts I'm using for this stage:

Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive - OEM

AMD Athlon II X3 455 Rana 3.3GHz Socket AM3 95W Triple-Core Desktop Processor ADX455WFGMBOX

Antec EarthWatts EA-650 GREEN 650W ATX12V v2.3 SLI Ready CrossFire Certified 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

ASUS M5A78L-M LX PLUS AM3+ AMD 760G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9R

The cpu is really sort of a place holder for now until AMD's FX line matures a bit, we'll see what happens with Piledriver. Anyways, the fourth core unlocked no problem, so I got a quad core for $80. Plus I picked up a DVD burner. The case is temp also until I save up some $ for stage two. Btw I added case fans after these pics were taken, in case you were wondering.

Approved by Inspector #5 (aka Bella)

LBowen's Hot Rig: Power Level over 9000!

LBowen — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 19:24:16 GMT

The moment of Awesomeness has arrived. This beauty came via UPS yesterday and these pictures I took wouldn't upload yesterday due to the sheer xtreme power emanating from the case :) Fortunately the uploading function is working now so all is good. I'll post some more pictures as I get some benchmarks going.

Thanks again to the HotHardware Crew and all of the sponsors. One thing I noticed immediately is the boot speed to windows, that ssd is blazing fast.

Suggestions for micro build.

gdeptula1 — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:06:00 GMT

Looking to build a micro rig for SC2, Photoshop, and select other current gen games.

So far, I've got: i5-2500k Sandy, EVGA 550 TI 1GB, ASRock PRO3-M, and an Ultra MicroATX tower.

I'm on the fence about if I should go with a 560TI; it's got more power, but I'm trying to save dollars wherever possible. I have a 750 watt modular Corsair Silent Pro M PSU laying around, should be more than enough to power this system. Suggestions on memory and a HDD are appreciated, as are thoughts on my choices so far. I don't plan on overclocking, so for the time being I'm going to use the stock cooler (I know, I know...).

Let me know what you guys think! :D