I saw the new Thermaltake level 10GT case the other day and said, what the heck, let's rework my gaming rig (my older rig will be for sale.) I generally stink at build posts, but wanted to make an attempt.
While I am not going for all out performance, I wanted a blend of the best I could get across the board. In other words, I needed to spread the cash around the best I could, but still get a hot rig together. Please don't post "you should have done X here or Y there" those comments are really not helpful after the fact! I know I could do better in several areas - again it's about trying to get a little of everything in here. Let's start with the components:
Case: Thermaltake Level 10GT I went black since white seemed too Japanese Anime for my tastes and would look a bit odd in my home office. Although this is a bit out there by itself, especially compared to the monster rectangle that is the Corsair 800d (my current case.)
CPU/Motherboard: Intel i5 2500k and Asus P8P67 Deluxe I know the i7 2600k is a bit quicker with HT, but again I want a little of everything in this build (plus I can get 4.7 easy as I soon found out.)
Memory: Corsair Dominator GT 8gig
Hard Drive: OCZ Agility 3 Not the Vertigo drive, but at 240 gig I am happy. Also have a couple of WD Caviar Black 1tb drives I will take from my current rig for storage.
Video Cards: 2 x EVGA 560. Again, there will be some who say "Dude, why?" Well mainly because I wanted to run SLI, I didn't want to spend more than $400 to do it, and I figured I could wait until we get that shiny new tech (Kepler) next year and see what's what then.
Power Supply: Corsair Gold Series AX1200. Went over the top since I plan on upgrading the video cards next year. Although I estimate my power draw at max to be close to 1000 so this seemed healthy enough!
Cooling: Went Koolance, again opinions are like . . . well we all know the rest. Reason being is the CPU 370 is the dog's bollocks and I wanted it all to match (shoes to purse kind of thing I know.)
Video Cards - Koolance GPU 220
Memory - Koolance RAM-33 Not necessary, but looks, um, cool.
Radiators - 1 x 240 Black Ice (blue) Will cool CPU and memory (fantastic job of it too.) 1 x 120 Black Ice (blue) Cools GPUs only. Now I thought this may be a bit light for two cards, but under load it seems to be fine for now. I may need to go 240, but haven't completely got this together so not sure.
Connectors: Running all black Koolance compression, disconnects, and tank/pumps.
Tubing: White and Blue UV tubing.
Fans: 2 x Noiseblocker NB-Multiframe M12-P 120mmx25mm Ultra Silent and 1 x BitFenix Spectre All White 120mm
The case has 2 200mm fans in it and I modded it out to add the one 140mm that came with it at the CPU exhaust (pics below.)
TIM: Indigo Xtreme
Other: Using a UV cathode, blue LED run, cable sleeving, blu-ray DVD, mini card reader, and an[strike] Aerocool X pane[/strike]l. (The Aerocool took a dump while I was sleeving it - using a different fan/temp controller.) I may be missing some stuff, but I think I got all the important bits.
Here are a few mid-build pictures. Actually, this is mid-water build and my current state of progress. I couldn't wait for all the bits to come in so I ran it on air at first to see what I could get - and 4.7 stable through the ASUS program was sweet. Ran torture on it for 24 hours with no problems and the heat wasn't that bad either. Once I have this together I will re-run the overclock and do it for memory as well. Should be plenty quick for my needs. Waiting on a few more connectors and some colored sleeving (should be in mid-week) and then I can finalize the box and fire her up!
Sorry about the pic quality - from my phone since I didn't have a decent camera on hand this afternoon.
BUILD LOG CAN BE FOUND HERE IF REALLY INTERESTED!