Backstory.txt
I build PCs a lot. Been doing so since I was a little kid, fed surplus parts from his father, what he could find off the street, at thrift/surplus/etc stores, and off eBay.
So, I'm not very traditional when it comes to builds.
Most people do something like this:
- Come up with idea of what machine will do (requirements)
- Research parts, evaluate acquisition options
- Acquire parts, usually from a retailer
- Unbox parts gleefully
- Build! Carefully, and in proper order
My builds often end up like this (in various orders):
- Acquire parts
- Build
- Come up with idea
- Unbox what I just built because I forgot what I put in it
- Research said forgotten parts using a quick OS liveboot or install.
Best description: Build by the will of your screwdriver.
As such, I tend to have tons of misc. parts laying around, from old builds, builds for others, half-done builds, etc.
Build Story
Week before the competition started, I was busy with school, and didn't get anything done on the build. Then it started, davidfg4 started steamrolling, and I started freakin'.
So...needed to get something built that could power the GPUs that had been idling for a few months. And FAST.
Parts I used:
- Motherboard: MSI Z87-G45 (This and the CPU were intended for an actual planned build that didn't happen due to school, and got forgotten)
- CPU: Intel G3250 20th Anniversary Edition (Legendary overclocking and single-threaded performance)
- GPUs: MSI R9 290x TwinFrozr something, XFX R9 295x2 <fancyname>
- SSD: Crucial M500 240GB (not what the name implies...)
- PSU: Rosewill 1000W (don't remember the model. Last used for my main machine, so its solid)
- Fans: 3x 120mm fancy-pants Cougar (front, top) , 1x fancy-pants corsair silent 120mm (door), 1x cooler master 140mm (door), 2x Rosewill 9 blade 120mm (295x2's radiator)
- RAM: 16GB of Ripjaw something (DDR3 I hope)
- Fan controller for all those fans (NZXT something)
- Case: Corsair fancy-pants mid-tower (Was originally in a NVIDIA case, which is beautiful...if you're not running AMD cards. Then moved to an ULTRA case, then to Corsair. Thanks, medoicre CPU CLC radiator)
- OS: Windows 8.1 Enterprise (AMD Linux drivers don't work well with FAH, otherwise I'd just use CentOS 7...)
The following is what resulted.
(Warning: some crude gestures and references to alcohol)
Imgur Album
Highlights thus far
Initial parts roundup
You can't tell, but its actually 1:00AM
It's working!
Only way I could get the radiators to fit...was to put the fan on top. So no rear panel for now!
(2 Molex to 6 pin) + 6 pin = 8-pin PCI-E. Why? I lost the last 8-pin modular PSU cable needed. Hey, it works.
The reason for 2 case swaps, crude gestures, and references to alcohol, right here.
The reason I'm not folding with it right now (2/2/16)
(edit: added .jpg to images. not at all web savvy, what am I doing wrong here)
(edit2: derpy copy-pasta'd images for me)