So this is how it's gonna go down: This part is just a rundown of the build process, thoughts, and overall general performance (as if I'm just talking to the average person). Part II will be the more technical aspect with benchmarks and the like..
Be Proud.
AT A GLANCE:
CPU: Intel Haswell Core i5-4670K Quad-Core @ 3.4Ghz (currently NOT OC'd)
-CPU COOLER: Corsair H100i Liquid Cooler w/addtl. Corsair SP120 120mm fans
MOTHERBOARD: Asus Maximus VI Hero ATX (LGA1150)
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws Series 24GB (6 x 4GB) DDR3 1600 (9-9-9-24-2N) (16GBs in use)
GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 770 4GB @ 7010Mhz
STORAGE:
SSD Boot: Samsung 840 Pro Series 256GB
SSD 1: Samsung 840 Pro Series 128GB
SSD 2: Samsung 840 Pro Series 128GB
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 2TB @ 7200RPM w/ 6GB/s SATA interface
PSU: SeaSonic X Series 850W
CASE: Corsair 650D ATX Mid
MONITOR: LG 23EA83V IPS LED Monitor
THE BUILD:
Building a new machine was a long time coming, for me. My last build lasted me quite awhile, and while I was satisfied by the lifespan of the older rig, I was bummed to see it go. Another factor was the fact that I was waiting over the course of 3 months to even start building. Things out of my control were the main culprit of that, but it gave me a lot of time to do other things and appreciate the machines that Console Peasants use (PS3... The Last of Us... awesome).
August rolls along, and the circumstances preventing me from investing on the parts dissolved; it was time to build the this monster. Ordering all these parts were a pain, to say the least. I had to input the build parts into PC Parts Picker so it could aggregate the cheapest prices. Easy enough, except for when the part wasn't available at the cheapest price, or you had a nazi bank that controls where you want to buy your parts. I mean, they even blocked my transactions from Newegg! After that SNAFU was taken care of, the parts started rolling in... it was definitely time to build, and what better way to show that than to do it through pics??
Most of the parts, minus the horrible Intl. Organization textbooks (why did I even enroll in this class!?)
The Corsair H100i with the Corsair SP120 replacement fans.
The Intel Haswell Core i5-4670K with Stock fan (obviously not being used)
The MSI GTX 770.. the beast of a GPU (and possibly one of two... still up in the air with that one, though)
The Samsung 840 PROs and the Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM drive... good choice but more on that later.
The four (of six) G.Skill Ripjaw RAM that I bought not too long before the last build busted on me. Remember, 16 of the 24GB are in current use... at least I have spares.
By far, the "Most Impressive" packaging award goes to the Seassonic PSU. That Crown Royal-like bag house the PSU, and that bag on the upper right holds the connection modules. It also feels well built. I'm very impressed by this PSU.. did I mention that this was 850W? I highly recommend this PSU.
Another [mostly] impressive part is this Corsair 650D case. There is a ton of room cable management, clip-based door panels (no screwing or unscrewing doors), plenty of airflow, one 80mm fan, two 200mm fans (front and top vent), holes on top vent for various radiators, modular drive bays (that you can also move around, if you desire), easy-to-remove dust filters for easy cleaning, a modular SATA plug up top for non-external enclosed drives, fanspeed adjuster (not in use), two USB2 ports, two USB3 ports, and one Firewire port. This case is way more feature-packed, and larger than my last case (which also had a lot of room for management. I'm very impressed by it.
Closer look...
Note the lower drive bays are removable and you may either stack it like the pic depicts, or side by side. Of course, if you have 3 or less drives in use, you can completely remove the additional bay for more airflow from that massive front fan. ONE MAJOR FLAW of this case is that the USB3 ports are actually a straight passthrough and doesn't connect directly through the motherboard. Instead, I have to channel it out and connect it to the I/O jacks.. which sucks, for now. Yes, there is a passthrough attachment. No, I have not order it yet. The fact that I even have to order that kind of pisses me off. It's definitely more sensible to just have the USB board plug instead of mounting two extensions to a control panel. Lame.
The top vent, SATA port, and front panel.
Finally, I have the ASUS Maximus VI Hero motherboard..
The supplied accessories to said mobo..
..and finally the mobo itself.
Of course, we can't talk about the mobo without mentioning the I/O that's onboard. A couple notes: A BIOS reset button is prominent (more than my past mobos). Optical output seems to be the standard today, but I wasn't too impressed by it (more on that, later). The HDMI port is a result of the emergence of much better onboard GPU solutions provided with Ivy Bridge and Haswell CPUs. Of course, I'm not using it (and for obvious reasons). Aside from the even four USB2 and four USB3 ports, don't let that analog audiojack array fool you. Yeah, at it's most basic, it runs with the typical AC97 audio drivers, but ASUS provided a dedicated audio processor directly to the board (Supreme FX). It used to be that manufacturers provide tiny soundcards that take up at least one PCIE x1 slot, but now it's built directly to the board.
Now, I never fully documented my build process, but I do have more pics to explain some stuff:
As a start, I removed the CPU from its protective case and (very carefully) placed it in the CPU slot. I did inspect the pins and got instantly scared when I saw that at least one pin was protruding out, abnormally. I grabbed my narrow-necked screwdriver, used the tiniest star-pointed head I had available and pushed the pin in very, VERY slightly. Let's just say that was successful. I set the CPU in place and locked the pin. I then proceeded to lock the RAM in place.
Removing the mobo from it's packaging, I made an inspection of the board and found a very non-impressive corner, bent up. This was a manufacturer screwup since the box itself was completely intact and not damaged. Bad QA... BAD! Anyway, this is as minor as it looks. It still held it's ground and I was able to snug a washer and screw in without screwing it up even more.
Fast forward: the board is now mounted to the case. Notice the stupid USB3 passthroughs stick out the back of the case. >:(
The backplate is also impressive-looking. It fit like a glove :) Do note the 770 with it's two DVI-D, HDMI, and Displayport inputs.
Fast forward even more: This is the setup, all complete! Take note of the H100i all set into place and the giant 770 occupying it's PCIE slot. Other notes: i'm not the best cable manager, but I thought it was as good as its gonna get.
The Yamamojo-jojo isn't complete without its racing stickers! Do note that the old (and rare) HD-DVD/Blu-Ray combo still works! I just couldn't bring myself to depart with this dying technology, but it is showing its age and relevance (more on that in a bit).
SETUP/INITIAL RUN
Building a comp takes time. I think that's a simple but effective enough description (short of comparing it to building a Lego set). Setting up is a different story. The Maximus VI carries the lastest UEFI builds available and I found it very easy to use. the drive controller was set to AHCI by default, and much of the settings that you would usually fiddle with prior to installing your OS was set on desirable presets. All I did was set up the boot order (to the 256GB SSD), and booted my Windows drive.
I was initially having major issues with my board interfacing with my boot-formatted Windows flash drive. It was set up to be an MBR-based bootup drive through my Macbook's Disk Utility program, and it has worked on another build that I installed Windows with, in the past. It was driving me insane and I kept reformatting the drive to see if that fixed the problem. I finally decided to do it the old way and make a boot drive through the command prompt. I restarted my Macbook (being the only other computer I had available) and booted up Windows 7, run the proper commands, and rebuild the drive to boot Windows. Of course, this worked like a charm and I was installing in no time. I chose the 256GB Samsung SSD over setting up a RAID array with my 2 additional 128GB SSDs. I felt that I wasn't going to see that much of a boost, and I wanted to leave at least one of the drives for a future Hackintosh project that I want to do (we'll see how Mavericks play with other peoples Maximus VI boards).
The install only took 15 minutes to finish, and with the additional driver installations, I was ready to roll within the hour. After all the setting up, the bootup time from after POST was about 12 seconds and has stayed consistent since. Overall, I had a relatively smooth experience setting up. It definitely wasn't a perfect process, but it was far better than my last builds.
GENERAL PERFORMANCE
If you haven't noticed, the Yamamojo-jojo is ultimately a gaming rig. In reality, this computer was built to be capable of gaming... and gaming nicely. This may bear the same meaning, but I go with the second wording because I honestly don't have the time to play games. Still, it's always a better choice to have/build a computer with plenty of room to breathe, and that's one of the main reasons why I rather build a computer over buying one at Best Buy. By default, it is a fact that this rig is capable of doing basic computing tasks such as Office related tasks, browsing the internet, and A/V-related tasks. In fact, on of the first things I did after I finished setting up was watch 13 Assassins using Media Player Classic.
My initial active visual outputs was a direct HDMI connection to my 40inch Sony HDTV, and was going to be my media display for movies and whatnot. My second input was a VGA (w/DVI converter) to my old 23in. Hp Monitor. It was an ideal setup for me for the first couple weeks. Two big factors caused a switch in the lineup: the first being the resolution of my Hp monitor. Its a modest 1680 x 1050 display resolution. I wanted a monitor that could at least do 1920 x 1080 (or 1080p, for those more familiar with the term) and have a DVI-D port by default. The second factor was that the VGA input prevented me from having a proper HDCP protocol, so it interfered with iTunes movies that are in full HD 1080p (which prevents playback on non-HDCP compliant inputs/displays). It was time for a change... and this was the result:
This is the LG 23EA85V IPS LED display. It outputs at 1920 x 1080 resolution @ 60hz, it carries a DVI-D, HDMI and Displayport input in the back, it's less than a inch thick, has a resolution sharpener, and has a bezel of only 1cm (with the exception of the bottom).
If you ask me, I found the perfect display for my uses. No, it's not gaming specific like a BenQ MLG ( xXLeGiTqUiCkSCOPEzzXx [[MLG]] 1v1mEnUb .::1337::. ..damn, I hate MLG... so much.) monitor, but it's a definite step up from a 6 year old Hp monitor (I can't believe that its 6 years old!). While we're on video-related stuff**, it's worth briefly noting the immense graphic processing power of the GTX 770. It dominated my very processor-heavy Flight Simulator X with framerates between 60 - 140+ frames (at near max settings)! Of course, FSX runs optimally with a frame limiter, so its limited to 30fps, but I have never seen frames drop no lower than 29fps. Another game I run with mostly max settings is Digital Combat Simulator. This is a game that optimizes CPU and GPU processing, but is really memory-dependent. I was getting average framerates of 91fps with a low of 63 and a max of 137fps. This is using an A-10A on a random generated mission with Max ground and helo settings. The last game I benchmarked was Crysis 3. I had the game settings at max (and "Very High" is the new Ultra setting, for all you Crysis fans). The average framerate clocked in at 48fps with a 35 low and 61 high.
A noticeable but minor flaw is video playback performance. I'm not entirely sure if this is a card-related issue or a CPU issue, but from time to time, full screen playback on the Sony output gets slightly choppy. I never experienced that issue with my last build (with a GTX 560 ti), and it's not that bad, but its still noticeable and is note-worthy. Perhaps an update to that is in order, sometime down the line.
As for temperature and fan/cooler performance, I'm delightfully surprised by the performance.** You know you done something right when temperatures slightly change (but never exceeds max) at load capacity, while playing a game, and the db output of your fans is softer than your Fat PS3 at idle conditions. Just imagine when I'm playing GTA V with that damn PS3. It produces way more noise and heat than the Yamamojo-jojo. It's glorious, to say the least.
**More technical benchmarks and further insight to the tested titles will be on the next part (for all those wanting more technical stuff).
FINAL THOUGHTS
It's always a fun time for me when building season comes along. Yeah, there will be those moments when I'm replacing parts with better parts, but when you're creating a full build, its a satisfying achievement. The great thing about computer building is that the level of performance is completely up to you. Building a comp with cheaper parts doesn't necessarily make the computer obsolete. You can actually thank the stagnate game developing community for that one, since they moved to this multi-platform developing model. Essentially developing a game that is designed to run on 8 year old hardware (such as the 360 and almost the PS3) gives PCs a lot of breathing space. While that window is now closing with the advent of the next generation of console gaming, you can see hardware such as the 6 year old Nvidia GeForce 8800s running todays games on decent settings that either still exceeds the image quality of console equivalent titles or matches them. Always feel satisfied about the builds you make and at what budget you want to invest in. For the performance-to-price ratio, (some $2200 total) the Admiral YAMAMOJO-JOJO is more than satisfying for my needs.
If you're tech-savvy, I'm posting a dedicated entry with all sorts of benchmarks and further insight to the gaming benchmarks that I mentioned here.
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