Monstrosity-i7 (New Build)

[ZaLiTH]

Have I missed something?
I have not seen anything on cooling.
CPU/GPU/CASE.

If you want to stay with the same brand why not go with the 900D. Lots more room to expand with.

Nope, you're not missing anything.. I haven't quite picked all the parts yet. :sarc: After some research last night, I have settled on a case though.

I considered the 900D. To be honest it's hard not to consider it... What a case. But I fear it's a bit too much of a case for me, I'd never be able to move it around with one arm. (Bike accident a few years back, left arm is really lazy these days.) There are plans to mod an elegant looking handle onto the case sometime soon, which a friend will be helping to mill out of solid aluminium for me.

I settled on the 750D for a few reasons; it has more than enough space for me and it's still small enough for me to man-handle without third-party help, the drive layout positions work perfectly considering my planned storage setup, the massive side window will do beautifully to show off the guts of the beast (the perspex window will be swapped out for one with about a 40% to 50% tint), and it doesn't have an annoying front door thing to get in the way.


As for cooling, again, undecided. :/ Full water cooling is not really practical for me due to the weight. One possibility at the moment is the H110 (280mm rad) for CPU cooling, along with a custom wind tunnel to assist the GPUs. There no plans at present to OC this (else I would've taken the 4930K instead), so at least I won't have excess heat to worry about as well.

To be fair, I'm not chasing numbers here, instead it's quite simply a future-proof monster of a dream machine. You notice all the unused potential on the motherboard? Hehe...

Where are the pics ????

Er... So, I soft-bricked my HTC One last night trying to fix the camera. Only just woke up about 30 minutes back, so I'm working to fix it now. As soon as I do I'll be able to get pics of the two 780Ti's and the SSDs in the mean time.

[update] I believe my phone camera is now officially fubar. Two ROMs later and it still doesn't want to focus correctly, so I suspect it's not a software issue after all.

I am making a plan in the mean time to borrow a digital camera, so as soon as I get my hands on that (and find a few hours to spare), I will sort out my current rig's GPUs and snap some pics of the rather innocent looking 780's.

 

[ZaLiTH]

Quick update: finally got some pics of the SSDs and 780s up, check my OP for the gallery link.

 

[paulpicks21]

Quick update: finally got some pics of the SSDs and 780s up, check my OP for the gallery link.

Nice boxes ZaLiTH lol. You could have got one out for us :roflmao:

 

[ZaLiTH]

Quick update: finally got some pics of the SSDs and 780s up, check my OP for the gallery link.

Nice boxes ZaLiTH lol. You could have got one out for us :roflmao:

Hehe... Apologies, I was in a bit of a rush earlier. I've actually been running one of the 780Ti's in my current rig in the meantime. Gotta test them and all that, right..?

Got a pic of my current rig's SSD in the OP gallery link, but here's a few pics of one of the 780Ti's running all alone.. Can't wait to get them both side by side.

The MSI 780Ti is a seriously sexy beast... *grin*

 

[paulpicks21]

Very nice mate. Looking forward to pics when you get the new build completed, it's gonna be a killer rig.

 

[ZaLiTH]

Thanks Paul.. I can't wait to get this beast running, at this rate it shouldn't take too long though...

I actually just got a teaser pic this afternoon of the parts, just before they were wrapped to be shipped my way.

I'm told to expect them on Friday.

 

[paulpicks21]

Some very nice goodies right there mate!

 

[ZaLiTH]

That they definitely are.. Can't wait for this.

You've got a seriously nice rig yourself.. I very nearly went with G.Skills for this build, even included them in my initial stock request. I'm thinking of black/ice-blue sort of colour scheme though, so the red would've made life a bit difficult.


[edit] Just to make a sort of general distinction, I've renamed my current baby to MiniMonster... Should make it easier to tell the difference when I mention them in future.

 

[paulpicks21]

Thanks. It does it's job very well. I am happy with it but I always like to upgrade things but I have spent enough money on it for now. I suppose I will change the GPU and get a bigger SSD in the next year but I think that's all I need to do.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

The processor says it only supports up to 1866.

To the best of my knowledge, that only applies to the system "standard" speeds. Selecting an XMP profile for RAM is effectively a form of overclock.

For about half the price, you could go with a i7-4930K. You'd loose only 100Mhz of processor speed and 3MB of cache. The difference between 12MB and 15MB of cache probably isn't noticeable on a gaming machine.

Hmmm... Wouldn't you consider that "skimping" on the build? To be honest, I'm not entirely against the idea of going with a i7-K instead of an i7-X. But at the same time, this build doesn't really have a fixed budget, so the cost doesn't really matter all that much..

Hey, you're the one that started out skimping. If there's no budget then why fool around with a single processor MB?

Package this MB w/8 Quad channel slots: Motherboards - Z9PE-D8 WS

With TWO of these 8/16 Xeons and be done: Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2600 Product Family

And quit messing with that cheap stuff.

I wonder how many PCI-e lanes that beast could support. 80? :shock: (drool).

 

[ZaLiTH]

I wonder how many PCI-e lanes that beast could support. 80? :shock: (drool).

Yup... 40 in each chip, through 80 available on the motherboard. That should be enough to handle any graphics bandwidth requirements for the next 10 years at least. Scary thought...

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Pity the MOBO doesn't have more PCI-e slots!

 

[paulpicks21]

Have you got a new camera sorted out for the shots of the build yet ZaLiTH? We demand some super high res shots lol.

And please tell me you have a new monitor coming? It would be so sad to see 2x GTX 780TI's running a single 1920x1080p screen!!

 

[ZaLiTH]

Have you got a new camera sorted out for the shots of the build yet ZaLiTH? We demand some super high res shots lol.

And please tell me you have a new monitor coming? It would be so sad to see 2x GTX 780TI's running a single 1920x1080p screen!!

Yup.. I've updated the gallery links in the OP. I'm borrowing a PowerShot SX130 IS until I get a decent camera of my own. Depending on how this build turns out in the end, I may even ask my sister (semi-pro photographer) to snap a few shots with her EOS 650D..

And yes, I will most definitely be getting better displays. I'm aiming for 3x 27", battling to find any with a nice thin bezel though. I really like the style of my current Flatron, would love to get a few of it's big brothers if I can.


Anyway, now that I've had a chance to think about what's going where when I put this together... I'm aiming for a black/ice-blue layout, with either painted white strips or frosted perspex panels to "catch" the light. Which the nice big window on the 750D should showcase that quite nicely with a lightly tinted panel..

I've switched my PSU choice to the SeaSonic 1000W Platinum; partly thanks to the EVGA colour scheme... Partly for this quote:

Seasonic... come on, now. Fess up. You hired Harry Potter, Merlin, or Gandalf the White to run the engineering department, didn't you?

But mostly for this review.

This thing will handle anything I throw at it. Forever. No questions asked.

Sticking with the colour scheme, I will need to change the colour of the perspex on the MSI twins. From what I've seen online, they are white LEDs behind green-tinted perspex. Not sure how tightly attached this is to the molded cover, but I will most definitely test that one day..

The CPU may possibly get a Xigmatec Dark Knight, which I may add some white highlights to... Now I just need to decide whether I want to go for fans with LEDs I can turn off, or plain white fans with separate case lights. Hmmm.

 

[ZaLiTH]

Please excuse the double post... I'm torn between two colour scheme ideas. The 750D supports 6x 140mm and 2x 120mm fans (front, top, rear, bottom).

Options 1: LED light strips top and bottom, with a set of gorgeous white Zalmans.

Option 2: A full compliment of BitFenix fans that include seperate light switchs. This way I can highlight more areas of the inside, using the light from the fans to "illuminate" key areas.

I was also considering fans with curved cold cathode light tubes, especially if I'm not going to add two straight tubes or LED strips. But without cutting and soldering 8 fans myself (meh), this would be an always-on light show. :/ But now I can't decide, what would you guys go for?

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

...I'm borrowing a PowerShot SX130 IS until I get a decent camera of my own...

That's a sweet little camera once you get used to the controls. I keep one in my purse and I'm more likely to grab it for a quick shot at home that I am my bigger SX10 IS, especially for shots needing flash and I can't back off enough to allow for the difference between the lens and the external flash on the big camera.

 

[ZaLiTH]

That's a sweet little camera once you get used to the controls.

I find it pretty easy to use hey, seems to handle different lighting situations very well on auto, but it's still got a nice range of options in the manual modes.

Considering the one-handed situation, I'm looking at the EOS 350D for myself. It's already a rather old model, so it would obviously be secondhand.. But feature and size wise it's pretty much perfect for me. This theory has already been tested by the way, I know someone that used to have one.

 

[ZaLiTH]

So.... I got an 8kg parcel of awesome today.

And a few short hours later, my lounge looked like the middle of a warzone. Actually, to be fair, it still does...

But it was all definitely worth it.. The only part I didn't take out of the box is my i7-4960X, that one can stay tucked away safely until about 30 seconds before it goes into it's new home in this:

...along with these:

...and this:

...and this:

I figured I'd use the K95 and G700s on my current machine in the meantime, so I've been playing with the custom lighting settings on my keyboard. Turns out you can select exactly which keys do and don't light up in each of the three profiles... Pretty darn sweet hey?

 

[paulpicks21]

Very nice mate, that keyboard looks sick

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Very nice mate, that keyboard looks sick

I agree. I'm kinda wishing I had got that one instead of the G510s.