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WARNING!!! THIS IS A VERY LONG READ AND ALSO FILLED WITH PICTURES
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Link to Building Half-Life Blue Post;
http://pcpowerplay.com.au/forums/sho...half-life+blue For those wishing to see the old build or just see an overclocked, watercooled, triple carded system.
The Story
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Well, hello. It's been three long years since my last build, but fate has a funny way of interjecting bad moments into your life. A few months after that post I was to become unemployed, this had the major effect of me needing to let go of my internet and land line. No more surfing for me . I consoled myself with the fact that I had my machine to play with. A few months past and I settled into how my life was running, and was even able to manage the budget and save some money. After nearly a year, roughly April 2011, I was able to acquire a new graphics & water cooling upgrade which consisted of 2 x HD 6970's and 1 x GT 440 & an EK HF Supreme Full Nickel. Upon arrival the cards & block were whisked into the machine so quickly, I don't think the packaging had time to settle on the floor.
I must have been too complacent with myself, cause 'Murphy' cast his gaze upon me. I was to find out that after plugging in all 3 cards, my power supply unit was not enough to run them plus all the water stuff and drives I had. So a brand new GT 440 had to be shelved, as well as my idea of wanting to try Hybrid PhysX. After fixing the set-up in the machine and telling myself "It's okay, be happy with your two new cards.", I got to play with my new cards for two days, it was then that 'Murphy' decided to introduce me to one of his good mates. His name is 'Worse', and he was about to show me just what was in plan for my 'happiness'.
Upon waking one morning and running through my usual days start, which consisted of turning on the machine, making a coffee and then diving into whatever game I was playing. This particular morning after making my coffee, I sat down at the machine as I normally do, and placed my hand on the mouse to 'start' my day (what else ya gonna do when unemployed). When I double clicked the game to start, within seconds the machine went into a BSOD and abruptly shut down, not even finishing it's BSOD! ... within seconds I could smell that acrid burning technology smell that we all fear. In a panic I went to look into the case, ripping the side cover off and inspecting everywhere, but couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, but I could certainly smell that something had happened. The decision was made to power on the machine while my eyes were glued to the board, the moment I was to push the power button my eyes were to behold a tiny, yet still quite bright, flash of light followed by the faintest plume of white smoke rising from a chipset on the board, even a tiny bit of white powdery stuff was scattered over the chip after the event.
At a bit over a year old, Half-Life BLUe was dead !!!
Hard to see the damage, but it was the chip between the RAM slots and the IDE slot that went when I was watching, I dare say something else cooked before that, judging by the smell. The board is now part of my "Expensive Dead Parts' collection. It sits in good company.
The combined efforts of 'Murphy' & 'Worse' were to be very successful in stopping my happiness. Rummaging through my spare room full of parts for a board that was socket 775, I was to find that the only board I had, was a Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L, not the best gaming board you would agree, but in it went and all the water stuff and drives, ... but only one graphics card. This was to be 'BLUe's' fate for the next two odd years, with one virtually brand new HD 6970 (two days use) and one spanking brand new GT 440 (not even fired) sitting in the spare room cupboard. This was not sitting well with me as you could imagine. Something needed to be done, and the brain started ticking over 'possibilities'.
The thought process at the time was to acquire a new motherboard that meet my requirements, I was also contemplating replacing the now venerable Q6600, which I have had for 7 odd years. Before long I was starting to think of a build that came to me when I was nearly finished building 'BLUe' ... and I wanted this build to be special. Being unemployed I really had no immediate means to make these grandious delusions spring into action. The brain started thinking once again, and a plan was born, a long term plan.
I had been wanting to go to core i7 for some time now, but of course a decent CPU and a worthwhile board were going to cost some big dollars. So for the two odd years that 'BLUe' was in it's sickly state, I began saving, my thinking at the time was an LGA1366 i7 and an ASUS Rampage III Formula board, this was the early months of 2011. By the end of the year I had already saved a nice small amount and was going to start looking at narrowing my options down as to what I actually wanted to get, that I was to read about the socket 2011 6 core processors. This kind of changed everything, as the more I found out about it the more I wanted one, and one in particular. I wanted the 3930k. This is an expensive chip as is a good motherboard to go with it, but the heart was set on the CPU and the now updated ASUS Rampage IV Formula. This change required a considerable amount of money to be added to the 'save' amount. Starting to become an expensive upgrade.
While all this planning and saving is going on, I am still using 'BLUe', and I must admit, that even with a lowly G31M chipset, I was able to game quite decently on a single HD 6970, and I did for some two years, all the while wondering what it will be like when I eventually kick in the other one. It was this thought process that started a new dilemma. Staring into the DX Soprano case one day, it dawned on me that when the HD 3870's were in the case, it was quite difficult to arrange the hard drives within their bays, as the cards were long enough to interfere with the drives space requirements. The HD 6970 not only interferes with the hard drives space requirements, it takes them completely away! With the end of the card only just missing the metal cage for the hard drives by a few millimeters. Put two cards in the case, and now you really constrict the amount of hard drives you can use.
It was clear that once again, I was to have an issue just like I did when building 'BLUe' in the first place. The issue of a case. The requirement of space seems to be a never ending battle, but there was a case I had wanted every since I lay my eyes on it. It was BIG, it was expensive and it was awesome ... it was also no longer available. Thankfully, it was replaced by a slightly smaller version, but still BIG and still awesome, but now not stratospherically expensive. With funding being the equivalent of a bowl of rice a week, my 'needs' were outweighing what I could provide. The case was tentatively added to the 'save' list, starting to think that by the time I finally get the finances to build this thing, the core i7 will be equivalent to a commodore vic-20.
During this time, still gaming on little 'BLUe' (named so now cause of it's smaller internals count), I would start thinking about the off chance I further saved money and got the case. As I mentioned earlier I have had an idea now in my head for a new gaming rig for some time and although the i7 and board's intention is to upgrade sickly 'BLUe', a new case, is well, the start of a new rig. This also means all that a new rig entails, new HDD's, new DVD's, new PSU ... you get the idea, it is all just more and more expense. That 'bowl of rice' is getting smaller and smaller as to how far it's suppose to go around. I started thinking that a new gaming rig, means a left over one.
This option of multiple machines sounded appealing and started a new line of thought that side tracked off, but was still reliant on, the building of a new gaming rig. So the train of thought went back to the case with some affirmation, and was now starting to think more along the lines of what I wanted this case to look like. Having done the 'stickers' route with 'BLUe', I very much wanted to do a paint job on a case this time, and by that I mean getting some one else to do it, cause the best I could do would be some stick figures, and not really worthy of showing off. This of course meant extra money for a paint job and as such was a 'maybe one of these days' kind of idea, but would be nice. The idea of multiple machines lead me to go and check what was in this cupboard full of parts I had. Emptying them out onto the spare room floor, I was to discover that I had enough parts to build 3 machines, and a plan on how I would utilize the machines was starting to formulate.
April 2013 arrives and marks the day of the arrival of my chip and board. Gleefully starring at the parts that I have saved so diligently for, I start to think, well I will be able to get some RAM fairly easily considering their cost, won't take me long to save for them. Case with RAM will take slightly longer, but still not like saving up a grand. So the new parts got put aside. Another few (6 or more) months and it will be here I told myself. The end of April was to show me just how funny life can be sometimes, two weeks after the motherboard and CPU arriving at my door, I was to get a phone call that changed everything. The phone call was regarding a job, a nice new, 'nice' paying government job.
As you can Imagine, this has now meant that the reigns holding back my vision of my new gaming rig have been thrown asunder. Now after having finished building everything, I thought I would once again share what I have created.