It's finally finished. It's been 6.5 years since I put together a system.

Final Old System Specs:
Intel i7-920 @ 2.93GHz
Corsair H80i Liquid Cooler with 1 Cooler Master Excalibur
Corsair Dominator 12GB 1600MHz DDR3
Asus Rampage II Extreme
eVGA GTX 580 1.5GB Reference card
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty Version 2
Intel 530 120GB SSD
2x WD RE 1TB 64MB in RAID 0 (Windows RAID 0)
Corsair 600T
Corsair HX1000 PSU
Samsung 12x Blu-Ray Drive
Corsair Link Fan and Light Controller
Windows 10 Pro
Asus VX238 Monitor
Corsair K95
Corsair M65
Corsair M95
Logitech G13
Klipsch ProMedia 5.1
Sennheiser HD280 Pro Headphones

New System Specs:
Intel i7 6700K
Corsair H80i Liquid Cooler with 1 Cooler Master Excalibur
Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB 2667MHz DDR4
Asus Maximus VIII Extreme
2x eVGA GTX 1080 Reference cards in SLI with NVidia HB Bridge
Creative Sound Blaster Z
Intel 750 400GB SSD 2.5"
2x WD RE 2TB 64MB in RAID 0 (Windows RAID 0)
Corsair 600T
Corsair AX1200i PSU
Samsung 12x Blu-Ray Drive
Corsair Link Fan and Light Controller
Windows 10 Pro
Asus RoG Swift PG279Q, Asus VX238, Samsung SyncMaster 930B
Corsair K95
Corsair M65
Corsair M95
Logitech G13
Klipsch ProMedia 5.1
Sennheiser HD280 Pro Headphones

All mass storage is handled by a WD DL2100 with 6TB in RAID 1

Current Games:
Battlefield 4
Star Wars Battlefront
WoW: Warlords of Draenor

It got to the point where I could no longer stretch the old system out. That system was built in late summer of 2009 and upgraded throughout the years. When I started gaming again, I knew there was no way that my old system was going to keep up with the newer games. Plus my old system was developing a lot of weird problems with USB when I went to Windows 10.

This system was built around the Asus RoG Swift PG279Q to deliver 100-144fps at 1440p with settings at maximum with all the eye candy turned on. I decided that the monitor would take centre stage in this upgrade. I was tired of everything being focused around 60Hz along with the screen tearing, stuttering and input lag. This monitor gives such a silky smooth gaming experience thanks to G-Sync and the high refresh rates. Even just browsing the web seems special at 144Hz. It's nice to finally see what I was really meant to see from my computer. It makes plugging in a 60Hz monitor into my computer like plugging those cheap emachines speakers into a Sound Blaster Z.

I knew this system had to be something special to drive this monitor and to keep frame rates in the triple digit range. This system was started in February 2016 with a lowly GTX 660 from an external laptop GPU enclosure acting as placeholder for the upcoming Pascal cards. I got the pair of GTX 1080's in early-mid June during some fluke were eVGA actually had stock...but I am not going to go there. I have spent the last couple of weeks testing and tweaking this system and now it is ready for show time.

This system has exceeded expectations of the 100fps minimum I was looking for at 1440p. BF4 and Battlefront hold 144fps (capped at 144fps) with 80% GPU usage while WoW is 120-140fps (capped at 140fps) at 80-100% GPU usage in any place not Warspear. In Warspear, it is 70-90fps at 100% GPU usage but that is just to be expected. My old system was getting 24-34fps in Orgrimmar back in the day when the GTX 580 was top dog with the equivalent max settings.

It is not just about the numbers, the computer also "feels" exceptional. Everything is smooth, vibrant and clear. This is the experience I have been dreaming of for a long time.

I still need to clean up the wiring but I will save that for another day (which I have been saying since February). Trying to rewire around a full Corsair Link setup is slow and painful torture. I also know that the PSU is way overkill. I got it on sale a couple months before the start of the build when I had something much bigger in mind.