Help Keith build his first "little" gaming box

[Nozzer66]

Cant really go wrong with Silverstone PSU's. They use quality Japanese capacitors and as someone who's continually fixing medical gear with second rate Chinese made power supply caps in it I speak from experience. :)

[Teabag86]

So how'd the trip go and more importantly how is the new little box coming along?

[keithinhanoi]

Hey - Just got back late on Monday, and I'm still trying to shake off the jet-lag and get back into the swing of going to work again.

 

My "little" box was already built and running during the first week of my trip in early July. The best part was I was able to just drop in my Windows 7 SSD I had been using in my iMac, uninstall unnecessary drivers and install new drivers, and everything is working perfectly.

 

For the rest of the trip I was focusing on enjoying time with family & friends, so I didn't do anything more with it other than running CPU / GPU burn-in tests most evenings / nights.

 

Here's the final build on PCParkPicker.

 

Minus the system, a new keyboard/mouse, and a DisplayPort cable, I can say I managed to stay around the $1000 mark, which is impressive given how powerful it is.

 

I decided to upgrade the case fan (Cooler Master JetFlo 120mm) instead of replacing the stock Intel CPU cooler, because it seems with running games, the temps on the GTX 760 peak out and lead to cycle throttling more quickly than on the i5. I may go back and swap out for a more efficient air/fan CPU cooler, but first I want to try out some OC'ing with the vcard after I've established some 3D game baselines. When I swap out the case fan, I'll take some pics to post here, if anyone is curious.

 

I have fired up Skyrim, and with no in-game or NVidia driver settings changed and the same mod line-up I was running on my iMac, I'm immediately seeing FPS at full 60 about 95% of the time, with occasional drops down to 50.

 

First impressions - everything moves so fluidly! I'm not used to seeing the trees sway in the wind at normal life-like speeds.

 

Unfortunately, with all of this new-found processing power, I'm going to basically have to start from scratch with Skyrim. Having a 4GB GPU is going to open up a lot of possibilities texture-wise.

 

I'm thinking of going the route of a SR-LE plus REGS line-up, with a few things omitted / added. I just don't like the idea of throwing out all of my previous "work". First thing, though is just going through and reading up on the updates to 60 or so mods in my current line-up. Yikes!