custom PC ordered!

[vmagic]

Case
FRACTAL DESIGN R3 - BLACK PEARL CASE

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7-2700k Quad Core (3.50GHz, 8MB Cache) + HD Graphics

Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3: PCI-E 3.0 READY, SLI, CROSSFIREX

Memory (RAM)
16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (4 x 4GB KIT)

Graphics Card
3GB AMD RADEON™ HD7970 - DVI,HDMI,2 mDP - DX® 11, Eyefinity 4 Capable

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
12x BLU-RAY RE-WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£69)

Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT

Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX850 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£99)

Processor Cooling
TITAN FENRIR EVO EXTREME HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£39)

Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

Network Facilities
GIGABIT LAN & DUAL-BAND WIRELESS 802.11N 450Mbps PCI-E CARD (£36)

Monitor
IIYAMA E2473HDS 24" LED WIDESCREEN, 2 HDMI/DVI-D 1920x1080 (£159)

Keyboard
Razer® Black Widow Ultimate Mechanical Gaming Keyboard (£109)

Mouse
Razer® Deathadder Re-Spawn 3500DPI Infrared Gaming Mouse (£49)

Speakers
LOGITECH Z323 2.1 SPEAKERS - 30W RMS with 360 Degree Sound (£44)

Warranty
3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£69)

Delivery
PCS EXTRA-CARE DIAMOND DELIVERY - MON-FRI, PRE-NOON (£9)

Build Time
FAST TRACK 3 WORKING DAY DISPATCH (£59)



I literally cannot wait to get my hands on this Ordered friday afternoon (13/1/2011) with the 3 day build (I know, it's not a guarantee) but hoping it should turn up sometime at the end of this coming week or the start of the week after.

Will mainly be gaming (if you couldn't tell from the 7970!) and looking forward to Guild Wars 2, I know the Fractal R3 case isn't supposed to have the best cooling in the world but it looks sleek and understated and I won't be overclocking anyway

woop!

 

[MadMan]

looks epic, post some pics

 

[vmagic]

tis now built and in testing :rockon:

 

[TheKeir]

Wow, that is a serious pc!

Personally I would have gone for a Razer Naga mouse, and a set of homeplugs rather than PCI card, but other than that, thats an epic spec.

When you get it, remember to post some pics and tell us how it's performing!

Also, smart-looking case, I like it.

 

[vmagic]

Wow, that is a serious pc!

Personally I would have gone for a Razer Naga mouse, and a set of homeplugs rather than PCI card, but other than that, thats an epic spec.

When you get it, remember to post some pics and tell us how it's performing!

Also, smart-looking case, I like it.

thanks :-D will post pics as soon as it has arrived, tried the naga once and wasn't too keen on the abundance of buttons ;-) and yeah, didn't think about homeplugs at the time but am on virgin boradband 50mb internet (wireless N) so the card should handle fine hopefully

am also basically getting a pc so I can use my laptop as an actual laptop, at the moment it's stationary 90% of the time on my desk anyway... but the laptop has been the most powerful system I've ever owned (i7 2820QM, 8GB 1333 RAM, GT555M) so am expecting a huge increase in performance simply from having a desktop :-D

 

[TheKeir]

Regarding the Razer Naga...

You mentioned you're looking forward to GW2, the Razer Naga is an MMO mouse, hence the grid of 12 buttons as opposed to the more traditional buttons-everywhere style of gaming mouse. Due to the nature of MMOs, the Naga is an insane piece of kit for anyone who takes MMOs seriously, and is much better than any other non-MMO mouse.

 

[tom_gr7]

nice spec mate,

I'd make sure you keep an eye on temps, just to make sure things don't get too toasty

 

[vmagic]

nice spec mate,

I'd make sure you keep an eye on temps, just to make sure things don't get too toasty

yeah... won't be overclocking (for now anyway), hopefully the relitively decent 7970 temps will be OK... may add another couple of fans to the case after it arrives (if needed)

 

[Joyner08]

That is an insane spec. You're future proofed for a good 4+ years I'd say the 7970 looks beastly.

Ran this through the create a PC and it come to just over £2,100. Crazy price, wish I had a budget like that!

Remember to post some pics and a video some time, I'd love a closer look

 

[vmagic]

That is an insane spec. You're future proofed for a good 4+ years I'd say the 7970 looks beastly.

Ran this through the create a PC and it come to just over £2,100. Crazy price, wish I had a budget like that!

Remember to post some pics and a video some time, I'd love a closer look

paid for the 3 day dispatch so it might turn up at the end of the week... in which case the first thing I'll do is set it up and take some pics

yeah, was over £2000 but I haven't had a new desktop in... well... years tbh, last desktop I remember having was some Athlon 64 system with a radeon card (can't even remember what it was) possibly about 7 years ago

since then I've had laptops, a dell m1530 and more recently a dell XPS 17 (l702x) which has served me well tbh, playing most games on "high" presets or thereabouts

figured this would do me (and the girlfriend) well for a few years. A year or two down the line I might overclock the i7 and the 7970 or get another 7970 for crossfire but for now I think it'll be awesome :-D

 

[vmagic]

so, pc showed up today (quick build and delivery tbh!) had ordered friday night with the fast track delivery so realistically it took PCSpecialist a mere 3 days to build, test and ship... was impressed

all seemed well, looked awesome - set up everything plugging in peripherals/monitor etc

then upon booting I had a "cpu tempterature exceeded, press f1 for setup" message at which point the BIOS showed the CPU at 80degrees and falling

thought it might be a bug, booted from the BIOS into windows and downloaded realtemp... showed each core of the CPU @ 90degrees+ when performing tasks, on top of that I noticed that none of the case fans were actually running (at first I just thought they might be really silent!) At this point Catalyst control centre had also crashed and recovered from some sort of blue checker type screen...

Feeling pretty meh I opened up the case, noted that the Titain Fenro heatsink was VERY loose/wobbly on the CPU and no amount of tighting the 4 bolts that held the H bracket onto the heatsink would do anything to keep it in place/stop it from being wobbly, additionally the wobbling would have made whatever thermal compound that was originally used pretty redundant. So the CPU Heatsink and fan aren't fitted or took a knock and were damaged in transit... the case fans weren't connected up, I had to drag a spare cable from the other side of the mobo to try and hook the fan connector up - upon booting the fans worked but the screen went all garbled with artifacts everywhere and windows crashed soon after, when I disconnected the fan connector on the Fractal Define r3 case it would boot into windows normally... albeit with the CPU at melting point

a courier is coming tomorrow to pick the tower back up - such a shame, am pretty gutted tbh, though it's likely an issue that occured in transit I'm still feeling pretty meh about the whole thing now and no idea when the replacement will be shipped/if it will have gone through the same testing/if the heatsink will be fitted OK

Kudos to the tech support guys, they were knowledgeable and advised how I could go about trying to tighten the CPU heatsink up but after spending over £2000 on a PC I just want it to work so now the wait begins

rawr

-Jon

 

[MadMan]

im very sorry to hear that. Hopefully its a quick wait

 

[tom_gr7]

sorry to hear about ya troubles mate,

Sure it gets sorted out asap.

edit - some of the fans wont be connected during transit, (side fans etc)

 

[vmagic]

the fractal r3 only comes with 2 case fans by default... they were hooked up to a fan controller which was bolted to one of the slots but it's not technically a pci card, just something that occupies the slot and hooks up to the PSU...

had a last-ditch attempt to sort the issues out myself, removed the CPU heatsink and fan (titan fenrir evo) and rescrewed it back in (don't have any thermal paste but meh, even without paste it shouldn't hit 100degrees) but to no avail, although it was a lot less wobbly than it was, upon booting there were strange artifacts on the screen which looked like the GFX card was b0rked (happened as soon as the PC booted to the POST screen and in the BIOS) so couldn't even get into the OS to test if the heatsink was seated better

ah well, being picked up for repair tomorrow, hopefully it should be back and working within a week or two

seeing as I only have to send the tower back I've currently hooked the laptop up to the new monitor and razer peripherals so I can pretend to have a new PC


so, not much I can do now. I just need to hope both PCSpecialist and DPD do their thing... especially as earlier on today, even without heatsink and fans I ran a 3dmark11 and got just over 8000. GAHD I WANT MAH PC SO BADLY!!!

 

[vmagic]

rawr... tis now back with PCSpecialist (according to the DPD tracking site)

so hopefully I might get it back at the end of the week... ya never know... then you'll get photos

 

[vmagic]

PC RMA testing has been done

the cooler had a bent bracket and the hd7970 was artifacting, both were replaced and it's on the way home

fingers crosed :-O