Pc Build 2018

My distinguished and fellow gorksters I give you my new build for this year. I have not upgraded to the RTX 2080ti or 9900k as of yet But I have decided to keep my options when I did this build.

So many of you have seen my build in a Phanteks evolv ATX a few years back but I didn't post my subsequent build the following year when I built a a gaming ITX setup using and Shift X. So this year I decided to go back to a normal size build. So seeming I have quite decent experience with Phanteks I went with this year Evolv X.

I kept my 8700k but I am keeping an eye on the 9900k situation so far it a hard sell for me but nonetheless I bought a motherboard which could accept it if needed. I got the Asus z390 Maximus Hero.

I still have two 1080 ti but only use one. I have now switched from using Dell ips monitors to 4k HDR gaming on Oled TV. So the appeal of RTX 2080ti is there but I still want to see what SLI support is like for the two 1080ti. As that would be much faster than a 2080ti at 4k which is the only reason I can of upgrading to a 2080ti to.

Still finishing off, need to properly seat the graphics card and tidy up the cables.

To put it mildly I felt that in the last two year or so from purely a gaming standpoint that there hasn't been anything that really shook me. THe jump from 980ti to 1080 was huge but the jump from 1080 to 1080ti was only very marginal. The jump from hard drives to SSD was so much I nearly fell off my chair (do you remember selling the crucial to me, that was my first SSD experience.), but the jump from SSD I hardly noticed. Everything has slowed down and now all companies are drip feeding us incremental performance increase. The 2080 ti does represent an increase that I am looking for at 4k but not at £1200+ when I am so use to getting that performance increase at £700.

And as sad as it is I get more excited about making rig bling with RGB lights than the actual gaming hardware. I remember quite a few years ago I felt like this but then eventually there was hardware to match my enthusiasm. I think I was on the 2600k setup and I kept that for 6 years as there was nothing that appealed to me. In fact to me with so little that appeals to me PC wise I have turned my attention back to my first hobby Hi Fi.

And threadripper could appeal to me if I wasn't just a pure gaming geek, But I am not the type that does video editing or uses virtual machines or in any way shape or form do anything productive or constructive. I just play games and nothing else.

Here's an example.

So I think I started PC building back in 2005. I knew that from the very first moment I only wanted an IPS screen so I bought a dell 2005 after that I stuck with Dell and IPS screens. 30 inch dells, ultrawide dells but it was only until about a year ago that I went the Asus ultrawide gsync. And while it was very good from a gaming point of view it dawned on me that Gsync or freesync for that matter is just a luxury and for all the extra cost above a Dell monitor you have the Asus tax and the Gsync tax and we still have to deal with ips glow or backlight bleed.

In all these years since the very first Dell monitor I owned we are still no closer to dealing with Ips main flaws which is Ips glow and Backlight bleed. That when I decided I am not investing any more in pc monitors but that sentiment is starting to spread to other areas that I used to enjoy about PC hardware.

I can see myself using the 1080 ti for at least another year and the cpu probably another two years and when you take the Cpu or Gpu outof the equation what are you left with? Everything else which doesn;t directly impact performance. So while there are new products or refreshes come out we are more or less in the same situation from a few years ago.

Incoming !!! I have build (kind of) that I will start Monday as that when the case arrives. So I have now moved the 8700k out of the Evolv X and in goes a 9700k. This is what happens when I get bored...

So I decided to have a little itx based general pc like web browsing, emails all the non gaming mundane tasks. So I though what mini itx case I really like the look of. And only one took my fancy. The Inwin A1. So I ordered through ebay a cpu that I could use with the bits left over from my other mini itx build. So I ordered an i3 8100. But I had what a can only describe as gorksters moment of clarity.

An Inwin A1 is expensive case combine this with last years top of the range mini itx motherboard. 16gb of G.skill tridentz rgb, samsung 950 pro nvme and a 1080 ti. the one thing that stands out is the cpu that I ordered. There is no way that the snob in me could drive all that with an i3. So in goes the 8700k so I needed a new cpu for the other setup.

I didn;t fancy going 8700k again and there were only two options 9th gen or Ryzen. Seeming I already had mostly intel based motherboards and coolers it made it a no brainer.

I would dearly love to try AMD again as it has been so long since I had an AMD based setup. But I can;t find a use for it besides gaming. And I think intel still is the leader in that field. If you thought the 8700k was fast at 1080p the i9700k is the fastest of them all, even beating the 9900k.

Hopefully get some pics up sometime next week.

Zen 2 with 13% increase that sounds very impressive but I doubt it would appeal to someone like me. I have never seen any Ryzen setup i.e 1600, 1700 or 1800 above 4ghz. In fact I have only ever seen one 4 ghz setup with teh rest being all 3.9ghz. Some even splash out on custom water cooling but AMD can't crack the barrier.

Let give them some hope and say 20% increase. Even if they could that would be 4.8ghz. That would be backwards step for me. I have both the 8700k and 9700k at 5ghz. Core speed is king and with Intel being on their ring bus architecture means they would always be able to hit the high clock speeds over AMD. The only downside is that when you add more cores it doesn't scale.

Amd market is not the one I am part of. THey are offering excellent price to performance. Intels market is performance crown but we will bleed you dry for it.

My case still hasn't arrived. But I have the 9700k installed. Benching and pics to follow shortly

I jumped on the Ryzen 1600 when it was released and couldn't be happier. I'll upgrade to Ryzen 2 as I need to upgrade the oldests PC, so he can get mine. I've got it running a watercooled 1080 and it plays all my games fine on my 144Hz freesync monitor. I've clocked the ram up but the CPU is stock. I just don't think most games require much power over a mid range rig.

I just had to support AMD as, after the bulldozer **** show, I felt it could easily turn into an Intel monopoly and they were trying to push an unlocked dual core for £200 just before Ryzen was released. Everything about Ryzen 2 looks like it will be really good.

Intel will undoubtedly be back in 4-5 years, now they have Jim Keller (he designed AMD64 and Ryzen), as long as they let him do his thing and don't try to interfere. It fits into the revised earnings call by Intel following the acquisition of Jim Keller as they know the revisions Ryzen will likely go through and how they will stack up against their offerings.

Sexy>I don't know am I an Intel Fanboi? It could be quite possibly true. I have not use an AMD product since the 5870 crossfire which I do believe is still the longest time I have had a graphics card for. And have not used an Amd cpu since the x4800 x2. So it has been a fair while. it has been Intel and Nvidia.

Funny you should say I am a fanboi I remember using AMD x4800x2 cpu I considered myself an Amd fanboi

But in reality I think I just need the latest and greatest so whether it be Intel, Amd, nvidia etc it doesn't really matter.

The new mitx build is still ongoing. Case has arrived but progress is slow. Providing you don't change what given to at default it straight forward. But I am not like that The gork in me has to change stuff. I don't remember a build taking me this long not even the shift x I did last year. There's quite a few bits which uses really really tiny screws and it winds me up no end.

To top this off I installed the 9700k into my other setup booted up no probs and was working fine. Then decided to overclock it then had issues no matter what I set it would not OC besides the normal turbo boost. Flashed the bios and all OC probs were solved. But then I noticed that my RGB on my graphics card stopped working altogther. In the Zotac software the RGB lighting control is now greyed out...

So either the bios flash has stopped RGB lighting control with PCI graphic card socket or by coincidence my graphics card decided to bork it lighting when the bios flash happened...sigh screw you Asus I knew I should of got a Gigabyte...

Oh I'd say without doubt! I'm an AMD fanboi BUT that didn't stop me going Intel as the price to performance was better. Maybe I'm a price/performance fanboi? When Keller's Intel parts come out, especially the 2nd gen when stuff starts to get tightened up, that is going to be a difficult time for me, I recon.

The fact that Intel pushed out the i3-7100 in Q1 2017 for almost £200 really put a sour taste in my mouth, and restricting the PCI-E lanes in their performance range is pushing Hamps (remember him?) to AMD, which is great because he's a bit like you wanting parts with the biggest benchmark numbers.

Ohh and turn all that RGB stuff off. I've got more LED's in my PC than in my living room (it is xmas remember), but all of them are off. Why can't someone do a range of RGB free parts? Oh and I mean performance parts with no RGB, not super budget stuff.

you could just snip the led off or desolder it.

Hi James I kind of finished it...sort of.

So whenever I do a ghetto build where everything gets plugged in as is without any though for cable routing and component placement. Then I do a second build i restrip it back down and then rebuild it properly. I am still stuck on the first stage. So over the holiday season I will be spending time redoing it and applying liquid metal to the gfx card.

here pics of the build as it stands



So I removed the PSu that shipped with it which funnily enough considering it's an sff build it has a full size atx power supply. An unknown brand which quite a few people who own this case have commented it less than favourable opinions.

Seeming I had a spare corsair ax860i and a corsair sf600 I went with the latter. The biggest problem was removing the initial case psu. To say it made my blood boil was an understatement. So many screws and the really tiny ones in hard to access areas, This took me ages. Then when that was removed I ran into the next hurdle you need atx to sff psu bracket otherwise there is no way of mounting. And as you can tell from the pics all the connections come out from the 'front'.

Also there is no way for me to control the led strips at the bottom as my MB has a 3 pin rgb header and not the 4 pin type. But I do have spare 4 pin strips lying around so that will need to be rectified.

There is also another major problem with the case. If I change cooler there is no access area to the backplate which means you would need to remove the motherboard completely.


So here's the component list I use for this build.

Inwin A1
8700k
Asus strix z370i
Gskill trident z 3600 mhz
Evga 1080 gtx 1080 ti ftw3
corsair sf600 psu
corsair ll120 RGB
corsair h75 aio cooler
cosair commander pro
corsair lighting pro
corsair lighting strips pro
vortex poker3 mini keyboard
razer mamba

i built myself as new rig GRW. same mobo as yours by the look of it

ROG Maximus X1 Hero
I7 9700 K
GTX 1080 ti MSI
asus ryuo 240 cooler

etc..

The CPU should actually be an AMD Athlon 3200+ Barton (or 2500+ for the working mans version) and surely it should be Windows ME and weren't Jet Turbine coolers all the rage back then?

My brother had one of them and I had this
I remember the cooling was decent, but I distinctly remember they were LOUD! I think I still have tinnitus from it!