Gadgetory

4k is here but honestly there are still some limitations the monitors are quite expensive for anything but a TN panel text scaling within windows particularly while maintaining the sharpness and clarity you'd expect from a 4k screen is still a challenge and finally they mostly just sit in front of you rather than wrapping around yes video card support for multiple 4k displays is still pretty iffy so that leaves the aspiring surround gamer in a bit of a pickle 3 4k monitors is beyond impractical requiring a graphic setup forged in the fires of Mount Doom and while triple 1080p subs are both relatively inexpensive and easy to drive they aren't exactly cutting edge anymore but there's another option with the way that 2560 by 1440 27 inch monitors have dropped in price nowadays you can snag a few of them for around a grand which means that the only remaining question is what kind of gaming rig are you going to build to power it so let's get to building shall we welcome to the ultimate surround gaming build guide before you begin find a safe static free workstation and equip yourself with an anti-static strap I like to keep mine on my ankle to keep it out of the way now all we really need for assembly is a multi bit screwdriver but a pair of side cutters and a pair of pliers can come in handy from time to time another thing that we're going to need for this build that's a little unusual is I'm going to have my eye fix-it toolkit because we're going to do things like taking apart RAM modules now before you actually begin building the rig I always recommend plugging the components in and powering the system up once outside of the case to ensure that everything is working well it's nice and easy to reach and swap out components if you need to the motherboard box makes a handy non conductive test bench if you don't have one already for our CPU we went with Intel's latest technology the core i7 4790k codenamed devil's canyon doesn't really change much from the previous generation core i7 4770k codename has well but due partly to improvements in the thermal interface material between the die and the heat spreader it promises lower temperatures and a more consistent overclocking experience I guess we'll have to push the system a little bit once we're done to see what we can squeeze out of it so hold your CPU by the edges and identify the corner with the little gold triangle align that with the corner of the socket that has a plastic triangle indent on it it should be the bottom-left lift up the retention arm pull back the socket cover carefully place the CPU into the socket no force should be required for this step then lower the socket cover lower the retention arm and secure it with the hook in the bottom right corner the plastic cover should pop off on its own choosen memory was really tough for this build not because we needed special performance Ram or because there's a lack of great memory brands but rather because no one makes acid green memory to go with our build so we settled on an old favorite and we're using a 32 gig kit of corsair dominator Platinum's at 21 33 megahertz c9 but with a twist first we disassembled the top bar by removing the two screws at either end with an eye fix-it screwdriver then we fashioned a stand and put a few coats of black plastic upon all the silver top pieces next we did a couple of coats of green plastidip blazed on the acrylic light bars for a stealthy green accented look that should complement the rest of the system very well with that done all that's left is to pull back the tabs on the memory slots align each module according to the notch on the bottom of the stick and the key in the socket and press firmly on both sides until the latch closes bill one set of color-coordinated slots before the other two if you're only using two sticks the case decision for this rig practically made itself I recently reviewed the NZXT h4 40 found it to be fantastic and resolved to use it in a build guide at some point then this Razer Edition came along and took the original case added some tasteful Razer themed accents like the logo on the front and green LED lighting in place of the usual white for the i/o illumination at the back the glossy accent and power supply cover and yeah I had to use start by putting both side panels in the original box conveniently NZXT includes retainers so you don't have to find somewhere safe to put the thumb screws while you work take out the rear 140 millimeter fan by removing the four screws then put these aside and then remove the front bezel by popping it off from the bottom there's a magnetic fan filter here put that away for now as well we'll need it again later remove all of the three and a half inch drive cages to get at the three front 120 millimeter fans remove their screws from the front then pull them out the side now what we're going to do is replace all four of these fans with the appropriate size BitFenix Spectre Pro green LED fans to match the rest of our build first install the 140 millimeter fan at the back with the lead in the bottom right corner and trailing across the motherboard tray then slide the three front 120 millimeter fans into place so their power leads are on the bottom right if you're looking at them from the front of the case then use the same screws we took out to mount them back in the front put the fan filter back and pop the front bezel back on now as much as a soos would love for me to tell you we chose the saber-tooth z97 mark 1 4 it's cool firmly controlled fan profiles it's SATA Express port for future SSDs or it's one touch easy overclocking that would be a lie this was all about the looks the clean looks enabled by this board's plastic thermal armor covering made it the only z97 board that made any sense in this build aesthetically I mean I guess the five-year warranty on top series boards didn't hurt matters either but that's why we went with it so from the box you'll need the board itself the i/o shield two SATA cables and the manual and optionally the dust covers for any PCI Express Ram or other slots that you aren't planning to use for your system start by pressing firmly on all four corners of the i/o shield at the back of the case until they snap into place then since NZXT pre installs the correct nine standoffs for ATX motherboards you can just lower the board into the case putting its middle mounting hole through the post that takes the place of one of the normal standoffs be sure while doing this not to crush the wire for the rear case fan or accidentally lock your top PCIe slot this post will hold the board in place while you screw in the other eight standoffs here here here here here here here and here while you still have easy access to the board plug in the front power and reset switches as well as the power and drive activity LEDs follow up by plugging the block style connectors for USB to front audio and USB 3 plug in the SATA data connectors as shown then finally connect all of your fans will use the three headers on the bottom edge of the board for the front fans and the right edge header for the rear fan this lets us take advantage of a Seuss's excellent in BIOS fan control to keep the system both cool and quiet originally I had planned to use a dual 140 millimeter all-in-one liquid cooling unit for this build but Swift tech called me up three days before I started scripting it and told me they finally have the successor to the age 220 ready the h2 20x it features a more powerful more reliable pump and enthusiast grade block interchangeable color plates and finally unlike most all-in-ones it's expandable if you want to add more blocks or radiators so we'll start by changing the color plate to match the system better remove the four plastic pushpins and black cover swap out the included plate for the green one in the box to match our system better then put the cover and pushpins back in optionally at this point the cooling system can be drained the tubing can be shortened and the fluid can be replaced with green hydrants to better match the system since the h2 20x uses standard enthusiast grade tubing and fittings and has a refillable reservoir on two mounting swift tech ships the h2 20x with LGA 1150 mounting hardware pre-installed so all you need to do is unscrew the four thumb screws remove the adhesive covers on the backplate stick it to the back of the motherboard like so apply the included thermal compound to the middle of the CPU about the size of an uncooked grain of rice screw the top hold down in a cross pattern into the backplate and plug the power lead into an asked fan header on the motherboard we used the one under this hatch but the fit might be a bit tight for your liking the radiator / reservoir / pump unit will be mounted with the stock fans flipped around so they're pulling air through the red then exhausting it from the top of the case and with the fittings towards the front of the case for better clearance between the motherboard and the built-in pump / reservoir unit we can pop off the top bezel the same way as the front then use the 8 included 1/2 threaded screws to secure both the fans and the radiators then we need to finish wiring this bad boy up the included pwm hub can be hidden behind the back of the pump it uses a SATA connector for power and we can leave this dangling for now the CPU fan header on the motherboard can be used for PWM signaling then we plug the pump into channel one and the fans into any two other channels so the speed of all three will be controlled by your motherboard then we finish up by running the SATA connector for the pump and leave that dangling as well normally I go pretty conservative on power supply choices for these guides because we stick with fairly low power consumption single graphics card setups not today we'll be loading this bad boy up with a corsair ax 1200 IAT + platinum fully modular power supply unit so we'll get silent operation at idle with the fan not even turning on and great efficiency even when we are under full load slide the power supply in fan side down and screw the bracket back in at this stage I usually run all of my power connectors in Reverse so starting at the motherboard starting with the 8 pin and 24 pin connectors for the motherboard and then run them back down to the basement next up you'll need to modular SATA cables leave one of them loose in the basement then run the other one up through the hard drive area using the last two connectors to power your fan hub and water pump after that grab a modular molex cable for your built-in case lighting and finally grab four PCIe power cables for the graphics cards run those through the cable management grommets before securing them and the rest of all of your modular cables to the power supply don't worry too much about which goes where because it doesn't really matter if it fits it's it's our drive setup is going to be the standard SSD for OS and key applications with hard drive from a storage affair that has been my go-to for quite some time the OS drive will be an Intel 730 series 240 gig SSD a drive that offers great performance consistency and reliability but since it isn't big enough for a full game library these days instead of just going with a green drive for peer storage we are going to be helping it out with a four terabyte WD black which will handle mass storage but can also do in a pinch for game loading or key application loading as well undo the thumb screw on the bottom SSD mount and slide it towards the window side of the case to remove it use four of these screws to secure the drive to the sled with the connectors facing the motherboard slide it back into place secure the thumb screw then plug in the terminal SATA power connector from the modular cable that we left in the basement before and run the data cable we plugged into a motherboard before up through the grommet behind the motherboard and then through the access hole to plug into the drive next choose an appropriate hard drive tray I'm going to use the middle one remove both thumb screws at the back and pull it out use these special screws to secure the sled to the bottom of the drive through the anti vibration mounts then put the drive sled back in place and do up the thumb screws connect SATA power and data in the same manner as before in our 4k build guide I went with dual GTX 780 t is an sli because I figured I could still get away with three gigs of video ram not so today at over eleven million pixels surround two and a half K monitors have over thirty percent more pixels than a single 4k monitor so we went with the best bang for the buck dual graphics solution from a high resolution perspective power consumption and heat output be damned dual Radeon r9 290 s from gigabyte with powerful triple fan windforce coolers on them these won't throttle and we might even be able to overclock them a little bit too I think these are going to deliver some amazing performance in this application now you may have noticed already that the coolers have a green Plasti Dip accent on the side this was achieved by removing the six screws holding the cooler from the back then removing the four screws for the top race that improves the rigidity of the graphics card I applied three coats of white Plasti Dip undercoat and four coats of blazed green on top I had originally planned to paint more parts of this build but I felt if I overdid it it would be overpowering so I settled on just little accents like this one I still think that we could have done better in terms of the green color here perhaps with a gray undercoat instead of white but at some point we do have to film these build guides and stop thinking around in the garage so here we are Oh actually well you've got your GPU colour off is a good time to replace the stock formal compound on there as well but leave all the other stuff like the the thermal pad to the RAM and whatnot so now it's time to install them we simply remove the two PCI slot covers that correspond to each of our graphics card slots the top two PCIe 16x slots by removing the thumb screws position each card over the slot and when it's aligned firmly push it into place then put back the thumb screws that you just took out plug in two PCI Express power connectors an eight pin and a 6 pin per card and for your finishing move I guess step back and appreciate it because we don't have crossfire bridges on high-end AMD cards anymore I don't know what's more impressive about the aged 440 the fact that it looks so good from the front or the fact that it can look so good from the front while looking so horrible from the back so it's time for cable management honestly I won't be doing much because this system is going to look great regardless I'm just going to take everything wrap it up down as tight as I can because you don't actually have a ton of space behind the motherboard tray on this case and I'm going to jam it all on the basement which is all hidden by that nice little stealth power supply cover then we're going to close up the side panels and call this baby ready to rock now that the system is fully built and up and running it's time to talk monitors now the important thing here is not necessarily the models of waters that I'm using while I do love me some Asus Pro arts and PBS I've got a PA to 7 9 q in the middle here flanked by 2 PB to 7 8 Q's something with slimmer bezels might have actually been nicer for this now the important thing is the type of monitor that is being used and how to mount them all somewhat elegantly all three of these panels run at a massive 2560 by 1440 resolution and they're mounted using the modular expandable triple monitor ergo text and that I reviewed here surround gaming isn't for everyone but if you're into immersion that's a joke get it into immersion immersion ception anyway if you want that kind of experience it doesn't get much better than this choosing the peripherals for a colored themed matched type of build was actually a little bit challenging since well normally I would go purely based on economics performance etc today I have to try and find good stuff that's also available in like black and green Corsair made the keyboard easy fortunately with their k70 RGB fully programmable backlit mechanical keyboard it's well built with a solid aluminum backplate and made in Germany Cherry MX switches it looks amazing and the fact that it can change colors makes it the most chameleon-like of all the keyboards which makes it bad acid something anyway moving on the mouse we've gone with or that I wanted to go with is a classic that Razer DeathAdder 2013 with this high performance optical sensor and ergonomic design that's available in both right and left-handed varieties but what you actually see in front of you here on the table is a g502 because one of my employees took the Death Adder 2013 without telling me so I don't have it anyway for the headset well at that point I gave up on matching stuff just by these sweet Star Wars theme streets by 50 headphones they're like $200 but they're totally worth it just kidding check out the audio sub forum on Linus tech tips calm for a legitimate recommendation in your price range although I can't promise that it'll match your black and green color scheme now let's take a step back we made it this far we jumped ahead a little bit let's talk about the software setup side of things press delete' while booting to get into the UEFI bios load your customized defaults set up your fan curves and make sure you set up the header for the illumination on your water block to run at full speed all the time so that it's nice and bright and looks fantastic in your system once you're done with that switch to advanced mode in the BIOS for some CPU overclocking we've got a full overclocking guide for this CPU which you can watch here but for now here are the values that worked well for my CPU for AI tuner CPU ratio and core voltage now there's lots of other stuff in here that you can play with if you want and I'd recommend starting at Linus tech tips comm if you want to get some help from our fantastic community if it looks a little overwhelming to install your Windows operating system create a bootable USB flash drive and then reboot while mashing f8 immediately to get to the boot device selection menu where you'll pick your USB Drive once the setup process has begun it's basically a matter of clicking next until you land on the Windows desktop at the desktop grab the latest drivers off the manufacturer websites for your components go to night comm for your essential free applications and grab some stress testing apps and a rivet tuner derived overclocking utility such as afterburner to overclock your graphics cards your mileage may vary but these are the settings I got these puppies running yet mmm mixie so now that that's out of the way let's find out if our rig here can actually handle all 11 megapixels of gaming glory at playable frame rates now to be clear we were never expecting even a powerful gaming rig like this to max out every game at this res at all but these settings and frame rates deliver a beautiful and very playable gaming experience that I think is truly special well you guys enjoy some glamour footage of our finished system here I want to take an opportunity to extend a huge thank you to Intel for making this video possible these build guides are incredibly time consuming for us to produce and without sponsors like Intel to foot the bill we wouldn't be able to set aside the week of time that it takes for my team to script film and edit them so thanks Intel for supporting the DIY folks who want high-quality guides that enable them to confidently build their own pcs I hope you guys enjoyed this video as much as we enjoyed making it hit the subscribe button now if you haven't already until next time