Gadgetory

welcome to our next better system build guide now a better system involves parts that still deliver great value for the dollar without going over the top just for bling but also means that we're not really skimping on anything so our target budget for this system was $2,000 now in our last build guide we went with a straight gaming build so we didn't really spend extra money on anything unless it gave us more cooling or more gaming performance in some way this system is going to be more about well-rounded overall performance so it's still going to be a rockin gaming machine featuring the intel core i7 4770k unlocked processor we're still going to overclock it but maybe not quite to the same extent and it also features because it has hyper-threading because it's got lots of RAM and because we're using silence optimized components a very quiet workstation like element to it as well so it's going to be the silent machine that's suitable for gaming as well as light workstation use such as HD video editing now we're going to show you how to build step by micro step exactly the system we have in front of us but many of these principles will be able to be applied to other systems as well so we'd love for you to come back and reference this video when you're building your own system with that in mind we've made some menu navigation so you can go to the main menu up on your top right and you can navigate between chapters on the bottom right allowing you to skip in between the parts that you find most interesting now it should be noted we're using annotations to make that functionality work so if you're watching on a mobile device you may not be able to access that functionality if you switch over to a desktop that'll work just fine for you now without any further ado let's get started with our better gaming / Lite workstation build optimized for silence now with our better class of system sort of nomenclature in mind we did give ourselves a bigger budget this time around because we were trying to do a couple of more specialized things that is to make the machine great for not only gaming but also light workstation use as well as make it quieter so with that in mind for our CPU we went with the 4770k this is a core i7 processor meaning it has hyper-threading technology so while it doesn't really offer much tangible performance benefit over a top-tier core i5 like a 46 70 K in gaming applications the 4770k will deliver a significant performance improvement in things like video editing or 3d work to justify its additional cost now the i7 4770k is an LGA 1150 processor meaning that it's compatible only with LGA 1150 motherboards so we went with a sabertooth dat seven board this supports all the overclocking features of the chip as well as other Intel technologies such as Smart Response technology with SSD caching and all that good stuff and it also has some Asus exclusive features as well it's got their thermal armor which is a dust coating that goes over top of the entire board and even you can have little pieces to cover up the slots allowing you to keep the board operating in pristine condition for the extent of its lifetime it has their thermal radar to technology which allows you to quickly and easily diagnose hot spots on the board as well as monitor the board make sure your entire system temperatures are good it has their fan expert to technology allowing you to control all the fans in your system and keep everything nice and cool and optimized you guys noticing a theme here and it also looks fantastic and since we're using a windowed case that is an advantage last and certainly not least the reason we went with a sabertooth Tough Series board for our workstation II better gaming build is the fact that it uses tough components and comes with a five-year warranty a su supports this board for five years that's industry-leading meaning that if you're buying something that you want to really work for a long time a tough series board like a saber tooth is never a bad option the one thing you may recognize from our last better build guide is these Corsair Vengeance ddr3 modules we didn't change our memory configuration because I still feel that a 2 by 8 gig ddr3 1600 kit is pretty much the best bang for your buck it does a number of things it gives you a great ability options for the future meaning you can move to up to 32 gigs without any difficulty without taking these out and tossing them in the bin and it gives you definitely more memory than you need for any modern game as well as probably enough memory for your light workstation load however if you're doing a lot of DaVinci Resolve or you know After Effects rendering or whatever else then you may want to right from the get-go step up and get two of these kits for a total of 32 gigs now our budget gave us a ton of options in terms of graphics cards we could go with an entry-level Quadro we could go with a dual GPU solution with fairly high end cards we could go with a very high-end single card solution such as a GTX 780 that's the route that we ended up going and the reason we did that is because a single GPU solution still delivers the best performance regardless of micro stuttering or SLI profiles in any game it also runs extremely quietly runs cool and it's going to offer great CUDA performance for applications such as Adobe Premiere or DaVinci Resolve now why we might go with some of those other options dual gtx 660ti s would have been better for gaming performance but would have added heat output power consumption as well as a little bit of inconsistency in terms of the performance and I usually prefer a stronger single card to two weaker ones whenever possible we could have gone with an entry-level Quadro and honestly if I was going to take advantage of the 10 bit color output or if I was going to take advantage to some of the CAD applications that can be accelerated by a Quadro then I might go that route instead but that won't offer a satisfying gaming experience like a geforce card will now we could also pony up and spend more and get a GTX Titan but that contributes nothing to the gaming experience and is more useful for someone like a CUDA developer that needs the double-precision floating-point capabilities of a GTX Titan that are cut down significantly on the 780 last but not least if we were leaning more towards the gaming side and we were willing to wait for Adobe to upgrade their suite to support OpenCL with all the features or if we didn't need some of the Kuta only features right now you could go with a Radeon graphics card such as a 79 70 gigahertz edition and you'd also get some free games to go along with it with their never settle bundle and we're going to make the most exciting video ever about storage alright storage isn't that sexy but we've got an Intel 520 series SSD this is their highest performing consumer grade SSD and we went with that because again we had a slightly bigger budget we also upped the capacity we've got 240 gigs now that gives us flexibility we can either install a ton of apps and games on it or we can segment 60 gigs of it to use as a cache to accelerate our mechanical drive now this is where it's going to come down to personal choice we went with a three terabyte WD green drive and the reason for that is that with its low power consumption and quiet operation it was a good fit for our build here however if you wanted to use a dedicated scratch disk or if you needed more storage for large video editing projects you might end up with an internal raid array for example and then an individual dedicated scratch disk rather than going with this single green drive solution so the options are totally out there but remember guys green isn't like it was before where you were getting great power consumption and low noise at the cost of performance particularly in sustained performance they're right up there with many 7200 rpm drives now so you don't have to make that trade-off and that's why we went this route well excuse me now I've talked a lot about the silence optimized aspects of the system but I haven't shown you how we're doing it yet it starts with the power supply a loud power supply is difficult to deal with because you can't just swap out the fan without special training or pretty serious danger so we've gone with a/c Sonic G Series C sonic has a legendary reputation for moving quiet as well as high performance power supplies in fact many of the power supplies you see in the market with other brand names on them are actually manufactured by C sonic this one is 80 plus gold meaning we don't have to remove as much heat from the inefficiency of the power conversion it is also semi modular meaning that we don't have to have an S sorry cables jumbling up the case so we don't have to have our case fans spinning louder it uses a single strong 12 volt rail meaning you don't have to worry about what plugs into where and last but not least it has a five-year warranty to go along with that five-year warranty on your motherboard now those two components that fail most often over time the motherboard as well as the power supply have five year warranties in this system now it's only a 550 watt power supply but I'm going to show you guys what the power consumption the system looks like when you're done and I think you're going to be pretty impressed at the way it handles it even though NVIDIA recommends a 600 watt power supply for a GTX 780 based system next up we've got a dark rock 2 CPU cooler it looks great it's quiet it runs cool no complaints about it whatsoever we decided to go air cooling with this build rather than liquid cooling we showed you liquid cooling last time so we're going to shake things up finally we've got the fractal design define our four this is the black windowed version but it's available in different colors or without a window if you prefer it is again silence optimized with acoustic dampening materials as well as it has the ability to provide ample airflow with ventilation in the front and it gives you the option to remove some of the silence optimized material and add more fans with their mod you vent technology should you so desire not only that but it looks fantastic oh my case is gone I guess that means we're going to talk about peripherals now we're going to start with the Razer DeathAdder 2013 I think it's a fantastic value even though it's a little bit of a higher-end Mouse so while the peripherals don't fit into my $2,000 budget the goal here was to pick peripherals that I thought were appropriate for someone spending two grand on their Tower and the Death Adder 2013 has great heritage the death adders extremely well regarded but it's got some tweaks a higher sensitivity optical sensor making it great for gaming without any acceleration issues it's got tweaked argh anomic as well as rubberized grips that make it feel great and I just like it so there you go next up we've got the Philco magic ninja we've got a Cherry MX brown full-sized keyboard this gives a good balance between a typing experience and gaming experience I personally love Cherry MX brown key switches and it looks fantastic and very professional with the key caps printed on the front rather than on the top that also means that the printing will last forever because it won't wear off with your fingers for our mousepad we've gone with the SteelSeries qck because regardless of budget I use it for everything I love this mousepad just just get one even if you're not building the system don't worry about it now let's talk about the peripherals that you don't generally touch we went with the custom one pros from Bayer dynamic for our headphones these are closed making them great for going off to your own little world whether it's work or play they sound fantastic they have an adjustable base port meaning you can decide okay I want a ton of base for this music or not as much for another one which is actually very very cool and last but not least they are incredibly comfortable these are the personal headphone of choice for slick right now the one drawback being they don't have a built-in microphone so you will need a standalone microphone for our monitor this is what I expect to be a bit of a contested topic now many gamers will opt instead for fast response TN panels because those are going to give you less motion blur as well as less input lag when you're gaming now slick and I discussed it at length and we decided to go with a PA 248 this is a pro art series from a soos because we prefer the vibrant rich colors in better viewing angle to the faster response time for our gaming enjoyment with that said neither of us are pro gamers so what's the advantage of this monitor it's 1920 by 1200 instead of 1080 giving you a little bit more vertical resolution it comes pre-calibrated meaning those colors are going to be accurate right out of the box and honestly having gamed on this monitor a fair bit I don't notice any particular input lag I don't notice any particular ghosting even compared to TN panels so I'd say for the price given that the 248 isn't that much more expensive than a TN panel especially a gaming grade one I would go with this option but of course the choice is yours and now it is step by step ah I got kind of far away from the mic there time to build this PC so we're going to start with our usual procedure where we install the compose once we assemble them together before putting them in the case to make sure that everything is working they okay before we make more work for ourselves when we're trying to swap things in and out in there inside a chassis the motherboard box makes a fantastic test bench before we get started here's everything you need a nice anti-static place to work I don't recommend working on carpet if you can avoid it we are actually using a mod mat Xtreme from mod rate which is a nice rubberized surface so we're not going to damage anything it's not going to slip off away from us and it's anti-static I recommend using an anti-static wrist strap that you then attach the other end to either a grounded out power supply or similar or to a grounded wall outlet and finally you'll need a standard Phillips head screwdriver first up once we've got our motherboard on our well makeshift anti-static test platform is to install the CPU the only things you need from the CPU box are the processor itself and the stock heatsink which we're only going to use to make sure that the systems working outside of the case step one is to lift up the retention arm there shouldn't be too much force that you need to apply once it's out of the way you can actually lift up the entire hold down plate next up align the golden triangle on the corner of the CPU with the triangle or dot on the CPU socket there should also be two indentations the CPU only fits in one way never force it the socket is very fragile give it a little wiggle to make sure it's in the right spot lower the cover plate and then bring down the retention arm there should be a little bit of force required this time you'll have to swing it out a little bit wide and then hook it underneath the hold-down clip and what you'll notice is that protective covering over the pins in the CPU socket now pops off completely on its own and your CPUs installed installing the stock heatsink is a snap well four snaps actually it has thermal compound pre applied so you don't have to worry about that just make sure that you have enough slack on the four pin CPU fan connector to reach the header on your motherboard I'm going to plug that in there we go then apply pressure in a diagonal fashion to the four hold down pins until you hear them snap into place installing RAM is easy as pie 3.14 that is I usually recommend using the two slots that are furthest away from the CPU socket and then all you have to do is make sure that you align the notch in the bottom of the RAM with the notch in the socket in this particular motherboard you can see only one side has a retention clip so put that side and put the side with no retention clip in first then press down firmly until the clip goes into place rinse and repeat please don't rinse your memory now it's time to move on to the case so we're going to open up the side panels both side panels because we're going to need access to the back of it for all of our cable management keep your screws somewhere safe I recommend keeping them in a small dish such as the one that I of course have readily available right here thumb screws go in there and put your side panels somewhere safe the last thing you want to do is trip over them or something like that and scratch them or dent them before you even have a chance to put together your computer I recommend putting them in the box that they came in with the packing foam in between this is an optional step but I like to do it so you take the box or baggie or whatever the accessories for your case comes in open it up and dump them all out make sure they're all there this particular case comes with a little inventory on the back of the box that tells you exactly what should be inside then you take all those pieces and dump them in your tray that way you know where everything is when you're looking for it and you don't have to be fumbling around the next thing to install is the i/o shield so you're going to regret it if you forget this one so I recommend doing it first all you have to do is take it out of the motherboard box position it at the back of the case sometimes there's a placeholder there don't worry you're not supposed to use that just take it out on this case we don't have that though and then press on all four corners firmly until you hear them snap into place next we're going to prepare the case to have the motherboard inside it fractal includes a little adapter from Philips head to the hex pieces that are motherboard standoffs that you're going to screw into the tray they also clearly label with an a4 ATX and an m4 M ATX or shorter motherboards where you need to put in the standoffs we're going to put in nine standoffs in all the ones marked a next the motherboard goes into the case I'd really recommend laying your case flat before doing this then what you do is you position the i/o on the back of the motherboard with the i/o in the back of the i/o panel which you just installed slide it into place very carefully without scraping the back of the motherboard against the motherboard standoffs that you also just installed I recommend holding the motherboard by the CPU heatsink that stock heatsink that we're going to take off in order to prevent touching sensitive parts on the motherboard or putting undue strain on other parts of it once it's in position put in at least one screw so that it holds in place then put in the other eight screws and your motherboards installed now we're ready to get that stock CPU cooler out of there and replace it with our aftermarket one now the reason we put the stock one and in the first place was just in case we had some weird clearance issues while we were trying to install things in the system we didn't want to you know have to take an aftermarket one back off because it can be a little bit more difficult than the plastic push pins that are used on the stock one so I've pulled that off now OOP now all we got to do is install our aftermarket one after of course cleaning off the CPU so use 99% isopropyl alcohol wet a piece of toilet paper clean off the bulk of the thermal compound then follow up with a lint-free cloth that's going to allow you to make sure that there's no residue left on the CPU next up you're going to put some thermal compound on your coolers going to come with thermal compound put on about the same amount as about a cooked grain of rice is what I would go for for a modern CPU now we need to make a decision about how we're going to orient the heatsink in our case now if we had top exhaust we might consider mounting the heatsink horizontally like this so we could take advantage of it but we left the mod you vents in which means we don't have top exhaust so we're going to opt to position our heatsink vertically like this then when we install our fan afterwards we're going to install it pushing air towards the back of the case pulling air through the heatsink so that we're leveraging that rear 140 millimeter exhaust now to install it you want to make sure that you have enough clearance around your RAM for the side that you're going to have your fan on if we had the fan on this side say for example like this we wouldn't have room with this high profile Ram so something you might want to consider is going for a low profile vengeance Ram kit rather than a high profile one like this if you're going to use an air cooling heatsink instead what we're going to do is we're just going to turn it around so our fan is going to be right next to our exhaust fan right here on the heatsink the good news is that mounting this be quiet dark rock - is quite simple all you do is position the heatsink then you can actually squeeze the back plate under the thermal are more on the sabre-tooth which is kind of neat because it holds it in place and screw the four screws in from the back then all that's left to do is mount the fan to the heatsink using the included clips plug the CPU fan connector into the header on your motherboard and you're done your heatsink is now mounted next we're going to install the power supply so you have the option of either having the fan on the bottom of the power supply or on the top but we're going to go with the fan pointing down this time around this case does have a filtered intake down there so you don't have to worry about it getting completely clogged up with dust but the main reason that we're going this route versus the other way around is that it looks like our cables are going to have a little bit of trouble reaching the very top where our eight pin CPU connector is unless we install it this way because the fixed cables on this power supplied the 24 pin and the 8 pin are going to be over on your right-hand side my left if I install it with the fan down to attach the power supply to the case we simply use the four screws that come in their own little baggie that are threaded correctly for the back of the power supply so now it's time to start running some of the connectors so we're going to start with the 24 pin connector this provides most of the power to your motherboard we get to go through that nice cable put a hole down there at the bottom through this other nice cable management hole up here at the top then we curve around plug that bad boy in and we have wired our 24 pin connector and a nice neat tidy clean way next we've got our 8 pin connector which is also going to route behind the motherboard tray so it's going to go right through that bottom spot there then is going to come back up the there we go top left of the motherboard tray and plug right into that 8 pin connector up at the top left this parts a little bit tricky so if you can't get it yourself maybe get someone with small hands to help you out with it now this is the point in the build guide where it's all about social networking or making connection yeah making connection connecting things that's what I was looking for right connecting things so we're going to start with our front panel connectors USB 3 is a large block of a connector usually blue very thick very inflexible you want to run that as close as you can to your front USB 3 port which in the case of this motherboard happens to be right angle which is awesome meaning it's going to look nice and tidy and you don't have to have a big loop-de-loop next up you've got front USB - these ones have a small missing pin so it only goes in one way plug that block into any of the USB 2 headers on your motherboard usually there are a couple of them finally we've got front panel audio front panel audio usually has a couple of different options HD and AC 97 this one only has HD that's great because it's been a long time since any motherboard required an AC 97 pin out once again missing one block in the pins so just plug that into the front panel connector guys this is the point in the build where don't be shy about checking out the motherboard manual to double-check where all of these things are which leaves only the front power button reset button and power led to plug in now I normally show you how to plug these in directly to the board but because I'm a bit of a purist but there is an easier way asus has what they call their cue connector which allows you to plug them all in easily where you can see what you're doing and then take that whole block and plug it into the motherboard I still insist on doing it the other way simply because it makes the connector slightly more low-profile so there's less chance of them interfering with anything and I personally think it looks better this way but you have either option we've got two drives to install one is a two and a half inch SSD the other is a three and a half inch hard drive we're going to opt for using the lower of the drive bays this is just to make cable management a little bit more tidy and to mount our SSD is very very simple you orient the ports towards the back of the case the side that we're not working from put in at least a couple screws let's face it it's a non-mechanical device it's not like it's going to get broken if you don't put in enough screws and then slide the cage into place for the hard drive the process is slightly more complicated retrieve the sled we're still using the same ones grab the screws that have the spacer on them because there are rubber grommets in the sled position perfectly for three and a half inch drives then orient the ports towards the back of the case that we're not working on screw all four in securely remember this is a mechanical device and then slide the sled into the case those rubber grommets are going to help prevent vibrations from being passed from the drive to your case which is going to make it operate much more quietly now we've got to connect those drives that we just added to the system this power supplies modular though so there's no SATA connectors attached to it go into the usually a little baggie or box inside your power supply box and grab a dual SATA connector so this will allow us with one cable harness to plug in both drives you can plug the six pin connector into any of the outlets on the power supply itself as long as they are the same so six pins then plug each of the SATA power connectors into the back of the drives once you're finished with power grab a couple SATA data cables these will be included in your motherboard box I would recommend one straight one and one right angle one plug the other ends where they're both straight into the motherboard then plug the straight connector into the SSD and the right angle connector into the hard drive at the back as we get close to the end you guys are probably starting to notice that this is a really really tidy looking build you can hardly see any wires this is what great cable management a well-thought-out build and modular cables will do for you because we're only going to plug in one more modular cable harness and this is going to allow us to get power to our fan speed controller as well as the fans that are integrated to the case we're going to allow the asus motherboard to control the CPU fan because it does a really good job of that and it can be controlled from within AI suite so all we need to do now is plug the modular connector into the power supply run it through the back just like we've done with all the other ones and we can power all of the fans in this case simply by plugging one molex connector into the molex lead that comes out of the front panel now at the back of the case connecting our fans is simple we've only got two fans in the case one at the back one at the front so we take those leads and plug them into ones that are coming out of the front fan connector so there's one short one I'd recommend running that one to the front and there are two long ones I recommend connecting one of those to the back and you can use that other one for something else in the future should you desire may be an additional front fan if you decide to add that so close guys time for a little bit of cable management now here's a tech tip for you a lot of your components are going to come with twist ties I usually put those with the zip ties that came with my case because it gives me even more cable fasteners to use some of the zip ties can be particularly long and these are great for when you want to take a nice big bundle of cables take one of those little hooks that are on the back of the motherboard tray and then tie the whole bundle together all in one place like so because there's so much cable management room on the back of the motherboard tray and the define are for don't have to worry too much about bulky cables causing you to not be able to close up the side panel once you are done and now it's time to put that sexy gtx 780 into your rig so find the top a PCI Express slot PCIe 16 is the long slot and remove the next two PCI slot covers down for that so that means removing the thumb screw not letting the PCI bracket cover full on to anything random cuz that might be bad okay loosen the thumb screw and do it again this time not letting it fall that time I let the thumb screw fall don't worry too much about this folks don't worry we got this we're experts here all right now you position the graphics card with the PCI Express 16x slot aligned with the PCI Express 16x slot in your mother board make sure everything is lined up correctly press down firmly then all you have to do is put those two thumb screws back in and then once you're finished with the thumb screws in much the same fashion as you did before with your SATA drives as well as your fan controller plug the two PCI Express connectors into your power supply run them up the back of the motherboard tray bring them up to your graphics card and plug one six pin connector in so that's with the two extra pins just left dangling and one eight pin connector in to your graphics card now it has all the power it needs to deliver all that juicy 3d goodness and there you have it guys if that's not a gorgeous build then I don't know what is it goes to show you how optimized components as well as somewhat careful assembly I mean we weren't totally militant about the way that we did our cable management but it goes to show you how those things together can turn into a very very nice looking rig that you'd be proud to call your gaming machine but not embarrassed to call your professional workstation now performance one of the most fun things about getting a new computer comparing it to your old one and going yeah that's a lot better so I always like to run some rudimentary benchmarks just to see how much time I'm going to be saving but I guess I'm wasting some of it running the benchmarks don't worry too much about that because we're totting this machine not only as a gaming machine so you might want to run some 3dmark benchmarks or some built-in benchmarks and some of your favorite games but also as a workstation machine we're going to run Cinebench which is a free application for benchmarking and that shows off the rendering prowess of your computer so we're going to run the cpu benchmark there not only can you evaluate how much of an improvement you got over your old system but also how much of an improvement you got by overclocking by turning our CPU up from 3.5 gigahertz which turbos up to 3.9 with one or two cores active all the way up to 4.4 gigahertz on all cores all the time we were able to get more than a 25% performance improvement in Santa bench which is going to be noticeable in the real world and you're actually working on things which I personally think is incredibly cool and all of that is while maintaining the silence of this machine to the point where you pretty much have to put your ear next to it in order to hear the fans but what's performance without efficiency has well offers unprecedented sea States that is lower power States for the CPU to the point where this machine with a GTX 780 that's a Titan based GPU so gk110 with a Haswell 4770k so it's got your hyper threading it's got your overclocking up to 4.4 gigahertz idols at 55 watts drawn from the wall that means the system is actually consuming less than 50 watts once you factor in the inefficiency of the power supply converting AC to DC power not only that but when we created a load scenario that was completely unrealistic running fir mark as well as I does CPU tests we were only able to draw a total of 465 Watts from the wall that means the actual system power consumption maxes out around 400 watts remember when I said that 550 watt power supply was going to be just fine in this system there you go I wouldn't exactly go and add another GTX 780 to it without upgrading the power supply but you'll certainly be able to do small incremental upgrades like maybe a little bit more ram or a couple more drives without any difficulty whatsoever now all of that's fine and good so now we've got power and now we've got efficiency and performance all that good stuff but what about temperatures because silence optimized is all fine and great but if it's running really hot you're not going to be comfortable with it even with our overclock check this out running our stress test we're running at 63 degrees now this room's a little bit cool so let's say maximum 70 degrees even if you're in quite a warm room that is pretty darn impressive your core i7 4770k is going to perform great and lasts for a long time with those kinds of temperatures in this kind of environment I hope you guys have enjoyed this build guide we're featuring Intel's Haswell fourth generation 4770k don't forget subscribe and check in for more unboxings reviews and other computer videos and these guys leave a comment under the video guys because I compromises more of them are coming you you