- last edited on by
ROGBot
Some of you may remember me as asking for advice a few times recently on stuff then having to blow off the project due to financial setbacks, well this time i can tell you it's very much alive. I've had a small minor financial break and have been able to finally go ahead with the project albeit in a slightly slimmed down version. First the my old rig.
Out with the OLD:
CPU: Core 2 Quad Q9550
Ram: Corsair DDR 2 CM2X2048-8500C5
MB: Asus P5Q-E
GPU: Asus GTX 680 DirectCU II OC
HDD: 2x sata III 3.5" drive
keyboard: Logitech G15 blue v1
Mouse: Logitech G9 Razer
Headset: Logitech USB headset 20
IN WITH THE NEW
Now because of the slimmed down version i wasn't able to go full blown water cooling but considering i will be doing some minor XMP profile overclocking i went into it with an AIO. And now, without further ado. The new hardware.
PSU: Corsair AX860i
CPU: Core i7 6700k
GPU: Asus STRIX-GTX1080-O8G-GAMING (on preorder
CPU cooling: Corsair h100i v2
MB: Asus Maximus VIII Formula
RAM: 16GB F4-3200C16Q-16GTZ (4x4GB)
SSD: Samsung 850 Evo
HDD: HGST Deskstar 4TB
ODD 1: (reusing) BH16NS40
ODD 2: (reusing) BH12NS30
ODD 3: (reusing) GH20NS35 (dvd burner)
Case: Coolermaster Cosmos II
Peripherals
Mouse: Corsair m65 RGB pro
Keyb: Corsair k95 RGB
Headset: Corsair Void SE wireless RGB
Mousemat: Corsair mm300
Controller: Microsoft Xbox Elite Wireless + play & charge kit + wireless pc adapter
As for the OS, ill slap win7 on it, then do a straight upgrade to Free Win 10
That'll put that old rig back to the vista stone age where it came from 😄 and seriously boost my video encoding speeds & performance as well as gaming. The 2 hotswap bays in the consumed by a 2TB and 1TB drive for regular OS backups (anyone know any good software for that?)
Planned new rig upgrades:
I hope to eventually add a second 4TB drive and swap that AIO out for an XSPC RayStorm D5 Photon AX360 kit.
Naturally that thing will be outfitted with lots of led fans, led strips eventually, but the case will have a custom airbrush by a good friend. It's not called Project: Phoenix for nothing.
Initial Casemod:
Custom airbrush of a phoenix on side panels of Cosmos II
Planned Casemod:
Airbrush of flames on top and front pannel of the cosmos II, fan controller lid and drivebay lid
RGB led strip inside case (need to find out which ones will corretly work with the Maximus VIII header, and available in europe shipping to Belgium)
Replacing stock cosmos II fans with SPxxx RGB led fans (as seen in Computex '16)
If anyone has any other idea's they're welcome.
Now, as mentioned above i'll have multiple drives and as i understand it the mainboard has 2 chipsets for sata ports. Intel and ASmedia. Before i hook up the parts i want to make sure i've got everything correct. Can anyone please verify the following?
couldn't find sataexpress correct labels so forgive me if they're wrong)
SSD => Sata 6G_5 (mobo layout label 11 top)
ODD1 => SataG_6 (mobo layout label 11 top)
Cosmos II hotswap bay 1: Sata6G_E1 (label 12, hotswap bays will be used SSD boot drive backups only in raid 1)
Cosmos II hotswap bay 2: Sata6G_E2 (label 12)
ODD2 => SATAEXPRESS12_1 (label 11 bottom
ODD3 => SATAEXPRESS12_2
HDD1 (4TB drive) => SATAEXPRESS12_3
HDD2 (planned) => SATAEXPRESS12_4
Is that correct for optimal performance and correct detection in BIOS? Would you also recommend upgrading BIOS before i even install the OS for the first time if it's not the most recent one?
Will this boot Win7 initially? I'm hoping to save on windows and install 7 first then free upgrade to WIN10Pro, use a tool to read the 10 activation key and then do a clean install of 10. Advice / comments are welcome!
I'll be posting images later on of how the build progresses
