My trusty desktop of 5 years, died a horrible death last week Thursday. Made a terrible wheezing sound and refused to power on. Motherboard and psu replacement didn't solve the issue and it was about 4-5 cpu generations behind so I gave it a proper burial and took the opportunity to build a new upto date one.

My trust old Bitfenix Colossus, old specs:

Intel i7-920 Quad Core -2.66ghz, 6gb ram, 128gb SSD, Gigabyte X-58 UD3R MB, Gigabyte Geforce GTX 460 SOC GPU, 650w PSU. After my bad experience with this gigabyte motherboard I definitely wouldn't be buying anything gigabyte again.

What are you going for with the new one? Should be able to carry a lot of it across if you wanted to.

And the new components arrived yesterday and I spent most of the evening putting bits together:

New Specs:

NZXT Phantom 820 Full Tower Case

i7-4790k 4ghz Devil's Canyon & NXZT Kraken X60 AIO Water CPU Cooler

250 GB Samsung SSD (for OS & Programs), 250GB Samsung SSD (for Games)

Asus Maximus VII Hero Intel Z97 MB

24gb Ram

EVGA Geforce GTX 790Ti SOC AXC 3GB GPU

1000W Corsair PSU

Using my other storage HD's from the old PC for a total of 10terabytes of storage.

Only installed Windows 7 so far, few more tweaks and will hopefully play around with it some more this evening.

Can't wait to play Watchdogs.

Side by side old and new:

More pics of it fully setup to follow

Wow nice build.

Don't get your hopes up too much with WD though, it runs like utter crap on the PC at the moment. I have had it since launch and am still waiting for them to fix it. :(

Wow nice build.

Don't get your hopes up too much with WD though, it runs like utter crap on the PC at the moment. I have had it since launch and am still waiting for them to fix it. :(

hehe it came free with the GPU, will see. Guess I could always get for PS or maybe Wii U if it ever comes out.

looking very nice indeed! 10 terabytes of space, I am surprised your not renting your hard drives for storage, could make a mint and a half!

i know naff all about building computers, but it sounds cool. wow 10 terabytes of storage, god the ammount of !Removed! i could store on that..........lol

What a beast. I need to start thinking about building a new one. I built the current one about 4 years ago. Got all the parts from Novatech last time but will do some research on parts and specs before I go ahead.

where did you buy that lot from? looking to maybe replace my GPU or CPU soon ( got the mod bug) let us all know how you get on with it

Building a PC is easy when your in practice, sadly I am not, but never the less its an awesome spec machine!

The best thing about building your own is the fact you can get maseratti specs for a scratty corsa's price :D

i was a bit dubious about building my own PC at first, but after seeing the price difference compared to pre-built and once i found some really good guides online, i decided to take the plunge and ordered the parts, made sure i had a whole day to myself and slowly built it up, nothing major went wrong and in the end i did rather enjoy the whole process and now i wouldnt touch a pre-built now i understand the basics

I'd say if your happy enough to tinker with your motor, then building a PC is easy :D


Glad to hear though im not the only one not happy with gigabyte im on my 3rd RMA'd Motherboard.

Ive always said if I ever got a desktop pc id rather a custom built one instead of.prebuilt. id just have to ask a geek friend to help with what to get lol.

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I'm always happy to help if you want to know what to get, how to build or if you get stuck.

I've made a career out of it.... Damn guess that makes me a geek then :p

Haha thankyou but ive not got the room for a desktop and it would mean I cabt lie in bed on laptop haha :-)

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Htpcs and cubes are all the rage these days, couple it with a wireless keyboard and mouse then you can use your tv.

Got all my parts from Aria.co.uk, which was the cheapest across sites like ebuyer, dabs, amazon etc. Case I got from ebuyer as for some reason aria don't stock it.

Got windows installed last night and few essential programs. PC runs like a dream and quiet as anything looks great lit up at night.

Bought a few more bits for it today, gaming keyboard and mouse, 3.5" to 5.25" hot swappable bay and a usb header extension.

Gonna have a play with some overclocking at some point, but more pics to come

10 terabytes hehe I think is too small might replace them all at some point and slap as many 3-4 terabyte HD's as I can afford ;)

well if you want to dispose of any of those terabytes, I will be first in line to take them off your hads :D

Aria is fantastic, I use Aria for all my PC builds, have done for the last 12 years!

Htpcs, cubes??? Thats greek to me haha

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Aria is great until you get a problem.

I won't touch them now, I had to use the consumer credit act to get our money back on a faulty netbook after Aria refused to do anything. Had it not been for the fact that I purchased on a credit card I would have had to move on to threatening legal action.

I have never known a company so disinterested in after-sales support, and taking so long to respond. Appalling.

wow, that must have been a bad day as I have never had a day of trouble from them!

I was in contact for over a month so I can't personally let them off for a bad day :(

Ouch, so far several orders with them over the years and no trouble. shame to hear alex

crikey that is rediculous!

And the new components arrived yesterday and I spent most of the evening putting bits together:

New Specs:

NZXT Phantom 820 Full Tower Case

i7-4790k 4ghz Devil's Canyon & NXZT Kraken X60 AIO Water CPU Cooler

250 GB Samsung SSD (for OS & Programs), 250GB Samsung SSD (for Games)

Asus Maximus VII Hero Intel Z97 MB

24gb Ram

EVGA Geforce GTX 790Ti SOC AXC 3GB GPU

1000W Corsair PSU

Nice bit of kit there mate, you didn't mess about and really went for it lol,

I have my eye on upgrading again with the i7 4790K and a GTX770/80,

I honestly don't really need to though, I can run Arma 3 and Lightroom 5 just fine.

I've been upgrading my own kit for nearly 20 years, my last build nearly 5 years ago was when Windows 7 was released,

EVGA P55 motherboard and i5 750 2.66GHz CPU, Antec P182 case with Corsair 520w PSU, added the 128GB SSD, 16GB RAM & GTX560 a bit later.

I use Scan.co.uk for all my bits, never a problem with them, just City Link who delivered it, 4 out of 5 attempts wrong,

I waited in all day (as you do for expensive gear) 3 times and no show, checked internet and saw 'Attempted Delivery, Card Left'....my ars3

other time i was given wrong parcel and chased van down street when I realized it wasn't mine lol.

Nice bit of kit there mate, you didn't mess about and really went for it lol,

I have my eye on upgrading again with the i7 4790K and a GTX770/80,

I honestly don't really need to though, I can run Arma 3 and Lightroom 5 just fine.

I've been upgrading my own kit for nearly 20 years, my last build nearly 5 years ago was when Windows 7 was released,

EVGA P55 motherboard and i5 750 2.66GHz CPU, Antec P182 case with Corsair 520w PSU, added the 128GB SSD, 16GB RAM & GTX560 a bit later.

I use Scan.co.uk for all my bits, never a problem with them, just City Link who delivered it, 4 out of 5 attempts wrong,

I waited in all day (as you do for expensive gear) 3 times and no show, checked internet and saw 'Attempted Delivery, Card Left'....my ars3

other time i was given wrong parcel and chased van down street when I realized it wasn't mine lol.

I despise citylink with a passion. Thankfully Aria use DPD who actually text you (providing you give a mobile number) and give you a 1 hour timeslot. They normally turn up about 5mins past the hour. Nice ;)