[Death-Axe]

Hi, I think 2014 will be a time for a new system. At the moment I have an asrock 330 HTBD from around 3 years ago. This time I am going to go with a full tower setup so I can ditch my USB Jbods as well and throw it all into one machine. I'll list the chosen parts, and would like some advice on (especially the PSU) them.

I will use windows 8.1 on this, and will do a little bit of gaming on it too.


Fractal Design Define R4 PC Case
Corsair Builder Series CXM 500W Modular 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX/EPS PSU
Asus F2A85-M PRO Motherboard
AMD APU A10 6800K Black Edition Retail Boxed Processor
Corsair CMZ16GX3M2A160​0C9 Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600 Mhz CL9 XMP Performance Desktop Memory Kit Black
LG CH12NS30.AUAR1​0B 12x Blu-ray Retail Combo
Samsung 840 Series 500GB 2.5 inch SATA Solid State Drive (most expensive part of the lot!)

I already have a USB soundblaster which I'll use for sound.

I have 1x 3tb HD and 5x 2TB HDs. Would the PSU support all of this? and will there be any compatibility issues with this hardware? and will what issues will I run into?


It has been a long time since I built a PC so I've been out of the loop with hardware for quite some time.

[warlion]

If you want a gaming console and all those HDD
The corsair will be small go for 700w or 800w (I use 725w cool master and is small for me)
500sdd is to much just for os you can do it with half (I had a 128gb ssd a external 3teras and 2 1tera mdd)
I recommend to buy a water cooler like the corsair h100i (that's what I use)
And I don't see any video card


Edit : For the PSU I recommend a 1000w

[Death-Axe]

The a10 is a combined cpu and radion 8000 video. Good enough for the small amount of gaming. I can always upgrade to a real card later :-) not too confedent with water cooling so I'm not going in that direction.

Thanks for the advice on the SSD and PSU, I'll go with those.

---

So changed parts:

Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5 inch Basic SATA Solid State Drive
Corsair Builder Series CXM 750W Modular 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX/EPS PSU

Any other advice? on say the quality of the parts?

[warlion]

Don't worry the new types of water cooler are not so complicate you don't need to do anything already make plug and play
http://www.corsair.com/us/hydro-series-h...ooler.html

When you go for AMD you can overclock and is a really big difference and a water cooler is really good combination, the water coolers had so many pros against the EOM fans and is about $60 usd

Also 16gb of ram is really to much with 8gb you can manage just fne (I had 8 and with a 1080p video only use 6mb)
I had a eight core and only 7% is been use on xbmc @1080p


If you are not planning on overclocking you can use a small water cooler like h50
http://www.corsair.com/us/cpu-cooling-ki...ooler.html

[Death-Axe]

So is that all in one with no need of a tank or anything? looks interesting. £99 UK, I might consider it later on. Will it fit in the case I chose? and where abouts in the case does it go?

[warlion]

That's correct all in one . It goes onside the case if you chose the h50 you can remove the fan on the back and add the radiator instead search on youtube for installation

The h100i is double radiator the case must be big enough to fit in the top inside the case
As far I can tell by google the case it can fit the h100 but I can't be 100%sure only by pictures the h50 will fit nicely

Also on the h50 you can use pull push to cool the radiator with the fan you remove from the case to install the radiator

[veralynn]

take the 240gb ssd Samsung, u know when u install 8.1 it takes a hellofalot of Space, and if u wanna downlaod some stuff it needs to dl at one harddrive before eventually sending itt to one older hdd,.
And if u then have only 128 gb u will only have a small portion to download to..

i have the 240gb myself and i only have about 90 gb available now, even With sending all dowloads to the nas when they are done..

[warlion]

Windows 8 use 20gb (64bits) if you planning to install and keep games until the end of time even the 500gb will be small storage, but if you keep your windows clean even 128gb will be enough

You can go for office 365 is really small and cheaper
Xbmc about 60mb +database can go to 1gb


I had 128gb sdd with all my programs all adobe software, office 365, w 8.1 media center edition, xbmc with a big library, random software with 86gb free space
When I plan to play a game I install it, play it, finish and uninstall

So all depending of how long are you planning to keeps your games installed


Just remember if you are planning to go for the CPU OEM fan you need to make sure you had a correct air flow on your case, hide the cables well make sure all are together to allow a good air flow

[Death-Axe]

What sort of things are you downloading? with all of those hard drives I am adding, download folders can be put on those if necessary. Besides that, I do all my downloading of items on my laptop and move stuff around after :-)


I looked at some pics, it seems people with that case are using the water cooling. Looks like it can also fit behind where the hard drive racks are too. Since it will add another £100 to the build, I'll add that in at a later date from first building.

Thank you for the advice people, I am still saving up for this (totted it up price will be £652) and I'll let you know how it all goes.

[warlion]

I recommend the water cooler put it on the back or top . The front fans are intake bring cool air into the case if you put the water cooler radiator in the intake you will fill your case with warm air
The HDD get warmer the front fans are also to cool the HDD if you are planning to use all of you hard disk I subject buy a second fan for the front of the case