Building my first PC Gaming Rig

So this past Saturday I ordered pretty much everything I wanted to build a pretty decent gaming rig. My build so far:

Rosewill Blackbone ATX/Micro ATX Case
ASUS M5A78L-M/USB3 Motherboard
EVGA SuperNOVA 750W PSU
AMD FX 8350 Black Edition 8-Core CPU
16GB Crucial Ballistix 1600MHz DDR3 RAM
Sapphire Radeon NITRO R9 390X 8GB GDDR5 GPU
Seagate 1TB HDD
Crucial 240GB SSD

Link to my build on PC Part Picker: https://pcpartpicker.com/b/CVkTwP

Got everything put together last night minus the mechanical hard drive, and the video card which should be arriving today. Then I just have a couple of finishing touches. Going to put some heatsinks on the mosfets because they're known to heat up with this motherboard/processor combination so that will help dissipate heat. Also need to get a proper 2.5" to 3.5" hard drive tray, and a fan splitter so I can get my front case fan powered up and running.

I got it fired up already and installed Windows 10, along with Steam. First time I've had an SSD in a computer and WOW, what a huge difference between booting a computer with the OS installed on a basic hard drive, and booting a computer with the OS installed on an SSD. Thing is blazing fast. Looking forward to downloading games from my Steam library, and finally testing out the video card!

Nice. I just built my rig last October. Here is what I went with.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/tJc7f7

I loved doing the building. It's something I've always wanted to do. The part I didn't like was the cable routing.

What are you looking to get from Steam?

@jak341 wrote:

Nice. I just built my rig last October. Here is what I went with.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/tJc7f7

I loved doing the building. It's something I've always wanted to do. The part I didn't like was the cable routing.

What are you looking to get from Steam?

Man, that's a nice rig you've got. Yeah I agree the cable routing sucks, I went with a midtower case and it was a bitch dealing with all of the cables, the tower I got could do with some better cable management features.

As far as Steam I've got a pretty decent sized library of games that I've had since the last time I owned a PC. So I get my entire back catalog back to enjoy again.

Last major component arriving for this today. Going to be installing some small copper heatsinks on the mosfets as my Asus mobo didn't come with a heatsink on them, and I've read that they get quite hot.

I'm also going to be swapping the obnoxiously loud and inefficient stock heatsink cooler for my 8350 for a Coolermaster 212 Evo Heatsink. Then I should be totally set! Looking forward to trying out The Division Beta today!

Nice!

The Coolermaster 212 EVO is a very good air cooled solution. It keeps my CPU temps quite cool. The only complaints I've see are it is a louder air cooled fan. I didn't think it was loud at all though.

@jak341 wrote:

Nice!

The Coolermaster 212 EVO is a very good air cooled solution. It keeps my CPU temps quite cool. The only complaints I've see are it is a louder air cooled fan. I didn't think it was loud at all though.

Installed it today, much quieter than the stock fan.

I was bored last night. Ripped apart the system (again). Did some better cable routing and moved the fans from the fan controller back to motherboard control.

Hopefully, this will be the last time I rip and tear into the system for a while.

Installed a couple of Corsair Air Quiet LED 120mm fans. One to replace my stock case fan, and the other I installed in the empty optical drive bay to help pull cool air in through the front of the case. Also been working on cable management trying to hide them as best as I can. Hard to do in a mid tower with a Coolermaster EVO and a Sapphire GPU that's 14" in length eating up space.

nice man, i haven't built a rig in forever. been thinking of building something just for giggles, part of the fun is seeing what you can frankenstein together haha.

@Fire Arians wrote:

nice man, i haven't built a rig in forever. been thinking of building something just for giggles, part of the fun is seeing what you can frankenstein together haha.

Yeah I think I've had just as much fun tinkering as I've had playing games!

@IowaSteeler927 wrote:

@Fire Arians wrote:

nice man, i haven't built a rig in forever. been thinking of building something just for giggles, part of the fun is seeing what you can frankenstein together haha.

Yeah I think I've had just as much fun tinkering as I've had playing games!

Agree with this.

My next acquisition will be a new desk. My small little laptop desk isn't cutting it anymore. Unfortunately, space is limited in the spare bedroom where the rig is.

I just picked up a new chair and a set of Logitech G430 Headphones yesterday so I'm pretty stoked about that.

I just saw this thread. Nice build Iowa. I used the Cooler Master Evo on my previous CPU, but I decided to go with a liquid cooler on the 8350 after reading how hot it gets. Right now I have a game running on one monitor and this up in the other and my CPU is sitting at 32C. When my PC is idle and no games are running, the CPU is in the 20s.

I just rebuilt my machine a few days ago. I replaced everything aside from my video card, power supply and mechanical hard drives.

I went with the following:

Cooler Master MasterCase Pro 5 (This is an amazing case. I love it.)
AMD FX-8350 Black Edition
16GB G. Skill Sniper DDR3 1866
MSI 990FXA-Gaming Motherboard
DeepCool Game Storm Captain 240 liquid CPU cooler
I also replaced my 240GB Kingston SSD with a Samsung EVO 850 500GB SSD.

My power supply is an 850W Thermaltake
My current video card is an old Nvidia GTX 560Ti Overclocked. That is next on the slate for replacement, but I decided to wait a bit longer. It still runs everything fine at the moment. I'm also running dual 25" HP monitors.

@Lokki wrote:

I just saw this thread.  Nice build Iowa.  I used the Cooler Master Evo on my previous CPU, but I decided to go with a liquid cooler on the 8350 after reading how hot it gets.  Right now I have a game running on one monitor and this up in the other and my CPU is sitting at 32C.  When my PC is idle and no games are running, the CPU is in the 20s.  

I just rebuilt my machine a few days ago.  I replaced everything aside from my video card, power supply and mechanical hard drives.

I went with the following:

Cooler Master MasterCase Pro 5 (This is an amazing case.  I love it.)
AMD FX-8350 Black Edition
16GB G. Skill Sniper DDR3 1866
MSI 990FXA-Gaming Motherboard
DeepCool Game Storm Captain 240 liquid CPU cooler
I also replaced my 240GB Kingston SSD with a Samsung EVO 850 500GB SSD.

My power supply is an 850W Thermaltake
My current video card is an old Nvidia GTX 560Ti Overclocked.   That is next on the slate for replacement, but I decided to wait a bit longer.  It still runs everything fine at the moment.  I'm also running dual 25" HP monitors.  

Nice build! Very similar to mine. My 8350 is running pretty cool now with the Hyper 212 Evo, and have 4 different 120mm fans in my case including the one on the heatsink. Temps stay right about where yours are actually, suprisingly enough.

So...in the continuing saga of PC cooling, I moved my fans back from motherboard control to fan controller control.

For some reason, I get kernel panics when the motherboard drives the fans. I can't explain why. For some reason, the computer will just shut itself off only when in idle. If I am using it, no issues. It's when I walk away and sleep mode kicks in.

It doesn't do this when I run the fans off the controller. I'm thinking it's something in the ASUS fan curve software. It has to be. The only thing I have not tried is running the fans without software and only use UEFI control.

What are you guys using for a mouse? I currently have the mouse that came with the Coolermaster Devastator Combo, it's okay but I'm looking for something with a little more customization and more features overall. I'm thinking of picking up the Logitech G502 Proteus Spectrum which seems to have pretty great reviews across the board. I like it because it has RGB LEDs which will allow me to get that color of blue that matches my black/blue theme I've got going on. I've always had good experiences with Logitech products. In the past I had their G9x mouse, which has since been discontinued, and seems to be going for about $200 now, which makes me wish I hadn't sold it.

I'm using a very plain Logitech mouse. It's the one that gets 2 years or so of battery life.

I also have a Microsoft mouse. It eats batteries every few months. The Logitech has the original one it came with, so I can personally vouch for the length of battery life.

I have a Logitech G500s and I also have a Razer Naga, depending on what I am playing.

I have a Razer Black Widow Chroma mechanical keyboard. I put the o rings under the keys so that they don't click quite as loud though.

what the hell is this language you guys are speaking in this thread.....nerds!!!

@vasteeler wrote:

what the hell is this language you guys are speaking in this thread.....nerds!!!

@vasteeler wrote:

what the hell is this language you guys are speaking in this thread.....nerds!!!

Join us. You know you want to. Succumb to your wildest desires and fantasies. Build your own PC.

All hail, the master PC race!

I went ahead and picked up the Logitech G502 Proteus Spectrum mouse. Pretty happy with it so far. Feels well built, fits my hand well, and I like all the features and customization it offers. It was between this one, and the Corsair M65 RGB Mouse. I actually liked the wider profile of the Corsair a bit more, but I don't like where they positioned the "sniper" dpi button on that mouse at all. Not a fan of the button being so large, right where I rest my thumb on the mouse, and bright red in color when my theme is blue/black. I also took into account that I already have the Logitech gaming software installed for my G430 Headset, and their software is universal with their gaming peripherals so that was another big reason to stick with Logitech.

@vasteeler wrote:

what the hell is this language you guys are speaking in this thread.....nerds!!!

i peek in every once and a while to this thread. turns out a computer isn't just a tv with a keyboard.

Anybody else pick up The Division on PC?

@IowaSteeler927 wrote:

Anybody else pick up The Division on PC?

I picked it up last night.