Its been a good 15 years since my last PC build, one that consisted of a VapoChill ATX case with built-in cascade cooling, and a water-cooled graphics card. Times and technology has changed so much in this time. I thought it would be a straight forward PC build that would take me an hour or so, and maybe a bit longer to get the aesthetics such as LED lighting and cable management right, but after a good week, I’m still fiddling around with it.
First off, a big thanks to Phanteks for supplying the Enthoo Evolv ATX with tempered glass case, and it was a dream to work with. Not only does the Enthoo Evolv incorporate a well thought out design, it also has a ‘cutting’ edge look to it.
Additional thanks goes towards Cooler Master, Patriot, G.Skill and Thermaltake for the additional parts supplied. So let’s get down to the hardware specifications used:
- Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ATX case with tempered glass
- Cooler Master V850 PSU
- G.Skill Trident Z DDR4 3200 2x8Gb
- Patriot Ignite 240Gb SSD
- Thermaltake Water 3.0 Extreme AIO watercooler
- ASUS Z170 Pro Gaming/AURA ATX motherboard
- MSI GeForce GTX 1060 6Gb Gaming X graphics card
- Intel i5 core 6600K
- Toshiba SATA 2TB hard disk
- 2 x Phanteks 100mm LED strips
- 2 x Corsair AF140 purple LED quiet fans
What started off as a straight forward build, ended up with hitting one obstacle after another. After having installed all the parts I realized the Thermaltake watercooler would not secure onto the motherboard as I had forgotten to put on the support bracket at the back of the motherboard. Cue having to disconnect all the cables and taking our half the hardware to put on the bracket, which in itself took another hour or so as I tried to figure out the manual on how to put on the bracket…..in the end it needed to be assembled at an angle and not as my logic would dictate it would being straight up.
With all the parts installed, it was time to boot it up. A quick press of power button gave me a little crackle and a small smell of smoke. To this date I still haven’t figured out where the smoke came from, but Winston reassures me that sometimes new PSUs can do that…….very reassuring.
At this point, the system wouldn’t POST. I can see LEDs on the motherboard lit, so I knew there was power going to it, but it just wouldn’t POST. Some quick triaging (which involved going out for dinner to calm myself down), I realized that RAM slots 1 and 2 on the motherboard are dead. At this point I had installed 4 x 4Gb Crucial Ballistx DDR4 memory modules, so I swapped these out for 2 x 8Gb G.Skill Trident Z DDR4 3200, and this got there system finally up and running.
To be honest, I have mixed feelings about this ASUS Z170 Pro Gaming/AURA motherboard. On one hand I’ve got the capabilities to have 3D printed modules that can customize and snap onto the motherboard itself and I’ve reached an overclock of 4.7GHz for the CPU (with no additional vcore increase), but the AURA part of the brand is a bit misleading. Sure, its got the 10 RGB LEDs on the side of the motherboard, but it does not have any onboard headers for the RGB LED strips much like the ASUS MAXIMUS VIII, but luckily the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv case has 2 LED headers built-in.
I’m a little reluctant to see how much I can really push the MSI GeForce GTX 1060 6Gb Gaming X graphics card. The supplied app pushed the clock up in OC mode by a bit, but looking at the MST Afterburner app gives me the shivers as the slider bars just don’t seem to have a controlled upper limit……I’ve bumped it up to 1600MHz and that’s as far as I’ll go for now without additional cooling in the next part of the build. 3DMarks11 gives me a score of the mid 14200s, so I’m more than happy for now.
Going forward, the next part of the build involves mainly replacing fans, more lighting, and cable alterations. I’ll be looking to replace the existing 2 120mm fans on the Thermaltake Water 3.0 Extreme with some Corsair AF120 ones with purple LEDs. And during the build, I didn’t realize there was actually 3 fans supplied with the case, so I missed one out which I’ll be replacing as well.
I’ve got a stack of purple cable sleeving and heat shrink coming, so all the cables will get a bit of a treatment. Also got ordered some purple SATA cables and a purple braided PCIe 8-pin cable, and that should be all for part 2.
Part 3, most probably in October, will be water-cooling the GTX 1060, so eventually the gorgeous MSI Twin Frozr cooler will be removed and replaced by a water block. I’ve got my eye on either a Raijentek or FrozenQ reservoir, and will go down the hard piping route, with a pastel purple/lilac coolant.
The final part will be to fully utilize the space towards the front of the case. Because the hard disks and SSDs are installed out of view around the back of the casing, and after installation of a pump and reservoir I’ll still have a little from there, which will be perfect for a 5″ TFT screen which will be used to display system specs and parameters.
