4. How much money did you spend on the rig as it is right now?
Really...probably more than what a perfectly good second hand car costs at carmax! And I guess I could have spent more, but it was just criminal how much graphic cards were selling on the first quarter of 2018 which is when I decided to build this system.
5. How often do you update/buy a new rig?
Good question, so back in high school through college, I built around 6 rigs. That was the era when water cooling was just beginning to be a thing. My last build was probably around 2003, and at the time that had dual 10,000rpm raptor drives, with Quad-SLI on two of those infamous cards from Nvidia, the Geforce 9800 GX2, and I guess I forgot what processor I was running, but that could run the first Crysis game on literally all Ultra settings. Since then, I moved abroad, and because of practicality, I had to switch to laptop usage, and the last laptop I had, which I retired last year when I built this system, is my Alienware M18x with dual GTX 980m in SLI and i7 3940xm processor. The laptop did not come with these cards and cpu, but I upgraded it after the warranty 3 year period was over. That got me through many awesome games, including Dying light, all in ultra, without any hiccups, and the Rise of the Tomb raider. Then I moved back home to San Diego, settled down, and decided my decade and a half long of dealing with a Laptop was finally coming to an end, and once again I could go back to having a proper desktop.
It was then that I began plotting as to what I wanted for my system. Everything from the case, the cooling system, and all the components. Unfortunately, because of the circumstances of the market at that time, I had to change a few times the specs of the build, based on shortages of GPU's and water cooling, thanks to the super demand from miners. The planning period and building period spanned from October 2017 to March 2018. Basically half a year, to source the components and build it up.
There were several things I had to learn about and/or teach myself, which I had not done before, specifically the custom water loop. Learning to bend PETG tubes, learning all the nuances of the different metals inside radiators and water blocks, the pros the cons, and researching the seemingly infinite types of coolant fluids out there, why some clog the systems, why some don't, and so on, it has been a lot of fun, and interesting learning and understanding how far the liquid cooling for personal computers has come, specially now with people cooling with Nitrogen etc... I really have to thank all those Yo
6. What components are used?
- Case: Thermaltake Tower 900 in black
- CPU: Intel i9 7980XE, daily OC at 4.5ghz on all 36 cores, gaming OC at 4.8ghz on all 36 cores
- Ram: 64gig Corsair Vengance LPX DDR4, OC at 3400mhz
- Storage: 512 MR.2 Samsung 960 Pro, and 2TB Samsung 860 Evo
- GPU: Two GTX 1080 on SLI, OC at 2100 mhz gpu clock, and 5556 mhz memory clock
- MOBO: Asus ROG Rampage VI Apex
- PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower 1500W 80+ Gold
- CPU Block: EK-FB ASUS ROG R6E RGB Monoblock - Nickel
- GPU Blocks: Barrow full block for Nvidia GTX 1080
- Fittings: All Barrow G1/4 for petg compression fittings
- Tubing: Ridig PETG and Flexible
- Water pump/reservoir: Primochill D5 pump with 360mm reservoir
- Cooling liquid: Primochill True
- Fans: A total of 12 140mm Thermaltake LED ring Fans
- Radiators: Two XSPC EX560 Radiators
- Optical drives: Blueray disc reader/writer
- Keyboard: Corsair K95 RGB Platinum
- Mouse: Razor Ouroboros
- Monitor: Samsung 49" QLED Ultra Super wide at 3840x1080 Native 144mhz
- Case lights: Dual LED strips with remote control tone mixer
- Fan Controllers: Kinwin two controller of 4 fans each, with manual analog speed knobs
