Out of the 8 Years I have been building computers, This is my 3rd one base on Intel. The first one was a Pentium 4 & after that I have been using AMD for a long time before switching back to Intel last year.
Budget was not so much of a restriction this time around, but I did not want to empty my pockets either to get the "Extreme" ends of each of the product. So few of them was a necessity, some of them was purely because there was no other option.
I will give a brief review of each of them.
The Chassis
Cosmos II was my ultimate "to have" cabinet, I was worried that the mess of colored cable (seen in Unboxing videos) will ruin the cable management and make everything look bad, to my surprise cooler master had changed all cables to black ones and I was happy with that. Assembling the entire system was very easy, I had no issues what so ever with the case..
I will be modding it very soon, with a clear acrylic side panel that i am going to get it etched in the same way the current panel is so it looks as awesome as it does now & still look like it was factory made.
I hate the fact that its so heavy, I had to lift up that thing fully assembled over to a 3.5 ft table, now my hands & back are still paining
CoolerMaster is not kidding when they say on the box, Do Not lift alone, Require 2 person
Pros:
Cons:
Honestly I could have gone for Asus z87- Deluxe, but to me this felt more appealing. It had the option of watercooling the mosfets which no other board has. And I did want to go full on liquid cooling with help of EKWB but that didn't go through. but i like this board over the gold accents of the Deluxe so i went with it.
I am a huge Asus fan always have been, I always use Asus products if there is an option to do so. Heck I even had the ASUS laptop I don't except anything less than perfect from Asus, and this board delivers that & more. Its extremely well built each & every part. the backplate is full metal so its sturdy & also give passive cooling to the mosfets. It overclocks well (more on that later) has alot of software & hardware features. has the 10 sata 6 GB/s ports that i wanted. can do 3-way SLI / Crossfire i think not sure though.
The only thing it lacks is in Onboard USB Headers, There are only 2 & I had 3 devices that connect to those headers
Asus lacks in the software department, they sometimes have issues with their software but the AI Suite III this time around was awesome, Just clicked on the 4-Way Optimization & it overclocked the system to 4.7 GHz.
I did get Bluescreen errors after overclock, so i Updated the BIOS and redid the overclock & it has been stable since.
The Proccessor
Haswell was the only way to go right now, I had the option of the 4930K but with X89 chipset & socket coming within 6 - 8 months it was not worth the investment. No other thing to say here except that this chip uses very low power & still overclocks like anything.
On idle my system is drawing 98Watts from the wall which is damn amazing whereas my i7 2600K was using 130Watts at idle with 5 2TB green drives
The Graphics Card
I wanted to opt for the ASUS R9 280x but it was not available yet & this was ordered by PrimeABGB on request. To be honest this is my only high end graphics card purchase, I never tend to spend money on graphics cards because I don't play that many games a lot, and for a while now, I just prefer to watch the game play / walkthroughs on YouTube instead of playing them. I always have bought 2 - 3 Generation old cards usually less than 10K ranges & this is my very first purchase of graphics card above 20K
Nothing bad to say about this card, it is good built, and silent. I did not hear the card even on full load which is more than good enough for me (off course i did not keep the side panel open)
The only company that comes with Limited Lifetime Warranty on their cards so i would suggest this card to anyone who wants to by AMD/ATI Graphics Card.
The only game that i do play a lot is F1 2013 & with everything turned up to the MAX Settings I am getting an average of 110 FPS on 1080p display res.
Will be doing Crossfire with another XFX R9 280x soon once my credit card balance is up again
The cooler
I only went with the Kraken X60 because there was no H110i available, I do like NZXT Products but I will be avoiding them henceforth. The plastic parts of the Kraken X60 was very very cheaply made.. it did not have any decent finishing on it, and the back plate for the LGA 1150 took almost 30 minutes to fit & that too when the board was out on the bench. It would not just line up straight I had to bend the plastic to make it match up. I have never had this issue with any other black plate installs, the Metal back place of the Noctua NH-D14 was a breeze to install.
See how it fits...
Then there was issue with the screws, the screws are longer than they should be, if you tighten it to the point where NZXT wants you to tighten them, you will have almost 4 -5 mm of space between the Radiator & the fan meaning your fans will be lose on top of your rad. So I removed it & inserted the metal washers they give, used 2 on each side (one between the radiator & the bottom end of the fans & one on top) still there was issues and it would not just tighten, so went ahead and screwed them in so that they would & when i unscrewed it, I had already damaged the fins near the holes. fortunately after doing a 3 hours leak test there was no leaks.
Then the cooper base was dirty & had stains on it even some scratches, this on a factory sealed product is unacceptable. I had to remove the thermal compound that it comes with to clean the copper base with alcohol & apply my Arctic Silver thermal paste.
I did not expect this from NZXT, atleast give screws that will fit properly with your own fans.
The Drives
SSD: 2 x Kingston 120GB SV 300
There was no reason here to go for the Samsung 840 EVO, I already had the Kingston SV300 120GB because i was using it in the laptop & 440 MB/s was good enough speed for me. so just purchased another Kingston SV300 120GB & put them in RAID 0.
Result:
I am happy with that
The WD Red drives were for a RAID 10 Array, since there are only 4 Intel ports remaining after using the 2 for SSD I only purchased 4 for now, and will buy 4 more when the Drives prices decrease in the next few months & use Windows Storage Spaces to configure them in a separate RAID.
One of the Hard drives was DOA, so it will have to be resent to Service Center for replacement, I will write an angry letter to WD, don't except such things from them.
MEMORY
I wanted to opt for 1800 MHz & above RAM Kits but i had 1600 MHz Vengeance lying around from my i7 2600K so decided to use those only instead.
these are 4GB Sticks each in total 16GB RAM which is more than enough for me to run my system & some Virtual Machines along side.
PowerSupply
http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u69/corsair_rm1000.jpg
I am using the Corsair GS800 for the time being because the one i wanted was not available, PrimeABGB told me expected date was around 10th i.e. Tomorrow
I am opting for Corsair RM 1000, as I want to do CrossFire later & I think the 1000watts is enough for the system.
Overclock was a breeze thanks to the AI Suite III, I normally don't overclock but with the Kraken X60 i felt I had to
Without the bios update it was overclocked to 4.7 GHz but i got 3 - 4 times a Blue screen in Windows 8.1, so after updating the BIOS to the latest, I used the AI Suite III to overclock to 4.2 GHz only as a fail safe.
Like i said before On Idle my system is drawing 95 -98 Watts & on full load when i was benchmarking CPU, GPU & Memory It was using 355Watts. This wattage is mesured using the on screen LCD of my APC BackUPS Pro 1500
Mods down the line:
1. Clear Acrylic Side Panel
2. Bitfenix Alchemy White LED Stips
3. Bitfenix Alchemy White individually Sleeved Cables
4. Full Custom Liquid Cooling from EKWB
ps. any pointers where i can get the Bitfenix stuff?
Full Gallery:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/pfniaqj8cqboi5a/VBEwc4CrEO
Camera used for photos
OLYMPUS E-PL5
http://www.olympus.co.uk/site/rmt/m...42IIR_silver_silver__Product_010_TL__x290.png
@mods please move this to reviews & previews if its too much for Show-Off thread.
Thanks
Budget was not so much of a restriction this time around, but I did not want to empty my pockets either to get the "Extreme" ends of each of the product. So few of them was a necessity, some of them was purely because there was no other option.
I will give a brief review of each of them.
The Chassis
Cosmos II was my ultimate "to have" cabinet, I was worried that the mess of colored cable (seen in Unboxing videos) will ruin the cable management and make everything look bad, to my surprise cooler master had changed all cables to black ones and I was happy with that. Assembling the entire system was very easy, I had no issues what so ever with the case..
I will be modding it very soon, with a clear acrylic side panel that i am going to get it etched in the same way the current panel is so it looks as awesome as it does now & still look like it was factory made.
I hate the fact that its so heavy, I had to lift up that thing fully assembled over to a 3.5 ft table, now my hands & back are still paining
CoolerMaster is not kidding when they say on the box, Do Not lift alone, Require 2 person
Pros:
- Huge amount of Space for anything you want to put inside.
- Hot Swap drive cages, although i would have liked to see all the bays hot swapable. or alteast a aftermarket accessory for it.
- Tons of cable management room
- Modular Hard drive cages
Cons:
- Plastic accents feel cheap
- Hard drive Cage fans are not up to the finish, the blades have very sharp & unfinished ends.
- Can barely fit a Dual 140mm Radiators, top handle bar metal holder comes in very close contact with the radiator. Had to remove that metal plate install the radiator move it to the far right as I could & then reinstall the plate.
- No spacing for Push-Pull configuration
Honestly I could have gone for Asus z87- Deluxe, but to me this felt more appealing. It had the option of watercooling the mosfets which no other board has. And I did want to go full on liquid cooling with help of EKWB but that didn't go through. but i like this board over the gold accents of the Deluxe so i went with it.
I am a huge Asus fan always have been, I always use Asus products if there is an option to do so. Heck I even had the ASUS laptop
I don't except anything less than perfect from Asus, and this board delivers that & more. Its extremely well built each & every part. the backplate is full metal so its sturdy & also give passive cooling to the mosfets. It overclocks well (more on that later) has alot of software & hardware features. has the 10 sata 6 GB/s ports that i wanted. can do 3-way SLI / Crossfire i think not sure though.The only thing it lacks is in Onboard USB Headers, There are only 2 & I had 3 devices that connect to those headers
Asus lacks in the software department, they sometimes have issues with their software but the AI Suite III this time around was awesome, Just clicked on the 4-Way Optimization & it overclocked the system to 4.7 GHz.
I did get Bluescreen errors after overclock, so i Updated the BIOS and redid the overclock & it has been stable since.
The Proccessor
Haswell was the only way to go right now, I had the option of the 4930K but with X89 chipset & socket coming within 6 - 8 months it was not worth the investment. No other thing to say here except that this chip uses very low power & still overclocks like anything.
On idle my system is drawing 98Watts from the wall which is damn amazing whereas my i7 2600K was using 130Watts at idle with 5 2TB green drives
The Graphics Card
I wanted to opt for the ASUS R9 280x but it was not available yet & this was ordered by PrimeABGB on request. To be honest this is my only high end graphics card purchase, I never tend to spend money on graphics cards because I don't play that many games a lot, and for a while now, I just prefer to watch the game play / walkthroughs on YouTube instead of playing them. I always have bought 2 - 3 Generation old cards usually less than 10K ranges & this is my very first purchase of graphics card above 20K
Nothing bad to say about this card, it is good built, and silent. I did not hear the card even on full load which is more than good enough for me (off course i did not keep the side panel open)
The only company that comes with Limited Lifetime Warranty on their cards so i would suggest this card to anyone who wants to by AMD/ATI Graphics Card.
The only game that i do play a lot is F1 2013 & with everything turned up to the MAX Settings I am getting an average of 110 FPS on 1080p display res.
Will be doing Crossfire with another XFX R9 280x soon once my credit card balance is up again
The cooler
I only went with the Kraken X60 because there was no H110i available, I do like NZXT Products but I will be avoiding them henceforth. The plastic parts of the Kraken X60 was very very cheaply made.. it did not have any decent finishing on it, and the back plate for the LGA 1150 took almost 30 minutes to fit & that too when the board was out on the bench. It would not just line up straight I had to bend the plastic to make it match up. I have never had this issue with any other black plate installs, the Metal back place of the Noctua NH-D14 was a breeze to install.
See how it fits...
Then there was issue with the screws, the screws are longer than they should be, if you tighten it to the point where NZXT wants you to tighten them, you will have almost 4 -5 mm of space between the Radiator & the fan meaning your fans will be lose on top of your rad. So I removed it & inserted the metal washers they give, used 2 on each side (one between the radiator & the bottom end of the fans & one on top) still there was issues and it would not just tighten, so went ahead and screwed them in so that they would & when i unscrewed it, I had already damaged the fins near the holes. fortunately after doing a 3 hours leak test there was no leaks.
Then the cooper base was dirty & had stains on it even some scratches, this on a factory sealed product is unacceptable. I had to remove the thermal compound that it comes with to clean the copper base with alcohol & apply my Arctic Silver thermal paste.
I did not expect this from NZXT, atleast give screws that will fit properly with your own fans.
The Drives
SSD: 2 x Kingston 120GB SV 300
There was no reason here to go for the Samsung 840 EVO, I already had the Kingston SV300 120GB because i was using it in the laptop & 440 MB/s was good enough speed for me. so just purchased another Kingston SV300 120GB & put them in RAID 0.
Result:
I am happy with that
The WD Red drives were for a RAID 10 Array, since there are only 4 Intel ports remaining after using the 2 for SSD I only purchased 4 for now, and will buy 4 more when the Drives prices decrease in the next few months & use Windows Storage Spaces to configure them in a separate RAID.
One of the Hard drives was DOA, so it will have to be resent to Service Center for replacement, I will write an angry letter to WD, don't except such things from them.
MEMORY
I wanted to opt for 1800 MHz & above RAM Kits but i had 1600 MHz Vengeance lying around from my i7 2600K so decided to use those only instead.
these are 4GB Sticks each in total 16GB RAM which is more than enough for me to run my system & some Virtual Machines along side.
PowerSupply
http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u69/corsair_rm1000.jpg
I am using the Corsair GS800 for the time being because the one i wanted was not available, PrimeABGB told me expected date was around 10th i.e. Tomorrow
I am opting for Corsair RM 1000, as I want to do CrossFire later & I think the 1000watts is enough for the system.
Overclock was a breeze thanks to the AI Suite III, I normally don't overclock but with the Kraken X60 i felt I had to
Without the bios update it was overclocked to 4.7 GHz but i got 3 - 4 times a Blue screen in Windows 8.1, so after updating the BIOS to the latest, I used the AI Suite III to overclock to 4.2 GHz only as a fail safe.
Like i said before On Idle my system is drawing 95 -98 Watts & on full load when i was benchmarking CPU, GPU & Memory It was using 355Watts. This wattage is mesured using the on screen LCD of my APC BackUPS Pro 1500
Mods down the line:
1. Clear Acrylic Side Panel
2. Bitfenix Alchemy White LED Stips
3. Bitfenix Alchemy White individually Sleeved Cables
4. Full Custom Liquid Cooling from EKWB
ps. any pointers where i can get the Bitfenix stuff?
Full Gallery:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/pfniaqj8cqboi5a/VBEwc4CrEO
Camera used for photos
OLYMPUS E-PL5
http://www.olympus.co.uk/site/rmt/m...42IIR_silver_silver__Product_010_TL__x290.png
@mods please move this to reviews & previews if its too much for Show-Off thread.
Thanks
Last edited:
