These are the thoughts and recollections of a man on a journey to build himself a gaming PC. Now if that sounds a bit boring to you I suggest you navigate away from this site now, but if you’ve ever thought about putting together your very own rig then this article may convince you to do the sensible thing and get somebody else to build it for you, or it may even inspire you to build your own. Or if your MarkuzR, it may give you a stiffy….

Be warned: some of the details are likely to be sketchy; I wrote this article on the fly after various stages of the build. Additionally, any prices I quote for components  were correct at the time I bought them. I also won’t go into too much detail about what each individual component does, as I expect people reading this to have a basic understanding of a PC. Finally, if you decide to follow in my footsteps and build your own machine then you do so at your own risk! I suggest carrying out a fair bit of research before you commit yourself to buying anything, and if you’re buying parts online, please check out the credentials of your chosen website before banging in your card details. A quick Google search is usually enough. You have been warned!

Now that I’ve got the disclaimer business is out of the way I can begin. It all started during the 2010 Steam summer sale. I’m a big fan of Steam and I was looking forward to this sale for a while, especially as there were one or two games that I’d had my eye on in the hope that they’d be reduced by 80% or something stupid. One of those games was Crysis. I shouldn’t need to tell you what Crysis is; you’re reading a gaming site for Christ’s sake, but  for those of you that have been living under the proverbial gaming rock for the last couple of years, Crysis is the Big Daddy of high end PC gaming. Its bleeding edge graphics that, in my opinion have, not been matched yet since its release in late 2007.

When the game finally went on sale I snapped it up without hesitation and began the download. Once the game was installed I eagerly loaded it up. Upon getting to the title screen I’m greeted with a lock up.

Balls.

No worries; I’ll restart the machine and try again. This time it doesn’t lock up and I manage to get in to the video options screen where I start playing with the settings. Now, my current PC is no slouch; It was built in mid 2007 out of scraps from my brother’s old PC and a few components which were bought new at the time. The processor is a dual core 3.2Ghz AMD Athlon II, there is 4gb of DDR2 memory on board and to top it off a Geforce 9600GT is installed to take care of the graphics. I knew this rig couldn’t run Crysis at max settings, but surely the mid range settings would be fine right?

Obviously, due to the fact I’m writing this article, I was wrong; walking around the tropical island Crysis takes place was fine but whenever anything remotely interesting happened, the frame rate would drop and more often than not the game would lock up and I’d be forced to Ctrl-Alt-Del back into windows.

Double Balls.

I needed to play this game. I was originally just going to upgrade the odd component, perhaps a new graphics card and some more memory but, after much deliberation, I decided that a new system was in order. Of course I had the option to buy a readymade system; I could have gotten a similar spec machine from anywhere, but this wasn’t an option for me – building PCs is something I enjoy immensely. I’ve been doing it for years and I’ll be doing it for years to come, plus there’s nothing more satisfying than choosing a bunch of components and making it all come to life.

First things first, I needed to decide which processor to use. There was never a moment’s doubt in my mind that I would be buying an AMD processor; I’m sure there are many of you who dislike AMD (Ben), but you can’t argue with the fact that AMD provide a lot more bang for your buck. After poking around a few review sites and comparing prices for different processors, I finally went for the quad core Phenom II 965 Black Edition. The best price I could find at the time was £129.20 from AlliedsDirect.com I had never used this company before so I did a few checks, was satisfied with the results and put in the order. I was on my way.

Next thing to be bought was the motherboard. I don’t have much experience with motherboards; I usually just buy a cheap one that will work with my chosen processor. Not this time though, so I decided to ask for a bit of advice on our own GamingLives forums, and you can read the thread here. In the thread I generally ask for peoples advice on what I should buy.

MarkuzR  pipes up and suggests that I buy a new ASUS Crossfire IV. I seem to be all for the idea at first but get a bit stumped by its price so I ignore him! I did a bit of research and eventually settle on another ASUS card which more or less does exactly what the Crossfire does but for nearly half the cost. I put the order in but then get told the bloody thing is actually out of stock so I cancel the order and go back to the drawing board. I do finally manage to get a different ASUS board, the M4A87TD EVO 870, not as flashy as the Crossfire but like the one I cancelled it does the job. This I got for £73.60 from Ebuyer.com

I don’t want to bore you with an account of every single component so I’ll skip on a bit. Unfortunately I’m not super rich and I had to buy my components one at a time over a period of months. Time passes and after asking for people’s opinion, ignoring them and then doing my own thing anyway, I eventually amass the following to go with my processor and motherboard:

• Cool Master CM690 II Lite case, aka The Dominator – £58.99 from Overclockers.co.uk
• 3 x 2GB (6GB) OCZ Gold DDR3 2000Mhz memory – £110.63 from Overclockers.co.uk
• Western Digital 1TB SATA Hard Drive – £61.26 from Dabs.com
• Cool Master GX 750w power supply – £53.60 – Ebuyer.com
• LiteOn IHAS124-19 24x DVD±RW Re-Writer SATA £14.99 – Overclockers.co.uk
• Samsung SH-D163C/BEBE SATA 16x DVD-ROM – £10.99 – Overclockers.co.uk
• HIS ATI Radeon HD 6870 1024MB 199.98 – Overclockers.co.uk
• Corsair H70 CPU Water cooler – £78.40 – Ebuyer.com

The more PC savvy of you might notice that I’m missing a few things like a sound card etc, well I’m partially deaf and wear an aide in my left ear. I could sleep through the apocalypse if I was lying on top of my good ear and, as such, a decent sound card would just be a waste of money for me so the onboard sound will do me well enough.

I didn’t really have a game plan for which components I was going to buy. The water cooler, for example, was a spur of the moment impulse buy as I have never water-cooled a system before and, to be honest, I’m shitting myself in case I bugger it up. I also think I cocked up a bit with the memory. When it arrived it said on the back that it was optimised for use in an Intel system. I initially thought this was just a load of rubbish and just a marketing ploy between OCZ and Intel but after some more research OCZ supply AMD optimised memory too. Nevermind! You can’t win them all, so I’ll just see how I get on with it.

As a final note on buying components, if you’re going to do this yourself then I’d recommend buying the graphics card last as this will most likely be the most expensive and, dare I say, the most important component that you get for your build, plus it’s also the fastest changing market. When I began this build my graphics card hadn’t been released yet.

The Build…
The final components were finally delivered to my flat on Monday the 8th of November. Instead of jumping straight in I decided to start the build the next day after work. I didn’t want to rush it and make a hash of it so I planned to complete it over the course of two days. This way I could take my time and make sure it was done properly. This is, after all, going to be my rig for the next two or three years.

Before starting, however, there was one final thing that needed to be done; I needed a name for my little man project. Something that would represent strength and power, but at the same time it had to be subtle. I racked my brain for, oh, a good five minutes while names like “Death Smegger”, “Starscream” and “I Kill You N00B” flashed through my mind but, in the end, Alan was born.

I began with unpacking the case, along with the motherboard and the water cooler. Lining up the motherboard with the correct holes in the case was a breeze, as was inserting the retaining screws for the motherboard into the case. Before fixing the board into the case I decided to check out the mounting instructions for the CPU water cooler and, according to these instructions, I needed to attach the cooler’s bracket on to the back of the motherboard before fixing the motherboard itself into the case. Conflictingly, however, the instructions for the case said that I could fit cooling brackets whilst the motherboard was in situ as the case has a large hole on the motherboard mounting plate which gives access to the back of the motherboard.

So, motherboard goes in, power supply goes in but when I tried to attach the cooler’s bracket the bloody thing wouldn’t go on and it turns out that the access hole is ever so slightly out of line with where the screws need to be. Bastard. Everything needs to come back out.

I eventually got the bracket on to the motherboard and back into the case but it had been a rather fiddly affair especially as the bracket kind of got in the way of the case’s mounting plate.  It was at this point that I noticed that I hadn’t put on that little metal clip that surrounds the motherboards ports etc on the back of the case.

Alan, you bastard.

Everything had to come out again and, after installing the motherboard for the third time, I decided to call it a night and packed Alan away. Plus the girlfriend was about to arrive home and I had made a right mess, so it was best to quit while I was ahead!

The next day after work I began with my next task, which was to fit the massive radiator for the water cooler. Now I’m not exaggerating, I could probably have replaced the radiator in my car with this thing, it’s that big, and once I attached the two 120mm fans that came with it, the thing became enormous and I’m really not used to having a large piece of kit in my hands…. so I was a little worried at first but the radiator attached to the case effortlessly. With the radiator in, the next logical thing to do was insert the processor and connect it to the water cooler.

It was during this part of the build that I nearly smashed the thing to bits. The instructions for the H70 clearly state that the cold plate should be placed onto the processor and then with a twist to the right it should lock into place. Did it fuck. It took over an hour to get the cold plate secure. In the end I had to unfasten the top section of the bracket, slide the cold plate into place, put the bracket back on, line it up, and then screw it down. Easy installation my arse.

The rest of the build went swimmingly. Hard drive, graphics card and the DVD drives simply slotted into their respective areas with a satisfying click. Cool Master really have done a wonderful job with this case and I couldn’t recommend it more. Despite my initial cock ups, the tool-less design and excellent cable management holes made the whole job go a lot faster and it looks amazing. My only gripe with it was the little issue with the access hole to the back of the motherboard being in the slightly wrong place.

Testing…
For Alan’s operating system I decided to go with Windows 7 64bit. I had already purchased a code for my last machine but, as a cost saving exercise at the time, it was only the upgrade version. Because of this I had to install XP first then upgrade from that. Absolutely ridiculous solution but that rant is for another day. Naturally, I didn’t have a copy of XP to hand so I had to wait a few days before my Dad could send me his and in the meantime I installed my Windows 7 but opted not to enter a CD key which, as some of you may know, gives you 28 days to get one sorted. This of course meant I’d have to install Windows 7 twice but I thought stuff it, I NEED to play with my new toy!

First thing after the Windows install was the driver installations etc, then Steam and then the download for Crysis!

Five or six hours later, curse my shitty internet, and I’m finally ready to try this bad boy out in all its glory. Naturally the first thing I do is whack all the settings up to high and away I go. I was immediately blown away. Crysis really is a beautiful game (graphically,as the story is garbage!), so beautiful in fact that my tiny brain is struggling for words to describe it. Gone were the lock ups and the stuttering frame rate as Alan smashed through the rich visuals with ease. Even on the areas that ran well on the old machine I could see a massive difference;anti-aliasing is a work of the Gods.

Not content with being able to run Crysis as smoothly as a really smooth thing in a really smooth place, I wanted to test Alan further. It’s been a while since I last benchmarked anything but I remembered that 3DMark used to be pretty good so a quick Google search later and 3DMark06 was being downloaded on to Alan’s hard drive. After a number of graphical and CPU based stress tests, I clicked on the link to 3DMark’s website and was pleasantly surprised to see a score of 18,492 points.

I’ve got no idea what that score means but big numbers = good in my book. After a bit of digging around I found out that 18k is quite high, especially for a machine that hasn’t been overclocked yet. Speaking of overclocking, I will eventually overclock Alan and make improvements over the course of the next year or so but for now I really don’t see the need to mess about in the bios as the machine is powerful enough already.

So there you have it. The story of Alan; from sweet, sweet conception to problematic messy birth. Despite the few problems with the build I am incredibly impressed with the results. The case looks amazing and the performance makes me moist, but the thing I am most impressed with besides all that is the Corsair H70 water-cooler.

Out of interest I downloaded a CPU temperature logger to monitor its temperature (obviously) and I am very happy to report that even under load my CPU temperature didn’t go any higher than 35 degrees. I must stress that this was only after around 25 – 30 minutes of playing Crysis and I will have to experiment a little bit more. However, I think you’ll agree that 35 degrees is very impressive. My only small gripe with the cooler is that the fans it comes with are quite loud; even with the packaged restrictors installed you can hear the system quite clearly. To try and combat this I will replace the fans with some higher performance silent ones and, as usual, if anyone has any suggestions for which fans to use, please let me know on the forums as your advice is appreciated but will probably be ignored…

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