A lot of things have changed since my last post… One big change is that I finally upgraded my computer. I have been using a Dell M1710 XPS laptop for over 5 years, has been great but lacks the credentials required for many modern games. Sporting a 512MB Nvidia Geforce Go 7950 GTX , it didn’t tick the box for DirectX 10, aka 8000 series or newer graphics cards. It could run crysis on low/medium settings at about 1280×800, still looked good, on a faster system it just looked even better!
Anyway, now I have plenty of juice 😎 earlier today I finished my first run through the new Deus Ex game, all graphics set to max and 1920×1200 resolution with faultless frame rates. I loved the first two Deus Ex games so seemed fitting to break the PC in with the latest one.
This was the first computer I have ever built from scratch and I’m very pleased with the result. I bought all the parts from Overclockers UK who provided helpful pre-purchase advice. Turned out within the first 48 hours, one of my RAM sticks was faulty. I was planning a long drive the next day so gave them a call and was able to take a detour via their shop and swap the RAM there and then. Absolutely perfect, no down time for my computer and the extra petrol cost less that the postage back.
Parts
| Intel Core i7 2600K & Asus P8Z68-V PRO Intel Z68 Mainboard |
| MSI GeForce GTX 570 OC Twin FrozR III Power Edition 1280MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card |
| Cooler Master CM-690 II Nvidia Edition Advanced Dominator Case |
| Antec TruePower New Modular 750W ’80 Plus Bronze’ Power Supply |
| OCZ Agility 3 60GB SATA-3 Solid State Hard Drive |
| LG BH10LS30 10x BluRay-RW / 16 x DVD-RW Drive |
| Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache |
| Kingston HyperX Genesis 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit |
| Akasa Venom CPU Cooler |
| TP-Link 300Mbps Wireless N PCI Adapter |
Modifications
Shows my Core i7 running at 4.4Ghz
Using ASUS TurboV EVO automatic overclocking my CPU now runs up to 4.4Ghz, up from 3.4Ghz! I have also added three 30cm green cold cathrode lights to the inside of my case. This was mainly because I thought my lovely green window looked dull under a desk… now it lights my feet up! Whoop!
Gallery
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