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"I Need a New PC!" 2014 Part 1. 1080p and 60FPS is so last-gen and your 2500K is fine

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T

TC McQueen

Member
RadarScope1 said:
Anybody ever have trouble with New Egg checkout? I've been caught in an endless loop there for like 20 minutes. I even tried paying with PayPal and it keeps taking right back to the CC info screen. I'm almost wondering if I've been hacked or something… Either that or New Egg is too good for my money.
Click to expand...
If you're running NoScript, you might be blocking something vital to their order process because the default settings block everything until you tell it to enable it. Just give everything temporary permission, then block everything that shows up on other websites.
 
F

FrenchMovieTheme

Member
NoRéN;105538100 said:
not unless you hate fast boot times, programs launching faster than you can imagine, and the lack of noise from having a non-mechanical drive. :)
Click to expand...

lol point taken!

a couple more questions for anyone:

1. is it worth it to go with the 3gb vid card over the 2gb? i'm also comparing the GTX 770 vs. GTX 760.... the 770 is close to $100 more. is that justified? i'm mainly looking to get stuff working @ 60 fps in 1080p. maybe someday i'll move the resolution goal up but 1080 looks fine to me right now

2. i wanted to get a pc that i could hook up to my TV via HDMI if needed.... what should i be looking for in order to accomplish this?
 
R

RadarScope1

Member
TC McQueen said:
If you're running NoScript, you might be blocking something vital to their order process because the default settings block everything until you tell it to enable it. Just give everything temporary permission, then block everything that shows up on other websites.
Click to expand...
Thanks. Looks like that's a Firefox extension? I'm using Safari - no pop-ups blocked and Java enabled. Maybe I'm just too dense to use their site.

Either way, just went to Amazon and got it done in two minutes. Cost me a bit more but at least my order actually went through.
 
S

scogoth

Member
OldAsUrSock said:
Is there a technical reason to why we need GPUs with the same VRAM to be used in Crossfire or SLi and not just the same GPU?
Click to expand...

Both cards work on the same workload at the same time so they must have access to the same resources in order to perform their calculations. This means that both GPUs need to have the same VRAM capacity so they can store mirrored data. Once the calculations are done the results are sent the master GPU which combines it with its own calculations and outputs it to the frame buffer.
 
M

mkenyon

Banned
Serandur said:
Sorry it took such a while for me to respond mkenyon, I wasn't sure I would have the money I needed at the time, but now I certainly do and then some. I am definitely going Ivy Bridge and my budget has an upper limit of $1600 (but I need to buy everything except the case, a gunmetal phantom 410 I already ordered; older parts are either useless/worthless or donated to friends/family at this point), so the build's upper limit budget in total would have been ~$1700, give or take. I had a build planned out for a lower pricepoint, but I've got some extra headroom to play with now if I so choose (might not have to cheap out quite as much on the mouse/keyboard, might be able to squeeze a nicer monitor in too, better cooler, maybe a bigger SSD <shrug>). I'm generally pretty good at deciding what I want myself, but I'll post it anyway and get some opinions. However, before that, I was wondering if you might still be selling that motherboard? It is wickedly nice, just didn't think I could afford it before. I am interested, though I haven't decided yet (but not a big deal if you sold it off, I'm happy with the UD3H). Anyway, the build I was planning (for gaming, media, video editing, benchmarking, etc.) was:

CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($324.98 @ Best Buy)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($29.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($139.99 @ NCIX US)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($80.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($84.81 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X 3GB Video Card ($339.99 @ Newegg)
Case: NZXT Phantom 410 (Gunmetal/Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (Already Purchased)
Power Supply: XFX 750W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($90.24 @ Amazon)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer ($15.98 @ OutletPC)
Monitor: Asus VX229H 60Hz 21.5" Monitor ($149.99 @ Amazon)
Keyboard: Cooler Master CM Storm Devastator Gaming Bundle Wired Gaming Keyboard w/Optical Mouse ($36.98 @ SuperBiiz) - Kinda crappy, I know, but care more about the PC's internals for now
Speakers: Cyber Acoustics CA-3602 30W 2.1ch Speakers ($41.97 @ Amazon)
Other: Logitech UE 6000 Headphones ($90.00) - These are not necessary, I have a decent, though not so great pair of old Sennheiser's which I'd prefer to replace, but don't need to.
Total: $1505.90



I haven't had much time to decide how to fine tune the build and adjust it based on my new upper limit (of about $100 more) and I do have one glaring issue I'm not happy with. I've been waiting to build for quite a while now and so I had my eye on the 290s and 280Xs back when they released. Of course, me being in the U.S., I'm facing a bit of an issue with 280X and 290 pricing (and I realize I'm only driving a single 1920x1080 monitor to begin with, so I was just entertaining the 290 at the brilliant price point it was supposed to sell at because why not). I have no issue with Nvidia cards, however I'm not comfortable with the 2 GB 770 and the 4 GB version is also quite expensive for the same performance that should have been available at ~$300 with the 280Xs. I'm not sure what to do, as I'm quite unhappy with the current GPU market, but at the same time I cannot afford waiting any longer (as I am without a desktop at the moment at all).

I was considering simply sticking with a cheaper mid-range card (like the R7 265 or GTX 660) until prices dropped back down to normal or, rather, Maxwell or Pirate Islands were around, but that defeats the whole exciting impact of a new high-end machine, in my opinion and costs more money as well. Does anyone have any advice on that front? I'd rather not wait more than two weeks to actually build this if it can be avoided, I'm not sure how likely it would be to come across a random hot deal on a Gigabyte or Asus (my preferred AIBs) 280X in the near future from somewhere, and I'm stuck in a bit of a tight situation then otherwise.

Maybe I should just swallow the losses (and get the 280X if it comes in stock on Newegg for $340 or on the deal NCIX are having for the next 3.5 hours at $350), maybe wait a bit on individual parts for sales, and simply upgrade the cooler and the mouse/keyboard? Thanks to anyone in advance for their input.
Click to expand...
Yep, still for sale. I think I generally don't repost it because of the sentimental attachment. I know deep down inside it'd just be sitting around though, and that's no good.

I feel you on the 280x/290 front. It seems like the 290x prices are coming back down to reality, but the 290 still seems quite pricey. Sk3tch is selling some for $475 a piece though, as well as some MSI 770 4GB cards. Might consider PM'ing him.
 
N

NoRéN

Member
RadarScope1 said:
Thanks. Looks like that's a Firefox extension? I'm using Safari - no pop-ups blocked and Java enabled. Maybe I'm just too dense to use their site.

Either way, just went to Amazon and got it done in two minutes. Cost me a bit more but at least my order actually went through.
Click to expand...
You sure you didn't just miss checking the box at the bottom of the newegg checkout page?
 
S

SteveWinwood

Member
So it's been way too long but I'm finally going to upgrade this dumb old pc.

So here's some stuff.

Your Current Specs: I'm starting fresh
Budget: <$1000 The United States of America
Main Use: Mostly gaming, probably streaming, messing around with VMs and linux, probably emulation
Monitor Resolution: New monitor, look below
List SPECIFIC games or applications that you MUST be able to run well: Dota? Just general hawt new pc releases.
Looking to reuse any parts?: Nah
When will you build?: Like in a month?
Will you be overclocking?: Sure why not.

So I know the general in and outs of this crap, but the specific parts and whatnot I haven't kept up with. So I'm gonna need some help there. I'll be doing tons more research as I wait for my pc fund to show up (tax return) so this could (will) all change.

I just wanted some quick pointers as I know I went mad overboard for my needs on some of this crap.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($229.99 @ NCIX US)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 65.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($71.99 @ Mwave)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD4H ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($159.99 @ Micro Center)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($141.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($84.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 760 2GB Video Card ($239.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design Define R4 w/Window (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower Case ($99.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($79.99 @ Micro Center)
Monitor: Asus VG248QE 144Hz 24.0" Monitor ($264.99 @ B&H)
Total: $1373.91
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-03-24 00:35 EDT-0400)

First off, more than I wanted to spend. Need to slim down by a decent amount. I know some of that is mad overkill, so where should I start cutting? Alternatives?

The 16gbs of ram is probably too much, but I really wanna do some vm stuff and maybe end up doing some video editing, so what I'll probably do is get 2 sticks of 4, then if I want some more later buy another 2 sticks to get me to 16 (Just have to keep that in mind when remembering about mobos).

The case I don't care about right now. Really, it could be a cardboard box.

I need a monitor. The cpu and the gpu is where I think there could be some massive changes.

I don't need any sort of physical media. Just a few usb holes.

The ssd will last me a bit until I feel the need to throw a big hdd in their on the cheap so I'll worry about that later. Also worrying about the OS later. Also worrying about keyboards later.

Any input would be appreciated!
 
C

Chris R

Member
SteveWinwood said:
First off, more than I wanted to spend. Need to slim down by a decent amount. I know some of that is mad overkill, so where should I start cutting? Alternatives?
Click to expand...

I'd get a "cheaper" CPU cooler unless you are dead set on that one for some reason. A 212 will run you $30 instead of $70.

Also, are you sure you need a full ATX board and case? I'd consider a mATX solution. Beyond that I'll defer to other posters, the specs you posted would totally play Dota2 at max settings though.
 
S

SteveWinwood

Member
rhfb said:
I'd get a "cheaper" CPU cooler unless you are dead set on that one for some reason. A 212 will run you $30 instead of $70.

Also, are you sure you need a full ATX board and case? I'd consider a mATX solution. Beyond that I'll defer to other posters, the specs you posted would totally play Dota2 at max settings though.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I don't know how hot these things run anymore.

And I'm always worried about compatibility with mobos, so if I can get a "cheap" one that I'm sure will work I'll be happy, but for this I just shot high. Honestly same for the case. I'm just worried about size there. Maybe I should go as bottom as possible and work up to ensure compatibility.

I might start to just swap stuff right out of the "Excellent" build in the op and see where that takes me.
 
S

sgjackson

Member
SteveWinwood said:
So here's some stuff.
Click to expand...

If you need to slash money definitely start with dropping to 8GB of RAM and a cheaper CPU cooler (will save around 100 bucks or so), and maybe go with a non-K model i5 and a cheaper B85 mobo if you're on a really strict budget (note that this won't be able to OC). You could also go with a cheaper monitor. If all you're playing is Dota you can move down with the graphics card pretty easily as it isn't particularly demanding. If you plan on playing games more demanding than Dota, though, you're kind of in a weird spot, as what you picked is largely where you want to be with regards to price/performance at 1080p and downgrading would lead to compromises you may or may not be OK with.
 
S

SteveWinwood

Member
sgjackson said:
If you need to slash money definitely start with dropping to 8GB of RAM and a cheaper CPU cooler (will save around 100 bucks or so), and maybe go with a non-K model i5 and a cheaper B85 mobo if you're on a really strict budget (note that this won't be able to OC). You could also go with a cheaper monitor. If all you're playing is Dota you can move down with the graphics card pretty easily as it isn't particularly demanding. If you plan on playing games more demanding than Dota, though, you're kind of in a weird spot, as what you picked is largely where you want to be with regards to price/performance at 1080p and downgrading would lead to compromises you may or may not be OK with.
Click to expand...

Awesome, this is the sort of stuff I was looking for. I wasn't sure if I was really over doing it or not.

The budget isn't incredibly tight, but I don't want to needlessly splurge and be wasteful stupidly.

What I know is going to happen though is I'm going to talk this over with friends and they're going to ask me "Are you really going to stream that much? Are you really going to do that much emulation and VM stuff?" and I'll say "Well...." and then cut back some.

I guess when I estimated a lot of this I didn't really take into account the monitor, which is what is probably what's throwing me over that 1k mark.
 
Cuban Legend

Cuban Legend

Member
Guess Who said:
How much of an upgrade would it be to go from a GTX 560 Ti to a 760? Worth the $250?
Click to expand...

Ive had my 560 for 2 years now, I ordered a 770 (used/$300) last night, I'll let you know how it goes.

From what I've seen though I'm hearing it should literally double my framerates at anything 1080p or below, that to me is mind-boggling.
 
L

LordAlu

Member
EmptySpace said:
thanks for this. question, why does it have to have 2 hdds? i am actually okay with only one, and i often delete stuff anyways.

i don't want to overclock. doesn't that actually shorten the lifespan of the cpu? i would probably want to spend more on a gpu, but then again that's probably overkill given i don't plan to do multiple monitors or even 1440p gaming. not to bring up ps4, but that uses 5gb of gddr5 on games. it would be naive to think the standard of games/graphics won't go up because of that. right now, 4gb looks to be overkill given that there's still that 8gb of sysram. or should i just wait for the gtx 800 series? i hate how the best gpus practically cost the same as decent laptops. again, it's not like i have zero idea about building a pc. i take apart my older laptops to take out the hdd and the ram. it'll probably be easy. :)
Click to expand...
There's two hard drives in there for a good reason. The first one (Crucial M500 120GB) is an SSD upon which you'd keep your OS, programs and most played games. The SSD is blazingly fast and on any buld over $600-$800 is pretty much essential - it's the biggest thing you can do to increase the general speed of your system. The 1TB hard drive is there for storage space (as obviously 120GB isn't that much).

Overclocking may shorten the lifespan of the CPU from 20 years to 16 or 17 - which makes no difference as it will be replaced long before then. The benefits far outweigh this as it gives you a real performance increase. Regarding GPUs, Scogoth explains it better than I do:

scogoth said:
VRAM depends on a lot of factors and games today that CAN use +3Gb don't HAVE to use +3Gb. Resolution and AA are the two easiest factors for Vram, for example at 1080p Assetto Corsa uses about 1.3GB of VRAM for me. At three screens (and it has proper three in-game camera support for triple screens) it bumps up to a tad over 3GB. BF4 will also use over 3GB if you pump up the eye candy to 11 but if you don't have it it doesn't use it and automagically does some nifty game engine stuff with textures to not slow down performance (at least from a VRAM point of view).

Another factor is high res textures and as far as I know Skyrim high res textures modes are one of the few notable examples of high VRAM usage. If developers start releasing high res textures then more VRAM might be useful but that has yet to be seen.

So if you are three screen gaming, 4K gaming, 3D gaming, high res texture modes or want to crank the AA (real AA not post AA) to 32x then there is a case for 3GB. As for the future my personal opinion is we will see games bumping up against that 3GB limit but no more. The PS4 has 8GB, 2GB for system, probably 3+3 split for video usage and CPU usage so I don't suspect textures to balloon out of control.
Click to expand...
For 1080p gaming, the 760 2GB is perfectly fine and is the best value-for-money card out there right now. The 770 is quite a bit more yet only provides a 10-15% performance improvement, which isn't worth the money really.
 
T

ThoseDeafMutes

Member
retard said:
Nvidia cards get a boost on the order of 30% to their bottom line in BF4 just from upgrading to 8.1

Don't know if it applies to other games, but I wouldn't be gaming on 7 at this point.
Click to expand...

I'd like to see the receipts on this one please. Performance increase is more like 4-6% on Win8 versus 7 for BF4 with high end vid cards. Maybe it's higher than that with low range stuff, I don't know. But on average, while 8/8.1 do have an advantage it is quite small.
 
O

Objectively Bad Opinion

Member
ThoseDeafMutes said:
I'd like to see the receipts on this one please. Performance increase is more like 4-6% on Win8 versus 7 for BF4 with high end vid cards. Maybe it's higher than that with low range stuff, I don't know. But on average, while 8/8.1 do have an advantage it is quite small.
Click to expand...

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2367180

It's not small at all in my experience. It's no Mantle killer either though.

I don't know of any sites that have tested this change, sorry. If you want something other than Anandtech's favorite Nvidia troll as proof I'd have to do some digging-- there's probably a bunch of posts noting this change in Battlelog.
 
R

riflen

Member
retard said:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2367180

It's not small at all in my experience. It's no Mantle killer either though.

I don't know of any sites that have tested this change, sorry. If you want something other than Anandtech's favorite Nvidia troll as proof I'd have to do some digging-- there's probably a bunch of posts noting this change in Battlelog.
Click to expand...

Frankly that post on Anandtech should be ignored as it's just a screenshot showing an FPS counter. I don't think the poster could have done less work tbh. He doesn't even turn on the performance graph built in to BF4 for the screenshot.

Having said this, performance is definitely much improved in 8/8.1 over 7. I would say though, that the improvement large comes in the form of improved frame times and not average frames-per-second.

You would need frame-time captured over a period of several minutes during multiplayer to see the real benefit of DICE's DirectX 11.1 path.

I know that DICE also recently patched in tile-based compute shader lighting optimization for nVidia GPUs. A feature that was already enabled for AMD GPUs.
 
O

Objectively Bad Opinion

Member
riflen said:
Frankly that post on Anandtech should be ignored as it's just a screenshot showing an FPS counter. I don't think the poster could have done less work tbh. He doesn't even turn on the performance graph built in to BF4 for the screenshot.

Having said this, performance is definitely much improved in 8/8.1 over 7. I would say though, that the improvement large comes in the form of improved frame times and not average frames-per-second.

You would need frame-time captured over a period of several minutes during multiplayer to see the real benefit of DICE's DirectX 11.1 path.

I know that DICE also recently patched in tile-based compute shader lighting optimization for nVidia GPUs. A feature that was already enabled for AMD GPUs.
Click to expand...

Yes, I'm aware-- the frame counter in BF4 is an average of the last half-second I believe, which will conceal a lot of bad behavior like any average will. Even so, I think it's pretty clear there are some gains to be had that are substantial + noticeable which was my original point. Certainly not 6%.

BF4 MP is difficult to benchmark on a good day, and it's even more difficult to get an accurate overview of performance in all situations. I understand that. However, the performance hit when just standing in a certain area and looking down the map is pretty reliably reproduced and impacts gameplay any time you are in that area of the map. Even if an upgrade of the OS only affects these pathological problem spots (which is unlikely, and my subjective observation is otherwise) then it is an upgrade well worth undertaking.
 
L

Linkup

Member
My goodness nobody told me SSDs have to be setup up in Disk Manager before use...I was considering returning the drive. Glad I jumped in when the M500 was $110!
 
C

CyanideFuse

Member
Linkup said:
I'm an old timer lol
Click to expand...

I had the same problem last week when I plugged my new HDD into the computer to copy some games over to it. It took a few minutes to dawn on me that I needed to do this.

On another note: how good is the AMD Catalyst software for overclocking?

I have set the clock and memory speed to the highest it will let me for my R7 265 dual-x and it all works fine without any crashes both in Unigine Heaven and in games. I was just wondering, really.
 
O

Objectively Bad Opinion

Member
CyanideFuse said:
On another note: how good is the AMD Catalyst software for overclocking?

I have set the clock and memory speed to the highest it will let me for my R7 265 dual-x and it all works fine without any crashes both in Unigine Heaven and in games. I was just wondering, really.
Click to expand...

Bad. It automatically sets overclocks at boot which will cause problems if your overclocks are unstable, particularly if they're catastrophically unstable or become so. You'll never see your desktop again as you can get stuck in a crash loop.

There's also no overvolting in there.
 
S

scogoth

Member
retard said:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2367180

It's not small at all in my experience. It's no Mantle killer either though.

I don't know of any sites that have tested this change, sorry. If you want something other than Anandtech's favorite Nvidia troll as proof I'd have to do some digging-- there's probably a bunch of posts noting this change in Battlelog.
Click to expand...

I'm not saying that 8.1 isn't an improvement but I can prove that XP gives me a 200% fps boost over 8.1 with two screenshots. That post proves absolutely nothing.
 
I

InsertCredit

Member
Alright guys, I was holding out for the Haswell-E's but two weeks ago I caved and ordered a little mITX box. Of course, a few days later Intel announces the updated haswell's are releasing earlier... but hey, that's life ;)

Anyways, I had some time over this weekend to put things together and take pics. The goal was to have a small, relatively quiet, dual-os box (OSX / Win7). Mostly used for web / app development and some semi-serious gaming.

Specs!

case: InWin 901 Mini-ITX Tower
mb: Gigabyte GA-Z87N-WIFI (hackintosh friendly)
cpu: Intel Core i7-4770K
gpu: MSI GeForce GTX 780Ti (3GB)
ram: 16GB Corsair Vengeance Pro DDR3 (1866MHz)
psu: XFX ProSeries XXX Edition (650W)
ssd: Samsung SSD 840 EVO (250GB)

stuff already owned:
displays: 2x Dell 2407WFP (24")
speakers: bowers & wilkins 683
tv: panasonic TC-P50ST60

The most eccentric part is InWin's 901 case, picked mostly because of looks. Here's a nice review. Putting things together was fairly straightforward but it isn't super friendly if you're new to building pc's. Some awkward cable management was required to make everything fit.

In case anyone's interested, OSX runs terrific. All hardware is supported (even the 780ti, using nvidia's official drivers). Mostly thanks to tonymacx86's super helpful tools and guides. Here's a shot of OSX's 'about this mac' ;)

2PGoazW.png
Click to expand...

Pics!

yuKBy1D.jpg

0n2yMPq.jpg

s9dLb4q.jpg

U3IhE5U.jpg

5wvdTnq.jpg
Click to expand...

So far I'm really happy with the looks and performance! And not too shaken by the Haswell-E dates ;)
Next up is installing a proper H60i cooler plus some decent fans to see if this little bad boy can be overclocked a bit.
 
P

Prophet Steve

Member
BIGWORM said:
Seems like that Samsung EVO 840 250GB is at a good price point.
Click to expand...

Yes, there even was a thread about SSDs getting cheaper. The M500 is also a great price now. I am still waiting to see whether the upcoming SSDs will bring a lot of benefits and how much their price will be different, but I'll probably pick up a new SSD soon.
 
W

W Hudson

Member
Just built my first gaming PC last month (4670K overclocked to 4.5 GHz and GTX 780), and so far its been running great. There have been a couple expected hiccups early but I got everything sorted out it seems. I decided to download OCCT and stress test the system. After a few seconds the program starts making a quacking noise and tells me that there was an error in core 1, or something to that effect. It stopped the test and I haven't run it again but everything is running great still and I don't have a problem with any game at present. Should I worry about this or should I just ignore it since my PC runs smoothly. Opinions on OCCT seem to be all over the place so I don't know what to think right now.
 
S

scogoth

Member
InsertCredit said:
Alright guys, I was holding out for the Haswell-E's but two weeks ago I caved and ordered a little mITX box. Of course, a few days later Intel announces the updated haswell's are releasing earlier... but hey, that's life ;)

Anyways, I had some time over this weekend to put things together and take pics. The goal was to have a small, relatively quiet, dual-os box (OSX / Win7). Mostly used for web / app development and some semi-serious gaming.

Specs!

case: InWin 901 Mini-ITX Tower
mb: Gigabyte GA-Z87N-WIFI (hackintosh friendly)
cpu: Intel Core i7-4770K
gpu: MSI GeForce GTX 780Ti (3GB)
ram: 16GB Corsair Vengeance Pro DDR3 (1866MHz)
psu: XFX ProSeries XXX Edition (650W)
ssd: Samsung SSD 840 EVO (250GB)

stuff already owned:
displays: 2x Dell 2407WFP (24")
speakers: bowers & wilkins 683
tv: panasonic TC-P50ST60

The most eccentric part is InWin's 901 case, picked mostly because of looks. Here's a nice review. Putting things together was fairly straightforward but it isn't super friendly if you're new to building pc's. Some awkward cable management was required to make everything fit.

In case anyone's interested, OSX runs terrific. All hardware is supported (even the 780ti, using nvidia's official drivers). Mostly thanks to tonymacx86's super helpful tools and guides. Here's a shot of OSX's 'about this mac' ;)



Pics!



So far I'm really happy with the looks and performance! And not too shaken by the Haswell-E dates ;)
Next up is installing a proper H60i cooler plus some decent fans to see if this little bad boy can be overclocked a bit.
Click to expand...

I never like InWin cases in the past but god damn thats a nice looking case.
 
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