Impatience and feedback on GK104

So yesterday I got sick of waiting for the inevitable upgrade of my motherboard and CPU and decided I would just "port" my old computer Vesy into her new body retaining what I could and beefing it up with the new parts.  I started working on it at about 11am and finished completely at about 11pm.  Here are some pics of the process:

 First tower I ever built in.  Won't make the mistake of buying just coz its the only one accessible.

The internals.  What a mess....

 Here's my old Asus P6T Deluxe v2.  Not a bad board.  It's missing SATA III and USB 3.0 which are about the only things that are worth upgrading for.

 Vesy, meet your new body!

 Set up the motherboard and seated the GPUs.  Made an absolute NOOB mistake of not putting in the raising screws onto the chassis before I seated it.  Had to redo that.  As you can see there's still some daylight at this point.

 Here we have it set up cables and all.  Sun is now gone, hence flash.  So neat, so clean.  Don't mind the lone HDD.  That's gonna be gone the moment I get an SSD.

 Door closed and all assembled.

 Vesy lives!!!  The UV light was probably a bit much.  The idea was to light up the white parts of the internals.  Unfortunately there isnt much white yet.  Not until the upgrade anyway.  Also seems that not everything white will light up.  Need to figure out lighting at a later point.

At this point, the computer started but there was no monitor signal.  This was about 9pm.  After another couple hours of trouble shooting, it ended up being as simple as removing the motherboard battery for a few seconds.











So my GPU performance is now enormous.  SLI was a little tricky to get my head around but its all good now.  The GTX670 is amazing.  It has HD Audio bitstreaming as well as not having the silent stream issue that previous nvidia cards suffered from.  Some games still see some slowdown but I suspect the SLI profile isn't kicking in.  BF3 singleplayer is a constant 59fps though which is perfect.

New PC build.

Currently contemplating my first full overhaul of my old power hungry cow of a computer whom I've aptly named Vesy.

I've been thinking plenty about it for the last few months but I'm still waiting for the perfect components for my needs.  Being as anal as I am about how things should work, those parts will likely never be available in my lifetime.  But here's what I'm settling on so far:

CHASSIS

CM 690 II Advanced Black and White Windowed

Figured it'd be nice to get away from the drab of an all black case whilst still being able to use a black drive without it looking out of place.  Also that vertical PCI expansion slot gives some ideas about PCIe risers and taking advantage of a blocked PCIe 1x slot under a GPU. 

MAINBOARD

GIGABYTE GA-X79-UD3

Black design with grey accents will keep to my colour scheme.  No nonsense extras mean the price stays down.  Only thing I'd crave are an extra 4 DIMM slots but then again, half the slots usually means being able to fiddle further with RAM timings and clock speeds.  Also 4 way SLI compatible if that route ever becomes worthwhile.

PSU

Cooler Master Silent Pro Hybrid 1300W

Fully modular, nice exterior texture, fan controller included, and a colour scheme that matches my chassis selection.  Also cheaper than a lot of 1000W units.  Only gripe is that ugly 24-pin connector.  Custom single sleeved alternative must be looked into.

GPU

Current options: GTX690 or GK110

Currently all GTX690s look the same regardless of the manufacturer.  They look mighty fine so that's no problem.  Here's hoping nVidia keeps it up with the GK110 if it ever gets a consumer release.

CPU

Intel Core i7 3930K

6 cores and unlocked multiplier.  Not game enough to go with the 3960X since I'm not watercooling.

COOLER

NZXT HAVIK 140

Silent operation and close to AIO water cooled temps.  Black and white fans are an awesome touch!

Currently trying to find out what's needed to get it compatible with an LGA2011 socket.  If it won't work then Noctua's NH-D14 is the next contender without sacrificing any performance at all.

RAM

Corsair Vengeance Low Profile

The only white heatspreaders around these days. Depending on how expensive a kit will be in comparison to the non limited black version I may go with that although voltage drops in efficiency to 1.5v.

SSD

SanDisk Extreme Solid State Drive 240GB
 
The fastest SF-2281 drive available and for just over $1 p/GB this is handsdown the best value to performance component in this system. 







Current total based on staticice Australia's cheapest prices:  $3,170 before shipping.