It’s been a long time since I’ve posted here, you know, with that pesky real life demanding most of my time and prohibiting me from posting on a more consistent basis. I am making a very strong effort to change that now, and I figured I would start with something unique that I haven’t done before.
This is a build log for my current desktop PC, the reason I chose to document this is because it is an absolute monster and by far the biggest, baddest computer system I’ve ever built, and I wanted to share the experience of what it was like. One thing I can say, it wasn’t easy, it went through a few iterations before completion, had a few issues afterwards, and got to where it is today. All of that information will be documented in a series of posts that will be put up over the next 1-2 weeks.
What’s up with the name?
Some people might look at the name for this build, Arcturus, and think what the hell is that? I actually got the name from Stargate Atlantis, since I’m such a huge Stargate fan. For the uninitiated, project Arcturus was an experiment performed by the ancients aiming to find a power source that would make ZPM’s (Zero Point Modules) look like Alkaline batteries in comparison. This PC makes the ones I’ve built before it look like little toys, so I thought the name was fitting.
OK, so what are the specs?
The specs are a bit complicated to say the least but I will do my best to list them here. It is divided into 2 sections, the guts, and the cooling system.
The Guts:
- Caselabs TH-10 Case Black
- ASUS Rampage IV Extreme Motherboard
- Intel Core I7 3930K CPU
- 32 GB GSkill Sniper 1866 RAM (9-10-9-28)
- 2 EVGA Geforce GTX 580 3072 MB SLI
- Corsair Force GT 180 GB SSD
- 4 Samsung Spinpoint F4’s 2 TB each
- Corsair AX1200 Power Supply
- MDPC cable sleeving red and black (all PSU cables and SATA cabled were sleeved)
- 2 BitFenix Alchemy red LED Strips 50cm each
- 3 4 pin molex to 8 3 pin fan power boards
The Cooling System:
- Danger Den Dreamflex Tubing UV Red
- 2 Swiftech MCP-655 Pumps
- EK Nickel Plated CPU, GPU, Motherboard Blocks (these were later changed but that will be covered in a future post)
- 2 XSPC RX480 Radiators
- 1 XSPC RX360 Radiator
- Danger Den Monsoon Reservoir (Later changed due to issues to be covered in future post)
- 16 Phobya G2 Red Waterproof Fans
- Wide assortment of Bitspower compression fittings
So without further ado, here are some pictures of the components that went into this build:
PSU And Cable Sleeving:
Caselabs TH-10 And Components:
That’s it for now! Look for the next post where I will be covering the bulk of the build and describing different things I had to do to build something of this magnitude.