System Build 2013: Closed loop cooler, Haswell, and more

Keen-eyed viewers may have noticed that I gave away my choice of CPU cooler in the last post about my system build, as the box was sitting right next to the case in the last picture. I decided to go with a Corsair H110 based on the impressive performance numbers that more than a few independent tests showed it could put out. Of course, the price was much higher than an air cooler and though it definitely pushed my budget even thinner, I think that it was a worthy addition considering the fact that the most recent generations of Intel processors have always been a bit warm, especially when overclocking.

For the CPU, I bought a Haswell i5 4670K almost the first day it hit retail shelves. Considering the fact that my previous rig packed an i7 and that a good number of Haswell reviews were less than enthusiastic about its overclocking potential, my choice bears a bit of explanation. First off, I went with the i5 because in most (if not all) gaming benchmarks i5 versus i7 had a negligible effect- most of the graphics workload is dependent on the GPU and rarely does the CPU become a bottleneck. Saving $100 on a processor and spending $100 more on a GPU would have a vastly larger return in terms of gaming performance. Based on my usage, the i7's hyper threading just wasn't worth it this time around. In terms of why I chose Haswell over a previous gen i5, the simple fact that on the Asus Z87-A motherboard all of the internal SATA ports were 6 GB/S and supported RAID sealed the deal, as this feature is conspicuously absent from the previous generation. Micro Center was running an absurdly good bundle deal, and the whole endeavor only cost me $10 more than what I would have paid for a previous gen i5. That was a pretty airtight case for me.

Of course, to round it out there was still a lot of other choices to be made. I still needed a power supply, RAM, and a video card.

I chose a Seasonic 650W fully modular power supply- the wattage isn't enough to support a big SLI build, but I had decided to go for a big single card once again, because the power/noise/heat equation still greatly favors a high tier single card over two lesser cards in SLI. I wasn't about to skimp on the quality of the PSU, though, hence why I used a Seasonic that had been noted for its very solid, stable voltage regulation.

I chose DDR3 1600 RAM- although there is dispute as to whether or not DDR3 1600 or DDR3 1866 is the point past which diminishing returns kick in, 1600 is the highest speed actually supported on Z87 without an overclock. I found a good deal on 8GB of Crucial Ballistix Elite memory; despite the "overkill" sized heat sinks it was mercifully free of LEDs and bright colors that some RAM tends to come with, and the timings were excellent for the price. My previous system got along just fine with 6GB of memory, but when a kit of 2x4GB sticks comes along at such a good deal, upping the memory to 8GB didn't seem like too extreme of a jump.

The video card proved to be much more elusive than I had hoped. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 700 series has just hit the market, and a number of the models are a bit scarce. In the meantime though, I assembled what I had into the case:



More to come as I finish off this build!