All right, finally that update I keep promising. First... I spent memorial day weekend building myself a workspace in the corner of my garage. Now I should have a much better workspace, as opposed to a couple of sad fold-up tables in the middle of my garage...   Next... All my hardware finally showed up! I spent a fair amount of time playing with my camera and lighting, just collecting shots of unboxings:  First items out of the box... my XSPC RX480's and some Swiftech MCP35x's:   The Radiators had a great finish on them... no dings or blemishes, and only very minor fin damage, almost negligible.  Next, The processor and ram:  This ram is supposedly a monster overclocker... can't wait to heat em up and see what they can do.   Now, the CPU and GPU water blocks... a Swiftech Apogee HD and a EK waterblock for the GTX680:  When I flipped the CPU block, I was horrified to find a QC sticker stuck to it... upon closer inspection, though, it was just stuck to a protective plastic sheet. :p    And now, the most expensive part of my build thus far:  It came with a bunch of stickers, a poster, and the usual manual junk:  It also came with a really nice looking metal/carbon fiber case badge. Shame it wont get used. :p  The packing is even fancy... specialized compartments for each item, and an EVGA logo carved into the main section:  The card is a monster:   I got the SC+ version, so mine came with a fancy backplate, too. Nice, considering my motherboard is inverted on this case, so this is the side everyone will be looking at, mostly:  And then, there's the Corsair AX850 PSU:  I got this one for half off, due to it being open box... heck of a deal if you ask me... but it looks like i'm paying for it:  Oh well, no matter. I was planning on painting it anyway. :p The sleeving and heatshrink is a nice thought, but it's kinda cheap... I'll be sleeving all of my case anyway, so I'll re-do these at the same time!  Finally, all the fittings and miscellaneous stuff... starting with some VERY good looking Monsoon fittings. I saw these in a few cases, and just had to get some to try em out:  I also got some Phobya Radgrills for the outside of my case... the finish is a bit ugly though, and the sticker/middle has to go... nothing a little dremeling won't fix.  And then there's the EK DDC-Dual Top, to gang my two pumps together:  It came with some hardware to mount it in a 5 1/4 bay, and some anti-vibration stuff. The machining on this piece is particularly high quality. Shame it's not visible.   What case build is complete without a massive pile of fans? Gentile Typhoon AP-15's in my case.  And last, but certainly not least in the extras category, the many many Bitspower fittings that will bring it all together. The quality is excellent... well worth then chunk of change I plunked down for all of it:  Finally, one of the best looking pieces of my pile of components... some sleeving and miscellaneous connectors/tools/fittings from MDPC! I cannot recommend Nils' sleeving enough. Just go buy some, and you'll understand.   I bought basically one of everything in his store!  Performance-pcs.com... the place where I got most of this... also sent me a bunch of random desk toys... I guess as a reward for all the money I spent with them?  |