[aotsukisho]

This one's a repair/fix-em-up from a friend. Surprise surprise, it's yet another build from my favorite generation (LGA1155).


Got the case and popped off the front for a good cleaning. There's no real filters on this case and there was a lot of sticky dust everywhere.


Dust behind the cables as well


Got it to boot by replacing the RAM with my 2x4GB testing set. The hardware is still good, just the original RAM module was faulty.


Graphics card is a regular EVGA GTX 650, which unfortunately doesn't quite have enough oomph to stack up to modern games.


Don't forget this screw to remove the shroud along with the ones next to the fan.


GPU heatsink has the same dusty story


Cleaned it up best I could so I could see how it works


I ran the Monster Hunter Online benchmark to see how it would do, and it did as I expected to...38% is nothing special, but relatively good for the aging hardware.

I did find that the motherboard is an MSI Z77 chipset one, and the CPU is an i5-6600K. I will fit it with liquid cooling and see what kind of overclocks I can get on it to see how viable it can be on modern stuff. My i7-2700K at 4.6GHz was rated VR Ready by Steam, but the Core-i5 line lacks hyperthreading.

My recommendations at this point, assuming overclocking will be successful, will to upgrade both the graphics and the power supply. The GTX 650 isn't strong enough to run new things at 1080p, and the PSU is a no-name unit that is rated for 750W but I will be surprised if it can survive being loaded to 500W. EVGA recommends just a 400W PSU for that card, and they assume the system has an i7 as well. A GTX 960 or even a GTX 970/1060 will push this into the modern [email protected] with possibly some streaming on the side quite well.

[aotsukisho]

Finally got around to uploading progress from last weekend.


Getting to the CPU, removing graphics card


Just as the sysinfo told me, it's a Core i5-2500K. Unfortunately there's some light corrosion from the heatsink slug, but I got as much of it off as I could.


Popping off the stock Intel 'thermal solution' as they call it. TIM was quite hard, which is to be expected.


Installing the backplate for the Corsair H80 all-in-one liquid cooler


Testing the system before I bolt anything down. Due to this being an overclocking test I didn't trust the Kingwin PSU so I used a reputable one. The model I used is the Corsair CX600 which is of lower wattage, but I am confident it will perform much better than a no-name unit. Also, even if you SLI a GTX 650 you will not run into wattage shortage issues.


I was originally going to run push-pull on the radiator, but as it turns out a single high static pressure fan is enough. I repurposed the other case fan to be a bottom intake, which will help with maintaining positive case pressure and getting that all important airflow across the graphics card.

I'm not sure what the issues with overclocking were, whether it was 'losing' the silicon lottery or the motherboard's PLL/VRMs not being up to snuff, but I only managed a 4.2GHz stable overclock on the 2500K. This is a bit lower than the expected 4.4GHz median, and it would not stay stable at that frequency despite disabling Turbo Boost and juicing it up to 1.5v. Regardless of that, I feel like a 27% overclock isn't shabby. Perhaps I was spoiled by my LGA1155 mobo/cpu combo, or I just got lucky with all components, but my old i7-2700K was stable at 4.6GHz with that same H80.

I will be putting the CX600 power supply in shortly, and that should be it for this build unless more work is requested in the future.

[aotsukisho]

Finished up the PC.


Kingwin PSU out


Corsair PSU in


Testing the system with everything in it


Final shot of the system before sending it out.

Not a bad gaming platform, although I believe plans were to upgrade the graphics card to at least a GTX 1060.

CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K @ 4.2GHz
CPU Cooler: Corsair Hydro H80
GPU: EVGA GTX 650
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-Z77-DS3H
RAM: 2x4GB G.Skill Ares DDR3-2400
Boot HDD: Toshiba DT01ACA100 1.0TB
PSU: Corsair CX600
Case: Ultra Gladiator Mid Plus