mid-life rebuild with pictures!

[nerfmeplease]

Last night was a long one. got home from work, tore my computer apart, left for the gym, got back and started back at it. eventually i gave up on the overall cleanliness because i was excited.

my setup is:
Intel i5 2600K 3.4ghz
nvidia 470 GTX
8gb G.Skill 1866 DDR3 9 lat.
2 x 500gb HDD
120gb mushkin SSD
ASUS P8P67 mobo
800 watt PSU
Fractal R4 mid case
Thermaltake water 2.0 extreme CPU cooler

upgrades:

Reasons: the previous case (see-through acryrlic) was just a heat sponge and with heat comes noise from fans. GF goes to sleep long before me so i dont want to keep her awake with jet engines. Also, with Haswell processors around the corner, and having the unlocked sandybridge, i can push the CPU to 4.5ghz+ with better cooling instead of dumping money on an ivybridge and regretting a semi upgrade. I can squeeze quite a bit longer out of this PC with this new setup (+a new graphics card, still deciding on ati or nvidia).

The Fractal case comes with built in sound dampening padding, and wonderful build quality, honestly the best case ive ever felt/used. the whole case is sturdy and doesnt have any cheap plastic parts where most try to skimp out (front panel is plastic, but its got layers of fan filters and a nice flap for the front that is sleek). Another reason is the awesome filters (mentioned moment ago) that i desperately need (see before pics..) as this new apartment i have moved into is the absolute worst air circulation ive ever seen. customizable air flow/HDD bays for whatever you need most, remote mounting spots for SSD's on the back panel (chose not to because its being replaced soon).

the Water cooling had the best reviews and performance for the price ($140+$20 rebate) and has great software for control. I had pieced together my own setup that came out to about $190 but then found that. installation took about 25 minutes with it being my first water cooling and me crying about my back hurting from the gym, not bad. In the pics it may look crooked but i had to let it loose while plugging in motherboard connections and then remounted it, easy peasy.

BEFORE PICS!:
the dust was so bad you couldnt even see light through the fins on the stock CPU cooler. the heat popped the thermal glue off of the heatsinks on the RAM (fixed) and the GPU might as well have been displaying a giant dustbunny on my screen with how nasty it was.







AFTER PICS!:









Hope you enjoyed, the case and cleanup isnt completely done, but i got excited late last night and plugged it in to start the burn in phase.

[Zoidberg]

... This is what I like to call Computer Gore.

[Wetop]

Could use a little bit more cable management, yes... But why didn't you clean your old computer? As Zoid said, computer gore

[nerfmeplease]

Could use a little bit more cable management, yes... But why didn't you clean your old computer? As Zoid said, computer gore

that was about a month. i used to (when i lived at home) clean it once every 2-3 months with a compressor, and even then it was only minor dust on the blades of the fan and stuff. never in my life have i seen dust build up like that did. im honestly surprised it didnt cause a short. the acrylic case was also a giant pain to remove the side cover, 8 screws held it in with little acrylic blocks that didnt like to line back up. this case is back to just two thumbscrews, hurrah!