Building a gaming PC

A while back I started looking into the specs for the upcoming PS4 and Xbox One and couldn't help but wonder what it would cost to build a PC of similar specifications. Well, just as I was about to find my answer I was sidetracked and ended up buying myself some high end parts. I suppose that's just typical me.

The parts are as follows:

Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme6

CPU: Intel Core i5 3570K 3.4Ghz

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo

RAM: 8Gb (2x4Gb) Corsair Vengeance 1600Mhz CAS 7

HDD: WD Caviar Black 1Tb

GPU: Asus DirectCU II OC GTX 770

Case: Cooler Master Storm Trooper

PSU: EVGA NEX650G

All higher than the upcoming consoles' specs. Much higher. That's £1030 worth of computer parts (excluding Windows 7), enough to play most games maxed out. It's also much more expensive than even the Xbox One's £429 tag but for me, it was worth it.

Motherboard with CPU, cooler and RAM already inside
(Poor quality due to laziness, couldn't be bothered to bring out my SLR)

As soon as the parts arrived, I cleared my 27" iMac from the desk to allow for room to build (and generally lose tools and equipment). The CPU and RAM were nice and easy to insert, just plug and play. The CPU cooler was a little fiddly at first, but with the help of a friend it fitted on nicely (the wrong way round at first, but that was easily fixed). 

The Storm Trooper case originally had its front fans facing perpendicular, which would only cool the hard drives. With a little bit of tinkering, they can be turned 90 degrees to create a convection current throughout the case.

With extreme care, I attempted to insert the GTX 770 into the top PCIe. When I figured this wasn't working I applied a little pressure and 'click', it was in. Despite the nerve-racking experience I was happy to have the most expensive component inserted. Next was the dreaded cable management. I started with connecting the case I/O to the motherboard, USB 2 and 3s, power and reset buttons and so on. That was the easy part since the length of the GTX 770 made the SATA ports challenging to access. I would have removed the GPU, but it was about 1am and I wanted this thing finished. So with a little guessing (iMac owners are experienced at this) I managed to fix in the SATA ports for my HDD, DVD drive, eSATA and 'X-Dock'. The power cables were fairly easy to route, and thanks to my modular PSU they were nicely managed.

Then came the moment of truth: the first boot. After hooking up the computer to my cheap Samsung P2470HD (I know it defeats the purpose of a gaming PC but it's only temporary), I hit the power switch and turned on my newly built PC. The fans spun up, graphics card gave the green light and... the screen was blank. The motherboard didn't show any warning signs (with the sound test provided with the case), nor did it display any numbers on the LED counter. It took me about half an hour to realise that I had forgotten to hook up the CPU to the PSU, it couldn't have been more obvious. 

It was 3am and I had booted windows from the DVD drive first and was half way through the installation (Which took a surprisingly short amount time compared to when I set up Bootcamp, I didn't know just how slow Apple Superdrives were until a £15 LiteOn drive beat them).

Finally, the build was complete. All the divers ASRock had provided are installed and are working perfectly (I downloaded the Nvidia drivers online). Not bad for a spontaneous purchase if you ask me. I'll be posting some Benchmark tests here in the near future to show off my new PC.