Custom Desktop Build

Every gamer will eventually want to brag about their “rig.” To many its a direct reflection of their personalities.

My desktop project began in 2014 and was created with the intention of mining Litecoin while also emphasizing speed, media storage, and audio capabilities. As time has gone on I’ve switched out GPUs almost yearly to bring enhancements.

With my overclocked settings I’m only losing about 7.5% CPU performance to the latest and greatest 7700k (2017). My biggest gap is missing out on native PCIe booting with new SSDs – something I’d love to take advantage of.

EDIT: I’ve since retired my desktop and “donated” to my parent’s basement. I sold my GTX 1070 for more than I paid (thanks, crypto!) and put it towards my XPS 13 laptop.

This will be the future web server of Computing with Dan as I have far more settings to tweak for performance + my parents paying for power (shhh).

EDIT #2: After tweaking to my hearts content I stopped using my desktop as the site’s server and instead went with a dedicated AWS VPS instance. Let me know your thoughts on performance!

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Specs:

• Core i7 4770k Overclocked to 4.4ghz
• Cooler Master Hyper Evo 212 (Best bang for your buck if your case can handle it!)
• 16gb DDR3 Overclocked to 2133mhz
• 256gb Vertex 4 SSD (Boot)
• 3TB WD Black HDD (Media Files)
• Z87-Gold Motherboard
• Asus Xonar Essence STX Sound Card
• Dayton Audio Mini Amp (Via RCA Interconnect) 2x40w RMS
• Polk Audio FXi A4 BiPole/DiPole Speakers
• Windows 10 Customized with Script (Will Include in other Project)
• 27″ Crossover 1440p monitor (Same Sharp panel as old Apple Thunderbolt display)
• Currently using the integrated Intel GPU
• GTX 1070 Armor Edition
• GTX 970
• GTX 980
• GTX 780ti EVGA Classified (SLI) {Probably my favorite to play with}
• 3x AMD 7950’s with custom 7970 BIOS (Litecoin Mining)
• Corsair Carbide 300R Case (Not the sexiest but it supported 3 GPU’s!)