Heat. Heat.
4K is here, but honestly, there are still some limitations. The monitors are
quite expensive for anything but a TN panel. Text scaling within Windows,
particularly, while maintaining the sharpness and clarity you'd expect from
a 4K screen, is still a challenge. And finally, they mostly just sit in front
of you rather than wrapping around. Yes, video card support for multiple 4K
displays is still pretty iffy. So that
leaves the aspiring surround gamer in a
bit of a pickle. Three 4K monitors is beyond impractical, requiring a graphic
setup forged in the fires of Mount Doom. And while triple 1080p setups are both
relatively inexpensive and easy to drive, they aren't exactly cutting edge
anymore. But there's another option. With the way that
2560x440 27in monitors have dropped in price nowadays, you can snag a few of
them for around a grand, which means that the only remaining question is,
what kind of gaming rig are you going to build to power it? So, let's get to
building, shall we? Welcome to the ultimate surround gaming build guide.
Before you begin, find a safe, static-free workstation and equip
yourself with an anti-static strap. I like to keep mine on my ankle to keep it
out of the way. Now, all we really need for assembly is a multi-bit screwdriver,
but a pair of side cutters and a pair of pliers can come in handy from time to
time. Another thing that we're going to need for this build that's a little unusual is I'm going to have my iFixit
tool kit because we're going to do things like taking apart RAM modules.
Now, before you actually begin building the rig, I always recommend plugging the
components in and powering the system up once outside of the case to ensure that
everything is working while it's nice and easy to reach and swap out
components if you need to. The motherboard box makes a handy non-conductive test bench if you don't
have one already. For our CPU, we went with Intel's latest technology. The Core
i74790K code name Devil's Canyon doesn't
really change much from the previous generation Core
i74770K code name Haswell. But due
partly to improvements in the thermal interface material between the die and
the heat spreader, it promises lower temperatures and a more consistent
overclocking experience. I guess we'll have to push the system a little bit
once we're done to see what we can squeeze out of it. So hold your CPU by
the edges and identify the corner with the little gold triangle. Align that
with the corner of the socket that has a plastic triangle indent on it. It should
be the bottom left. Lift up the retention ARM. Pull back the socket
cover. Carefully place the CPU into the socket. No force should be required for
this step. Then lower the socket cover. Lower the retention ARM and secure it
with the hook in the bottom right corner. The plastic cover should pop off
on its own. Choosing memory was really tough for this build. Not because we
needed special performance RAM or because there's a lack of great memory
brands, but rather because no one makes acid green memory to go with our build.
So, we settled on an old favorite and we're using a 32 gig kit of Corsair
Dominator Platinums at 2133 MHz C9, but
with a twist. First, we disassembled the top bar by removing the two screws at
either end with an iix it screwdriver. Then, we fashioned a stand and put a few
coats of black plasti dip on all the silver top pieces. Next, we did a couple
of coats of green plasti dip blaze on the acrylic light bars for a stealthy
green accented look that should complement the rest of the system very
well. With that done, all that's left is to pull back the tabs on the memory
slots. Align each module according to the notch in the bottom of the stick and
the key in the socket and press firmly on both sides until the latch closes.
Fill one set of colorcoordinated slots before the other two if you're only
using two sticks. The case decision for this rig practically made itself. I
recently reviewed the NZXT H440, found it to be fantastic, and resolved to use
it in a build guide at some point. Then this Razer edition came along and took
the original case, added some tasteful Razer themed accents like the logo on
the front and green LED lighting in place of the usual white for the IO
illumination at the back, the glossy accented power supply cover, and yeah, I
I had to use it. Start by putting both side panels in the original box.
Conveniently, NZXT includes retainers so you don't have to find somewhere safe to
put the thumb screws while you work. Take out the rear 140 millimeter fan by
removing the four screws. Then put these aside. And then remove the front bezel
by popping it off from the bottom. There's a magnetic fan filter here. Put
that away for now as well. We'll need it again later. Remove all of the 3 and 1/2
in drive cages to get at the three front 120 mm fans. Remove their screws from
the front. Then pull them out the side. Now, what we're going to do is replace
all four of these fans with the appropriate size Bitfenix Spectre Pro
green LED fans to match the rest of our build. First, install the 140 mm fan at
the back with the lead in the bottom right corner and trailing across the
motherboard tray. Then, slide the three front 120 mm fans into place so their
power leads are on the bottom right if you're looking at them from the front of
the case. Then use the same screws we took out to mount them back in the
front. Put the fan filter back and pop the front bezel back on. Now, as much as
ASUS would love for me to tell you, we chose the Saber-Tooth Z97 Mark1 for its
cool thermally controlled fan profiles, its SATA Express port for future SSDs,
or its one-touch easy overclocking. That
would be a lie. Uh, this was all about the looks. The clean looks enabled by
this board's plastic thermal armor covering made it the only Z97 board that
made any sense in this build aesthetically. I mean, I guess the
5-year warranty on Tough Series boards didn't hurt matters either, but that's
why we went with it. So, from the box, you'll need the board itself, the IO
shield, two SATA cables, and the manual. And optionally, the dust covers for any
PCI Express RAM or other slots that you
aren't planning to use for your system. Start by pressing firmly on all four
corners of the IO shield at the back of the case until they snap into place.
Then, since NZXT pre-installs the correct nine standoffs for ATX
motherboards, you can just lower the board into the case, putting its middle
mounting hole through the post that takes the place of one of the normal
standoffs. Be sure while doing this not to crush the wire for the rear case fan
or accidentally block your top PCIe slot. This post will hold the board in
place while you screw in the other eight standoffs. Here, here, here, here, here,
here, here, and here. While you still have easy access to the board, plug in
the front power and reset switches, as well as the power and drive activity
LEDs. Follow up by plugging the block style connectors for USB 2, front audio,
and USB 3. Plug in the SATA data connectors as shown. Then, finally,
connect all of your fans. We'll use the three headers on the bottom edge of the
board for the front fans and the right edge header for the rear fan. This lets
us take advantage of ASUS's excellent inbios fan control to keep the system
both cool and quiet. Originally, I had planned to use a dual 140 millimeter
all-in-one liquid cooling unit for this build, but Swiftech called me up three
days before I started scripting it and told me they finally have the successor
to the H220 ready, the H220X. It features a more powerful, more
reliable pump, an enthusiast grade block, interchangeable color plates, and
finally, unlike most all-in- ones, it's expandable if you want to add more
blocks or radiators. So, we'll start by changing the color plate to match the
system better. Remove the four plastic push pins and black cover. Swap out the
included plate for the green one in the box to match our system better. Then,
put the cover and push pins back in. Optionally, at this point, the cooling
system can be drained. The tubing can be shortened and the fluid can be replaced
with green hydric to better match the system since the H220X uses standard
enthusiast grade tubing and fittings and has a refillable reservoir. On to
mounting. Swifte ships the H220X with LGA1 1150 mounting hardware
pre-installed. So, all you need to do is unscrew the four thumb screws. Remove
the adhesive covers on the back plate. Stick it to the back of the motherboard
like so. Apply the included thermal compound to the middle of the CPU about
the size of an uncooked grain of rice. Screw the top hold down in a cross
pattern into the back plate and plug the power lead into an asked fan header on
the motherboard. We used the one under this hatch, but the fit might be a bit
tight for your liking. The
radiator/reservoir/p pump unit will be mounted with the stock fans flipped
around so they're pulling air through the rad than exhausting it from the top
of the case and with the fittings towards the front of the case for better
clearance between the motherboard and the built-in pump/reservoir unit. We can
pop off the top bezel the same way as the front. Then use the eight included
halfthreaded screws to secure both the fans and the radiators. Then we need to
finish wiring this bad boy up. The included PWM hub can be hidden behind
the back of the pump. It uses a SATA connector for power and we can leave
this dangling for now. The CPU fan header on the motherboard can be used
for PWM signaling. Then we plug the pump into channel one and the fans into any
two other channels. So the speed of all three will be controlled by your
motherboard. Then we finish up by running the SATA connector for the pump
and leave that dangling as well. Normally I go pretty conservative on
power supply choices for these guides because we stick with fairly low power
consumption single graphics card setups. Not today. We'll be loading this bad boy
up with a Corsair AX1200i 80 plus platinum fully modular
power supply unit. So, we'll get silent operation at idle with the fan not even
turning on and great efficiency even when we are under full load. Slide the
power supply in, fan side down, and screw the bracket back in. At this
stage, I usually run all of my power connectors in reverse. So, starting at
the motherboard, starting with the 8 pin and 24 pin connectors for the
motherboard, and then run them back down to the basement. Next up, you'll need
two modular SATA cables. Leave one of them loose in the basement. Then run the
other one up through the hard drive area using the last two connectors to power
your fan hub and water pump. After that, grab a modular Molex cable for your
built-in case lighting. And finally, grab four PCIe power cables for the
graphics cards. Run those through the cable management grommets before
securing them and the rest of all of your modular cables to the power supply.
Don't worry too much about which goes where because it doesn't really matter.
If it fits, it sits. Our drive setup is going to be the standard SSD for OS and
key applications with hard drive for mass storage affair that has been my
go-to for quite some time. The OS drive will be an Intel 730 series 240 gig SSD,
a drive that offers great performance, consistency, and reliability. But since
it isn't big enough for a full game library these days, instead of just
going with a green drive for pure storage, we are going to be helping it
out with a 4 TBTE WD Black, which will handle mass storage, but can also do in
a pinch for game loading or key application loading as well. Undo the
thumb screw on the bottom SSD mount and slide it towards the window side of the
case to remove it. Use four of these screws to secure the drive to the sled
with the connectors facing the motherboard. Slide it back into place.
Secure the thumb screw. Then plug in the terminal SATA power connector from the
modular cable that we left in the basement before and run the data cable
we plugged into the motherboard before up through the grommet behind the
motherboard and then through the access hole to plug into the drive. Next,
choose an appropriate hard drive tray. I'm going to use the middle one. Remove
both thumb screws at the back and pull it out. Use these special screws to
secure the sled to the bottom of the drive through the antiibration mounts.
Then put the drive sled back in place and do up the thumb screws. Connect SATA
power and data in the same manner as before. In our 4K build guide, I went
with dual GTX 780 Ti and SLI because I
figured I could still get away with 3 gigs of video RAM. Not so today. At over
11 million pixels, surround two and a halfK monitors have over 30% more pixels
than a single 4K monitor. So, we went with the best bang for the buck dual
graphics solution from a uh high
resolution perspective. Power consumption and heat output be damned.
Dual Radeon R9290s from Gigabyte with powerful triple fan windforce coolers on
them. These won't throttle and we might
even be able to overclock them a little bit, too. I think these are going to
deliver some amazing performance in this application. Now, you may have noticed
already that the coolers have a green plasti dip accent on the side. This was
achieved by removing the six screws holding the cooler on from the back,
then removing the four screws for the top brace that improves the rigidity of
the graphics card. I applied three coats of white plasti dip undercoat and four
coats of blaze green on top. I had originally planned to paint more parts
of this build, but I felt if I overdid it, it would be overpowering, so I
settled on just little accents like this one. I still think that we could have
done better in terms of the green color here, perhaps with a gray undercoat
instead of white. But at some point, we do have to film these build guides and
stop dinking around in the garage. So, here we are. Oh, actually, while you've
got your GPU cooler off is a good time to replace the stock thermal compound on
there as well, but leave all the other stuff like the uh the thermal pad to the
RAM and whatnot. So, now it's time to install them. We simply remove the two
PCI slot covers that correspond to each of our graphics card slots, the top two
PCIe 16X slots by removing the thumb
screws. Position each card over the slot and when it's aligned, firmly push it
into place. Then put back the thumb screws that you just took out. Plug in
two PCI Express Power connectors, an eight pin and a six pin per card. And
for your finishing move, I guess step back and appreciate it because we don't
have Crossfire bridges on high-end AMD cards anymore. I don't know what's more
impressive about the H440, the fact that it looks so good from the front or the
fact that uh it can look so good from the front while looking so horrible from
the back. So, it's time for cable management. Honestly, I won't be doing
much because this system is going to look great regardless. I'm just going to
take everything, wrap it up down as tight as I can because you don't
actually have a ton of space behind the motherboard tray on this case. And I'm
going to jam it all in the basement, which is all hidden by that nice little
stealth power supply cover. Then we're going to close up the side panels and
call this baby ready to rock. Now that
the system is fully built and up and running, it's time to talk monitors.
Now, the important thing here is not necessarily the models of monitors that
I'm using. While I do love me some ASUS ProArts and PBS, I've got a PA279Q in
the middle here flanked by two PB278Qs. Something with slimmer bezels
might have actually been nicer for this. No, the important thing is the type of
monitor that is being used and how to mount them all somewhat elegantly. All
three of these panels run at a massive 2560x440 resolution and they're mounted
using the modular expandable triple monitor erotic stand that I reviewed
here. Surround gaming isn't for everyone, but if you're into immersion,
that's a joke. Get it? Into immersion. Immersion. Anyway, uh if you want that
kind of experience, it doesn't get much better than this. Choosing the
peripherals for a color theme matched
type of build was actually a little bit challenging since while normally I would
go purely based on ergonomics, performance, etc. Today I have to try
and find good stuff that's also available in like black and green.
Corsair made the keyboard easy fortunately with their K70 RGB fully
programmable backlit mechanical keyboard. It's wellb built with a solid
aluminum back plate and made in Germany Cherry MX switches. It looks amazing and
the fact that it can change colors makes it the most chameleonike of all the
keyboards which makes it badass or something. Anyway, moving on. The mouse
we've gone with or that I wanted to go with is a classic, the Razer Death Adder
2013 with it high performance optical sensor and ergonomic design that's
available in both right and left-handed varieties. But what you actually see in front of you here on the table is a G502
because one of my employees took the Death Adder 2013 without telling me, so
I don't have it anyway. for the headset. Well, at that point, I gave up on
matching stuff. Just buy these sweet Star Wars themed Streets by 50
headphones. They're like $200, but they're totally worth it. Just kidding.
Check out the audio sub forum on line as techtips.com for a legitimate
recommendation in your price range. Although, I can't promise that it'll match your black and green color scheme.
Now, let's take a step back. We made it this far and we jumped ahead a little
bit. Let's talk about the software setup side of things. Press delete while
booting to get into the UEFI BIOS. Load your customized defaults. Set up your
fan curves and make sure you set up the header for the uh illumination on your
water block to run at full speed all the time so that it's nice and bright and
looks fantastic in your system. Once you're done with that, switch to
advanced mode in the BIOS for some CPU
overclocking. We've got a full overclocking guide for this CPU which
you can watch here. But for now, here are the values that worked well for my
CPU for AI tuner, CPU ratio, and core
voltage. Now, there's lots of other stuff in here that you can play with if
you want, and I'd recommend starting at Linus techtips.com if you want to get
some help from our fantastic community if it looks a little overwhelming. To
install your Windows operating system, create a bootable USB flash drive and
then reboot while mashing F8 immediately to get to the boot device selection menu
where you'll pick your USB drive. Once the setup process has begun, it's
basically a matter of clicking next until you land on the Windows desktop.
At the desktop, grab the latest drivers off the manufacturer websites for your
components. Go to nite.com for your essential free applications and grab
some stress testing apps and a Rivetuner derived overclocking utility such as
Afterburner to overclock your graphics cards. Your mileage may vary, but these
are the settings I got these puppies running at. Schmexy. So, now that that's
out of the way, let's find out if our rig here can actually handle all 11
megapixels of gaming glory at playable frame rates. Now, to be clear, we were
never expecting even a powerful gaming rig like this to max out every game at
this res at all. But these settings and
frame rates deliver a beautiful and very playable gaming experience that I think
is truly special. While you guys enjoy some glamour footage of our finished
system here, I want to take an opportunity to extend a huge thank you
to Intel for making this video possible. These build guides are incredibly
timeconuming for us to produce. And without sponsors like Intel to foot the
bill, we wouldn't be able to set aside the week of time that it takes for my
team to script, film, and edit them. So, thanks Intel for supporting the DIY
folks who want highquality guides that enable them to confidently build their
own PCs. I hope you guys enjoyed this video as much as we enjoyed making it.
Hit the subscribe button now if you haven't already. And until next time,
peace out.