Bro Cave: iRandomness
This week we feature and honor a bro’s first build. Armed with advice from our own forums, iRandomness took the plunge 3 weeks ago and hasn’t looked back. This one features an NZXT Phantom in white, an Asus RoG Maximus IV Extreme, a Radeon 7950, and some professional-level cable management – not typical for a first build! The only thing it’s missing now, is a KBMOD case magnet…
Okay so I FINALLY got my new desk so I can actually submit a brocave that didn’t involve a TV on top of a chair and me using a plastic container lid on my lap for my KB+M. I dub that the most hellish 3 weeks of PC gaming. Ever.
Right, so on to the juicier parts. My first venture into gaming was with my N64 which I got for my 7th (I think…) birthday. I never really got into it as a whole, I was addicted to Super Mario 64 for a disturbingly long time, though. But never really got out there to play more games. For about 5 years afterwards I didn’t really game much at all, even though I loved the time I did. Eventually when I got to secondary school, my best friend showed me to the world of consolololol, specifically, the 360 & Halo 3. From then up until now (4 years, to be exact.) I’ve been a die hard console gamer, All the halo spinoffs, all the CoDs (Including my french language locked World at War, don’t ask.) and about 30 other games I don’t care to mention.
Then along came the Youtube phase. I started watching the big names: Hutch, Nanners, Sparklez, etc. and eventually found out that Hutch belonged to a podcast known as YAGB. I decided to give it a listen, and (guess where this is going…) John’s superiority, as if it had it’s own gravity field, pulled me in and gently encouraged me to become a PC gamer.
And here I am! After listening to KBMOD every week from about Ep. 13, I’ve wanted more and more to get my own PC and join the ranks of the fabled PC Gamer, so 3 weeks ago… I did.
Obviously I came to the KBMOD Forums for advice, where the community and even Bob himself helped me out a little, and I ended up with this:
Specs: Case: NZXT Phantom (White/Red) Motherboard: Asus RoG Maximus IV Extreme (P67) PSU: Corsair CX600 Builder Series. CPU: i5 2500k @ 4.2Ghz CPU Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer i30 GPU: 3GB PowerColor Radeon HD 7950 (Ooooh yeah, baby.) RAM: Corsair Vengeance 2x4GB (Jet Black) HDD: 1TB WD Caviar Green SSD: 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 (Boot drive, duh.) Disk Drive: Who the hell cares? It’s a Sony something… Probably. KB: Sandstrom something, not actually that bad, considering it’s a cheap placeholder. Mouse: Acer mouse that came with my 5 year old PC.


Considering it’s my first build with no previous PC building experience, I’m very proud with it. I know I’m using a TV as a monitor, I hope to change that when I can afford 2 at once, but for now, I quite like playing BF3 Ultra on a 42″ TV. *Evil grin* Took a while to get the whole build to where I wanted, quality-wise, but it was hella’ worth it.
How loud are the case fans on that case? Does it fit everything well?
The ones that actually came with the case aren’t all that loud, especially considering you can turn them down with the built in control panel up top. All 4 of them at full power isn’t as loud as my 7950 fan at 60% power.
I love that case! nice build bud, so jealous of all these rigs on the bro cave. :-)
That cable management makes me ashamed of my own rig, but that Headset hook is a brilliant idea!
WHAT THE FUCK! that cant be good for you with that bigass screen
I don’t sit as close as you think. besides, it’s technically smaller than people who use dual 22″ monitors, so ‘sall good.
Awesome cave mate. Does it annoy you at all that you can’t get an extra 8 gb of ram with like the one you have already because of the large cpu cooler you have? I have that issue in my cave and it annoys me haha
Thanks, and yeah it does a little, not too much though, because I don’t see a need for 16GB yet, for me at least.
good job man better than what i did i just bought a comp off newegg
4
Very nice.
I should probably submit my brocave after installing my 212 and SSD….
you probably should, oven light.
Cannot unsee. Thanks bob.
How well does the 600 watt PSU hold up against a 7950?
It’ll hold up better than a 6xxx series card. I’ve heard the 7950 idles at about 20W. That is absolutely insane. Every iteration of a new card is more powerful than the last, but the fact that AMD did it and kept power down so low is what really impresses me. The nvidia cards might give out slightly better performance, but they chug power.
I just bought this case, may hit you up with your pro cable management techniques.
That’s a sick case the only thing that puts me of it is the fact that the side panel fan mounts ruin the sleek side panel. Its still a amazing case I’m just being picky.
High five for that case man!
Pretty sick build :D
Nice build, but i have to ask…is the vid card in the right PCI slot? i imagine they both run off 16x so it wouldn’t matter but i was just curious.
It was originally in the top slot, but then I couldn’t get my LED strip to fit all the way round the way I wanted, so ended up moving the card down 1 for it.
And yeah, it makes no difference whatsoever, so ‘sall good.
Booyah.
The cable management is fantastic.
I don’t know, could probably learn a bit from Scott