Jaeger - Mk1.3 Upgrade

Signs of Aging

It's almost 2018 and my gaming rig (Jaeger - i7-4770K - GTX780) is turning four.

Most of its parts are still significant even in today's standards.

• No issues with the storage drives
• 850W power supply still more than sufficient
• Motherboard recently replaced
• 16GB memory still acceptable
• CPU AIO (All-in-one) liquid cooler performing as expected
• CPU, despite being a Haswell (4th generation) processor, is an unlocked i7 that I've yet to overclock

The graphics card, though, despite performing similarly to a 3GB GTX 1060 card, can't keep up with new demanding games that are being released nowadays, at least not at Very High or Ultra settings at 1080p at 60fps. With Black Friday approaching, it was time for an upgrade.

Upgrade Path

I have a bias towards Nvidia graphics cards and with AMD Vega performance leaving a lot to be desired, I decided to go the route of the best Nvidia graphics card I can afford. After some research, my mind was set on the ROG STRIX GTX 1080 Ti from Asus. This is a beast of a card with a three-fan cooler design.

I was about to order the card online, but something made me do a double-check and discovered a slight issue - the card was too big.

I had a few options:

• Pick a smaller graphics card that will fit my current case
• Saw off some of the hard drive cage, just enough to squeeze-in the graphics card (like what we did with Qube PC)
• Or, buy a new case. A more modern one, tempered glass maybe? More space for cable management, better airflow. *gasp* RGB?

After some quick research, I added an Enthoo Pro M Tempered Glass ATX Mid Tower Case from Phanteks to my cart and finalized my order.

Disassembly / Reassembly

The parts quickly arrived after a few days and I immediately started building. The order of operations was simple enough -

• Unplug / detach / disassemble all the parts from the old build
• Consider cleaning and re-applying thermal paste to the CPU cooler
• Get lazy and pull off the CPU and CPU cooler as one unit
• Clean each part using an old sock and a can of compressed air
• Assemble / attach / plug all the parts to the new build

It took me five hours to do the build, install the necessary drivers and do some gaming checks. The system was working, but I knew that my cable management job wasn't the best. I could do better. The next day, I re-did all the cable management and, to the best of my abilities, made it as clean / perfect as possible.

Finished Product

(parts list)

Notes:

• I mounted the SSD in front of the power supply shroud. This required re-routing data cables and a longer power cable.
• I transferred the included 2 140mm fans to the front as intake fans while I snatched the old case's 140mm and 120mm fans and mounted them as top exhaust fans.
• Motherboard only had 2 CPUFAN headers and 3 CASEFAN headers (5 total). I had 5 fans and a pump (6 total). Ended up with 1 fan not attached until I was able to get a fan splitter.
• Graphics card has sag issue due to its size. Ordered a video card support brace to address that.
• Bonus: Motherboard always had front USB 3.0 headers but my old case did not have front USB 3.0 ports. New case has and it's finally able to make use of those headers.