Building my first modern rig.

1)      I have been planning to assemble myself a powerful desktop. Only recently, I found the chance to do so. So, 2 weeks ago, I went online and investigate a desktop setup that can be considered a beast, yet affordable.
After 3 days of sleepless nights identifying the best combination of hardwares, I finally made my purchase at newegg.

2)      ...ジャジャン！！ A week later, these came to my door. =D 5 boxes in total. 1 contains a monitor and 1 contains the tower casing. But I don't really care about those two.

It is the other 3 that I have been waiting for.
Upon unboxing, I get these: MORE BOXES!! but definitely more colourful.

Highlights: *drumrollllll*

CPU: Intel i5 2500K
(CPU type: LGA 1155)

GPU: XFX HD Radeon 6870 CrossFireX ready.

SSD: Crucial M4 64GB (SATAIII)

and the rest,
Motherboard: ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 (for LGA1155)
Heatsink: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus (supports LGA 1155)
Hard disk: Hitachi Desktar 1TB (SATAIII)
RAM: G.Skill 4GBx2 DDR3 1600
PSU: PC Power and Cooling Silencer MK III 500W
Optic Drive: Asus DVD Burner (SATA)
Keyboard/Mouse: Logitech MK120 Bundle

As for the OS, we installed 64bit Windows 7 Professional with free key provided by the University service (thanks to Ammar for the heads up, I wonder why I didn't get any email about that).

3)      Assembling the desktop takes about 8 hours of menpower from me and my housemates (thanks to Ammar again, Hafiz, Cimi, and the occasional words of encouragement from the others XD).
The final result is....
SATISFYING =D.

4)     A few things that catch my attention:
-My new desktop can boot up in under 30 seconds. Woot2! Well, without any antivirus though. I wonder how well will it do if I install one.
-In the Windows 7 Windows Experience Index, the slowest component is the CPU and RAM with rating of 7.5. I was expecting the hard disk to be the slowest, but the opposite happened, the hard disk maxed to 7.9. o.O..... is this the power of SSD?
-The desktop is surprisingly quiet, even with 2 chassis fan, 1 CPU fan, 2 GPU fan, and 1 PSU fan. Two friends of mine who went to my room after the assembly thought that I connect the big monitor to my laptop instead, and didn't realize a big desktop house is there.

5)     The verdict. This purchase is satisfying. I believe the specs could last for at least another 3 years before the rig become less-supported. The only thing that I have to think now is... how to ship it to Malaysia later. -.-" I can only think of contenna courrier for now. Well, I'll save that thought for later =D.

My newly renovated workstation. Really, I plan to work with it, no kidding.

p/s: I actually made a mistake in choosing the PSU because 500W is not enough to do multi-GPU (aka AMD CrossFireX or nVidia SLi). Heh, typical kind of mistake if you only have yourself to consult with. As the result of this, I will have to buy a new PSU if I want to do CrossFireX in the future.

In the meantime however, a run through Skyrim and Assassins Creed Brotherhood in High Setting 1080p prove that I may not even need it. They are able to maintain steady rate of frame per second between 50 to 60 with not very common drop to 40 fps. Meh, I guess I can live with that.