Corsair Employee Systems 1

We've done a lot of system build blogs and showcases with a variety of our products. To spice things up a bit, an idea was brought up to show what we personally use at home. Therefore, I'll take the first step to share and encourage all of you to do the same to form a quasi gallery of systems!

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Most hardware enthusiasts are also gamers, and I am no different here at Corsair. Outside of work, I wanted a PC that would be a great gaming system as well as something that could play media clearly (hence the third party sound card). The build i a little old by today’s standards since I originally built this system around late February/Early March of 2012 before I started at Corsair (and subsequently upgraded some other parts since I’ve worked here) but it still is chugging along without any issues.

Here are the system specifications:

Case:                     Corsair Obsidian 550D (Front Fans: 2x SP120 Rear Fan: 1x AF140)

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CPU:                      Intel Core i7 2700K (OC’d to 4.2ghz)

MB:                        Asus P8Z68-V Pro

GPU:                     ASUS GTX 580 Matrix

PSU:                      Corsair AX850 ( with Corsair Black Sleeved Cables)

Sound Card:       ASUS Essence STX  (paired with the Corsair SP2500 speakers)

Cooler:                 Corsair Hydro Series H100i (2x SP120)

RAM:                     16GB Dominator Platinum at 2133mhz

SSD:                     Neutron GTX 240GB (OS) Force GT 120GB (Games)

HDD:                     Western Digital 750GB Black

Accessories:      Scythe Kaze Master II Fan Controller

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How did you plan your build?

When I built this system initially, I wanted to use a SSD for the first time and the Z68 was not as problematic as the P67 with the SATA3 issue. I also wanted to use a Corsair Hydro Cooler (it was H100 then) and make it a quiet system. It was convenient as the 550D was shortly around the corner when I bought most of the hardware and this case had everything I wanted with the foam padding, the modular-bility of the panels, and enough room for all my parts. I didn’t need something as large as the 650D and the 600T, but I also needed something that could support the H100 on top so the choices were pretty limited then (in comparison to now). As the goal was to keep it somewhat quiet (not silent), I bought the triple slot video card with the larger fans so they would not be too audible under load. Finally, I felt that 16GB of memory was more than enough for all my applications running at the same time. SInce the motherboard was blue, and the case was black, it was only natural to set the color coordination of match and the Matrix video card really compliments it with the blue LED at idle.

What do you play with your system?

For the past year or so, I did not really have any games that I couldn’t run at high or maximum settings. I still play Left 4 Dead from time to time and I have recently renewed my account for World of Warcraft. I also played a lot of Starcraft 2 and DOTA 2 and all of these games did not need the latest and newest video card so the GTX 580 to this day still has held up very well (though BF4 did make it show its age when I was trying it out). All of my games are saved onto a different SSD so I could load them quickly and keep them off of my primary SSD in case I ever need to re-install the OS. Here's a shot of my Vengeance 2000 which I use when its not convenient for my sound card to be active.

Any planned upgrades in the future?

The Sandy Bridge CPU has been holding up very well with everything I've thrown at it. The only component I would most likely upgrade is the GPU since it's showing its age with newer games like BF4. However, to compensate, I am building a second gaming system and relocating this current system to my room. Here is a sneak peek:

So now that I shared my system, why don’t you share yours in the comments? Take a picture of your system, and give a brief explanation of why you built it! Was it for gaming? Media production? Spare parts from other builds?