Project Man Cave Part 1: PC Case, PSU and Wireless Headset

Since forever, I just wanted to buy a brand new gaming PC. As in everything new. From scratch.

A quick history

My wife is a graphic designer, and in roughly 2011 she bought a new PC to work on. At the time, it was pretty well spec'd. i7-2600 with 16GB RAM, SSD. Basically everything you would want at that time. It was her work PC for 3 years. Then, in October 2014, our son was born. We both work from home, and we thought (not sure why haha), that for her to get a Laptop as her main PC would be great, then she can sit with the baby and work and things like that.

So, she bought a MSI mid-range gaming laptop (i7, 16GIG RAM, SSD, GTX760m), and her old PC became my dedicated gaming PC.

We have this room next to our kitchen, which is a glorified walk in pantry/storage room. I put a table in there, took a network cable through the ceiling and turned it into my man cave. I put a GTX970 into that PC, and it became dedicated just for gaming. It was awesome!

Meanwhile, my normal work PC was in our main study and was doing it's thing fine. It was an i5-650 with 12GB of RAM. For web design and general scripting it was perfect. Until the motherboard gave in. This was about 2 years ago (mid 2017).

So, finances didn't allow to replace it, so the gaming PC became the work/gaming PC. And it moved out of the man cave to the study. A sad day indeed.

Meanwhile, web designing sucks more and more, so I give much more time and energy to my Herbalife business. It's amazing what can happen if you put some serious focus into something. I've since closed my web design business, and I'm now doing Herbalife full time. I'm never behind on bills anymore, and I'm actually doing well enough that I can start buying a luxury item here and there. And the business is just growing, so I'm super excited about that and what the future holds.

PROJECT MAN CAVE

So yes, I've been forever yearning to build a brand new PC from scratch specifically for my man cave. But not just that, I want to kit out that man cave to be super nice and a dedicated spot just for me to go relax in.

Now that business is going so well, I've actually started with it! I have decided to do something for it every month as time goes on, and I started with the PC case, PSU, some case fans and a wireless headset last month.

PC Chassis

I watched numerous videos online and I wanted something really stylish and smart looking, with RGB because why not haha! And this video grabbed my attention:

The Phanteks Eclipse P350X, and I bought it from Wootware: https://www.wootware.co.za/phanteks-ph-ec350ptg-dbk-eclipse-p350x-tempered-glass-black-steel-atx-mid-tower-desktop-chassis.html

It cost me R999 when I bought it, although I see the price has gone up slightly now.

I also added two of these 120mm case fans, also by Phanteks: https://www.wootware.co.za/phanteks-ph-f140sp-bbk-black-1200rpm-140mm-high-airflow-low-noise-case-fan.html

Then, seeing as I was buying from Wootware, I checked out what PSU's they have, and I was looking for a well rated one that was fully modular, so I ended up buying this Super Flower 650W 80 Plus Gold PSU: https://www.wootware.co.za/super-flower-sf-650f14eg-bk-leadex-ii-650w-80-plus-gold-certified-fully-modular-desktop-power-supply.html

Here are the pics for them:

That was what will be my purchase for February for the man cave. The plan was to buy the headset now in March, so I checked out all the videos about the contenders out there. I saw the HyperX Cloud Flight, the Corsair HS70 and the Steelseries Arctis 7.

I have had a Steelseries Siberia V2 for 6 years. And it IS AWESOME! But, it is beginning to show wear and tear, the earpieces are giving off little black flecks and so on. It still works and is beyond comfortable, so I was leaning towards the Steelseries as I had such an awesome experience with that set. 

And, out of the blue, as if Takealot read my mind, they had said headset on special for R2000 instead of R2500. I had some ebucks saved up, so I took the plunge and bought it as well, and I am extremely happy with it! Still super comfy, and sounds great, and it's, of course, WIRELESS!! whoohoooo!!!!

Here are the pics:

So, Project Man Cave started with a bang! First month, I ticked off three items on the list already! This is gonna be beyond fun!

The rest of the stuff

So yes, obviously I want to go all out, so here's what's on the list still:

The PC:

• CPU, Motherboard and RAM (i7-9700K and 16GB DDR4 RAM with a suitable motherboard, still shopping around)
• Graphics Card (looking at the RTX2080 currently, but would love the RTX2080ti of course)
• SSD + HDD
• Lapboard (looking at the Corsair K63 Wireless Mechanical Keyboard, and then you also get a Lapboard that it slots into)
• Wireless gaming mouse (love Logitech)
• Logitech Z607 Speakers (for when I'm gaming solo, don't want headset on all the time hehe)
• Windows 10 Pro license

Then, this is for the room itself:

• Air conditioner
• Recliner chair and other furniture (carpet, plasma unit, etc)
• Paint and fixing up
• 65 inch 4k TV (looking at Samsung for low input lag)
• Bracket for the TV

So yeah, I'm dreaming big for this, and the best part is, I've already started!