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! 

GTX 970

Hehe, the title of this blog post really makes me happy. If you've read through my blog, you would have seen that I was due to purchase a GTX 960 graphics card in the upcoming months, but something bugged me a little with that card... It's also a mid range card, like my GTX 560 ti was back in 2011 when I got it. But this time around, nVidia's mid range card is mostly a "power consumption" upgrade from the previous generation. I read that the GTX 960 is a perfect upgrade for a 560, but if you have a 660 or a 760, then it's not really worth it that much.

Also, being stuck at the bottom of Africa means we pay a lot more for stuff than the lucky guys in the first world countries. And, as an added bonus, South Africa is experiencing numerous issues like load shedding (for my overseas readers who aren't familiar with that - basically our local government didn't think of upgrading our power generating abilities as our population grew exponentially in the last 20 years, meaning our power provider, Eskom, doesn't have sufficient capacity to actually supply us with a constant and steady stream of electricity anymore, now they cut power every day or two to prevent a total blackout... fun!). Combine that with the oh so useless xenophobic attacks taking place, we now sit with a weakening currency, meaning we pay an even bigger premium for items that are manufactured overseas - aka all things computer related.

Anyway, I've been contemplating really hard to maybe invest in the GTX 970 instead - yes I know there's the whole 3.5GB RAM issue, but it's still the best value for money nVidia card on the market, and the RAM issue only becomes an issue when you start gaming on extreme resolutions with extreme settings. I'm on 1920x1080, so in my case it's not gonna be such a big impact on my gaming experience - in fact, it won't bother me at all!

So, after deciding that, I started doing some homework, and for a mere R1800 more, I can get a 970 instead of a 960, and I reckon it'll give me a good 2-3 years longer service than the 960 would.

I phoned up my suppliers, and my sales guy at Corex is giving me an excellent deal - his name is Dylan, and he's one of the sales guys at the Cape Town branch of Corex, and I've only ever gotten excellent service from the guys there, and Dylan especially - if you're ok with registering as a reseller with Corex (a bit of a mission but very much worth it believe me!), I can heartily recommend chatting to him - DylanV@corex.co.za or 021 528 8000 - and here's the purchase I will be making very soon:

That's right, the MSI GTX 970 GAMING 4G! And the price I'm paying is less than R1000 more than you'd pay from a big overseas vendor like NewEgg! Makes me extremely giddy to know I'll soon be upgrading to a higher end card like this one, and as the box says, I look forward to JUST GAME!

I'm especially looking forward to cranking up the settings more on GTA V, which I installed yesterday (wasn't happy with the 5GB patch I had to download after installing from the discs, but hey, these things happen!) - my GTX 560 ti only has 1GB RAM (the game shows how much RAM your settings is using, and I was sad to see that the 1GB I have didn't allow for much), so the 4GB will be a huge step up, let alone the rest of the raw power my new addition to the family will serve!

Happy gaming in my future, I foresee! :)

My PC and Console History

We got our first "Personal Computer" when I was 8 years old, in 1990. It was this weird and wonderful thing, and it had games on it! A few of them I remember included Sopwith, Pinball, Bandit (one arm bandit gambling game) and Blackjack. The specs for the time were, I take, quite good - it was a IBM (I think) XT machine, and the CPU ran at a cool 4.77Mhz, which could get boosted to 8Mhz (making games mostly unplayable haha) by hitting the turbo button. It had a whopping 20MB hard drive. a 5.25 inch floppy drive (360kb), 640kb RAM and the screen had just four colours (yellow, orange, brown and black). It ran DOS 3.3 if I remember right. Ahh good times!

The first upgrade we did after that was to get a - wait for it - colour screen! I wasn't too clued up with the stuff back then, but I take it they had to put some kind of graphics card or something to that affect in the thing. Also, we got a very cool 3 button Genius mouse - I tried to play everything with that mouse hehehe...

Then the motherboard gave in, so we got a new motherboard, and a 286 CPU running at 20Mhz!

At some stage we got Windows 3.1 as well, and upgraded the RAM to 2MB, because I wanted to be able to play Sim Ant (I never got it to work though).

Then Microsoft launched this very revolutionary new operating system called Windows 95, so in the thing went again for an upgrade. This time around (in 1995) I started reading about a thing called a "Pentium" - so I begged my parents for that, and they luckily obliged! So, this upgrade was huge - got a 520MB hard drive, a flashy new mobo with a Pentium 75Mhz CPU, and - once again, please wait for it - 16MB RAM (no imagine how the kids at school laughed at me because I would never use that much RAM ever - at that point, you were the bees knees if you had 8MB). And of course, the brand new OS from Microsoft, Windows 95 - it still came on stiffi disks! About 30 of them haha! Last but not least, the Creative Sound Blaster 16bit Sound Card, and a 4x CD-ROM (this pack was bundles with four awesome games, namely Syndicate Plus, Ultima 8: Pagan, Wing Commander 2, and Strike Commander).

The next upgrade I did after that was to put in a flashy new graphics card - a Creative Graphics Blaster, which had 4MB of memory (it sucked by the way, couldn't even play Quake 2 on the thing...)

Next, we upped the CPU, and swapped out the 75Mhz one for a 166Mhz one. I was in heaven again, the sheer speed!

That lasted a good while, and then Pentium II came out, and their Celeron range, and shortly after that Pentium III - so I begged and begged, and luckily my awesome mom told me the line every geeky kid wants to hear - "phone the guys and order the PC you want".

I WENT ALL OUT!!

I asked for the following for my brand new PC:

Pentium III 500Mhz
128MB RAM (at this stage, 32MB was a good amount, 64MB an amazing amount, and 128MB was practically unheard of!)
6.4GB Hard Drive (but the guys offer me a 8.4GB hard drive for the same price - yay!)
Creative Sound Blaster Live sound card (came bundled with Unreal!!!)
50x CD-ROM
Cambridge 4.1 Surround Sound Speakers

And, my prized possession - a Creative Riva TNT 16MB Graphics Card.

Also a new 14" Screen.

Damn what a pleasure it was working with such a behemoth of a PC! I still remember the hours of fun I had playing Jedi Knight and Moto Racer - and of course HALF LIFE 1!!!

When I started studying, I upgraded it with an additional 64MB RAM, so it ended up having 192MB, and also a 32MB Riva TNT 2 card at some stage. That PC went on to become my dad's, and he still used it for another 5 or 6 years after I got my first Pentium 4 machine...

I was studying IT and Programming related stuff, so my parents graciously bought me a new PC once again. This time around, the 3Ghz mark was just hit, and again I went kind of all out (for the time).

The next specs were:

Pentium 4 3.0Ghz with Hyperthreading
1GIG DDR RAM (people laughed once again because if you had 512MB, you were considered a god among your friends)
160GIG hard drive
Windows XP Home Edition
Leadtek GeForce FX5600 128MB Graphics Card
And I transferred my Creative Sound Blaster Live to this machine as well, and bought a cheapie for the old PC.

This was an awesome machine, and lasted me quite long! I upgraded the graphics card to a Gigabyte GeForce 6600 GT, and later a Gainward 7800GS, which was the highest I could upgrade it, since the Motherboard only had an AGP graphics card slot.

After that one, I bought a new Motherboard/CPU/RAM/Graphics Card in about 2008 if memory serves me right, which consisted out of:

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33Ghz CPU
nVidia Chipset Asus Motherboard (not sure why I bought this one hehe)
Asus GeForce 8800GT
2x 2GB DDR 3 RAM modules

It was great once again :) At some stage I got a 3.0Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU for quite cheap, and installed that, but this machine lasted me until the motherboard conked out in December 2010, which got me to the machine I work on till this very day:

MSI P55 Fuzion Motherboard, Socket 1156, with a Intel 650 i5 3.2Ghz CPU, overclocked to 3.7Ghz thanks to a big ass CPU cooler I have on, and 12GB of DDR3 Memory.

Luckily, the nVidia motherboard that died was still under warranty (it was 2 years and 10 months old, on a 3 year warranty!) - so I took it in, and obviously they couldn't replace it, so I got credit - the same amount I paid for it. That money went towards my awesome Asus GeForce GTX560ti card.

What a journey it's been so far! It's fun being a computer nerd, nothing quite as satisfying as doing a huge upgrade and playing a game you always had to down tune on the settings at full settings! I'm looking forward to my next upgrade :D

Lastly, my Console history - a lot shorter story.

Got a NES in 1989 for my 7th birthday, with two games - Contra and Super Mario Brothers.

And the next one after that was my Xbox 360 in 2009. See, told you it's a short story and a lot less boring than my PC one!

GTX960 on its way indeed

Funny how just this morning I blogged about looking forward to the GeForce GTX960 when it finally launches, and I just read that the card will finally launch around the 24th of January 2015.

There will apparently be a 2GB and 4GB version, running on a 128bit bus and GDDR5 Memory. Frequency for the memory will be just over 7000Mhz, and power needs will be very low at just 120W. From what I gather, they will sell for around $200, so I guess around R3000 in South Africa.

Can't wait!

My man cave got a small upgrade

After moving to our new house, we don't intend on moving again any time soon at all! So this time around, I decided to make the place fully networked with good old fashioned UTP (unshielded twisted pair, aka network cable if you didn't know). We use a media center PC to do our TV watching on, and this also happens to be the place where my ADSL router is situated (nice and central to give a better wifi coverage).

So, in the living room I have a 5 port gigabit switch, which connects to our study with a network cable through the ceiling. In the study, it connects to an 8 port gigabit switch. In the study there's our work PC's and the NAS. Today, I've decided to take a cable from the study to my man cave through the ceiling as well - it was using an old 54mbps Netgear wifi dongle that I've had for ages, and the thing is just not stable enough for anything other than browsing the internet.

So, now I have my man cave PC also connected with a proper cable onto the network.

One thing I must also say is that if you're still running a 100mbps LAN, do yourself a favour and upgrade to a gigabit one - it makes a huge difference! Copying something over the network is now actually so fast, that my hard drive read and write speeds are the bottleneck! Copying files only utilizes about 50% of my network capacity, which is bloody awesome!

Just remember to wire your cables properly, if they're not, chances are you'll only get 100mbps out of them.

Check out this handy guide on how to wire your network cables properly - it explains it very well indeed!

My gaming PC - an update

My gaming PC is up and running! So far I've only played Dragon Age: Inquisition on it, and it is performing admirably indeed! Running the game at 1600x900 (highest my screen can go remember) with almost everything turned to the max.

It runs great! Also, the Creative Speakers my awesome wife got me arrived, and they sound great. It's not a very big set, it's the Creative SBS A250 2.1 Desktop Speakers - they give around 11W RMS, which is more than what I need (for now hehehe...).

And they look quite nice too :)

Then, the mouse I'm currently using is my old Logitech G300:

But, I did buy a very nice G402 recently, which is connected to my work PC at the moment - I'm contemplating moving it my man cave PC - in fact, I will do just that - I mean, look at how cool this thing is! And I did buy it for my gaming PC anyway, so it's the right thing to do:

And, this is, sadly, the keyboard I'm currently using, a Logitech UltraX Premium Keyboard - it sucks for gaming, but for now it'll have to do until I can afford a decent mechanical one:

One of the only issues I have with the PC at this stage is the stock cooler that's on the CPU isn't pulling its weight, and the fan on top of it is really loud. The CPU temperature goes up to about 67 degrees Celsius while I'm playing, definitely want to get a decent cooler too - I'll probably end up doing that first...

Anyway, as a person who works from home on the PC the whole day, it's really refreshing to have a dedicated gaming PC to play games on and if you're in the same kind of situation, I'd highly recommend doing that as well if you can, it's really worth it!

Until next time!

My man cave and dedicated gaming pc

I did it! I finally have my man cave, with my won dedicated gaming pc in it! And it feels great! It took slightly longer to get together, because my son was born in October, but I finally did it!

My wife's old PC was graciously donated to me to be my gaming rig. It's about three years old, but it's definitely not a bad rig at all! It's got a 3rd generation i7 CPU, my old ASUS GTX560 ti Graphics Card, 16 gigs of DDR3 RAM, and a fresh 1TB WD Blue hard drive.

The screen I have connected is a Samsung 20", which runs at a 1600x900 resolution. Not ideal, but for a start it's perfect!

I formatted and did a fresh install of Windows 7 Professional, and have so far loaded up Steam and Dragon Age Inquisition is installing as I'm writing this.

Also, my wife bought me a not too shabby 2.1 set of Creative Speakers (hasn't arrived yet, thanks to the incompetent couriers Takealot use - hopefully tomorrow, or all hell will break loose!) for Xmas.

So, it's almost ready to game on, and boy am I excited! I will gradually get better gear, like a mechanical keyboard (I hear those are great!), better mouse, and most of all, a better screen and graphics card.

I just hope the motherboard, which has given some minor issues lately (MSI Z68A-GD80) keeps on working, otherwise it'll be a good R5000 or so for a new motherboard and CPU (I looked, and you don't really get decent socket 1155 boards anymore :(. If that happens, I'll probably go for an current gen i5, but we'll cross that bridge when needed.

And I really REALLY want a GTX970, but that's way out of my budget at the moment - hopefully nVidia launches the GTX960 (which I've heard rumors about) in the new year - I will be very happy with a 1920x1080 monitor and a card that can run everything maxed out - the 560 is starting to show its age a bit, but luckily (silver lining) my screen doesn't go higher than 1600x900, so I should be able to run everything pretty nicely at that!

Will post photos soon!

Steelseries Siberia V2 USB - my first gaming session

Yesterday, I finally got my Steelseries Siberia V2 gaming headset, and I couldn't wait to do a proper gaming session with it. Now firstly, I'm not a pro gamer at all! A gaming session for me is playing for 2-4 hours.

Anyway, my buddy and I booted up Loadout last night, and I switched my headset over to the 7.1 channel emulation. Boy oh boy, I am not disappointed with my new headset at all! The sound is amazing, the mic works very well, and the best part, it's extremely comfortable. When you look at the set, it looks quite big a bulky, and heavy, but it's really not. And the USB soundcard that came with the headset is definitely better than my regular onboard soundcard.

Here are some screenshots of the software (which you have to download - there's no driver disc with the device):

Not the prettiest interface, but it does the job it's supposed to. Here's what the USB soundcard looks like:

It's got volume control, and mute buttons for both the mic and the audio. It attached to your PC with a mini USB cable, which is included (I first thought it wasn't, but it just fell out when I opened the box).

It also includes an extra long audio cable, which is a nice touch.

Anyway, after the four hours session it was as if I never wore the headset. It's that comfortable. Loadout gameplay is a bit too frantic for me to have been able to figure out if the 8 channel sound made much of a difference, but I'm sure it did. Time will tell whether my gameplay improves as I get used to the directional sound :)

Steelseries Siberia V2 USB Pro Gaming Headset

My awesome wife bought me this baby for our anniversary:

I just unpacked it, and I'm listening to some music now as I write this. I've got it loud. Very loud. And it sounds freaking amazing! I've never had a decent set of headphones, and I cannot believe how huge a difference it makes, even to something as simple as listening to music.

The bass is incredible, I can feel the set vibrate on my head, and the noise cancelling is spot on, I cannot hear anything from the outside world, not even me typing on the keyboard (can't hear that even when nothing is playing!).

And, when nothing is playing, you cannot even hear the slightest hiss in the background, they're dead silent! NICE!

I cannot wait to use it for this evening's Loadout session! I will definitely be updating this post with my experience :D

My new Fractal DEFINE R4 PC Chassis: part 2

After months and months (if not years) of looking for a nice PC chassis that isn't too expensive, but also high enough quality, I finally decided on getting myself a Fractal DEFINE R4 Titanium PC Chassis. I've had my current case for waaay too long now, so it was time for an upgrade...

See? That's enough to make anyone depressed. Besides, the chassis fans were really starting to annoy me, going all krrrrrrrrrrrrr every few minutes... (I actually disconnected the one) - plus this one is really quite crowded. And yes, the dust doesn't help either...

(also note that my DVD drive isn't connected - when my motherboard failed in December 2010, the new one I got didn't have any IDE connectors! So it's been there the whole time, but I haven't used it since. Thank goodness for an external DVD writer that I have...)

And here's the new case :)

And I even bought (finally!!!) a new DVD drive (don't have the cash, or need, really, for a Bluray drive at the moment, will maybe make a plan for something like that in the near future).

Pulling off the plastic was a good feeling :D

Here are some more shots of the case from more angles:

(I had to show off my Marshall in the 3rd pic above :)

And, in the toolbox you get a bunch of screws and some cable ties:

First order of business was to install the DVD drive. Behind the front cover, there's room for two drives, and these brackets that you can easily remove and put back again:

And the switch you see there on the side is to control the speed of your fans, but I didn't have anything to really connect the connectors to, so I won't be using that one:

In goes the drive (the cheapest LG one I could find...):

Fit very nicely. Screwed it in place with some of the included screws...

So far, I haven't really started at all... The first order of business was to disassemble everything from my old chassis, and to clean it a bit.

First came the graphics card, my trusty old Asus GeForce GTX 560 Ti with 1 GIG of GDDR5 memory. Still very happy with the card, for those who care, here are the rest of its specs:

CUDA Cores: 384

Graphics Clock: 830 MHz

Processor Clock: 1660 MHz

Memory interface: 256-bit

Memory bandwidth: 128.26GB/s

Yes I know, I should be ashamed that it's that full of dust. Anyway, I did give it a good clean...

Next came my awesome Corsair TX650W PSU, also shockingly dusty:

And here's the "after I cleaned it" pic:

It looks like something out of a horror movie hehe!

Here's my old case with what's left inside:

I took out the hard drives too as you can see, and here they are:

That's a 1TB Western Digital that acts as storage, my OCZ Solid State drive (240gig), a 500gig Samsung Drive and a 320gig Seagate - yes, I support them all! hehe

Finally I took out the motherboard, didn't remove the CPU and RAM though:

Also did a good clean, and here's the underside, just to show you the bracket for my tiny little cpu cooler:

Alrighty, everything's out of the old, and now to start installing it into the new. I started with the PSU. Used some of the provided screws, and the rubber washers:

Yup I know it's upside down, but there's a huge fan on the thing, and I didn't want to sit at the bottom:

And now, for the one bit of complaining I have to do for this case. The screws that go into the chassis to secure the motherboard to, they give you a "key" that you can fasten them properly with. There's 9 in total. After securing them all, I pretty much used up the little key. Yes, it's stripped after 9 uses - not cool Fractal!

Anyway, that will be the final complaint, other than that, I'm super happy... Onward shall we?

Next I fastened my hard drives to the brackets... First, I did it wrong, with the SATA and Power connectors pointing up, where I should have actually made them point to the back for better cable management...

The brackets are really cool, and each one has screw holes for regular 3.5 inch drives, as well as SSD's. And I really like how easily they slot it and can be removed again:

And here's how I did it first, which was wrong (remember that, it's not in the manual hehe):

See, you want them pointing away from you, which makes for a much neater arrangement...

So, I took all 4 my drives out again, and turned them around. I then mounted the motherboard:

Next I started connecting all my hard drives, and the power to the motherboard. Now the sweet thing about this case is it's wider than other cases, meaning there's room behind the motherboard area for your cables and stuff. That also improves airflow if that's important for you ;)

The only thing is the one cable that plugs into the motherboard isn't long enough for the same treatment, so it, unfortunately, has to still sit at the top of everything. But, as you can see, the main power cable, which is a nice and thick one, always in the way, is routed through the whole at the bottom and enters at the one at the top again.

Here's the back so far:

The untidiness doesn't bother you when you don't see it! :P

Last but not least, I installed the graphics card, some extra external USB port thingies, and of course the chassis power switch and reset switch connectors (which I had to download the manual for to see where they need to go hehe). 

Now scroll to the top and compare to my previous one - huge difference!

At the back I still had this:

I folded the cables in as neat as I could, and finally closed the case.

Now, if you've ever built a PC, you'll know that you also leave the case open until you've tested it. Luckily that wasn't necessary this time, everything worked perfectly when I booted up, and the case is MUCH MUCH quieter than my previous one, so that by itself is a huge bonus!

TADA!!!

If I were to give this case a rating, it would get a solid 9 out of 10. I would have given it more, maybe a 9.5, if the screws weren't so soft, that's really the only issue I had through the whole experience. I look forward to one day finally upgrading the old thing, knowing that my new components will have a great place to call home once I do!