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[mojave]

I received the MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G last Thursday and installed in the new build. It fit fine. It looks like the case specifications for height are when a card slightly longer than the MSI is being used. The Gigabyte couldn't have been as high as the MSI since it needs to fit under the top of the drive bay.

I found this about HDMI 2.0 on the MSI:

Dennis Achterberg the Product Marketing Officer for MSI Components at MSI Europe said that the MSI GTX 970 Gaming Twin Frozr V 4GB is listed as HDMI 1.4 due to a lack of Official Certification by the HDMI consortium, the components are apparently 2.0 (NVIDIA spec) just the card itself hasn't passed the certification yet.

The MSI lacks the backplate that the Gigabyte has on it. It is completely silent since the fans don't kick in until the temp is higher. Load temps are a little higher than the Gigabyte, but not too much higher.

The HTPC is now silent with my ear right up to the rear. It idles with the CPU at 35C with the pump and all fans at about 600 rpm. The PSU and GPU fans don't kick on until the usage goes up.

I received the Thunderbolt 9pin to 5pin header cable adapter from ASUS last week. They said they are including the cable with new shipments of the ThunderboltEX II cards. I spent a lot of time Saturday trying to get Thunderbolt to work with no success. The motherboard settings for Thunderbolt aren't documented in the manual or online. I finally realized that I had bought the ThunderboltEX II Dual adapter and the pictures of the X99-Deluxe with a card installed only show the single version. I called ASUS this morning and they "think" I need to use the single version. I ordered one today.

ASUS website and customer service have no idea what Thunderbolt card works with the X99-Deluxe. They also don't know what any of the bios settings are for in the Thunderbolt section.  ? With the other Z87 motherboards, the instructions require one to use a certain slot on the motherboard. They aren't sure what PCIE slot to use on the X99-Deluxe. I guess I'll figure it out and let them know. 

[mojave]

Here is another picture of the interior with everything installed including the Blu-ray drive. This is the nicest and cleanest looking build I've ever had.

[Johnny_Friendly]

I'm really on the fence now.

I dig that board btw, but since I've got the red and black theme going, the white on the board would clash. (I can't be looking tacky.)

You may have answered this already, but I'm interested in what kind of build you came "from?"  My struggle right now is justification: and funding. I've built a number of systems over the past couple of years, but even when I made the switch from an AMD FX 8350 to a 4770k I didn't have to ditch EVERYTHING. I desperately want that new 5960X, having never had an extreme processor before. If all I had to do was get the CPU and a cheap new motherboard I'd drive to Microcenter today, plop it on some starter board, and upgrade later. With the discount you can get at MC, you can often get a board almost free when you buy a new CPU.

But there are no cheap LGA 2011-3 mobos. They start at $200, which isn't exactly a throw away proposition, at least not for me. And then there's the new RAM. So I continue to mull. Is it $1500 better than my 3 month old system?

It hurts not being the champ anymore, I won't lie,      and no one really knows how advanced Intel's SKYLAKE will be. But unlike this latest "refresh" crap, it's supposed to be a major advance. Should I wait? Not wait? Christ, I'm so confused!!!   ?

Congrats on a fine looking build.

[6233638]

This is the nicest and cleanest looking build I've ever had.

Those closed-loop CPU coolers certainly do make things a lot easier to work with inside the case, and look so much neater.
 
 
I'm still waiting on my 970 STRIX to ship. It's almost a week overdue now.
 
With recent discussion of The Evil Within recommending 4GB VRAM, and that new Lord of the Rings game (though it is of no interest to me) requiring 6GB VRAM for ultra textures, I'm almost wondering whether I should wait and see if 8GB cards turn up.
 
On the other-hand, I actually want to be able to play Alien: Isolation and The Evil Within at their highest settings when they come out in the next couple of weeks and my 1.2GB 570 won't cut it.

I dig that board btw, but since I've got the red and black theme going, the white on the board would clash. (I can't be looking tacky.)

This is why I don't buy cases with windows.
I like the system to look nice inside, but as long as the airflow is good, I don't really care any more.

But there are no cheap LGA 2011-3 mobos. They start at $200, which isn't exactly a throw away proposition, at least not for me. And then there's the new RAM. So I continue to mull. Is it $1500 better than my 3 month old system?

It hurts not being the champ anymore, I won't lie,      and no one really knows how advanced Intel's SKYLAKE will be. But unlike this latest "refresh" crap, it's supposed to be a major advance. Should I wait? Not wait? Christ, I'm so confused!!!   ?

It seems that at the same clockspeeds and number of cores in use, performance is virtually identical between Haswell (LGA1150) and Haswell-E (LGA2011-3) with some slight variance (<5%) depending on the task due to the DDR3/DDR4 differences. (lower latency vs higher bandwidth)
 
As you add more cores though, the clockspeed has to scale down to accommodate the extra heat and power requirements, so it really depends on whether your applications can actually utilize more than 4 cores - or whether you want the same performance with 4 cores, leaving two (or four) spare for other tasks.
 
The latter would be a benefit to me, but in the end, I decided that the performance gains just don't seem to be there yet to justify a complete new build for me - which it really would have been.
 
Haswell was not a refresh, but a new architecture. Broadwell is the Haswell refresh.
While Broadwell has been delayed, Intel has said that Skylake is on track for their original target, so it may be out sooner than expected.

[mojave]

I went from an i7-3770 to the i7-5820 with an SSD. For what I do, the difference in speed really isn't worth it. I was upgrading for other reasons and decided to go with the latest. If you game, you are much better off spending money on a video card upgrade to the new Maxwell cards. I would recommend waiting on the CPU, etc.

I'm still waiting on my 970 STRIX to ship. It's almost a week overdue now.

I haven't seen them in stock anywhere yet. Was it in stock when you ordered?

[6233638]

I haven't seen them in stock anywhere yet. Was it in stock when you ordered?

They did have stock in, but I missed the first batch after spending too long debating between the 970/980, and then figuring out which 970 I was going to buy.

[Johnny_Friendly]

Haswell was not a refresh, but a new architecture. Broadwell is the Haswell refresh.

I meant the 4790k that I'm currently running as the "refresh" part. It is basically a spruced up 4770k with a coat of new paint. (er, thermal paste). And I'm cool with that, because my 4770k was a dog as far as OC potential was concerned. Even on a closed loop Corsair 110 I could barely get a stable 4.2 OC. I ditched my Cooler Master V8 GTS a couple days ago for a new in box Glacer 240L I picked up off Craigslist for $60. I'll start fiddling with the settings soon and see how high I can go beyond the 4.4 number I've been too lazy to change.

Noctua does make a great fan, and I own a couple, but until this point I've only been able to use them in hidden locations due to their less than flattering color scheme. But now that they offer them in a subtle yet tasteful grayish black combination, they are definitely on the shortlist again. Who knows, could LED's be on the horizon? Sacre' bleu!

[mojave]

I finally had success with Thunderbolt last night! I received the ThunderboltEX II card (single) yesterday. ASUS tech support said I needed to use this card. However, I first tried the ThunderboltEX II Dual card I already had in the PCI-EX4_1 slot. This slot was covered by the GTX 970's fan so I had to move the 970 down to the PCIEX16_2 slot. It barely cleared the Corsair H75's radiator and fans. In the BIOS I had to manually set the PCI-EX4_1 slot to 4X speed. I booted up, connected the Lynx Aurora 16-Thunderbolt and the HTPC recognized it! I quickly connected the Aurora to my amps and played some music. It all works great! I guess I can return the ThunderboltEX II card (single) that I shipped Next Day Air.

The PCI-EX4_1 slot shares bandwidth with a USB3 header and a SATA Express port. When set to 4X mode, the header and port are disabled. It isn't a big deal.

After I installed the Thunderbolt card, I had the top of the case off. After booting up all the Noctua fans were spinning. I couldn't hear them even with my ear right above the open top of the case. I really like these fans. The only noise I could detect was a slight noise from the water pump. However, my ear had to be within about 4" to hear it.

Next up is getting the drives formatted in my new OWC Thunderbay 4 enclosure. I tried last night, but the drives wouldn't show up in disk management. I called OWC this morning and with Windows, I need to boot to safe mode to format the drives and then they will be recognized. I'll try tonight.

The drive bay is very nice and the fan is very quiet. The enclosure automatically turns on/off depending on the HTPC power state. The longest copper Thunderbolt cable is 10' with optical cables available up to 200'. What I like is the daisy chain capability. I can connect additional enclosures with 18" cables. Each enclosure can currently hold 24 terrabytes with 4 x 6TB drives. Six enclosures can be connected with only cable going to the HTPC so one can scale up to 144TB. With the ThunderboltEX II dual card, I can have the Lynx Aurora on one port with 5 additional drive bays and the 6 more drive bays on the other port. Now I'm all set for expansion to 264TB with 6TB drives and 4x enclosures. 

The drives are supposed to show up separately in Windows so one needs to use Window 8's Storage Spaces or software RAID for the drives. I think one could also use something like Drive Bender.

In addition to 6 devices per Thunderbolt port, you can also daisy chain 3 monitors. So really you get 9 devices altogether per port. There is a cable that goes from the video card DisplayPort out to the DisplayPort in on the Thunderbolt card. This lets one add 6 monitors in addition to the other outputs on the video card. I'm not sure what I would use it for, but it might be helpful for a whole house video system. Of course then you would need to run the pricey optical Thunderbolt cables.

The motherboard has some nice network and wireless features. Perhaps these can be accomplished other ways, but I thought it was nice to be part of the motherboard purchase.
1.  There is both bluetooth and wireless output with an antenna included. You can use the bluetooth for transferring files from your phone to the HTPC. The wireless supports 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac and can be used to connect to a wireless router, or it can make the HTPC into a wireless router. 

2.  Wi-Fi Go! function lets you download an app and control the computer from your handheld device. You can view the computer screen or type on the computer. You can also transfer pictures and other data to your computer from your phone. For example, you can take pictures on vacation and transfer them home using the app.

3.  ASUS Cloud Storage:  You get 5 GB of cloud storage and can sync not only from your computer, but from any other devices you might have like Android phones and laptops. It can even keep the data synced between your computer and laptop and the cloud.

4.  Turbo APP:  You can specify clocking and fan profiles on an application basis.

5.  Turbo LAN:  You can specify network priority on an application basis.

[mojave]

I was able to format the drives in the Thunderbolt enclosure by booting to safe mode. One nice thing about the Thunderbolt enclosure is that I can do whatever I want with the drives. For example, I could stripe two 4TB drives and add an 8 TB drive for backup. The forth drive could be a weekly backup that I remove and store in a fireproof safe or off site.

[Hilton]

I was able to format the drives in the Thunderbolt enclosure by booting to safe mode. One nice thing about the Thunderbolt enclosure is that I can do whatever I want with the drives. For example, I could stripe two 4TB drives and add an 8 TB drive for backup. The forth drive could be a weekly backup that I remove and store in a fireproof safe or off site.

Hey Mojave,

I'm looking at doing a very similar build to this one in the same case moving both my gaming PC rig over to this case and my HTPC to another one of the cases as well.
I'm about to go all rackmount for my gear.

I like what you've done with thunderbolt! Never thought of going down that route!

How is the rig running?  I have the H75 cooler too in my current HTPC case and would do the same as you cutting the drive bays out.

My board is an E-ATX X79 Mboard which the case is supposed to support, do you think the H75 will still fit in the front left?

Cheers mate.
Really love what you've done with this build!

[mojave]

The HTPC is running great and stays cool and quiet. I have to clean the bottom and side screens at least every 6 months. I should probably do it every 3 months. The inside of the case stays nice and clean due to the positive pressure.

I have done more builds with the GD-07 case. The H75 should fit with any motherboard. However, you have to be careful not to use too long of a graphics card. I've used some Asus Z-170 Deluxe motherboards and you can see in the picture below how everything fits.

I've done a build with the GD-08 case. I prefer the GD-07. The main (only) reason is because the GD-08 has drive doors that are difficult to get to work properly. Half the time the drive won't open without manual intervention. With the GD-07 you get a nice clean look and the drive bays don't have an extra drive bay door that is integral to the case.

[Hilton]

Thanks for updates!

Yeah I was a bit worried about the drive doors, but I don't want to wait another 3-6 weeks for the GD07 cases to arrive so I switched to the GD08. I think in my use case, being in a rack with front door it's probably more practical anyway.  I'm sure I could mod the drive bay doors to mount directly to the drive tray if needed. Nothing a dremel cant fix.

I downloaded the manual and you cant fit 120mm fans at the front when using an E-ATX MB, but you can still fit 6x60mm fans though.
I have a ASUS Rampage IV black X79 MB with 4960X CPU which is an E-ATX (SSI EEB) size MB that's going in from my old workstation/gaming PC.

That means I'll have to mod the drive tray and mount the h75 rad/fan upright in the space of 3 of the 5 1/4 bays instead of flat on the bottom. I know from the current case that the h75 is in that it fits in the space of 3 drive bays so at least I think I can still get it to work!

I was very tempted to just get a Thermaltake Core X9 case which would only just fit in the 12RU rack but it would be overkill and I'm also trying to downsize and consolidate my gaming/HTPC into one rig!

From the research I've done it looks like it's possible to fit 2 x 240 rads into the case using the E-ATX board with a tiny bit of modding to the drive tray like you did. One in the back corner and one in the opposite front corner.  When the next gen GPUs come out I'll maybe have a look at upgrading to a water cooled GPU too.

Thanks again for your input!