Hello everyone! This build has been in planning and prep for 6 months and I'm so happy, and slightly relieved, to finally be finished and bringing you all the final product. I am not a genius with formatting so most of the good stuff will be in the embedded Imgur album but I'll talk a little about my build and the process here.
But first, the pics:
First, the name, Reinhardt. For those that know the game Overwatch, you are probably familiar with the hero Reinhardt. For those that don't know, he is a giant German man with a personality larger than life. His main color scheme is gray/silver with a hint of red and from my pics, you can see my PC has the exact same color scheme, except for the RGB LEDs, but c'mon, it's 2017, there has to be RGB LEDs! I main Reinhardt in Overwatch and really enjoy his color scheme, as well as it being a good base for RGBs.
Secondly, let's talk about the case. Some of you may have seen all the posts @amitoza has made about his beautiful cases and prototypes. I held out until the second batch and unfortunately, that was the last time anyone really heard from him. From my understanding, there were 10 cases in that 2nd batch and 7 got shipped. None of us got shipping info or any word from him that the cases were sent. Several of us even got refunds through PayPal. I had started my refund process and was about 2 weeks away from having it finalized when the case just showed up at my door (and no, I am not going for a refund now, although I still think an explanation is due as well as an apology for just totally disappearing after I paid him nearly $200)! I was in disbelief because I never thought I'd get to see this thing. I had even already ordered a CustomMod Slim from @sergiiua, so I guess this means I'll have to do another build log? We'll just see about that. But back to the main point, the case came and I could move forward with my build. It seems the tolerances were a bit loose and I'm a little disappointed with the craftsmanship. I don't have a picture showing it, but the unibody is not symmetrical. It is more narrow at some points and not evenly bent all around. The motherboard standoffs should be moved back just a few mm. I was very nervous screwing the thing into place, although everything worked out fine in the end. It was impossible to mount the GPU to the case without removing the unibody and that was a nightmare. The thing is so thick and wants to bend back to its original shape, it took me several tries to line up the holes and get it screwed back on. If he would've left a few more mm of room above the GPU screw holes, that could've been avoided. With it all put together, those problems have diminished and I can overlook them, but I hope revisions are made if Amitoza ever appears again.
Third, OMG Ryzen ITX boards!!1! The long and grueling wait for a decent Ryzen motherboard sucked, to be honest (sorry Biostar). We were really only given two choices of layout and IO with the Gigabyte and Asus options. The Asus X370 one looked really nice and had the better chipset, but I knew I was never going to use the bifurcation and run a multi-GPU setup. Also, I have a lot of peripherals so I needed a lot of USB ports, and the Gigabyte has 8 on the back. That choice was made a bit easier by that alone. I'm not a huge overclocker, and I haven't even OC'ed the CPU yet, so the B350 chipset is fine with me. The layout was also not an issue and worked even better for me with how the case was laid out and how I had my G-Unique PSU made, which brings me to my next point.
Fourth, the power supply. Holllly crap this was a hard choice. HDPLEX, Pico, G-Unique, SFX, Flex, internal or external AC-DC converter. So many different form factors and options available. When I finally settled on the C-1 it narrowed it down, but there was still the choice between HDPLEX 160w, 300w(now 400w), and a G-Unique. The HDPLEX stuff seems to be of a high quality and has a strong following here, but the availability really made it hard as well as the big price tag. I realize I'm working with very niche products here when my case costs as much as a CPU, but I got to budget where I can. I knew I would also have to get custom sleeved cables because, at the time, the 300w option had a very ugly rainbow colored 24pin cable. But huge shout to @guryhwa who was very helpful in working with me to decide the proper model, lengths, and DC input connector I should use for my build. He is super knowledgeable and makes a simply amazing product that I would encourage everyone to check out. On top of that, his prices were unbeatable and everything has worked really well without any hiccups when stressing the GPU or gaming. I tried to get some pictures highlighting his PSU for anyone on the fence of ordering one.
That pretty much covers all the big points I wanted to cover. Thanks to those who read through all of this as well as those that helped me pick out parts or encouraged/inspired me throughout this whole build. I hope you have enjoyed and feel free to ask any questions.
But first, the pics:
First, the name, Reinhardt. For those that know the game Overwatch, you are probably familiar with the hero Reinhardt. For those that don't know, he is a giant German man with a personality larger than life. His main color scheme is gray/silver with a hint of red and from my pics, you can see my PC has the exact same color scheme, except for the RGB LEDs, but c'mon, it's 2017, there has to be RGB LEDs! I main Reinhardt in Overwatch and really enjoy his color scheme, as well as it being a good base for RGBs.
Secondly, let's talk about the case. Some of you may have seen all the posts @amitoza has made about his beautiful cases and prototypes. I held out until the second batch and unfortunately, that was the last time anyone really heard from him. From my understanding, there were 10 cases in that 2nd batch and 7 got shipped. None of us got shipping info or any word from him that the cases were sent. Several of us even got refunds through PayPal. I had started my refund process and was about 2 weeks away from having it finalized when the case just showed up at my door (and no, I am not going for a refund now, although I still think an explanation is due as well as an apology for just totally disappearing after I paid him nearly $200)! I was in disbelief because I never thought I'd get to see this thing. I had even already ordered a CustomMod Slim from @sergiiua, so I guess this means I'll have to do another build log? We'll just see about that. But back to the main point, the case came and I could move forward with my build. It seems the tolerances were a bit loose and I'm a little disappointed with the craftsmanship. I don't have a picture showing it, but the unibody is not symmetrical. It is more narrow at some points and not evenly bent all around. The motherboard standoffs should be moved back just a few mm. I was very nervous screwing the thing into place, although everything worked out fine in the end. It was impossible to mount the GPU to the case without removing the unibody and that was a nightmare. The thing is so thick and wants to bend back to its original shape, it took me several tries to line up the holes and get it screwed back on. If he would've left a few more mm of room above the GPU screw holes, that could've been avoided. With it all put together, those problems have diminished and I can overlook them, but I hope revisions are made if Amitoza ever appears again.
Third, OMG Ryzen ITX boards!!1! The long and grueling wait for a decent Ryzen motherboard sucked, to be honest (sorry Biostar). We were really only given two choices of layout and IO with the Gigabyte and Asus options. The Asus X370 one looked really nice and had the better chipset, but I knew I was never going to use the bifurcation and run a multi-GPU setup. Also, I have a lot of peripherals so I needed a lot of USB ports, and the Gigabyte has 8 on the back. That choice was made a bit easier by that alone. I'm not a huge overclocker, and I haven't even OC'ed the CPU yet, so the B350 chipset is fine with me. The layout was also not an issue and worked even better for me with how the case was laid out and how I had my G-Unique PSU made, which brings me to my next point.
Fourth, the power supply. Holllly crap this was a hard choice. HDPLEX, Pico, G-Unique, SFX, Flex, internal or external AC-DC converter. So many different form factors and options available. When I finally settled on the C-1 it narrowed it down, but there was still the choice between HDPLEX 160w, 300w(now 400w), and a G-Unique. The HDPLEX stuff seems to be of a high quality and has a strong following here, but the availability really made it hard as well as the big price tag. I realize I'm working with very niche products here when my case costs as much as a CPU, but I got to budget where I can. I knew I would also have to get custom sleeved cables because, at the time, the 300w option had a very ugly rainbow colored 24pin cable. But huge shout to @guryhwa who was very helpful in working with me to decide the proper model, lengths, and DC input connector I should use for my build. He is super knowledgeable and makes a simply amazing product that I would encourage everyone to check out. On top of that, his prices were unbeatable and everything has worked really well without any hiccups when stressing the GPU or gaming. I tried to get some pictures highlighting his PSU for anyone on the fence of ordering one.
That pretty much covers all the big points I wanted to cover. Thanks to those who read through all of this as well as those that helped me pick out parts or encouraged/inspired me throughout this whole build. I hope you have enjoyed and feel free to ask any questions.
