The Crimson Adventurer Build

I built a new system for a friend in 2013 as his system was extremely outdated and he was ready to go to next gen so he could play Battlefield 4 as well as other PC games. I set him up with some good hardware and assembled it all so he could enjoy Battlefield 4 and most other games on the market at comfortable frame rates. Here are the specs:

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Processor: Intel Core i5-4670K @ 4.4GHz
Motherboard: MSI Z87-GD65 Gaming
Memory: Corsair XMS3 2x4GB @ 1333MHz
Heat-sink: Sunbeamtech Twister 120
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 750W
Graphics Card: EVGA Superclocked GTX 770 w/ ACX Cooling
Hard Drives: Seagate Barracuda 500GB (x2)
Optical Drive: Samsung DVDRW
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Case: DIYPC Adventurer-9601R
Other: ASUS PCE-AC66 PCI-E Wireless Adapter
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Some of the parts were recycled from his old system. Those parts include the heatsink, the HDDs and the GTX 460. The Toughpower Grand is an old PSU from my system before I upgraded to my AX1200i. Everything else listed is for the build is brand new. That being said, the used parts all look pretty pristine but the HDDs could use some replacing sometime soon as they appear to be having some minor performance issues. Sorry for some of the pictures as looking back some of them have huge flash issues and I didn't realize it until after reviewing them. With that in mind, let's take a look at the build:

The Z87-GD65 Gaming Box

Rear of the Z87-GD65 Gaming box

For the motherboard, I went with a MSI Z87-GD65 Gaming motherboard, as the aesthetic would go perfectly with a black and red system. It's a good value red themed overclocking board and, aside from Gigabyte (who have also recently started doing black and red motherboards), the MSI Gaming line is the only other good red and black themed "value" board on the market. The ASUS ROG based boards tend to run a bit more on the expensive side and do not add much of a benefit for a budget overclocked system.

Accessories that come with the Z87-GD65 Gaming

MSI put quite a few accessories in the box for this motherboard. In the box with the motherboard, it also comes with a cool shield shaped case badge, the I/O shield, four SATA cables, the manuals and CD, a SLI bridge, the front panel M-Connectors, a door hanger, and some voltage probe connectors to attach to the v-check jumpers on the motherboard if one wishes to monitor the voltages on the motherboard directly.

The Z87-GD65 Gaming motherboard in the box

The Z87-GD65 Gaming motherboard all shiny and new

The motherboard comes wrapped in one of the more durable anti-static bags to shield it during shipment. Removing the board from the bag you're greeted with a very nice black and red themed motherboard with the standard affair of PCI-E slots, DDR3 slots, and other standard ATX features on the motherboard. One thing that is interesting is that MSI includes a sticker on the board notifying that if you use the MSATA slot on the motherboard that SATA slot six will be disabled. One feature that is starting to become popular with a lot of the motherboards since the 1150 socket was introduced is MSATA/M2 slots for low profile SSD installation direct to the motherboard. It's a nice feature, but won't be used in this build. The motherboard does have the power and reset buttons in the lower left which is nice for anyone running a test bench before installing a system into a rig. Other notable features are the OC Genie button (always handy if you just want a quick boost to your system without going all out on overclocking settings) along with an OC switch (as there are 2 profiles for this board's OC Genie), a diagnostic LED for error codes, a multi-BIOS switch located next to the 24 pin connector (in case you have a BIOS flash fail or something else occur), the aforementioned V-Check points to check voltage directly on the motherboard using a voltmeter, and a GO2BIOS button located next to the OC Genie switch that allows one to boot directly to the BIOS without having to hit DEL on the keyboard.

The i5-4670K used for the build

The i5-4670K installed in it's new home

The CPU used in this system is an i5-4670K, which right now is sort of the standard in terms of building an Intel-based gaming rig. They overclock well, and perform excellent. The unlocked multiplier makes it incredibly easy to overclock the system to around 4GHz without much of a headache. For this build, we managed to squeeze 4.4GHz out of the system without too much hassle though.

The DIYPC Adventurer-9601R's box

The Adventurer nicely packed away

For the rig, we went with a DIYPC Adventurer-9601R, which is a nice black and red themed case that comes pre-equipped with pretty much every fan slot filled with the largest fans that can be equipped for that slot. The box that it comes in is fairly plain, but shows off a bit of what the rig looks like on one of the sides. The case ships in the standard polystyrene clamshell with the rig encased in a plastic bag.

The Adventurer out and ready for adventures

Taking the rig out of the box, I was immediately reminded of my CM690 II in terms of overall layout and design. It even has an area on the top for an external SATA bay slot, but the slot itself does not come with the connector installed, it's something that has to be purchased separately. It just has a rubber seal as a placeholder to protect the plastic from getting chipped or damaged in any way that would prevent you from installing a SATA connector in the slotted area. The entire case has an air of quality about it. Everything seems to fit quite well together with good lines. It should be considering the price point of the rig. The front of the rig has all mesh 5.25" bay covers with very thin foam installed inside of all of them to act as a dust filter. The side panel is a smoked plastic window that has no mounting for a fan but the system has plenty of ventilation as it is. There are two 120mm red LED fans installed on both the front and top as well as one 120mm fan installed in the rear. The rig also comes equipped with three fan controllers to control the three fan zones (top, front and rear) which can be handy if you want to adjust between a silent and a full performance setup for your fans on the fly. For this build, I simply left them at high speed. The top I/O is the standard affair of 2 USB 2.0 ports, front audio jacks, the aforementioned fan speed controllers, and a USB 3.0 port.

Nice meshing on the top of the Adventurer

The two included 120mm red LED exhaust fans on the Adventurer

The top fan filter that covers the two top 120mm fans is easily removed by pressing the two corners closest to the rear of the rig and it simply pops up and out of the system for easy cleaning and also to gain access to the two top mounted 120mm red LED fans. The fans are bolted down by long Phillips head screws that span the full length of the fan and then screw down into the rig itself. The screws are tapped to a specific length, so you can't over-tighten the screws causing your fan frames to warp. One could possibly modify the rig to have a top based radiator, but it would require some cutting of the case frame to fit the tubing down into the case along with some creative thinking for the mount.

The inside of the Adventurer

So with the side panel removed on the Adventurer it has a pretty normal layout of a "gamer" style rig. All of the 3.5" drive bays are tool-less and slide on caddies. The 5.25" bays also have tool-less thumb screw style knobs that lock in the drive. The topmost 3.5" bay contains the box of all the accessories for the rig. The Adventurer comes with the motherboard mounts pre-installed. All of the expansion slots come with thumb screws for tool-less removal.

The large CPU cut-out on the Adventurer's motherboard tray

The Adventurer comes with a very large CPU cut-out in the motherboard tray to accommodate for swapping heatsinks without removing the motherboard. It has nice rolled edges to prevent any sort of sharp edges to catch skin on so that's pretty nice and it also adds a bit of a "premium" look to the finish.

Ample expansion slot room when the top set of the 3.5" drive bays are removed

The top few 3.5" drive bays are actually removable to allow for long expansion cards to be installed in the system with plenty of room for nice airflow. There's a plastic tab on the bottom of the removable bays that you simply lift up and allows them to slide out. You can see the locking notch in the metal sheeting. It also opens up one of the 120mm fans on the front to allow for direct intake instead of being blocked partially by the 3.5" bays. You can also see a bit of a close up on the 5.25" bay knobs.

The Adventurer-9601R's included accessories

The Adventurer comes with the standard affair of accessories. It does come with extra screws to mount another 120mm fan to the system, washers to mount the motherboard on "safely", the screws to mount the motherboard to the pre-installed standoffs, some case screws, some extra motherboard standoffs in case you have an oddly configured motherboard, and some other miscellaneous screws for the case.

The Adventurer's front with the panel removed

With the front panel removed you can see the included 120mm red LED lit fans with the same transparent red blades as the top mounted fans. One of the 5.25" bays already comes uncovered with the other two being removable but also able to be screwed back in if you're no longer using them which is an interesting idea to partition the 5.25" bays. It's a shame that they aren't all able to have that option, but still neat that they thought of that if someone wanted to keep those covered for some reason.

The non-windowed side panel removed from the Adventurer

The back side panel has a large protrusion to allow for more space behind the motherboard tray for routing cables. It also allows the Adventurer to have a "balanced" look to go with the smoked window on the other side panel.

The rear of the Adventurer-9601R

The rear of the Adventurer is pretty standard, 7 expansion slots, a 120mm fan, included rubber grommets, and standard passive meshing to allow a bit more exhaust flow to the rear of the case. Even though most liquid cooling nowadays is inside desktop rigs as standard when building a liquid cooled system, it's still nice to see included grommets rather than having them as "unfinished" and having them as an option rather than omitting them altogether just allows for more options so that's great that DIYPC is including it. All of the expansion slots are black with nice mesh to allow for yet more passive exhaust on the system. The rear I/O is sunken in nicely with well rolled edges and seems to be precision cut rather than having slightly obtuse cut lines.

The backside of the motherboard tray on the Adventurer-9601R

The back of the motherboard tray is equipped with a plethora of cable tie points to allow for nice cable routing for a clean and tidy setup behind the motherboard. some of the areas actually are slightly recessed to allow for a larger cable such as a standard sleeved 24 pin connector to fit without making the case bulge (even though there's that nice large protrusion on the side panel to also allow for that. Here you can also see more nicely rolled edges for a few of the cut outs for cable routing inside the system. It is a shame that they didn't include rubber grommets to allow the Adventurer to look cleaner, but at least there's no sharp edges for the cables to catch on so that's a plus. There's also a metal tab that sticks out to allow for the front 120mm fan cables to rest on so they aren't just hanging loose behind the 3.5" drive bays.

The cut-away diagram of the DIYPC rigs

As can be shown on the instruction manual for the Adventurer, it has 5 included 120mm fans, with a spot for a 6th fan as indicated by number 14 on the diagram. Here you can also see the removable power supply and bottom fan mount dust filters as indicated by number 11 on the diagram. One thing odd about the diagram is that it seems like the picture is recycled from a different rig that DIYPC makes, but the layout is similar enough that they just posted it.

The front panel connectors for the Adventurer-9601R

The Adventurers cables are yet again a standard affair of front panel headers, a USB 3.0 header for the single 3.0 port on the top of the rig, and a molex connector for the fans. I do wish that the USB 3.0 header was black rather than blue as it kinda ruins the aesthetic of the Adventurer by having something bold blue in a red and black rig. Luckily it's mostly hidden so it isn't a huge loss, but still a con.

Some of the screw holes on the 3.5" drive caddy

An alternate view on the 3.5" drive caddies for the Adventurer

One of the Seagate 500GB drives installed in a caddy

The two Seagate HDDs installed into the Adventurer

The 3.5" drive bay caddies have a decent layout of where the HDDs can sit. The front tabs are little nubs that simply insert into the hard drive whereas there is also a rear screw hole to really lock the drive into the caddy. They also come with holes to install a 2.5" drive in a rearward position to allow for the cables to sit correctly in the drive. To install the drive it takes a bit of flexing to get the tabs up and into the screw holes but once it snaps into place the drive fits nice and snug in the drive caddy with no slop and also fits nice and tight in the drive bays once you slide them in. The caddy has a band that allows you to still see the serial number of your HDDs should you require them rather than having a thick band all the way across covering the drives completely.

The XMS3 ram used for the build

The RAM I chose for the build was some Corsair XMS3 ram running at 1333MHz because we got it at a good deal with the motherboard from NCIX and we were somewhat limited on the budget but 8GB is all the system will ever need so it's perfect. The ram's stickers aren't flashy or anything so the slight blue and white will go mostly unnoticed in the system when it's installed.

The Z87-GD65 Gaming motherboard installed in the Adventurer

So with the case being looked over, now was the time to install everything into the Adventurer. The motherboard fit quite nicely and looks thematically exactly how we were going for with the red and black accents all over the board complementing the rear 120mm fan quite nicely. The cable routing holes are in pretty optimal spots to allow for the 24 pin and the sata cables to plug almost directly into their slots without really showing much of said cables. The only thing that would make it better is if the 24 pin connnector was angled 90 degrees to allow for max "stealth" cabling. As the rig came with washers along with the screws for mounting the motherboard into the standoffs I said why not and installed those along with the screws.

The Sunbeamtech Twister 120 installed on the processor

With the heatsink installed, the fans included on the Sunbeamtech Twister 120 match almost perfectly with the rear 120mm fan on the Adventurer. I really do wish that the cable routing holes did have grommets though as you can see all of the cables dangling behind the holes. It's a shame that the USB 3.0 header was just a tiny bit too high to allow for a less stealthy approach to installing the header in. Instead, I had to go from the bottom most hole (I guess I could have tried the one above it now that I'm looking at it) to allow for clearance of the connector's stress relief part of the rubber. Had the middle hole been a bit bigger it would've fit perfectly which is a shame.

The EVGA GTX 770 SC box

For the build, I went with an EVGA GTX 770 SC. It seems that every time that nVidia comes out with a new set of cards, the x70 card is the best performance per dollar so that's what we went with. I've always been a fan of EVGA cards as plenty of times in the past whenever I've had to RMA there hasn't been a whole lot of fuss trying to mess around with customer support before they finally agree to RMA the card and their customer service always seems to be prompt which is great.

The accessories included with the GTX 770

The EVGA GTX 770 SC comes with a "useless" driver disc (could use it as a neat coaster), a couple of EVGA enthusiast built stickers (which would've been nice if they didn't have a white background but instead a transparent one), a DVI to VGA cable (seriously who still uses VGA anyway?), a "manual" for the card and a couple of molex to power connectors for powering up the card.

The GTX 770 used for the build

The GTX 770 SC comes with the ever beautiful ACX cooler which looks aesthetically (in my opinion) amazing. The card comes with a black face plate with some silver accents saying EVGA on the top and Geforce GTX 770 on the bottom in a nice brushed metal. I like how the bezel around the fan is slightly extruded allowing it look kinda sleek but still curvy (and who doesn't like a bit of curve right?).

The GTX 770 installed into the Adventurer rig

Installing the GTX 770 into the system is your standard affair. Here you can see the SLI fingers covered nicely by a rubber cover with the EVGA logo on it. Also you can see the required power inputs (6 pin and 8 pin connectors) and the wrapped around brushed metal part of the face plate with the EVGA logo and the gtx 770 also engraved there. The brushed metal has a bit of a goldish hue to it which is kinda nice as well.

The Toughpower Grand and GTX 460 installed into the Adventurer

After installing the GTX 770 into the rig, I proceeded to install his old GTX 460 as a physx card (which would be later removed) and the Toughpower Grand power supply. The PSU also fit quite nicely aesthetically speaking with its red trim going well with the red and black theme of the rig. I do wish that the Adventurer did have a bit of a larger cut out for the bottom hole to allow for a bit tidier of cable management of the power supply, but you gotta work with what you got. Once again with the middle two cable routing holes they were a bit too small so routing the power connectors to the GTX 770 looks a bit disappointing unfortunately.

The PCE-AC66 wifi card box

The PCE-AC66 card and it's included antennas

A closer look at the PCE-AC66 card

So for the last bit of the kit, I added the PCE-AC66 wifi card by ASUS into the system. Luckily it's red look goes nicely with the overall theme so it doesn't seem to distract. The AC66 card comes with an external antenna base for mounting in a higher up position or elsewhere away from the back of the rig to allow for a slightly better signal rather than being near a bunch of other cables causing possible cable noise and reducing the wifi signal. My friend wanted a wifi card as where he was renting from he had no access to any sort of ethernet cabling for the internet unfortunately. But as the AC66 has modern wifi tech built into it, it shall work well for decent online gaming without too much latency issue that tends to occur with standard wifi pollution.

The PCE-AC66 card installed in the Adventurer

With the wifi installed we get a final look at the system one last time before closing it up. Luckily the side panel window is tinted so you won't see a huge amount of the "mess" of cables near the routing holes. The AC66 wifi card's heatsink looks very eye catching and really goes well with the rest of the rig. Aside from a couple of nuances in the Adventurer rig, the system turned out fairly well. I decided to leave the one set of hard drive trays out of the system to allow for better intake of the rig as there won't be more than 4 HDDs installed in the system at any give time anyway.

The completed look and powered up Adventurer ready to rock!

With the system completed and powered on it looks pretty great with an excellent glow coming out of the front of the meshing. It's a shame that the HDD activity light is more of a pink color and the blue is so bright. If they would've changed those to fit the build a bit better I think it would've suited a lot more to have a white power LED and a nice red led that is the same color as all the LED fans in the Adventurer. One other problem I noticed after building the system is that the LEDs for the power phases on the MSI motherboard were bright blue instead of red which is really dumb considering that MSI was clearly trying to go with a black and red board theme. A bit of a miss there and I hope they have fixed that in future board revisions.

Overall the system was a breeze to build in with ample room thanks to DIYPC's thoughtful and convenient setup of cable tie points on the back of the motherboard tray combined with a large amount of space to work with inside the rig. This system has been running great for several years now and has since had the HDDs swapped and the GTX 460 (as mentioned before) removed from the system.