First build: GA-B85M-DS3H - HD4600 - i3 4370

[astram]

First Build: Core i3-4370 - GA-B85M-DS3H - 16GB RAM - HD 4600​

Components

INTEL Core i3-4370 Haswell 3.8 Ghz LGA 1150 54W
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LV8TZLU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117446

GIGABYTE GA-B85M-DS3H LGA 1150 Micro ATX Motherboard
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HB77YRW
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128672

CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) SDRAM DDR3 1600

Antec P50 Window MicroATX Mid Tower Computer Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129229

Cooler Master V550 Semi Modular PSU 550W 80+ Gold
http://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master-V550-Compact-Generation/dp/B00IFQSO68/
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171092


Already Owned

Samsung SSD 840 EVO MZ-7TE250BW 250GB SATA 6.0Gb/s Internal Solid State Drive

Seagate Momentus 7200.1 ST910021AS 100GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 2.5" Internal HD

Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9320423AS 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 2.5" Internal HD

Hyundai X91W 19" Wide LCD TFT

Apple Wired Keyboard

Apple Magic Mouse


Comments

My time has come. Thanks to everybody whom I read (Too many to name.)

In the past weeks my mid 2010 MacBook Pro was having more and more kernel panics caused by switch of integrated/discrete VGA. I downgraded it to Snow Leopard with an old hard disk and is now working fine, but for a new machine i decided this time to go my way, with a desktop.

Took apart the 250Gb Samsung SSD from MBP and a couple of spare 2.5" HDD (80 & 320 Gb) and start my first build. Now I'm running Os 10.11 on the SSD and Linux Mint on the small HDD, using the 320Gb (exFat) for data. The installation of El Capitan was smooth, with UniBeast & Clover; did some of Toleda tricks to get audio running (still mute after sleep, "solved" with no sleep at all).

Here is what I assembled in the past weeks (started with a very low budget and some choices depends on offers from local stores):

1- Motherboard GA-B85M-DS3H: very small but cheap, has all I need (1 PciEx16 + 2 PCIe x1, 4 SATA III + 2 SATA II, 4 USB 3 + 8 USB 2, DVI & HDMI); BIOS version is F2 and i set it for UEFI boot.
2- CPU i3 4370 (w. stock cooler) ... is an i3... It was my mistake as I though "an haswell i3 will be superfaster than a Westmere i7", it's not "super" Since I do some video capture and encoding I plan an upgrade in the next weeks.
3- VGA. I didn't test graphics in deep and HD 4600 does an easy job, with a very low resolution monitor at 1440x900 (another upgrade in the next future).
4- RAM: 2x8Gb DDR3 Corsair Vengeance
5- PSU: CM V550the PSU is maybe a little oversize for my system, and I was not used to those big noisy fans since i was using MaBbooks (next time i'll get a fanless PSU)
6- Case: Antec P50. After my first Christmas build on a wooden shelf, I got this Antec "cube": Aluminum chassis is well made, but I had to rip off the plastic front and top cover, together with a buggy fan controller. I finally decided to lay the case in horizontal with the motherboard over PSU and HDD's.

I'm planning an upgrade of the CPU, with an i7 (4770/4790/5775) or i5-5675. I'll add soon in the 2 PCIe slots a Firewire and a Wifi card, leaving the PCIe x16 for a future video upgrade.

 

[ctyler]

hey, I'm building using same motherboard and cpu.

did you get it running? any snags along the way? any insight would be appreciated.