Project Rampage III, Cerberus: Sponsored by ASUS, Caselabs, Kingston

Official Sponsors






I had been working with full tower builds for Project Rampage and Project Rampage II using Corsair 800D as well as Caselabs STH10.

Below are the list of past builds I had worked,

Past Build Progress Logs:
Project Rampage: Corsair 800D

Project Rampage II: Caselabs STH10

Short Video of Project Rampage II:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ic74gyYGoRo

The build is named after Cerberus which is one of the greek mythological beast Three Headed Hellhound. As this is my 3rd build and instead of naming it as Project Rampage III. I would use the 3 headed hellhounds in sync with ROG series of greek inspired product names.

I would like to announce this begin the project log for Project Rampage Cerberus.

For this upcoming new build, I would like to work with something different and away from huge build. Project Rampage Cerberus is my new upcoming ITX build which will have the usual case mods as well as full watercooling setup.


I am proud to announce that ASUS, Caselabs and Kingston are my current official sponsors. I am thankful for their support and making this ITX build possible.

So far I had gathered the following components.

System Components
Intel i7 4770K
ASUS ROG Impact VI
ASUS ROG Poseidon GTX 780
ASUS ROG Front Base
Kingston 3K HyperX SSD 240GB (yet to arrive)
Kingston HyperX Fury DDR3 Memory (yet to arrive)
Caselabs S5 with Pedestal (yet to arrive)

For the upcoming months I will continue to gather my resources and components and hopefully this rig will be up before August 2014.

Stay in tune for the upcoming unboxing of the ASUS ROG gear!

 

ASUS Republic of Gamers, Front Base


ASUS Republic of Gamers, Front Base, Unboxed



ASUS Republic of Gamers, Front Base, Rear View


ASUS Republic of Gamers, Front Base Front View

 

For Project Rampage III, Cerberus, instead of the using custom watercooling block. I had chose a GPU which does both hybrid cooling, which does both air cool and water cool at the same time.

ASUS Republic of Gamer series of GPU, Poseidon GTX 780 is my ideal choice. Not only it offers hybrid cooling but also offer great performance for a single GPU setup.

It is more than sufficient to meet my HTPC/ living room gaming needs. Below are some of the sneak preview of the cards. I will do a detail unboxing image shots at a later date.

ASUS Republic of Gamers, Poseidon GTX780




ASUS Republic of Gamers, Poseidon GTX780 Aircool/Water Cool Capabilities


ASUS Republic of Gamers, Poseidon GTX780 Dissected


ASUS Republic of Gamers, Poseidon GTX780, Sneak peak of the card

 

Caselabs S5 with Pedestal






Caselabs S5 with Pedestal unboxed



Accessories for Caselabs S5



Flex Bay Panel with Custom Red Paint



Flex Bay 240mm Radiator



Flex Bay Device Mounting Kits



Caselabs S5 360mm Radiator Mounting Kits

 

Bitspower Fittings, D5 Tops, Mod Kit, Reservoirs and Water Block

This build I am focusing to minimizing the usage of multiple brands of water-cooling components. I will use all Bitspower products except for radiators and pump.

I would like to thank my sponsor Bitspower Taiwan for the generous sponsorship and I am very glad to able to use their latest EML products. I would like to also thank Vincent and Lily for the help to get the items to delivered to me all within a few days.

Here are the unboxing of the Bitspower Components.

Huge Parcel from Bitspower Taiwan


Unboxed Bitspower Parcel




I loves Bitspower D5 pump top and mod kit, specifically their Clear V2 Top and Matt Black mod kit. Great quality and this is my 4th set which 3 sets were in my Project Rampage II currently.

Bitspower D5 Pump Top with Mod Kit


Been using Bitspower fittings since day one of my water-cooling days. They produced the best quality one could get for fittings especially their rotaries. Their fittings does not tarnish like other competitor brands and most importantly they did not ever leaked on me. This is one of the main reason why all my rigs been using them and I never stop recommending them to fellow water-cooling newbies.

Below are just part of the fittings I had ordered as well as remaining fittings from my previous build. Normal Bitspowers EML fittings are not shown in the picture as I had yet to tore them up from their packaging.

Bitspower Fittings (Silver Shining)


Bitspower Dual EML 90 Degrees and Bitspower 90 Degrees Rotary with EML Fittings




Bitspower T and Q Joint Rotaries


Bitspower D Plugs, Bitspower Case Panel Pass Throughs, Bitspower Extenders and Bitspower Mini Valves





I hope you guys could see the quality of Bitspower fittings are offering from the photos I took. Thumbs up Bitspower!

 

Reserved for updates 03

 

Glad to announce that BeQuiet has joined the sponsorship for Project Rampage III, Cerberus.

 

Updates:

I did some purchases on some of the water-cooling parts, started with the radiators. I chose to use Alphacool's NexXxos UT60s for this build. This build I intend to use dual 360mm radiators to cool the CPU, Mobo and GPU (Hybrid).

Here are the unboxing of the Alphacool's NexXxos UT60 360mm radiators.



Dual Alphacool NexXxos UT60 360mm


Close-up on the fins of Alphacool NexXxos UT60 360mm

 

Updates:

For this build, I be paying a lot to details. Instead of just going to use M3 screws, I be adding some colors to them. I had ordered lots of anodized aluminum screw rings to go with the screws. Below are some of the images of these little beauties.

Anodized Aluminum Screw Rings

 

Finally, Caselabs S5 and Pedestal was delivered last night. Spent the whole night taking photos of the new toy. Instead of doing up a time lapse video building of Caselabs S5 and Pedestal. I decided to do something different.

Building of Caselabs Mercury S5 and Pedestal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNGjUx0rcF8

 

Updates:

For Project Rampage III, Cerberus, I had decided to use CoolerMaster's CM Storm Aluminum Series of gaming products. Reason for opting this series of gaming peripherals from CoolerMaster is because they have removable plates which I might be able to work on some mods on them as well as they looked really well built.



Apart from the removable Aluminum Plates, all of the CM Storm's Aluminum Series peripherals are using White LEDs. I always love White LEDs which explains the reason all of my builds used white LEDs.

My first impression of the peripherals are they are all very well built and their packaging looked premium and sexy!


CoolerMaster CM Storm Aluminum Series Mech Mechanical Keyboard


I shall start short personal review with the CM Storm Aluminum Mech Mechanical keyboard. I had gotten the brown switch for this new keyboard. I always love Cherry Brown Switch as I am sharing room with my baby and wife. I won't wish to disturb them with the late night gaming sessions with the typing of the keyboard.


Mech Mechanical Keyboard itself is huge, its really huge! Love the textures from the aluminum plates to the plastic body. The top chassis of the Mech keyboard is covered with the removable aluminum plate and the rest of the body is made of plastic. The plastic body is made of high quality plastic which itself I felt could withstand some hard knocks.

Overall view of the Mech Mechanical Keyboard


Close-up Shot of the Aluminum and Plastic Body




The Mech Keyboard has also a built in handle which is very handy for Lan party.

CM Storm's Mech Mechanical Keyboard also come equipped with 2 X USB 3.0 ports, Mini USB port and also the audio ports as well. These ports could be used for your wired mouse as well as USB devices.

Close-up View of the USB and Audio Ports of Mech Mechanical Keyboard

 

Just wish to share the new gaming peripherals I had recently purchased. Recently I posted the personal review of the CoolerMaster CM Storm Mech Mechanical keyboard and here is the next gear I gotten for Project Rampage III Cerberus. Welcome CoolerMaster CM Storm Reaper!


CoolerMaster CM Storm Reaper

For my new setup, I had decided to use CoolerMaster's CM Storm Aluminum Series of gaming products. Reason for opting this series of gaming peripherals from CoolerMaster is because they have removable plates which I might be able to work on some mods on them as well as they looked really well built.

Reason I decided on the CM Storm Reaper gaming mouse is because of the great quality I had seen in this series of gaming peripherals by CoolerMaster.



Skipping the technical details of the mouse, this review is more of the first impression as well as built which I think is more practical (Personally I dont bump my DPI to more than 3200).

CM Storm Reaper has a total of 8 Programmable buttongs which is more than enough for my gaming needs.



The games I played are Diablo 3, DOTA 2, Titanfall, BF4 and some RTS such as Starcraft 2 and Company of Heros 2.

The programmable buttons can be saved into 4 different profiles which are saved onto the Reaper's onboard memory itself. This is actually very good as I do game on my laptop as well. I could just plug the Reaper from my main rig and just use it on my laptop with all the profiles.


CoolerMaster CM Storm Reaper Unboxed




In terms of ergonomics, CM Storm Reaper is really good for users who use the Palm holding method. The buttons are also well spread out and my thumbs had no issues reaching the buttons.

Even my wife who has small hands, she has no issues handling the mouse.



CM Storm Reaper's side button could be seen at the picture above. Beside the common forward/Backward buttons, the Clutch button could be seen in the picture.

The extra button could be programmed as well. This is extremely useful in some games which you will want to bind the button to certain skills.

The Clutch button is huge enough so one should have no issues reaching the button.



The CM Storm Reaper has a aluminum plate which is removable. So user could able to mod it, paint it or cover with Carbon Fibre sticker to have a custom look to it.



Beside the rear plate is made of aluminum, the scroll wheel is also seems to make of metal as well. The metallic wheel has a very nice texture which I love it a lot. Comparing to rubber textured ones, CM Storm's Reaper scroll wheels is a lot better in terms of control as well as feel.

At front of the CM Reaper, there are also two LED vent holes which will emits white LEDs. I love white LEDs as it can easily fit into any other color themes of PC setup. I would appreciate if CM Storm would come with RGB LEDs which I think a lot of people would welcome that as well.

Lastly, CM Storm Reaper is using gold plated USB as well as braided cable. This is a very nice touch as I really love braided cables.



Overall, I am really happy and pleased with CoolerMaster CM Storm Reaper gaming mouse.

This is my very first CoolerMaster gaming mouse which I had purchased and I am glad I did. In terms of quality as well as ergonomics of the mouse itself, I felt it can easily rival some other major brands.

Stay tune for the last of the CM Storm Aluminum series of gaming peripharel's review, CM Storm Pulse-R.

 

Update:

For Project Rampage III Cerberus, I had decided to use BeQuiet's Pure Wings 2 for my radiator fans.



Reason I chose these fans is because of their performance as well as their near silent at full speed. I love the Pure Wings 2 frame as well which had moved away from the old and common fan's frame.



The fans came without any sleeves, but it is not an issue as I will be resleeving all of the fans anyway. Pure Wings 2's cables are all black in color which is a plus point. I prefered it to be black rather than the norm which are red/black/yellow cables.

 

Updates:

Updates the Bitspower shipment of items in the first page. Will soon take some photos of the Bitspower dual reservoir as well as the Bitspower ASUS Impact VI water block very soon.

Currently, most items had arrived. As was busy for the past one week on the Project Siren project, I had yet to find time to work on this build.

I planned to start to work on the pedestals first.

- Mounting fans to the radiators
- Soldering the fans to 3 fans > 1 X 3pin cable.
- Sleeving the fans cables

These are my planned for the build this week. Will also try to find time to mount the ASUS impact waterblock as well.

 

Updates:

For Project Rampage III, Cerberus, I will be using Kingston's enthusiast series of memory modules.I had chose to use Kingston Fury 8GB Kit (1866) for this project due to its low profile as well as good overclocking performance. Personally I dont like too much bling on my memory modules, always love them to be clean and low profile.

Here are the images to these beautiful memory modules.

Kingston HyperX Fury 8GB Kit (2 X 4GB, 1866)

 

Updates:

This is the third unboxing review of the CoolerMaster CM Storm Aluminum Series of gaming peripherals.

I had chosen to use CoolerMaster CM Storm Pulse R for my gaming headset for this build. Chose this headset for the synergy of design, white LEDs, practical, well built and removable mic.



Apart from the removable Aluminum Plates, all of the CM Storm's Aluminum Series peripherals are using White LEDs so is the CM Storm Pulse-R too.



Unboxing the CM Storm Pulse-R felt like unboxing an audiophile headphone. The packaging is well design and felt the boxes house something premium in it.





Opened up the box, the headphone and the removable microphone could be seen. Really nice packaging and appealing. SEXY!

At first look, CM Storm Pulse-R indeed look very big. The headbands look thick and sturdy and the cups were huge and looks comfy to wear.





The aluminum plates are secured by the screws could be seen, same high quality aluminum plates and CM Storm logos could be seen on both sides. One side shown CM Storm Logo, and the other side engraves the word.





The ear cups of CM Storm Pulse-R are huge, personally I have a larger head size head and yet the headphones are able to fit onto my head comfortably.

CM Storm Pulse-R's head band are huge and comfy. Beside using high quality plastic as the main structure of the whole headphone, aluminum or steel head bands could be seen on the headband itself.

Using 42mm Drivers, the headphone can dish out decent sound quality and yet not compromising the design and comfort. It is more of Bass heavy side, which is very good for gaming and movie sessions. The ear cups are also huge enough to cup the ears to avoid noise leakage which means it does isolates the external noises as well as you won't be disturbing people you with your gun fires and explosions in games.



Comparing to my previous gaming headset which is Steelseries, 5HV2, CM Storm Pulse-R felt a lot more sturdy and not as flimsy as compared to the 5HV2 which I used to own.

The removable microphone is another feature I like about this gaming headset. Instead of having this microphone sticking out or having it to turn upwards. CM Storm Pulse-R allows you to totally remove the microphone if you dont intend to use it at all. The microphone is bendable as well in order to bend into position which best suited.

The microphone has CM Storm logo engraved on it as well. Nice touch to the little details.





The cables of CM Storm's Pulse-R are like its fellows brothers are all braided, and the volume / microphone controller could be found on the cables which allows fast access to the volume as well as turning on/ off of microphone a lot easier and faster.



The cables are 3 metres long and they are long enough for you to plug in to your sound card behind your PC and having a braided cable also helps to reduce the chance of your cables being entangled together.

What I love about these cables are, they are removable! One does not have to throw away the whole headphone whenever the cables are broken. For CM Storm Pulse-R, users will just have to replace the cables instead of replacing the whole headphone. Damaged cables are a common issues due to the rough handling during gaming sessions. Nice and well thought by CoolerMaster.

On one end you could find the mini connector plug which is to plug to the headphone and the other end you will find a USB cable with 3.5mm audio and mic plugs.

The USB cables are used to power the white LEDs on the headphones and the analog 3.5mm plugs are meant for audio and microphone.





CM Storm Pulse-R indeed impresses me with the lightweight, sturdy, well built and great sound quality headphone. Packaged it with nice and premium packaging, it really felt as if I am unboxing my AKG or Beyerdynamic headphones.



Thumbs up CM Storm Pulse-R and glad it had joined the family of CM Storm Aluminum peripherals I had gotten as well.

 

Updates:

Since most of the items had arrived. I decided to work on my radiator and fans first. Removed the stickers on the fans and started mounting them onto the Alphacool UT60 360mm radiators as well as the mounting kit for Caselabs S5 pedestals.

Here are the images, personally I find them sexy and sleek!

BeQuiet Pure Wings with Alphacool UT60 360mm Radiator



I will work on the cables once I plan out the cables routing method and route.

 

Update:
I had gotten a new LCD monitor for the Project Rampage III Cerberus build. For this build, I decided to get a 144hz, 3D capable LCD screen. I decided to use ASUS VG248QE which has 144hz, 3D capable, Lightboost, Height Adjustable, Pivot functions. ASUS VG248QE has all the functions that I need.

ASUS VG248QE


Unboxing ASUS VG248QE


Unboxed ASUS VG248QE


Rear of ASUS VG248QE


The rear of the ASUS VG248QE has a nice red cable management hook. It serves its purpose well giving ample cable space. Nice touch!

There are various input options such as HDMI, DVI as well as Display Port. Sadly that only the DVI (Dual Link) and Display Port are able to support 3D and 144hz.

ASUS VG248QE provides a dual link DVI cable which I find it too short. I need a longer cable so I went ahead to purchase a 3metre long of Display Port cable as well as a longer power cord 3 metre as well.

Since its a Nvidia Vision monitor, I had bought Nvidia Vision to be use with ASUS VG248QE. The built in Lightboost as well as 144hz refresh rates really makes me enjoy FPS games a lot better than my current Samsung S27A850D. ASUS VG248QE really champs as a gaming monitor.

Closeup of ASUS logo on ASUS VG248QE



Beside the ASUS VG248QE, I had also received various parts as well for the build.

I found out I had more than enough clearance to mount a push and pull fan configuration for both my 360mm radiators. So I went ahead and requested additional 10 more pieces of BeQuiet's Pure Wings 120mm fans.

To control the all of the radiator fans, I had decided to buy 3 sets of Swiftech Fan Hub. The fan hub has PWN control as well as able to power 8 fans per hub. The PWN from the hub will be connected to my ASUS Impact board.

Beside the fans, I had also gotten a Swiftech MCP655 pump as well additional 2 metres of E22 tubings. With the remaining tubing I had left from the Project Rampage II build, I had a total of more than 3 metre of E22 tubing.

 

Update:

For my Project Rampage III Cerberus, I had decided to use Kingston HyperX Fury series of 8GB DDR3-1866 kit.



As the build is meant for media rig for my living room, I don't need high memory or high performance memory. Kingston HyperX Fury fits the bill, in terms of price to performance.





The Kingston HyperX Fury line of memory will position itself between the HyperX Genesis and high-end HyperX Predator. Kingston aims to provide a affordable performance and enthusiast priced memory. Nice!

The Fury came in different color of heat spreader, Red, White, Black and Blue. Depending of the color scheme of the build, users have no issues in finding the right color.

The heat spreader of the memory modules are low profile and the PCB of the memory are black. Very nice, no more ugly green PCB!



Specifications of Kingston HyperX Fury

PNP: Plug and Play automatically overclocks the memory up to the system maximum specs.
Capacities: 1866 MHz
CAS Latency: 9,10.
Voltage: 1.5 V
Reliable: 100% tested.
Guaranteed: Lifetime warranty.

Once the memory is plugged in, this is what you’ll see for the SPD information. One feature of this memory is its ability to boot up at its rated speeds and timings from the get go.

Unlike my Corsair Vengence memory modules, I do not have to manually set the memory speed. Thumbs up!

The HyperX logo could be seen at the top of the heatspreader. The sides of the heatspreader, HyperX logo are not painted but more of CNC cut, very nice as well!





Loving the HyperX series of products!

 

Updates:

Beside the huge pile of fittings which I received from Bitspower, I had also receive the water block for my ASUS Maximums VI Impact. I had chose Ice Black for the water block top. Wish to move away from the norm clear top which I always had used.

Here are some of the images of the beautiful block.

Bitspower ASUS Maximums VI Impact Nickel Block (Ice Black)



Bitspower ASUS Maximums VI Impact Block Unboxed



Bitspower ASUS Maximums VI Impact Nickel Block



Sadly, the block that covers the Impact Power is not really chrome finish if not it will look perfect. Overall I am really please with the water block, the kit comes with all the thermal paste, thermal pads, screws as well as an instructional manual. The quality of the block is good and top notch. Thumbs up Bitspower!