This is my rig: 3D designer.

The winter of 2013 was a busy one, pushing my aging socket 775 workstation to the breaking point. Both of us were showing the symptoms of working long hours, and after five years of heavy use, the Nvidia chipset-based system was plagued with failing components and BSODs. Unlike other unexpected expenditures, the idea of replacing my workstation was exciting. Building a new system may have been a necessity to keep my projects on schedule but I was going to indulge.

I’ve been building my own PCs for over a decade and as my attempts to personalize them evolved it became apparent that my machines were as much about artistic expression as about performance. The dying 2008 build had been my introduction to liquid cooling and resulted in a functional but novice effort. Now I had the maturity to create a first-class loop that looked as good as it cooled, and what better to pair it with than a X79 hexa-core processor?

This article will walk you through the components I chose, why I chose them and how I feel about them now that the system is running. My goal was simple: an attractive, clean-looking liquid-cooled system that would function as a workstation and gaming PC. I wanted to address the little details that would put this system a cut above anything I’ve designed in the past. Finally, I wanted it to be something I would be excited to turn on and work with.

There were no budgetary constraints when building this system other than paying sensible prices and not complicating the build with unnecessary options. A decent liquid cooling setup such as this allows for some extreme overclocking, though my goal was to run a moderate, stable overclock.