Build Thread 3.0

[Keyrock]

I have everything purchased for my upcoming build except CPU, GPU, GPU water block, coolant, and SSD. I'll post in the specs thread once I have all components purchased. This will also be my first time ever doing a custom water loop. I'm both nervous and excited. It should be a good learning experience. If anyone is interested I'll post my experience assembling the water loop. Heating and bending the tubing will probably be the scariest part. 

[LadyCrimson]

Just be sure to include pics.
Although I'd also be interested in what you end up thinking of the water loop.

[Sarex]

8 hours ago, Keyrock said:

I have everything purchased for my upcoming build except CPU, GPU, GPU water block, coolant, and SSD. I'll post in the specs thread once I have all components purchased. This will also be my first time ever doing a custom water loop. I'm both nervous and excited. It should be a good learning experience. If anyone is interested I'll post my experience assembling the water loop. Heating and bending the tubing will probably be the scariest part. 

Who did you go with for pump/rad/fittings?

[Keyrock]

1 hour ago, Sarex said:

Who did you go with for pump/rad/fittings?

The radiator is from Alphacool, pretty much everything else I got from PrimoChill.

[AwesomeOcelot]

Just had a look for a 12pin Nvidia cable to my EVGA PSU. EVGA PerFE 12 Cable: Only US, Out of Stock, $40. So Nvidia's free adapter it is. I may get a longer adapter if I can find one, but there doesn't seem any available right now. It's things like this that will make me never buy EVGA again. A lot of companies will give you free cable replacements with proof of purchase on their top end PSU.

[Sarex]

3 minutes ago, AwesomeOcelot said:

Just had a look for a 12pin Nvidia cable to my EVGA PSU. EVGA PerFE 12 Cable: Only US, Out of Stock, $40. So Nvidia's free adapter it is. I may get a longer adapter if I can find one, but there doesn't seem any available right now. It's things like this that will make me never buy EVGA again. A lot of companies will give you free cable replacements with proof of purchase on their top end PSU.

Noctua sends brackets for new sockets with free shipping, or at least they did.

[AwesomeOcelot]

I've had good experience with Noctua and high end audio equipment companies that appreciate that people have paid a premium and they want customers to enjoy their products. I only went with EVGA because Corsair and Fractal was out of stock, Seasonic was really expensive. Last 2 PSUs have been Corsair and they've been faultless, they're selling the cable for half the price, which is still pretty expensive, but not insanity.

Edited October 16, 2020 by AwesomeOcelot

[ComradeYellow]

I have one Noctua fan as the rear intake fan (I have my rig setup so the 3 stock fans serve as exhaust in the front) and it sounds like a vacuum cleaner when you run it full speed.  Kinda comical but yeah they're pretty good overall.  Once my IceGiant ProSiphon Elite arrives I may replace the stock fans with a couple more Noctua's if I don't like the stock speeds.

[Keyrock]

Noctua is a good reputable company. I'm a bit perplexed by their fascination with beige, but I won't hold that against their otherwise high quality products.

Like @AwesomeOcelotI initially looked at Seasonic for a PSU, their reputation precedes them, but the prices were ludicrously high. I wound up going with Be Quiet! They're not exactly famous for PSUs,  like Seasonic is, but they're a reputable company that I trust won't sell me junk. Plus, they tend to live up to their name.

[Sarex]

28 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

Noctua is a good reputable company. I'm a bit perplexed by their fascination with beige, but I won't hold that against their otherwise high quality products.

Like @AwesomeOcelotI initially looked at Seasonic for a PSU, their reputation precedes them, but the prices were ludicrously high. I wound up going with Be Quiet! They're not exactly famous for PSUs,  like Seasonic is, but they're a reputable company that I trust won't sell me junk. Plus, they tend to live up to their name.

I think the beige was their brand badge, it took them a while to realize how many customers they lost because of that. I mean considering their lack of interest in RGB shows they only care about the performance part of their brand.

I don't know, I think the price premium is worth the peace of mind for a pretty vital part of your build, which you are going to use in your next builds probably. Then again I own a Seasonic psu, so maybe I'm biased.

[Keyrock]

27 minutes ago, Sarex said:

I don't know, I think the price premium is worth the peace of mind for a pretty vital part of your build, which you are going to use in your next builds probably. Then again I own a Seasonic psu, so maybe I'm biased.

I don't disagree, the PSU is one of the most criminally overlooked parts of a build and it's very important. I too own a Seasonic PSU, it's in my 6 year old rig that's about to be retired and replaced.  I have nothing but respect for Seasonic. But when I saw the Seasonic prices and then I saw a Be Quiet! Dark Power (their premium line) PSU for over $100 less... It's not like Be Quiet! is some cut-rate, fly by night company, they make very good products.

[Humanoid]

I like be quiet!'s (geez that's a typing nightmare) coolers and PSUs, but find their cases a bit tacky. Not Thermaltake/Coolermaster/etc level tacky, but weirdly overdesigned.

Went with a Noctua cooler this time entirely for price reasons, which is a criterion they normally lose to Scythe - a special meant I could get their 14cm version for what 12cm coolers normally sell for. They do sell black versions of their product these days, though you pay extra for the privilege. For me though, even if I had a case with a window, my home office layout means the window would sit uselessly against the inside of my desk, and I'd lose out on the sound dampening material on the regular side panel.

Anyway, hopefully the next step isn't too hard, but I haven't started looking. Good RAM that doesn't have a uselessly tall heatsink.

Edited October 17, 2020 by Humanoid

[Keyrock]

2 hours ago, Humanoid said:

Anyway, hopefully the next step isn't too hard, but I haven't started looking. Good RAM that doesn't have a uselessly tall heatsink.

I bought G Skill Ripjaws. The heatsink isn't completely ridiculous, only sorta ridiculous, but at least I'm not paying extra for some fugly RGB.

[AwesomeOcelot]

I have the 2014 version of ripjaws, they look hilarious. I've never been bothered about what the inside of my case looks like. I've only ever had windows on my case because they didn't do a windowless version. For the last 10 years my PC has lived under my desk.

Just cut off a lot of plastic off the top of my SL600M to fit 200mm Noctua Chromax. Thinking about buying some polygon triangle vinyl and doing a Deus Ex Human Revolution pattern on the window.

[ComradeYellow]

I went with GamerMax because it was the only brand I could find that sported 1050 watts and upgraded to 32 gigabytes of RAM (Viper 4 series 3200Mhz).

I've literally never had a problem with PSU's or Ram (GPU's, CPU's, and Motherboards are the only things that have given me issues in the past) so the only thing I'm second guessing is that maybe I should have waited for good DD4 4000's to land to go with Zen 3.

[Keyrock]

24 minutes ago, ComradeMaster said:

the only thing I'm second guessing is that maybe I should have waited for good DD4 4000's to land to go with Zen 3.

Assuming the rumors are true and 4000 MHz is the new sweet spot (would be nice) you could always try to OC the RAM yourself. There's no guarantee that you can reach 4000 MHz, or what kind of timings you can get, but there's no guarantee that you can't get 4000 MHz and good timings either. When you buy more expensive RAM what you are paying extra for are binned parts (and fugly RGBs, if you're into that sort of thing) that have (supposedly) been tested and proven to be able to handle higher speeds and/or tighter timings, plus an XMP profile to make things easy for you. It's entirely possible to OC cheaper RAM to those same speeds/timings or close to them, but it's a crapshoot.

Edited October 17, 2020 by Keyrock

[ComradeYellow]

^Yup I can hit a stable 2900Mhz on my current board.  If I go all out and go with the new Crosshair VIII Dark Hero I reckon I get pretty high.  Not that's it's super important or anything, it's like going all out on a super fast hard drive, good for bragging rights but all-in-all not a big deal.  GPU and CPU Cores/Clock speeds/architecture are the big ones.

[AwesomeOcelot]

A 4000Mhz kit can be over twice as expensive as a 3200Mhz kit, the performance gain is definitely not worth it. For my kit, it's way over the difference between a 5800x and a 5600x, or a 5900x and a 5950x. When you're buying $700 MoBos and $300 kits of RAM, it's not about performance, it's more a sport a hobby, like people that tune their cars to go on track days.

[Keyrock]

Especially if you want tight timings. I speak from experience, as I recently spent WAY TOO MUCH on 32 GB (2×16) of 4000 MHz 16-19-19-39. Why? 3 reasons:

1) I'm an idiot 

b) I want nothing to do with the voodoo black magic that is memory overclocking 

III) I'm an idiot 

Edited October 17, 2020 by Keyrock

[LadyCrimson]

I need to stop reading these threads because all they do is make me want to run out and build another current uber rig "just because I can." 

[Malcador]

21 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

I need to stop reading these threads because all they do is make me want to run out and build another current uber rig "just because I can." 

Same, but then I realize how expensive it'll be even account for exchange rate   I should at least outline one, maybe will be my Christmas gift to myself.

[Keyrock]

I'm still waiting for these mythical HDMI 2.1 monitors to hit the market. I think there are 1 or 2 out in the wild, but not the size and specs I'm looking for. ASUS is supposedly going to put out a 43" 4K HDMI 2.1 monitor at some point. No word on price yet. I'm also considering a Sony X9000H 4K TV. I'm not sure if they've put out their promised firmware update with HDMI 2.1, VRR, etc. but you figure they'd do it around the time PS5 launches so they can cross promote the 2 products.

[Sarex]

1 hour ago, Keyrock said:

I'm still waiting for these mythical HDMI 2.1 monitors to hit the market. I think there are 1 or 2 out in the wild, but not the size and specs I'm looking for. ASUS is supposedly going to put out a 43" 4K HDMI 2.1 monitor at some point. No word on price yet. I'm also considering a Sony X9000H 4K TV. I'm not sure if they've put out their promised firmware update with HDMI 2.1, VRR, etc. but you figure they'd do it around the time PS5 launches so they can cross promote the 2 products.

Why not go for the LG CX 48 inch? It has HDMI 2.1, although it's 40gbps, but that does the same things a 48gbps connection would too.

[Keyrock]

33 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Why not go for the LG CX 48 inch? It has HDMI 2.1, although it's 40gbps, but that does the same things a 48gbps connection would too.

Well, for one thing, it's $500 more than the Sony X9000H.

I'm probably going to be doing my monitor/TV shopping around Black Friday/Cyber Monday Week, so there's still plenty of time for the landscape to change, I just like to monitor (pun intended) the situation. 

Edited October 21, 2020 by Keyrock

[AwesomeOcelot]

My LG CX is great as a monitor, it might be a lot cheaper than HDMI 2.1 monitors when they're released. How much 4K 120fps gaming is going to be happening on consoles? Not much I bet, and mostly in games where lower res will be fine. Last year I bought a Sony XF900 for a TV and I'm happy with it as a TV.