Tell me about building a PC

[Klaus]

LED strips on the RAM? That must be the mullet of motherboard modding.

[George K]

@Klaus said in Tell me about building a PC:

LED strips on the RAM? That must be the mullet of motherboard modding.

Coffee...everywhere this morning.

[mark]

@Klaus said in Tell me about building a PC:

LED strips on the RAM? That must be the mullet of motherboard modding.

Where have you been? PC builders get crazy with the RGB lighting effects and custom liquid cooling loops.

[mark]

Some of the fastest (affordable) Memory only comes in RGB and some of the fastest ram looks like it belongs in a jewelry case.

The color is user assignable to any color in the RGB color space. They can be programmed to perform rainbow color waves, ripples, etc. The entire interior of the PC becomes a light show.

[mark]

You have the option to turn it all off. My build is going to use some RGB components and I am still undecided on the custom liquid cooling loop stuff. It totally tickles the geek nerve to "plumb" a PC. lol

[Doctor Phibes]

My last gaming rig had liquid cooling.

It was very quiet, and worked really well, right up until the point after about 4 years when it leaked and trashed the motherboard.

[mark]

@Doctor-Phibes Did you do any maintenance on it?

[Doctor Phibes]

Of course not. Computers last for ever!

I did quite a bit of research after the fact, of course

[mark]

Water cooling does come with some risks. If I decide to go with water cooling of any ilk, (AIO or custom) I will be inspecting it on a regular basis for permeation and leaks. It does require a lot more diligence than air cooling. I have not ruled out a top quality air cooler.

[xenon]

@mark look into some of the big honking heat sinks and air coolers from Noctua, Mark.

Aside from perhaps the most demanding overclocking - they both perform better and are quieter than liquid coolers (no pump).

[Doctor Phibes]

After all the research I did, I got the impression that air cooling can be every bit as good as liquid, although not as quiet. I could be wrong about the noise, of course.

[mark]

@xenon Noctua is a great choice and they recently released an all black version of their flagship cpu cooler the NH-D15. Their original coolers are pretty ugly looking. That hardly matters to a closed, metal cabinet. My new case has a tempered glass panel on the one side. My new PC will have a semi outrageous, RGB lightshow available if I want.

I also like the beQuiet Dark Rock Pro4.

The top rated AIOs will keep a CPU cooler over long term high power consumption periods of time and a custom loop will also keep things even cooler.

Yes, the top rated air towers do very well for most people and will even keep your system from crashing, but they can get overwhelmed easier than a liquid cooler especially in a warm environment, and the result will be thermal throttling of the CPU. That will have a negative impact on performance. Running the CPU at higher temperatures also contributes to degradation of the CPU over time.

Is any of it noticeable to the average user? No.

I am not an average user.

I fully intend to overclock this PC to the fullest extent possible while retaining excellent reliability. I really want to, experiment with chilled liquid cooling. To see how far I can push it without going completely crazy and doing LN2. LN2 is so impractical as to be relegated to the benchmarking and world-record setting geeks.

[mark]

Do these links work?

I like the cascading almost "Tetris" look of the LEDs on the ram sticks.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PcBuild/comments/jpycwk/my_beast/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

[Moonbat]

@mark said in Tell me about building a PC:

@xenon Noctua is a great choice and they recently released an all black version of their flagship cpu cooler the NH-D15. Their original coolers are pretty ugly looking. That hardly matters to a closed, metal cabinet. My new case has a tempered glass panel on the one side. My new PC will have a semi outrageous, RGB lightshow available if I want.

I also like the beQuiet Dark Rock Pro4.

The top rated AIOs will keep a CPU cooler over long term high power consumption periods of time and a custom loop will also keep things even cooler.

Not so clear:

Link to video

[mark]

@Moonbat I am initially going with the Noctua NH-D15S in black.

If I do any water cooling it will be a custom loop. Go big or go home! lol

Once I settle in on the build, I will probably forget about the cooling unless I start to see thermal throttling which I really don't expect to see at all.

OR!

I get that geeky itch to plumb a PC.

[mark]

Some parts started showing up...

The back of the case opened with a 1 TB SATA SSD mounted.
4 out of 6 Samsung 980 1TB SSDs The other two arrive tomorrow. I am using 3 per computer.

The MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE motherboard fits like a glove. A little tight in some areas but nothing I can't figure out. The wiring channels and built-in Velcro straps in the case, will make things nice and tidy.

I purchased a "temporary" processor that Newegg had on sale. A 4 core 8 thread RYZEN 5 3400 G with built-in GPU just so I can test everything. The processors are not due to ship until 12/21/2020 so I needed something to tie me over. I will end up making a small workstation out of it for testing software, and other tasks. I may use it as my first water cooling project seeing as all the components I will use for that build, will be much less expensive than the main computers.

[mark]

on the test bench for some stress testing...

The Noctua CPU cooler with a nickel on top for scale.

[]

The CPU has been at 100% utilization for over 6 hours now. The temps haven't gone above 62 degrees celsius. This is only a 4 core processor that is not being overclocked so I didn't expect the temps to get any higher than that.

So far so good!

[xenon]

That's some top notch gear. Reminds me of this rib against habitual upgraders:

[mark]

lol

So true. I am, however, upgrading from a 1st Gen i7.

I am waiting for "Big Navi" the first batch of them, are being released on Wednesday. I have a few people going to battle for one or two of them. I hope to get at least one.

I am also waiting for the 5950X processors. I have two on pre-order at B&H. The last update from B&H estimated 21/21 for ship date.

And depending on how well the 5950X overclocks with the Noctua air cooler, I might just yet, get an AIO. Custom loop will come eventually.

[xenon]

Here's some inspiration for anyone looking to do a more natural PC build.