Considering building a new PC around my new RTX 2070 Super...

[=VG= 0100011000101]

I don't think 16tb is an exaggeration these days. I have ~ 10tb of films, 1.5tb of music, 1tb of my own projects, 1tb of programs ...
of course, everything double for data backup. also space for the system and of course 1-2tb of work space. if you want to cut a film, edit a large db or do something in this direction you also need space.
I have 16tb internally and 16tb externally (backup, because I also dont belief in raid for backups) and i dont have enough space for anything.

if you have more space, you will use it... but on the other hand, if you dont have much data at the moment you can buy it later...

 

9 hours ago, =VG= Gaz said:

As others have said 32gb of ram probably isnt needed unless you're going to be doing some pretty intensive hardcore work on the PC. 

if you are just watching movies and do some office work 8gb are enough. but if you are using cad, c4d, resolve, after effects, or similiar then it happens that you have 16gb completely full.
I have never really exhausted the 64GB I have at work, but 32GB are helpful. and i don't do any elaborate things with it but use many effects or several of these programs at the same time.

[Cruizer]

Hmm... AMD Cpu price tag has increased in my country. Idk for U.S

Ryzen 3600 increased by SGD$10.

Ryzen 3700X increased by SGD$36

Ryzen 3900X increased by SGD$45

Geez.... Casing stock depleting fast with shipment delays till mid of next month. Man oh man

[=VG= SemlerPDX]

The RAM should finally arrive today and I can start testing parts and building, but there's one last thing I'm thinking about buying... since I never get these things to look as good as those pictures of Gaming PC's....

what do ya think?

 

[=VG= SemlerPDX]

That case mod will look good on my new NZXT H400i box:

[=VG= keed]

Cool work but minor fire hazard.  

[Rabbit]

7 minutes ago, =VG= keed said:

Cool work but minor fire hazard.  

Good point, he should line it with asbestos for safety. 

[=VG= 0100011000101]

4 minutes ago, Rabbit said:

Good point, he should line it with asbestos for safety. 

or an oversized water cooling ... then the pc extinguishes itself if it burns.

[Cruizer]

A masterpiece.

Only minor adjustment of using aluminium foil for the interior to solve heat issue.

As well as cut out for I/O. If not u have to plug it to ur butt.

Airflow. What airflow? Aluminium foil already solve the interior heat. So hack the 120/140/200mm fans.

[=VG= SemlerPDX]

Too much fun - some glam shots for posterity -- bench test successful, CPU, MoBo, and RAM all check out, time to ditch the Wraith Prism and release the Kraken:

[Rabbit]

Awesome, interested to see what your frames and load times are once its all up and running with the games loaded.

7 hours ago, =VG= SemlerPDX said:

Too much fun - some glam shots for posterity -- bench test successful, CPU, MoBo, and RAM all check out, time to ditch the Wraith Prism and release the Kraken:
 

 

Also Its early and I haven't had coffee yet and I read that as "release the Karen"

[=VG= STARK]

1 hour ago, Rabbit said:

"release the Karen"

Haha love it.

[=VG= keed]

On 3.4.2020 at 2:17 PM, Rabbit said:

"release the Karen"

This is what the PTA call when the soccer moms attend the meeting 

[=VG= SemlerPDX]

On 3/20/2020 at 1:07 PM, =VG= SemlerPDX said:

Expecting to have some fun with the RAM and Ryzen tuning - hoping to run that 4000MHz RAM at 3600-3800MHz with very tight timings.... we'll see what we see.  It's not on the Motherboard QVL which is normally not a thing I do, but I'm fairly confident I'll have no issues.

Yeah..... um.... yeah.. So, I really should have trusted my instincts. 

Ryzen 9 is very, very picky with DRAM Frequency and Timings... After over 12 hours of working with a well respected Ryzen DRAM Calculator, I just can't get this damn Patriot Steel 4000MHz RAM to run at anything other than default DDR4 (2133MHz).  Was just shooting for a simple 3600MHz but it just can't do it - also, fun fact - this MoBo thinks that 1.478V is just peachy for this AMD 3900X, and the AIO Pump Header is disabled by default even if something is plugged into it - so ya gotta watch these 45C temps on your CPU while IN THE DAMN BIOS doing basically nothing.  Fixed it to 1.3V and everything is just great!

NewEgg to the rescue - G.SKILL 3600MHz CL16 DDR4 (8GBx4) is speeding it's way to me now, and I'll even get to keep using this Patriot (at 2133MHz) while I get the rest of my programs installed and OS setup.  Just gotta put off any tweaking, testing, and overclocking until then.  (G.Skills costs less, too - but that's cuz the Patriots were rated at 4000MHz)


My goal with the 3000RPM PWM Noctua fans is to create a custom fan curve profile for the case that can (hopefully) achieve positive case pressure in a well-known negative pressure NZXT case.  The H510 has a minimalist interior and exterior, and excellent filtering yet terrible air flow - but for some reason, large openings in the front next to the filtered intake are directly open to the back panel and back of the motherboard tray, and the large vertical cutout designed for cable runs, which could literally form an intake/output loop where no new air comes in through the filters, if the path of least resistance is from the output of the fans themselves.  MORONS!



I've added some case modifications with some paperboard and soft foam filtering to block this air path, forcing front intake through the two filters only and not from any other part of the case.  When temps get very high during gaming, it will allow for a negative pressure system where air will rush in from anywhere, including the rear I/O unused PCIe slot covers, and this is just fine... but normal operation will have positive pressure and prevent dust from gathering like a magnet as in my NZXT S340 case (pretty much same case).

(All the wiring done - pics below were taken on this day, took my time during the week to install and configure everything)

[=VG= SemlerPDX]

Case wiring complete - I settled for nothing less than professional, took a bit of time, but then I was taking my time.  I modified one of the triple-head SATA power cables to make one single neat cable for that 4-port USB 3.0 expansion card below the RTX 2070S

Love the colored Cable Labels that came with the Crosshair VIII Hero - marked each SATA cable on both ends so I can tell from front or behind which individual plug I'm dealing with at any time down the road. (not pictured is my custom airflow block between hard drive cage, cable-side panel and front airflow channel)

Pro cable management means not having to push on the back panel cover when you slide it into place to cover everything.  This board has a ton of wires for a single GPU setup, with that AIO there's a 3 wire dongle plus a USB cord for a 2.0 header, the 4 PWM fans and 2 CPU Power at cables at the top left (from front) - your bog standard massive ATX power, and a dual VGA power for the GFX, and 4 SATA drives at 8 total cables to run there (power + SATA) - all in all, it turned out great and everything is easy to access and service.

Front view again with back panel in place -- not using the NZXT "Smart" device...
The hole left open a spot for one of those nice vinyl ROG stickers for at least +25FPS in most games, and put another one on the right panel there (covering a small scratch that was nagging my OCD)

Not a fan of RGB, but I love the tempered glass and the infinity mirror on the NZXT Kraken cooler.  Time to get all the games installed and start having some fun!

... (3 week later:)...    (j/k)

Finally up and running!  Got everything installed and configured, very few things left to do.  The new G.SKILL RAM runs perfectly under many clock settings, unlike the Patriot's and so I'll RMA those asap.

Spent a bit of time getting the voltages right and maximizing my 3600MHz DRAM overclock on this Crosshair VIII Hero for a 1:1 speed ratio with the Ryzen Infinity Fabric, and plan to spend more time down the road fine tuning it even more.  Added a few hundred points to the TimeSpy Extreme initial benchmark scores I saved for this PC, and if you know how hard it is to gain an extra few points in a 3D Mark test, you'll appreciate that difference.  In a real world test, this translated to a speed increase of over 45 seconds on a compressed video library .zip file I brought over from my old PC (about 300GB of videos varying size 1GB-8GB each).  Working with compressed storage files on this Ryzen Beast is like using a freaking super computer!!! Also, ran a render in Adobe that took 20 minutes on my old computer, was done in less than 5 minutes.  I was so shocked, I broke out laughing out loud like a freak.

I've achieved positive case pressure up to 60C (CPU or GPU diode temps, whichever is higher) with a bunch of custom fan curves including on the RTX 2070S.  Pretty cool to see a few of them shut off during normal use, and automatically ramp up as high as 2000RPM under full load.  That's half the rating for the RTX 2070S fans, and only 60% of the Noctua case fans (including the two on the Kraken X63 AIO liquid CPU cooler).

Temps are very stable and remain at or under 60C even during extended full load stress tests far beyond what any game or benchmark suite I throw at it, with overhead for another 30-50% case/fan cooling if needed for the hot summer months.  Each of those 4 Noctua iPPC-3000 PWM fans were $30  (listed as 'down' from $45) but totally worth it for this level of control.  Dust was a constant issue with my last system due to the layout of my computer area along a main trafficway, near an outside door, and on carpet near a hard concrete floor... in front of the main filtered air intake for the grow room behind it.  Basically, just about the worst scenario for keeping dust out of a PC, and there's really no better place to put it so I'm stuck (by choice, but still).

Worth the time spent testing and setting up, positive fan pressure is making sure the intake always comes through my slightly modified filtered intake(s) on the NZXT H510i, and only allows air to rush in through the rear empty PCI card slot grills when something inside gets over 68C (again, CPU or GPU, whichever is higher).  I've only got it to do this with stress tests, even benchmarking suites remain in a positive case pressure setup except for a few bursts during loading phases.

Back when I was trying to learn a bit about 2D game programming in Java, I made a little test game, unoptimized but working alpha so I could add elements as I went -- it took up a solid and flat 50% CPU usage on my last 4 core i5 4690K with it's 4.3GHz overclock.  If I opened a second one, the PC would become so unresponsive, it was unlikely to register a click on the Close button of either of the Java games running.
(*edit: here's a copy of that game if anyone wanted to see what an unoptimized java game runs at on their own PC ... https://www.dropbox.com/s/7zt3e6shbe1ej7o/SemJavaGameTEST.rar?dl=0 )

I just opened 9 of them at the same time on the Ryzen Beast, then hit it with an Aida64 Extreme stress test on the CPU/GPU/System Memory and it didn't break a sweat.  Let it run for like 9 minutes, and nabbed the screenshot below.  I had mouse hovering over the "Stop" button in the stress test, and thought it was over the screenshot button, so that's the tiny dip seen in GPU-Z - I immediately started it back up, took this screenshot awhile later: