Battle Stations

[ajlueke]

Hello!

I recently paid a visit to a new small computer shop in my local town.  Out of the desire to support the business I went to check out the CPUs they had behind the counter.  I saw they had a 9800X3D available.  I hadn't worked with Zen 5, but really didn't think I would want to give up my 8 extra cores in my main build (7950X3D) that is also used for productivity work.

I had my old Lian-Li PC-V3000 (2017) case at home with all my old liquid cooling components.  I used this case before moving to a MO-RA3 external radiator from Watercool.

I picked up an ASUS X670E TUF motherboard which was available fairly cheap, along with a new water block for AM5.  I also had an ASUS TUF RTX 4080 Super that I had picked up at my local Best Buy because I saw it there for MSRP probably 10 months ago, and then never really did much with it.  I also picked up a water block for it.

So after paying a visit to a local shop I now have rebuilt my old case into a brand new secondary system.  Now that the fun part is over, what to do with it? 

System is powered up. No leaks!I have a soft spot for this case. I machined the fill port above the front rad myself.

Full specs for the system are as follows:

Lian Li PC-V3000 case (2017 version).

EKWB CE-420 Radiator.

EKWB CE-280 Radiator.

Noctua Chromax 140mm Fans (10 for the radiators).

EKWB Quantum Reflection Uni 140 (Flat Reservoir with D5 Pump).

Asus TUF X670E motherboard with WIFI.

AMD 9800X3D processor with EKWB CPU cooler.

Western Digital SN850X 4TB SSD.

AresGame AGT1000 Power Supply.

Asus TUF Gaming RTX 4080 Super with EKWB Block.

Corsair 32GB of DDR5 Vengeance RAM

There are 3 additional 140mm Noctua Fans and 1 120mm Fan that serve as intakes.

I ran it through a test run as well.  Everything looks good so far.

https://www.3dmark.com/spy/54724181

[BigAl01]

I would try a few games and then call it a success if you have no issues.  It's good to have a few backup machines available, just in case something happens to your main machine.  I now have 11 gaming computers on my LAN, but I continue to build new ones.  I don't know why.  Someday I'll run out of money I suppose.

[ajlueke]

I feel the urge to update my media server to solid state only.  The only thing holding me back is the fact that NVMe drives are still limited to 8 TB.  You can run 4 of them on an ASUS Hyper V, but you need enough PCIe lanes to support all those drives via bifurcation.   Getting that many PCIe lanes basically locks you into a Threadripper build.

[BigAl01]

Think about how fast that media server would be.  But in reality, isn't your media server already fast enough for your needs?

[ajlueke]

Sort of.  I do a lot of my own grades using Tekno3D software.  Meaning I'll take the .mkv rip of my Blu-ray disc and upgrade it myself to 4K, the Rec. 2020 colorspace and 1000 nits luminance since a lot of studio 4K releases are just atrocious.

That process can be slower for sure when the files live on a spindle and platter drive.  But in reality, when has "fast enough" been a reason not to do something?

[BigAl01]

When your wife says 'no' to more computer parts money from the budget.  I have lessons learned.  And funny thing.  My wife is also an electrical engineer with an MSEE.  But we are retired now and we must live within our means.

[mengelag]

I think the build looks awesome! Al, how many hrs a week do you spend keeping all 11 of those PC's updated? haha

[BigAl01]

I try to do the updates around once a month for the machines that are normally powered off until needed for gaming.  Sometimes I'll go down to the basement and game on one though.  On the day that I do the updates, I think it takes around 4-5 hours.  I do several at a time, but it gets confusing too, as to what I already did on a particular machine.  I really need a checklist for each one - Windows Updates, Adrenalin Updates, Norton Updates, Steam Updates, etc.