jaybee83

boy am i glad that i opted for the beefiest AiO out there... and pimp it up with push/pull 6x Noctua IPPC 3000rpm fans 😛 in any case, Jay still hasnt tried or mentioned the option to switch off that automatic scaling to 95C. i dont think hes even aware of it...

hmmm....now im in a pickle, A770 or 4090 on Oct 12? 😆

nice write up! and i definitely learned from your posts regarding active cooling on ddr5, planning to add an extra fan just for the memory modules 🙂

haha spot on for the PSU, i went with the 1600 watt 80Plus-Titanium TX-1600 from Seasonic. I hesitated a bit due to it not being ATX3.0 but theres basically nothing even on the horizon that would equal that efficiency. upcoming atx3.0 by seasonic only max out at 1200W platinum. either that or go with thermaltake 1650W atx3.0 80plus Gold....in the end i went for the 12 yr warranty and efficiency. as for RAM, ill start off with "only" 32 gigs ddr5-6600, then maybe up it later down the road, lets see. first i wanna do some accessory tuning on the machine, i.e. additional fans, internal display for hardware monitoring stuff, backup HDD i mentioned in the OP, colorimeter for display calibration, etc ..

my man, ure always welcome to join and destroy our scores in the foolishness / no self-control camp anytime, hope u know that 😄

i might have mixed that up with the info of them holding back cards for warranty purposes. my bad, ure right 🙂

absolutely more sensible and logical approach, kudos to that! only reason im going balls to the wall with this build is cuz ive been saving up for 3 years now, its my first desktop build in 15 years and my gaming days are numbered (got my first kid on the way 😁) btw, build thread is open! but not finished yet, its a WIP: enjoy!

good point! in that case we will need comparable configs asap to get a better judgement. also dont forget, "sweet spot" doesnt mean the absolute max it can reach. HUB already showed that 6400 is no problem whatsoever with Auto:1:1 settings. dude im glad u got this figured out! i know how stressful it is to be purchasing such costly hardware and then hitting a bump 😅 awesome pricing for sure! BTW guys, ure welcome to visit my Build Log thread: also included a poll for y'all 😄 note that its still a work in progress, but wanted to post it before i continue. enjoy!

My fellow NBT freaks / enthusiasts, 2007 was the last time I had a desktop, that's when i switched over to laptop-land for travel and work purposes. Just 2 years after, I joined NBR to squeeze a bit more out of my Asus C90S and the rest is history 🤠 Now, after 3 friggin years, a worldwide pandemic, rise and fall of a cryptomining empire (and shortly before me and my lady expect out first kid due in mid-march and thus my gaming days are almost over!), I am finally ready to get back into the promised desktop land! 😁 Plan is to detail my components and reasoning behind my choices, as well as the building process, followed by setup, tuning, and of course some sweet sweet performance results. Nuff around the bush beating, lets cut to the chase! Components Motherboard - Ordered 30-Sep, received 07-Oct Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme, AM5 Platform Price paid (including tax, shipping, minus cashback) - 1025€ I chose AM5 due to its expected longevity vs. Z790, AMD quoted minimum support until including 2025, potentially longer. So could be viable until Zen 6, hopefully longer. With Intel, even if they manage to beat Ryzen 7000 with 13th gen in some (but not all) instances, ure 100% guaranteed to be on a dead platform. That being said, if you look at my current machine (see sig), youll notice that im the type of guy who likes to invest into a solid baseline for a system and then prefers to tune it and upgrade it as much as possible rather than jumping to a new system every year. So in conclusion, I wanted to go with a flagship motherboard that includes the max features. Why Asus, and not MSI, Gigabyte, Asrock, EVGA you might ask? MSI Godlike has the most highpowered VRMs out of all AM5 flagships, but lacks USB 4.0, less Gen5 M.2 slots and just costs WAY too much (yes, even more ridiculous than the Asus Crossfire Extreme 🤣) Gigabyte Aorus Extreme is the cheapest of the flagships, but also sports the weakest VRMs and again lacks USB 4.0 just like MSI. Thats a no go, I need sturdy VRMs to be ready for any potential future AMD flagship CPUs down the road. Asrock and Biostar are out of the question for me personally, due to their stupid behaviour towards the press (see Asrock blacklisting of HUB and GN), as well as a niche existence with barebones Bios and customer support (Biostar). SO that leaves the Asus Crossfire Extreme with second strongest VRMs, USB 4.0 support, good Bios update support and not the most stupid ridonkulous pricing on the market (just second most stupid lulz). Oh, one more goodie to add here: its so far the only AM5 motherboard to sport dual bios, thus u can safely flash a new bios version and test it for bugs and performance without having to worry about disabled flashback optionality (which, unfortunately, a lot of bios versions have implemented nowadays). CPU - ordered 27-Sep, received 04-Oct AMD Ryzen 7950X Price paid (including tax and shipping) - 850€ Welp, spending so much on a flagship motherboard and then going with a 7600X?! What did you expect, OF COURSE Im going with the 16 core monstrosity 🤣 Jokes aside, not only gonna do gaming on this but also get some work done, so its basically best of both worlds. GPU - Ordered 12-Oct, received 13-Oct Zotac Gaming Geforce RTX 4090 AMP Extreme AIRO --> changed to MSI Geforce RTX 4090 Suprim X (read details below) Price paid (expected, including tax and shipping) - 2050-2250€ GPU tier & chip was quite straight forward: I want the flagship and ill just take the one thats released first by either Nvidia or AMD. Look guys, Ive got a kid on the way, so a month waiting is a month of gaming lost! So, Nvidia 4090 it is, then 😄 But which vendor? Now this was a tricky one. I originally planned to go with an EVGA, specifically FTW4 Ultra (or whatever the name would have been) due to their outstanding customer support and the option to extend the warranty to 10 freaking years! But, as you all know, EVGA is now out of the GPU game (power to them for showing Nvidia what consequences are!). So the first I checked out were Asus and MSI, both known for well built GPUs, sturdy VRMs and competent cooling solutions. Only thing lacking: warranties, both only provide 3 years. Im thinking Ill need at least 4 years if not 5, since earliest Ill upgrade would be in two generations or 4 years away in 2026. For this reason I am planning to go with Zotac, they actually offer an extended 5 yr warranty upon registration of the purchased GPU. Based on their company profile and customer support Ive seen so far, they are a bit like EVGA, but more of a "light" version. They arent are balls to the wall when it comes to ultra highend custom board like with the EVGA Kingpin editions, but they still seem to do a good job and treat their customers well. In the meantime I was also able to get a bit of info on the cooling solution of the flagship AMP Extreme AIRO card: 9 heatpipes, vapour chamber, dual bios, 115 mm fans, 24+4 phases (Nvidia stock is at 21+2, with Asus Strix and MSI Suprim X also at 24+4). Sounds good to me! Now to wait until 12-Oct before I snipe me one... Edit: Sooooo, after the AIB reviews came out and the sales launch turned out to be a true shit show, I spent roughly 1.5 hours hopping between 10-15 online shops and price comparison portals, all the while trying to gulp down reviews on AIB cards as best I can to determine how good the initially planned Zotac card actually is! In the end, the Zotac turned out to be too expensive for its meager cooling (no improvement vs. FE) and the best overall cards to get were either the Asus Strix (waaaay overpriced even at official pricing, with added scalping going down basically immediately) or the MSI Suprim X. The latter's cooling is imperceptibly worse than the formers, but the MSI actually has beefier VRMs with 26 phases vs. the Asus card's 24. Plus, I was able to get the Suprim X at a comparably good price: Price paid (including tax and overnight express shipping) - 2275€ In comparison, the Asus Strix went for at least 2550€, with most offers ranging 2600-2900€, completely insane if you ask me and definitely not worth all the extra dough. I can say I was lucky I got the Suprim X when I did, basically 5 seconds later the card was sold out at the vendor i got it from (lucky also for me, the vendor is a big reputable online shop so not worried about warranty stuff). Speaking of warranty, MSI only offers 3 years vs. the Zotac 5 yr warranty, but at least includes cooler swap (or rather maintenance for my purposes), so thats at least a balancing out. Another thing to consider with the MSI card is its somewhat lower max power limit of 520W vs. the 600W of the FE, Asus Strix and Gigabyte Gaming OC. The FE is out of the question, since no dual bios and crappy cooler, Asus Strix is overpriced as mentioned before and the Gigabyte Gaming OC looks crappy and also has supbar cooling. But no worries here, TPU's vbios database already lists several 600W vbios versions, so when the time comes ill just flash and voila, problem solved 🙂 Monitor - Ordered 09-Sep, Received a week later, now sitting on my Desk 😁 Samsung Odyssey Neo G8 Price paid (including tax and shipping) - 1060€ This is probably going to be a controversial one. The specs are absolutely amazing at HDR 2000 nits, UHD, 240 Hz, ultra fast VA panel. However, a lot of reviews found that the 2000 "marketing nits" of brightness did not stand up to scrutiny, but rather a still very respectable ~1200 nits. In addition, Samsung and its Odyssey line hasnt been known for their Quality Control, with panels arriving including weird "burn marks" (HUB), annoying scanlines at the full 240 Hz (various user reports and reviews), as well as other stuff like dead/stuck pixels or noticeable blooming. But you know what? I didnt care 😂 I took the plunge when I saw an amazing deal (see price above) and I also noticed that a lot of user reviews had perfect panels without any of the mentioned shortcomings. So i played the panel lottery and won 🤠 Image is absolutely stunning, there are no noticeable scanlines, no dead/stuck pixels, no cosmetic blemishes and blooming is only noticeable when looking at the panel from weird off angles (i.e. from above or steeply from the side), likely due to its curve. But sitting right in front of it is just breathtaking... Be it as it may, this is also my very first HDR monitor, so take this as it is 😄 I for one am super happy and the highend specs will make any hardware sweat for years to come 🙂 Again, longevity was my goal here! Storage - Ordered 03-Sep, received 3 days later, awaiting data transfer Seagate Firecuda 530 4TB PCIe 4.0x4 with heatsink Price paid (including tax and shipping) - 580€ I am currently sporting a 970 Pro 1TB and 2x4TB 860 Evos for a total of 9TB SSD space. That might seem like a lot but my 1TB system drive is already 60% full, with the two 4TB drives both at approx. 75% filled. So I figured I might as well splurge on storage and get myself a new 4TB system & data combo drive. Unfortunately, highend MLC drives have gone the way of the Dodo, especially since Samsung as the last holdout decided it was a grand idea to switch to TLC for their 980 Pro (and their upcoming 990 Pro). In general, I'd consider myself a total Samsung fanboy when it comes to SSD storage, they are just THAT good and reliable (just check the reliability reports by Backblaze and ull see what I mean). But this time around....I dunno, I wanted to try something new, something different. The 980 Pro, albeit a sensationally good drive, felt a bit lacking for my tastes. Soooo, what else is there? With MLC out of the picture, TLC is where it's at now, QLC can rot in hell if you ask me. Other musts for my requirements: - NVME drive - PCIE 4.0 - DRAM Cache - 2.5 PB TBW at minimum - 5 Years Warranty In the end I chose the Seagate Firecuda drive for its 5 year warranty, high 5.1 PB TBW and 3 year data recovery service included in the warranty. Performance wise it is also pretty much at the top, even ekeing out the 980 Pro, Corsair MP600 and WD SN850 drives here and there. The only other drive that tops all of the mentioned would be the recently released SK Hynix Platinum P41, but that is neither available in Europe, nor does it come in 4 TB flavour. In any case, the 4TB Seagate should last me a while before additional storage becomes necessary. My plan is to RAID 0 up the two 860 Evo drives and set up a 18TB HDD spinning rust as backup for ease of mind. PSU - Ordered 27-Sep, received 28-Sep Seasonic TX-1600 Titanium Price paid (including tax and shipping) - 470€ This was another tough decision due to the newly published Intel ATX3.0 Power Supply standard, which is especially important for the next-gen of GPUs Nvidia 40 Series Ada Lovelace and AMD 7000 Series RDNA3. The main factor here is that ATX3.0 allows power supplies to temporarily exceed their rated spec by 2-3x in order to be able and buffer short spikes in the micro to millisecond range without giving out. Add to that the new 16 pin 12VHPWR PCIe 5 connector that is slated to replace the traditional 8 and 6 pin PCIe connectors for power supply to GPUs, which is also part of the new ATX3.0 spec. So much for background info! So, where does that leave us enthusiasts who want to build a new system NAOH? The issue is, that already existing and upcoming PSUs following the ATX3.0 standard are "not up to snuff" for my Titanium and high wattage taste. The highest powered PSU for ATX3.0 currently available is the Thermaltake GF3 1650W, which "only" has 80Plus-Gold efficiency, "only" 10 years warranty (Seasonic provides up to 12!) and "Thermalfake" is also not really known for their outstanding product quality and customer support. Out of the question then. What about upcoming Seasonic PSUs for ATX3.0? Well, weve got the Vertex series which is slated to this December (too late for me, unfortunately), and will come in Gold and Platinum flavours (no Titanium goodness) and max. rating at 1200W. Pricing at up to 300USD also indicates a lower tier product vs. the Prime TX series of PSUs. So I did some thinking and research to get a better idea. First, the TX-1600, although not officially certified for ATX3.0, does actually provide TWO PCIe 5 12VHPWR cables including the much discussed additional 4 sense pins. In addition, reviews by Toms Hardware and kitguru showed a max stable wattage in the range of 1850 - 2100W, leaving plenty of buffer for additional power draw of next-gen gpus and their dreaded transient spikes (not confirmed yet though). That, plus TItanium efficiency, Seasonic 12 yr warranty, an overabundance of superlong cables, cool design and last but not least an included free goodie (65W GaN super compact charger) in the end made me decide to go with the TX-1600. Naturally, I will update you guys if I encounter any power delivery problems with the planned Zotac 4090 for this build. So stay tuned! RAM - Ordered 08-Sep, received 10-Sep G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB DDR5-6600 2x16 GB (Black) Price paid (including tax and shipping) - 440€ This one was pretty straight forward: Just get the currently fastest available sticks with some RGB bling and call it a day 😄 I am sure brother @Papusan will cry himself to sleep tonight when he reads this, being such a fan of blacked out components but allergic to RGB haha! In any case, we all know that the age of big CPU OC gains are pretty much over, at most you can hope for like 5-10% at most with a nicely binned cpu these days, more often than not much less. Thus, RAM OC becomes a far more interesting endeavour, having shown that on newer platforms higher bandwidth and lower latencies can vastly increase workloads and gaming (i.e. minimum fps) in ranges of up to 20+30%! Unfortunately I had a bad timing when buying this kit, its now available for like 360€ plus the new Hynix A-Die is slowly becoming available, which was shown to be able and reach up to 8000 Mhz on a single stick, with dual channel in the mid to high 7000s. Nonetheless, the Hynix M-Die that this G.Skill kit is based on can definitely do 6800 with "regular" VDIMM or even 7000 with high VDIMM (but that apparently needs active cooling with a fan pointed directly at the sticks). Curious to see how far Ill be able to push these sticks 🙂 Keyboard - Ordered 26-Sep, received 10-Oct Ducky One 3 Fullsize 100% Daybreak (MX Brown) Price paid (including tax and shipping) - 200€ For this one I had to do a bit of research, since I hadnt used or really cared about desktop keyboards for years. First thing I did was go to shops and check what kind of switches would be my thing. Turns out Blues are too clicky and loud, Reds are lacking tactile feedback, so Browns it was as the mide road / nice balance of the former two! Blacks, Silvers, Speeds, Low Height, etc, and all those other "special" switches didnt really interest me much. I needed something that felt good and that I could use for both gaming and work efficiently. Size was easy, I definitely couldnt do without my beloved NumPad, so fullsize FTW! Now came the tricky part: Which manufacturer and model? Lots of Cherry originals, Corsairs, etc. around. But then I noticed "Ducky", never heard of them before. Their designs intrigued me, it was something unusual and fresh, and not so "gamery gimmicky" looking, but still not too classic to be boring. Turns out they make super high quality keyboards, include swappable switches and keycaps, PBT keycaps for extralong lifetime and no "glossy" wearing off over time or disappearance of keycap labels. Initially, I was planning to go with a Ducky One 2 in white, but then the One 3 came out and I really liked the Daybreak model, so here we are 🙂 Case - Ordered 26-Sep, received 10-Oct Phanteks Enthoo Pro II Tempered Glass Price paid (including tax and shipping) - 180€ For the case, the two main priorities were good airflow / temps, as well as lots of space! I keep tabs on GN case reviews to determine how well current model cases perform with their standardized hardware testing setup. The Phanteks Enthoo Pro II stood out quite comfortable and to this day is actually the case sporting the absolute best GPU thermals of all cases, add to that top third CPU thermal performance. It has tons of space in all dimensions, since it is actually capable of housing two systems at the same time (not interesting for me but that also means more space for hardware!). Further boons are USB 3.2 and USB-C connectors at the front, capability to install a 420mm radiator (or even up to 480mm!), fan mounts for days, sleek but not over the top "gamery gimmicky" looks, dust filters and cable management options and also a good reputation by Phanteks as a case brand. Not everything is 100% set in stone yet, since Ill need to have the case in front of me first, but so far I'm planning to mount a 420mm radiator for CPU cooling either up top (if space permits) or in the front in push/pull config, then do front and bottom as intakes, with top and rear as outlets for airflow. The gpu and RAM, as well as the mobo VRMs and SSDs would then be nicely covered with more than sufficient airflow. We are talking a total of 13 case fans plus 3 gpu fans and potentially one more fan each for direct RAM cooling and gpu backplate cooling 😂 Overkill? Nah.... 😛 CPU Cooling - Ordered 06-Oct, received 08-Oct Arctic Liquid Freezer II 420 A-RGB Price paid (including tax and shipping) - 125€ For this one I was sure I wanted to go water cooling, but did not want to go full custom loop in order to keep the budget in check (i know, i know, thats ridiculous considering the rest of the build LOL). So in order to offset that, I wanted to go as large and thicc as possible for the radiator size, thus there was no way around the LF II 420. Not only is it one of the few 420mm AiOs on the market, but it's also the thickest of the bunch at a cool (pun intended) 38 mm. I chose the A-RGB version, so that I can use the fans in other positions inside the case and replace them with 6x Noctua IPPC 3000rpm in a push-pull config. Think THAT might be enough to cool the hot-headed 7950X? 😄 In any case, I'll plan to do some additional tuning (that goes for all the hardware in this build), to maximize peformance and minimize temps. Not sure if ill go bare die, but delid and liquid metal are definitely options. Mouse - Ordered 02-Sep, received 05-Sep Corsair M65 RGB Ultra Price paid (including tax, shipping and warranty extension to 3 years) - 100€ My current mouse that I am using with my laptop is the Mionix Castor with a total of 6 buttons, so thats what I set as the minimum when looking around for a new mouse to accompany this build. In addition, I definitely wanted to go wired, since I dont want to deal with degrading batteries in such a mundane thing as a mouse. We are talking stationary usage anyways, so why bother going wireless, right? Next thing I was looking at was the overall design (naturally very subjective), i.e. I didnt want anything completely bonkers like MadCatz models or ones with holes in their bodies (wth?! whyyyyy). I ended up narrowing it down to the Corsair M65 Ultra of the Roccat Kone XP Arctic White. I generally like the Roccat mouse design and I think their Kone series in white is pretty sexy! However, I have read for their Kone Aimo Remastered and Kone Pure Ultra that unintentional double clicks seem to pop up quite often after a short while on the left click button. Since I already have this problem with my current Mionix Castor, I wouldnt like to repeat this! Admittedly though, the Castor has now been in use for over 5.5 years, so its not a big shame that such things happen. Nevertheless, this double click issue plus the over the top RGB gamery lighting of the Kone XP drove me towards the M65 Ultra. The only challenge here was to actually get my hands on one, since they seemed to have been out of stock for almost a full year during the height of the pandemic, only recently returning back in stock at regular MSRP pricing. In any case, I got one at MSRP and also added an extra year of warranty to be on the safe side with any potential double click or other issues! Accessories / Misc This section will be for additional upgrades down the line that Ive got planned, i.e. case and radiator fans, fan adapter cables, LED strips, thermal pads, internal display for monitoring purposes (gotta use that bigass case, after all!), a display colorimeter to properly calibrate my monster display and a high capacity HDD for backup purposes. Ill update it step by step whenever I put an order in for items, thus WIP.

Techtober has started early and will be running late into Nov with RDNA3 😁

as far as ive seen Intel didnt do any mods on the ILM for Z790, their official stance is as usual:

yep no worries on that one. itll just leave a silver stain that u wont be able to remove, thats the LM filling the copper pores. but that will not hamper ur cooling capability in any way, its just a cosmetic blemish. what he said!

100% agree, i hope Lisa will be able to show that arrogant Jensen whos boss and how its done 😄

duuuude, dont make me regret my purchase like 5 minutes after i made it 🤣 but thats ok, here the warranty is actually handled by the shop u purchased from, so i naturally chose one that had a long standing reputation and good customer support. nice lil addon: asus has a promotion going on currently where u can get 100€ cashback plus another 25€ if you leave a review on the purchased X670 mobo. not bad! oh boy thats gonna be sooooo clooooose between the 13900K and 7950X! looking at the gaming benches, the 5800X3D still stands strong compared to the 13900K and thats saying something in Intel's own slides. as for the 7950X, really depends which review ure looking at, its either slightly ahead of both the 12900K and 5800X3D or slightly behind, so overall on par Id say. CB R23 single thread will likely go to Intel, but for gaming i think itll be more murky. as for multithread, no idea either to be honest. depending on how much they were able to pimp up their baby cores they might squeeze out a win here and there. overall pretty close fight and fierce competition, means WE win as consumers *mwahaha*. in the end i chose to go with whats available first and which platform has the highest chance for long term support 🙂 u said it bro! AMD really tickled the giants and gave us competition again! i love it! and THAT how u do it 😎🤘 rock on bud

dude, amen to that.

btw man thx for the headsup on the cashback promotion! turns out i get 100€ cashback on the Asus board, NICE! ill put that straight to the 4090 lol delid pretty likely for me, bare die not sure yet. for that ill likely have to switch to custom loop. however, if i can still mount the AiO then itll be indeed a no-brainer. ok cool man, gimme some time to write up the OP with all the components and some pics / reasoning for my buying decisions 🙂 lulz, my own little sub-forum, i like that idea 😄 as mentioned above, gimme some time to whip up something good.

wanna hear something hilarious? thats the board i got 🤣 but for 230€ cheaper with Alternate 😛 i got the AF II 420, hoping that should be "sufficient" to keep that beast cool haha. ill switch out the stock ARGB fans with 6 Noctua IPPC 3000rpm fans and use the stock fans for added case cooling instead. should be sweet! btw, i think its time i open a Build thread 😉

aaand done, actually went with ASUS on this one. i prefer 4 dimm slots since capacity is also a factor for work related stuff. ill still try to squeeze more Mhz out of the sticks, naturally 😛 reason why i chose Asus over Gigabyte and MSI were sturdier VRMs, USB4 included, 10G LAN and overall more balanced package. the others always had something lacking and if possible i wanna keep this board until AM5 is EOL, so i dont mind paying more now. excited! oh one more thing that convinced me to go Asus: they have this nifty feature implemented where u can automatically switch between stock boost algorithm for max single thread and manual all core OC for max multi thread performance. best of both worlds 🙂 delid tool looks definitely interesting, will keep tabs on that. bare die frame not sure yet, so far im going with the AF II 420 AiO, so bare die would only be sensible if i switch to custom loop down the road.

yeah i checked their mobo section right away to see if i can bundle it up with the CPU. unfortunately, they dont seem to carry any Asus boards yet? hmmmm

7950X ordered now for the mobo....hmmmmm

LOL welp someone has to do the "dirty work" i guess 🤣🤘 aight, just a few more minutes... edit: BAM! ordered 7950X with Mindfactory at MSRP woooooooo! now for the mobo....

i know right, ugh....what are they thinking? but yeah, its the early adopter milking tax, which im gonna have to pay up i guess. currently glued to the EU shops and checking my phone like every 10 minutes to finally see the cpus and mobos go live 😛

oh absolutely, those games are being played by all sides. like to that! (just out of reactions for today, too many good post 😄 ) cmon man, get out of those peasant 7x00 ranges, give us the 8000 we want and NEED 🤘😁

ha, what a "coincidence" that its likely at the same time of Zen 4 shop availability 🤣 so predictable!

GN asked EVGA directly about this "non-compete" contract thingy and they basically got laughed out of the building for asking this. theres definitely no such thing going on 😄 in general, i think its just too early to make any rash decisions for them yet. plus, they still have about a year or so of Ampere stock left, so theyll need to get that out, as well.