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Another New Gaming PC

Agent Orange

Agent Orange

Veteran Member
Joined
Sep 24, 2008
Messages
6,643
Location
SE MI
For those few here that are into this:

Back last October, I posted about a new Asus gaming rig and here is an update on that.

The Asus board, a ROG Crossfire X670 Hero motherboard, was returned twice due to BIOS issues and its failure to POST properly. This was a problem with the early released boards and has most probably been fixed by Asus. However, I wasn't willing to wait, and opted for an ASRock motherboard which has basically the same chip set at a considerably lower price. Also, I added another new case in the Lian Li Lancool III, which by the way, is a godsend for the builder. Can't say enough about that case (component accessibility and material quality).

So, here are the ingredients as it stands now:

• ASRock X670E Tiachi Hero
• Ryzen 9 7950X
• Noctua NH-D15 CPU Cooler
• GSkill Trident Z5 RGB 32GB (16x2)
• Seasonic Prime TX-1000 Titanium
• MSI RTX 4090 Suprim Liquid X
• Lian Li Lancool III
• Samsung 980 Pro 1TB
• Western Digital 6003 6TB
• Seagate Barracuda 1TB
• ViewSonic Elite XG271QG 240 Hz
• Windows 11 (22H2)

The build is now complete with recent addition of the 4090, which was extremely hard to come by at MSRP. I finally was in the right place at the right time (MicroCenter) and was able to get the card at MSRP, which was and is still an absurd price to pay. However, like a golfer looking for that great set of clubs or the hunter going after that treasured rifle, I jumped on it.

I have a very large library of mainly shooter games, and my favorite ones that I am playing mostly are these:

• Cyberpunk 2077
• Far Cry 6
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Assassin's Creed: Valhalla
• Witcher

I'm not into wild overclocking and will never OC the video card, and only slightly tweak the CPU and RAM. I'm just starting to run a few benchmarks and for example, "Endgame" bench, is over 40,000 as compared to about 28,000 with the old 3080ti.
 
And in 6 to 9 months this will be passe. I gave up trying to always have the best gaming system. I'll live with a few levels below that and save tons of money
in the process.
 
I'll be building an i9-13900k system next month. While one concern is finding an RTX 4090 (I may have to resort to scalpers, sadly), I have unique case needs:

- Must have at least one 5.25" bay
- Must be able to mount at least 3 x 3.5" drives (preferably 4)
- Must be modern (ie. have front-accessible USB 3, preferably USB-C)
- Must be ok to sit directly on carpet (ie. needs more than 1cm of ground clearance)

So far, the only relatively modern case I've been able to find that meets the above is the Fractal Pop XL Air. (Actually, also the bequiet! Dark Base Pro 900 rev. 2, however I really don't want to spend $300 on a case, that's a bit nuts.) Trying to find a case made in the last 3 years with an exposed 5.25" bay has been really difficult, so if you have any better suggestions, I'm all ears...
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the link. It does satisfy my conditions, but it has no front connectors (ie. USB) which is also a requirement for me. I'll amend my previous post to include more conditions.
 
There are USB ports behind the top door. No USB-C though.

6515_08_phanteks_enthoo_pro_full_tower_chassis_review.jpg
 
My Threadripper 3970x / RTX 3080 ti system is in an antrhracite gray Enthoo Luxe case, the front panel connectors are convenient behind the door, and with the cover down, it hides them nicely from view.

Wonderful airflow, you can mount a 420mm radiator in the top (I have a 360mm in mine). Nice heavy steel case, the tempered glass door is mounted on hinges with pins, so you can easily remove the door to get it out of the way by lifting it up. These will take any size ATX/eATX/SSI EEB (server) motherboard.

I have an older system in a Fractal Design Define XL R2 case, which is also a great full-tower case.
 
tradde said:
And in 6 to 9 months this will be passe. I gave up trying to always have the best gaming system. I'll live with a few levels below that and save tons of money
in the process.
Click to expand...

tradde said:
And in 6 to 9 months this will be passe. I gave up trying to always have the best gaming system. I'll live with a few levels below that and save tons of money
in the process.
Click to expand...
Yeah, and I could quit gaming altogether and save a bundle too.
 
tradde said:
And in 6 to 9 months this will be passe. I gave up trying to always have the best gaming system. I'll live with a few levels below that and save tons of money
in the process.
Click to expand...

I have the opposite philosophy: I only build a new system once every 5-6 years, so I purchase the best I can afford at the time. The only thing I upgrade by roughly the 3rd or 4th year is the video card.

It's not just for games; I edit 4K video, experiment with AI generation and restoration (images, video), etc. so it's not just gaming bragging rights. GPU gets a large workload, and the rest of the system is there to maximize bandwidth to/from the GPU. So while it isn't strictly optimization for the latest games, the goals are the same.

That said, Cyberpunk 2077 is utterly gorgeous with raytracing turned on.
 
Been trying to figure out what the deal is with the trend of tempered glass sides. I'd think you'd want to limit RFI. Personally, I don't find PCBs that attractive, even if the fans have bright blue LEDs.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Been trying to figure out what the deal is with the trend of tempered glass sides. I'd think you'd want to limit RFI. Personally, I don't find PCBs that attractive, even if the fans have bright blue LEDs.
Click to expand...
Well, even then, the PCBs they are making are getting covered more with shrouds and heatsinks, so you really can't see anything anyway. So I think the only point is so people can see the insides illuminated with LEDs. Which reminds me, I need to unplug a few more blue LEDs the next opportunity I get.
 
Probably. People already line their car with extra lighting. Now you just need to add the glass to finish it off.
 
Agent Orange said:
Yeah, and I could quit gaming altogether and save a bundle too.
Click to expand...
That's pretty much what I did. Most games to me are boring. I hate 1st person shooters. I played Wow too long and it gets boring when you have
great gear and then an expansion comes out and your gear is now crap and you have to get new gear all over. Not sure what I'd like to see come out.
But most of what I see I don't care to try. So my gamer doesn't get used much any more.
 
Trixter said:
I have the opposite philosophy: I only build a new system once every 5-6 years, so I purchase the best I can afford at the time. The only thing I upgrade by roughly the 3rd or 4th year is the video card.
Click to expand...
Thus like I said I don't get the best and save money: Similar to your "purchase the best I can afford". I might normally try for the best GPU but with prices as they
are I just can't do that. I'd say every 5 years I might upgrade or build a new machine.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Been trying to figure out what the deal is with the trend of tempered glass sides. I'd think you'd want to limit RFI. Personally, I don't find PCBs that attractive, even if the fans have bright blue LEDs.
Click to expand...
I don't necessarily care for the glass but it's not an option on the better cases. I'm not into the RGB light shows either but that's where it's at.
 
I don't game (at least not on the computer) and purchase and use whatever works well until it doesn't. My daily driver is a quad-core Socket AM3. I see no reason to upgrade yet. And my system still has a legacy floppy!
 
Chuck(G) said:
Been trying to figure out what the deal is with the trend of tempered glass sides. I'd think you'd want to limit RFI. Personally, I don't find PCBs that attractive, even if the fans have bright blue LEDs.
Click to expand...
Glass ages better then plastic, and if you are going to buy a $1000 GPU you might as well have it on display even if nobody else will ever see it.

We have come a long way from the days of ribbon and power cables all over the place affecting airflow and looting like shit. Gamer cases at least allowed for much better cooling and cable management.

I haven't purchased a new GPU since my RX580 because I just don't play new games. I still spend most of my weekends playing Age of Empires II conquerors on Voobly.com plus whatever older games I have on GOG.com, Steam, and Epic giveaways. I have a massive amount of retro hardware for playing old games, but I do like modern things like NVME drives that make booting Windows 7/10 instant. Also, it was yesterday that I noticed that DDR4 RAM edge connector isn't flat showing how few machines I own even use DDR4.

There was a decade where Intel CPUs were only a few percent faster every generation and few apps and games used more than four cores so you could get away from upgrades for a very long time.
 
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