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    So, with the new PC online, here comes some thought on my build.
    But first: it's 2019 and still there's no decent way of connecting motherboard to case I/O panels. Is that hard to come up with a standard like internal USB headers? Really. My previous build (Asus mobo) had a raiser board where you would connect the I/O cables and then plug that little piece of plastic onto the motherboard. Gigabyte provided a full cable in the X570 Xtreme, which made things a little easier, but when I closed the case after checking everything was in place (and turned the PC on a couple of times for BIOS update and config), the I/O power switch cable came loose and forced me to reopen the case. Really, do something about those frigging I/O cables mobo and case manufacturers.

    Here's the build:
    Ryzen 3900X
    Noctua NH-D15
    Gigabyte X570 Xtreme
    Seasonic 750w
    32GB DDR4 cantrememberthespeeditshouldbemorethan3000MHZ
    MSI RTX 2080
    Samsung 970 500GB NVME
    WD 6TB Black
    Samsung 860 4TB
    Samsung 860 1TB
    5" frontal bay with card reader and 4x USB3
    beQuiet! Dark Base Pro 900 (black trims)

    Starting with the case, that was the most difficult decision. I like fulltower cases, and those are rare. A quick tour of available midtowers highlighted that many manufacturers now ignore frontal bays, and for the desktop I don't want an USB card reader on the desk. The Dark Base was pretty much the only case which game me what I wanted, which included provision for many internal HDDs. If it had a version with no tempered glass sidepanel it would have been perfect, but nowadays everyone is about RGB LEDs so that you can light up the room with just the PC. Whatever.
    Anyway, the Dark Base is a pretty nice case. You can strip it down to the frame and rearrange its internal in several ways, and the hinged door (padded with sound absorbers and covering the intake fans, their dust filter, and the 5" bays) can be rearranged to open on the other side. It even includes a Qi charger on top, which I didn't connect because I don't have anything that would make use of it. The case has 2 USB 3 in A flavour and 1 USB 3 type-C on the front, sorrounding a large power button and activity LEDs. No reset button. There's a fourth USB-A plug but it doesn't carry data, it's meant for fast charging only. 3 beQuiet 120mm fans are included, but I replaced them with an assortment of 120mm and 140mm Noctua fans, then proceeded to add 5 more, for a total of eight fans spread throughout the case (front and bottom pushing, rear and top pulling); I went for Noctua fans because they are slightly quieter and the number of fans will compensate for the lower airflow. I've forced those fans to maximum RPM (normally they're PWM controlled) and they become audible in a quiet room, but it's a low-pitched whisper than doesn't get annoying and is drown by any other kind of noise.
    Working on the case was OK, but the motherboard partially covers the cable passthroughs, making routing a bit difficult. I had to rearrange the HDD cages because the GPU was too long, and had to route some cables through one space meant for HDDs as otherwise they wouldn't have fit. Disassembling the case was again OK, but removing the PSU shroud is a bit of a pain, with two screws on the right side and one on the left side. But the dust filters can be accessed from the front of the case without disassembling anything, a definite plus. Now let's see how long it takes for those to get dusty.
    I've lost a screw inside the case, as usual, but it was when everything was 90% completed so the screw will stay in there. Have fun, buddy.
    The additional HDD case are a pain. To attach them you need to open the left sidepanel to first unplgu a series of plastic covers than can only be retrieved from the right side, than install the HDD, slip the cage in the opening, and fix it with three thumbscrews. Each cage can fit two 2.5" HDDs or one 3.5". However the thumbscrews are arranged in a way that one is right below the SATA connector, precluding the use of angled cables.
    Overall I liked the case, my gripes are probably mostly due to oversized mobos.

    I've chosen the Gigabyte X570 Xtreme because it's the only mobo in the initial wave featuring an on-board 10GB network card. A MSI mobo had that as an additional PCIE card, and many others have only a 2.5GB or 5GB card on-board. It's also the only mobo with passive cooling for the chipset. It doesn't have internal USB2 headers, but 2 USB3, and 1 USB-C internal headers, which neatly fit the ports on the case and the frontal bay. The mobo even has two CPU power connectors, probably to ensure compatibility with future, more power hungry CPUs...but with a 3900 one plug is all you need. There are three M2 slots, all of them covered by a metal heat spreader. The first slot can be accessed even with a GPU installed. I installed the GPU before the CPU HSF, and to secure the fans I had to unplug the GPU...and that's where I wished for larger PCIE retention clips, it was pretty hard pushing them down to free the card.
    There are four USB2 ports on the back of the mobo, currently populated by mouse, keyboard, and graphic table. Upon first powerup the board was equipped with BIOS version F2, which for some reason stopped recognizing the mouse after 10 or so seconds, forcing to use the keyboard. Yes, it's a snazzy UEFI-type BIOS. Updating to version F3i solved all problems. A few parameters changed later (like turning off LEDs and enabling virtualization), the mobo was configured and ready.
    One note on LEDS: they are more subdued than I thought. But still useless, so off they are turned.

    About LEDs...the GPU. By default it has a rainbow-coloured LED strip lighting up the MSI logo and the whole lenght of the mobo, and the only way to turn it off is to install a piece of software. I don't want another thing clogging up the startup sequence, the case is below the table, I don't know if the settings will be saved if I unistall the program, so I'm living with those LEDs.
    The GPU itself is a beast, longer than the motherboard. It has three DisplayPorts and one HDMI. MSI were corteous enough to include dustplug for all these ports, and a metal stiffener to support the card. Which is totally useless, I've tried for 10 or so minutes to fix this stiffener for it to actually support the card with no success, it was either pitching down or too angled to make any difference. The PCIE slots on the mobo have a metal frame around them and the card itself takes two slots (so two screws on the backplate), so it should be enough. It's not like I'm moving the case anyway.

    The PSU is from Seasonic, which produce their own internals, and I've been using them for quite some time and never let down. Cables are fully modular, braided, and come in an elegant bag. I went for a 750w PSU although 600 should have been enough mostly to be sure not to be underpowered due to the GPU...and should I change that I wouldn't have to worry about removing the PSU and all the cabling associated with it.

    The RAM is from G-Skill, and I picked it from Gigabyte's compatibility list. I would have went for 64GB, but there were no 2x32GB kits available for sale when I ordered and I saved some money to upgrade the CPU from the planned 3800 to a 3900.
    I didn't go for watercooling because I'm still not fully convinced by it and its maintenance requirements, even for all-in-ones. Not to mention that the Noctua HSF is cooled by the same fans I use in the case, so they are practically silent even at max RPM. Mounting the HSF required the removal of the standard AM4 mounting brackets, but installing that and the CPU was a breeze compared to the LGA2011. The thermal past is Arctic MX-4, which I bought new and remembered more liquid and easier to spread. Oh well.

    Installing Win10 from a USB3 stick took around 5 minutes, although not even version 1903 comes with drivers for the 10GB card (from Aquantia), so I had to install the OS, then the network card drivers, reboot, and then Windows proceeded to install all needed drivers. Do you remember when you either had to slipstream updates in a Win7 installer or download all updates once a vanilla OS was installed? Now everything's simple. To hell with those fondly reminiscing the days of config.sys and autoexec.bat.
    The only thing that wasn't correctly installed was the Cintiq tablet: the tablet worked but the pointing area spread across three screens, so I had to manually install the Wacom drivers to force the pointer on just the Cintiq itself. The Adobe CC was a minor bump, beforehand I disabled and unistalled it from the previous PC, but upon login it was adamant the CC had been already activated on two computers...nothing major, I just logged in again and reset the activation on the machine.

    After installing every other utlity, I then proceeded to install Steam and GOG Galaxy. I wanted to test the PC and thought of 3D Mark, discovering that now you have to get it from Steam and the whole suite is €25. Then speedlolita told me the demo has some benchmarking tool. I got a respectable score of 11000, placing me above the sample "4K gaming PC" in the test (9300), but still way below the record holders (35k). Still, it's nice to see BattleTech run in 4K with all details and FSAA turned to max at 60fps even in city missions. And...other than that I don't have any other modern PC game to test the PC with.
    But here are some impressions with BattleTech.
    The major source of noise is the GPU. Upon turning on the PC its three fans spin at max, creating quite the ruckus. They then stop completely, only to resume spinning when required. The fans do produce an audible "hum" that constantly goes up and down, but even after an hour they were quite silent and never overpowered the game's music even during quiet moments. I tried the CUDA-enhaced rendering for one video (nothing major, just a bit of colour and perspective correction), and in that case it never stirred more noise than standard/Youtube use. Quite pleased with this design from MSI.
    I turn off the displays if I leave the PC on and go, for example, to eat dinner, and the card is also faster in reconnecting them, which is a pleasant change. Not that the FirePro W7100 I had before took minutes, but it's those one/two seconds that make you happy. A couple of days ago nVidia also released drivers in which you can decide scaling type (bilinear or nearest neighbour) which should eliminate blur on old/pixelart games, but I still have to install them.
    Last edited by briareos_kerensky; 22-08-2019, 09:12.

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      Originally posted by briareos_kerensky View Post
      But first: it's 2019 and still there's no decent way of connecting motherboard to case I/O panels. Is that hard to come up with a standard like internal USB headers.
      I have complained about that for years, motherboards have changed a lot but ever since i started building computers the whole pin header thing seems to have stayed the same, and i keep thinking there has to be something a lot better then that. I would have thought we would be up to wireless connectors by now

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        Originally posted by Brad View Post
        Last time I put xp in a machine the viruses arrived before the updates!
        This happened to me with a Window 2000 Professional machine in 2007.

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          Originally posted by briareos_kerensky View Post
          Is it a Prescot? It can double as a room heater then
          Willamette p4
          socket 478 mPGA
          0.18um
          1.8GHz

          RDRAM
          1024MB Dual
          398.8MHz
          C800-45(400)
          Samsung
          256MBX4

          To the tip at the weekend, now that I've encrypted the drive.

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            When my Aunt died, no one wanted her old Aspire 2930 Centrino (vista) laptop. I hung on to it for reasons unknown.....

            Anyway, I put CloudReady on it instead of Vista. As a web browser and spotify (to my chromecaster music) player, it's excellent. When the kids need to do their homework, I can carry on working etc.

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              My Gsync monitor started having lots of issues and then i started using my work monitor which was a Ips monitor which was ok but had lots of issues in games so so my dad had a monitor in the attic, was a AOC 2367m and been using it for a few weeks, and its surprisingly good while its 60hz it has very little input lag and was not getting the stuttering, thinking for my next monitor hoping to go IPS with a high refresh rate next

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                Just upgraded my e1607 4 core no hyperthreading to a 6 core xeon with hyper threading, e1660. Thank god I can finally play Battlefield 1 without it stuttering like a madman, only 2 years after it came out made a big difference tho thrilled.

                Having ram problems tho on this system had been getting a training error on boot a while back, reseated the ram and it went away. Since putting in the new cpu seems like some of the slots arent working, if I populate some slots I can only see 6gb in total. May have to get some higher GB count sticks and mug off using 6 lanes.
                Last edited by Baseley09; 05-05-2020, 19:41.

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                  So later today, once I pick up my cables, I can finally try this lot out. It’s all set up on the tv stand, so it’s a case of plugging in and turning on.

                  No doubt I’ll struggle at first to get it ‘just right’ from a sound and vision perspective, but that’s part of the fun I guess!

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                    Ordered a new build yesterday:

                    Ryzen 3600
                    Radeon 5600 XT
                    16gb Corsair ram
                    One of those m2 ssds
                    Be quiet case and cooler
                    700w psu

                    Think that’s it

                    Oh and a X570 motherboard

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                      Another 8gb of ram to my existing 8gb and a m.2 Nvme SSD 240gb drive, next upgrade all being well a IPS 144hz monitor

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                        New pc here and built. Those Be Quiet cases are fantastic, as are their coolers and case fans. It’s silent in the same way that a PS4 pro isn’t

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                          So have two monitors: a 1440p ips panel (60hz max) that I’m currently using and getting 60fps on everything and a 144hz 1080p Benq. Is there any point in going more than 60fps? Anyone here tried it?

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                            had a 144hz monitor though only a TN, felt like with 60hz on my current ips panel there was more in the way of stuttering

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                              Got a Dell S2721DGF arriving later. 27" 2560x1440, 165Hz, IPS, 1ms GtG, G-Sync, FreeSync... Usually just buy office monitors so feeling a touch nervous but hoping it works out to be an impressive monitor for the money.

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                                Originally posted by Brad View Post
                                Is there any point in going more than 60fps? Anyone here tried it?
                                It's glorious. Works best when using a mouse for looking around as your movement phasing/speed is not restricted by a controller. As an example I'm able to go back to 60fps comfortably when using a controller, but for mouse-look games forget it. DOOM at 60fps is dogger after you've sampled it at a locked 165 with G-Sync.

                                I'll easily sacrifice resolution over refresh rate, and plan to do so if I can't at least get a stable 120fps at 1440p on Cyberpunk (I've got a 1440p/165hz and 1080p/144hz).

                                What games are you playing?

                                Even just using Windows10 at 165hz is a revelatory experience. I can move windows around really quickly while still able to read the contents. It makes my 16hr+ work days way more comfortable on my eyes.

                                Wait, you already have a 144hz panel. Why would this not be the first thing you try for yourself!? That's like owning a Lamborghini for the exclusive purpose of nipping to the local Tesco while adhering to the 30mph speed limits despite living right next to the autobahn.
                                Last edited by dataDave; 06-08-2020, 07:44.

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