Eastman51

I think it's fairly normal for Windows to do this. We have a bunch of brand-new Windows towers at work that we freshly imaged, and they do the same thing.

I don't see why it would be a problem. As long as the case is sitting vertically it shouldn't create too many cooling problems; the case is vented properly for intake and is designed for use with a dedicated graphics card. It seems more like the PSU cooked and died, perhaps because it was a low quality unit or of insufficient wattage

1440p looks nicer than 720p inherently thanks to anti-aliasing effects caused by the increased pixel density of a higher resolution. To me both settings 1 and 2 look nearly the same, except settings 2 is dramatically sharper and clearer. I'd have a tough time seeing enemies in the distance on settings 1 because of how blurry and pixely it is. Personally I'd probably go for something in between, like 1080p medium. Whatever settings look decent but allow me to play at a good framerate.

If you really think cooling is part of the issue, clean any dust and start monitoring temps. If temps read too high, then it'd be valid to consider using better thermal paste, upgrading fans, or looking at alternative coolers. Without actual data you have zero places to start from. For all you know, that heat on the chassis is just because hot air is blowing on it from the GPU. I know that in my ITX PC, certain parts of the chassis get quite warm to the touch due to GPU air; but actual temps are well within safe margins. In the meantime, it would be beneficial to find a power supply of more than sufficient wattage and is known to be good. Such as borrowing a friend's PSU for a quick test; I've lended PSUs to buddies before to help them determine their eBay Corsair pos was causing problems. Alternatively, you should be able to see 12v, 5v, and 3.3v readings in HWinfo64; if these readings change too much it could cause the PC to crash and you know for sure something is up with the PSU. It might also be beneficial to pick up a Kill A Watt (or any other similar tool) so you can see wattage draw from the wall.

Any fans that will connect up to the motherboard or some type of fan controller (like old style DVD bay controllers with knobs to control fan speed) will give you that control you're looking for. My personal recommendation would be to get Noctua fans, or you can even get a 5 pack of Arctic fans on Amazon for ~$25. Arctic has a PST version of their fans that daisy chain for simplicity. But there's always Y splitters and hubs if your motherboard doesn't have enough fan headers. As for your fan config, I'd swap the top rear to exhaust. You don't need that much intake, especially on a Ryzen stock cooler. Hell you could even ditch the front top fan altogether and it'd be fine.

Have you actually tried checking temperature in software like HWinfo64? You should also open up the PC and check dust buildup. A computer shutting off under load could be due to a thermal issue with the CPU or motherboard (overheating GPU generally doesn't shut off a PC to my knowledge) or perhaps an issue with the power supply; unstable power delivery under load could easily cause the system to crash.

I've never had a new fan NOT come with screws.

I would probably get a new front intake, either a Noctua or an Arctic; pretty much my personal only two options for picking fans. I would then run two exhaust at top and rear. For the CPU cooler, I'd get either the U12S or the Arctic Freezer 34. While the options you mentioned would perform significantly better than the Intel stock cooler, these two are very good coolers and be something you could reuse for years to come on a future build with a more powerful CPU. You shouldn't have any issues fitting either in your case, they are standard sized air towers. As for the side panel fan, you said its basically right above the GPU. Assuming you can fit a fan there, you could run one as an exhaust; directly venting heat straight off of the GPU and helping to negate some of the issue you have of your GPU being too long. An alternate fan config could see the front intake, side exhaust. And then making the rear fan an intake, reversing the CPU fan on the new cooler, and using the top as exhaust. This would effectively give you two separate airflow paths through the case. I generally like to have more intake than exhaust wherever possible; this means that in lieu of exhaust fans, air is pushed out of any crevices or vents by default which minimizes dust buildup. Conversely if you have more exhaust than intake, you draw air in from wherever it can in lieu of intake fans; thus drawing in more dust. I'd recommend watching this video that LTT did a while back: https://youtu.be/dLX54ounENY It's very informative about dust buildup and fan configurations. You're free to set things up however you want, and you can monitor temps in games to see which configurations yield the best temperatures for your particular build. Edit: in order to run more fans than headers you have on your board, you can get fan splitters, hubs, or controllers. Splitters make fans share the power of the motherboard header, which reduces maximum rpm for those fans. A hub is generally powered by SATA, so you get better rpm range. A hardware fan controller (usually an old style 5.25" bay thing) is very similar to a hub, but you have physical and manual control over fan speed. A hub like this: https://www.amazon.com/SilverStone-Technology-Silverstone-Splitter-SST-CPF04-USA/dp/B07N3HP8S5/ (there are cheaper options, this one just happened to come up in my search and has SATA power) Or an old 2000s style DVD bay controller like this: https://www.amazon.com/Zalman-ZM-MFC1-Multi-Speed-Controller/dp/B004FKRP40/ Simple Y splitters, or even using Arctic PST fans (meaning they have the ability to daisy chain) is easier and should be easy to find on Amazon. You have tons of options available. Once you have decided how to connect all the fans, I'd just run some experiments with actual fan layouts to see which yield the best temperatures.

Unless you convert to water cooling for the CPU and mount the radiator at the top, I would only bother with one extra fan. I would mount it as exhaust in the rearmost top slot, I have run dual top fans in both exhaust and alternating on my air cooled setup and saw zero change in temperatures or any other change in performance. However the single top rear exhaust absolutely helps, mainly when lowering my CPU fan curves to make the system quieter.

You could try to verify that keyboard is the problem by finding or borrowing any other keyboard you know doesn't have issues, or you could probably even just unplug the keyboard when you launch the game and see how it goes.

You have to be in a1 and b1 or a2 and b2 to get dual channel. If you try running a1 and a2 or b1 and b2 it will be single channel and explain why it says memory is in wrong slot. That shouldn't prevent it from booting, however. Edit: I see what you're saying is wrong now. Your grammar/wording has been confusing lol. Sounds like the board might be faulty. You could try clearing the CMOS or updating the BIOS before attempting to run 2 sticks again; but its sounding like you may need to RMA the board.

So are you trying to run 4 sticks of RAM?

So it basically will only boot with one stick in each channel? For example, it will boot with sticks in a1 and b1 or a2 and b2; but will not boot with all 4 slots filled

Newest member of the collection. Perhaps getting to see the road again soon with the smell of rain on the horizon.

It's hard to say why it wouldn't boot. Modern motherboards shouldn't care too much if RAM isn't inserted in dual channel with two sticks, but in theory it is possible. I would check the motherboard manual for which slots are ideal for only two sticks. You should also confirm on the dram sticks themselves if the manufacturing dates are the same, serial numbers near matching too. I would also verify both sticks boot on their own to isolate a faulty stick. I've had tons of problems with Corsair DDR4, so it doesn't surprise me too much; however repeating the issue with the Crucial makes it seem like its not the Corsair's fault