Turbof1

It indeed has some questionable choices. The shrouds being plastic on the underside facing the gen 4 nvme's is another. If they made it full metal they could have acted atleast as heatsinks.

I can, but if I am correct, the bottom one is limited to pcie x2. In that case it would bottleneck read/write speeds.

That is the thing: the nvme slot is right underneath the pcie slot for the gpu. And a heatsink for the nvme drive is not possible to fit, again because I want to keep the shroud in place.

Hey guys, I am looking for a decent gen 4 2tb drive that remains cool. I need this for a nzxt b650e mobo. That motherboard has 1 gen 5 slot with headsink, and 2 gen 4 slots without heatsink. I want to put it in a gen 4 slots and later on use the gen 5 slot for a gen 5 drive down the road. The issue with the gen 4 slots on this motherboard is that not only those slots lack a heatsink, they are also covered by a (on the underside) plastic shroud which will void it from fresh airflow and thermally insulate the drive further. Hence why I fear thermal throttling. I dont want to remove the shroud because that will ruim the aesthetic of the board. Any suggestions?

I would not dismiss the arrival of a 5600X3D just yet. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-5-5600x3d-rumor-foretells-of-a-budget-am4-gaming-champ Just because something does not exist yet, does not exclude it from possibly existing in the near future. I think the chance at least for it to become a reality gives enough merit to hold off on locking into buying something now.

Imo, I think the 5600X3D would be better pick since I do not think the extra cores of the 5800X3D will matter. Technically the latter will perform ever so slightly better by a 100mhz higher clockspeed, but I doubt you'll notice that. What you will notice is the lower price, lower power draw and lower need for cooling. If you are not planning to use raytracing, go for either a 6900XT, or a 7900XTX as your gpu.

Don't forget he lives in Europe, meaning unfortunately pricing can differ quite a bit. That same unit for instance will cost in Belgium/Netherlands around 145 euros, while it is a B-tier spec. There are slightly cheaper options that are A-tier. Like this one: https://www.megekko.nl/product/4186/1119298/PC-Voedingen-PSU-/Cooler-Master-V850-Gold-V2-White-Edition-PSU-PC-voeding It would, but I think a 5600X3D would be even better for his case. It is unlikely he will be using those 2 extra cores while getting the same benefit of that V-cache at a cheaper price. That is if the rumors are true of course.

I'd advice against buying a 4070. It is not that good of a gpu for the money. Again, try to buy a last gen second hand. You can find 3070ti's for instance for around 400 euro's (just dont buy gigabyte ones since they apparently are more prone to cracking), which is only around 20% slower than the 4070. Given current gen is at best only marginally better up to the 4070, and beyond that quite a bit better but also way more expensive, I think buying previous gen second hand is the best way forward.

-If you can hold off a bit longer on the CPU, there are increasing rumors of AMD releasing a 5600X3D. I'd say that would fit your user profile a bit better. 5800X3D is around 300 euros, 5600X is around 160 euro's. Expect a 5600X3D to sit around 250 euros. -I'd say replace at least a couple of those WD HDDs with 2TB nvme drive, sits around 120 euros. -Finally the GPU: That is a tough one. Current gen is mostly either too pricy for the given budget, or too trash not worth considering. Remember that any decent upgrade will put you in replace PSU territory too. I would actually highly advice that since your PSU is I think 6 years old and will be quite stressed because the power draw can get close to the limit of that PSU. In fact, I'd swallow that cost first. Your aim would be for an 850W A-tier PSU ( https://cultists.network/140/psu-tier-list/ ). I checked and I think the cheapest is around 140 euros (Cooler Master V850 Gold-V2). You could try to get a B-tier PSU which is definitely a bit cheaper, I am not sure how much of a risk that is. Then, aim for a second hand GPU card. 6900XTs gp for around 600-700 euro's on ebay.

You mean the system panel header? I solved that with using the perforation for the zip ties: Ideally the cable management holes could have been placed better. Also slightly more room above the actually psu to push the cables through without first moving the psu would have been preferable. Then again, I am using this horizontal anti-sag gpu support that hides any of the smaller cables. I do like your gpu cabling! That looks really tight, and perfectly angled to the rubbered hole.

Let the king have its long, weary, covering drapes. My peasant build has all the good looking bits and is not afraid to show it off in all of its glorious nudity.

Private turbof1 reporting for pc-building, sir! Like probably many, I got sold on the Fractal Design North case. Those wooden slats on the front... . djeez Fractal, can it get it any more sexy? So I bought one last weekend and spend roughly 3 hours on transferring the parts from my older Aerocool Cylon Pro. That case is unlike its name would suggest a sweatbox with barely any front airflow. This is the older build: I mean, the little holes that should get some air inside are half covered by a plate... . Behold the magic of 3 hours hard labour of moving all the parts over: I got myself the tempered glass chalk one. To my dismay I figured out this version does not come with a fan hub. Why Fractal why. But, Fractal does ship the case, and all versions of it, with 2x 140mm fans. Thank you Fractal thank you. I had some issues with cable management. The space under the psu shroud provides ample room to stuff the excess cable length away, but the space between the mobo backplate and the side panel at the back is quite tight, especially around where the connectors of the psu cables and cable extension fit into one another. Luckily, I just had enough room to get the side panel on without any bulging. To my dismay, my mobo neither has a usb 3 type c internal header, with the front I/O of the case having that. That is left unused now. Should be fixed once I deem an upgrade necessary. Temperatures dropped around 7 degrees on idle, and over 10 degrees under load. The Aerocool case, although never resulting in anything hitting too high temps, just did not allow good airflow to have decent temps. This case however performs strong in that department. Oh you want to know specs? But this topic is solely for my need to show off the pc case! Fine... Here it is: -Asus B550 strix gaming-A -amd ryzen 5 5600X -gigabyte 3070ti vision -16 GB Trident Z royal ddr4 3600mhz RAM. -WD Blue SN570 1tb -2x samsung evo sata ssd's -Enermax T50 cooler + 3x exhaust case fans. -Fractal Design Ion Gold 750 watt PSU I am happy with the specs as they are. In a time where a 4060ti is often worse than a 3060ti, I am not bothered with getting anything new. We'll see if the next generation of cpu's and gpu's have enough of a performance jump to get something new in it.

I finished up the build today! I did buy the nvme drive sooner than expected, and changed my mind: I went for a 1TB one instead of 2TB. The reason I decided on this is two-fold: the 512gb ssd sata drive looked to have some issues that seem to be gone for now, but I am a bit suspicious of a failing drive. Also given this was the windows drive in the 2012 pc, putting it into the new pc meant it is a platform switch which could mess up drivers. For that reason, I bought the nvme drive right away to get a fresh install going on the nvme drive. Second, I figured 1TB should be enough for quite a while, with the option of buying second nvme drive whenever needed and installing it in the slot at the back of the motherboard. Some pictures of the hardware: The cable management was... challenging to say the least. I think this is undoable with a none-modular PSU. One issue I had was that the cables coming with the PSU are quite stiff The sata SSD drive also needing the sata cables also was a hassle. Luckily there is quite a bit of space in front of the PSU to push the cable in. Luckily the graphics card does not need auxilliary power from the psu, getting the power instead from the pcie slot. Saves the hassle of that. An other issue I had was the pcie riser. I ran into stability issues. it caused blue screen of death with the message "video tdr failure". At first I thought it was the platform switch without a fresh install, but after reinstalling the graphics card drivers it still had the same issues. Now suspecting a hardware issue, I reseated the pcie riser. After that, I had no video output anymore. After another reseating I now have a stable and working system. The thing is, the riser piece of the node 202 exists out of 2 pieces. So riser piece 1 in the motherboard pcie slot, riser piece 2 in riser piece 1 and then the graphics card in piece 2. This effectively creates 3 possible points of failures. Visually everything initially looked to be put in together just fine, but one thing or another must have had a bad connection somewhere. Anyway, it got fixed. The final product: I had a lot of fun building this. Looking towards the future, there are some upgrade paths like a ryzen 5000 series cpu and a better GPU. For now, this will do nicely!

Picked up the CPU today, the 3700x. Very well packaged and cleaned for a second hand cpu. Second hand is always a risk, but a seller being careful with selling it in a good visual condition, is also more likely to have taken good care of it. Came with the full box and amd cooler (the spiral rgb one I believe?). Way too chunky, just going to use this one: Or atleast I was... You see, the cryorig c7 comes with its own backplate which tries to incooperate compatibility for several different sockets. That does include AM4, but the backplate overlaps partially with a small backplate panel that acts as a headsink for stuff on the back of the motherboard. I don't really want to remove the backplate, but when I did try to do so I discovered that also kept the headsink at the backI/O in place... I unfortunately can't make it compatible with the stock amd backplate either, so I had to drop the C7 and insert the wraith stealth cooler I had laying around. An inferior cooler, but it'll have to do. After that I popped everything in place: Hooked up a GPU and PSU I used a couple of months ago for a test spin aaannddd... No picture. Bummer. The lights of the mobo and ram were on, so the board had power. Also when booting the fans did run. I started troubleshooting, replacing the ram and gpu. Still no picture. I suspected it was either the shiny new motherboard or the used cpu... . Loathing the second hand buy a bit, and not looking forward to the prospect of removing my 5600x from my main pc, I put it away for a moment. Then I remembered I didn't try a different PSU. I figured it was unlikely to be that considering the board did get power and I put that psu away in a perfectly working condition. But given it was low fruit, I gave it a try and replaced it with a different one. And that did the trick, got screen output! Extremely weird issue, but I am glad at the same time given the actual components work and I need to buy a new sfx psu anyway. Next week I will be buying that psu, which will allow me to build the system into the node 202. Still short of the m.2 nvme drive, but I can put that in later.

Aaannndd we got the mobo in! So tiny, right about the size of my hand! And expensive too . Tomorrow the cpu will be in. At that point I can put together all the necessary components to see if everything works. I would still need the sfx psu to actually build it into the chassis, but I can hook it up to a normal psu outside the case for a test run.