Very ambitious PC build, advice needed

[Kimkash]

Hi all =]

It is my first time building a custom built PC even though all my life I’ve tinkered with PC’s and I’m the one in my family to go to if there’s any kind of problem, so bear with me- I have ambitions (as you would see) and I have a lot of questions.

I want to start apologizing in advance since this post is going to be long, there are a lot of details to consider in order for you to be able to help me so I hope at least some of you will be able to make it to the end.

Several things ahead:

* Disclaimer

* My requirements

* Components selection

* Regular/normal questions I couldn’t find the answer to

* Specific questions about my particular build and ideas

 

Disclaimer:

* The components I’m about to be addressing aren’t the final choice and there’s room for change for several reasons, mostly because the actual acquirement of the parts will be in about 7 months from now (29.11.2019) and as we all know, this is a very long time in this industry.

* First time building a PC so even though I’ve watched countless hours of tech-heads and build guides, some of the ideas I have may be wrong.

* I’m going to use rendered pictures I’ve mockup-ed in about 30min in order to give you a better idea of how the custom-made case is going to look like, how the components fit into it and for design considerations and there are MISTAKES in there but I didn’t want to spend even more time re-rendering them all (every time I’ll ask for specific advice, I’ll mention if there is a problem with the corresponding picture).

 

So after that- let’s talk business.

My requirements

All my life I’ve been playing games but never had a good PC that’ll make the experience very good, I’m about to finish my degree (B.Sc. in ME) and I want to be able to play a lot of games in very high settings, nothing short of 1440P at 60FPS, smoothly (haven’t decided yet if I want 4K).

In addition to that, as I was saying,  I’m (about to be) a mechanical engineer and I will be doing CFD, Topology Optimization, 2D parts nesting and multibody motion analysis on my machine. These include high resolution renderings from software like Solidworks, Blender and AutoCAD- both pictures and video.

I am also starting to get into photography and FPV drone flying so I’ll start editing photos, and video editing is also in the pipeline for this PC.

Basically what I’m trying to say is that I need crazy, balls-to-the-wall machine.

 

Components selection

I’ve compiled a list that’ll give you the general direction I’m heading, even though as I said before- final component choice is prone to change upon outside feedback (=you).

List without fans (PCPartsPicker)

List with fans (PCPartsPicker)

* CPU- I’ll probably go with an AMD high-core count CPU since their price-to-performance really improved over the last few years.

* GPU- single, top-of-the-line GPU from NVidia, something in the neighborhood of 2080 RTX.

* Boot SSD- PCIe 4.0, 1TB SSD,  I really don’t know how to choose between the available options. I heard good things about Intel 900D.

* Motherboard- instead of selecting a specific one, I’ll tell you my filters from PCPartsPicker: AM4 socket (for Ryzen, might need sTRX for newer Threadripper), minimum 3 slots of 16x PCIe, minimum 1 Ethernet port, minimum 3 slots of 6GB/sec SATA, some kind of wireless modem built-in, MSI/Gigabyte, 4/5 star rating. The one I chose is visible in the list for estimation purposes.

* RAM- 32GB (or more, depending on your feedback regarding my requirements), DDR4, dual/quad channel.

* Storage- 6TB+ of high-rating HDD’s. Don’t know much about Raid arrays and brand superiority but will definitely need 6TB+ of USABLE space.

The system will be water-cooled and fanless for silence (whole section about it coming up in a minute).

 

Regular/normal questions I couldn’t find the answer to

These are some (probably) basic questions which for some reason I wasn’t be able to find answers to. I’ve been lurking in the forums for a while now, watching build guides, specific components reviews and teardowns but I haven’t been able to find a coherent guide/explanations to. Links to existing posts and videos will be appreciated.

* PSU: How do I choose a correct capacity for it? If, for example, PCPartsPicker tells me my PC will be about 479W, how do I choose the maximum rating? I know about efficiency rating and efficiency curves but I haven’t found a guide that says something along the lines of ‘your PC requires X watts on average and Y watts at max throttle so you need to take about (X+Y)/2 (or whatever equation you want to plug in here)’.

* RAM distribution: after seeing a lot of build guides, I’m pretty sure I need around 32GB of RAM, maybe even 48 or 64, but how do I distribute them across the slots in order to get maximum performance?

Assuming 32GB, will 2x16GB or 4x8GB be better? If I understood correctly, in this case- quad channel memory will be better so 4x8GB is the way to go but I’d love feedback on that.

* D5/DDC pump noise: other than 2 videos on YouTube who are actually testing the sound of the pumps without any other fan or background noise, there’s no info about the sound they’re making and how to choose basing the decision on acoustics (most of the info is about pressures and head pressure, even though the absolute majority of pumps can handle easily almost every moderate system built out there- 3.9m head pressure is a whack-ton in terms of PC watercooling tubing and dimensions…)

 

Specific questions about my particular build and ideas

We arrived to the interesting part: the custom-made case I’m planning to build for this PC.

I’ll start by describing it and then we’ll get to the questions:

 

 

The case will be made from dark hardwood wood like Mahogany or some other type (TBD), there will be no window or opening to see the internals of the PC (I LOVE LEDs but not in my PC, yeah I know- CRaZy….). I have a very specific taste in furniture and I would like to blend the PC in the general aesthetics of the room. Even though the case looks blank, the front will have intricate wood laminate and copper wire graphics (final design is TBD) so it won’t look like a giant piece of blank wood.

The cooling of the system will be based on the most silent pump I could find and will pass through CPU block, GPU block, haven’t decided yet about boot SSD block. I believe four 360mm long, 45mm thick copper radiators without fans can provide passive cooling for this PC. I’ve tried to apply my heat transfer course knowledge to this case but there’s too many unknown variables in this so I couldn’t verify it for sure. Do you think it’s enough? Too little radiators? Let me know, would love some feedback from people who already built high-end, demanding PC’s.

 

 

 

Regarding the loop order, I’ve made it so that it goes from the pump to the CPU block, (optionally) SSD block, GPU block and to the top radiator and downhill from there (a mistake is made in the rendering, it shows that after the pump the reservoir comes in but it is not where it need to go, the reservoir will be between the last radiator and the pump. Sorry about that). That way the temperature difference between each radiator and the water entering it is kept at a relative distance from each other since most of the heat transfer efficiency by all heat transfer mechanisms is influenced heavily by temperature difference.

Just to note, all tubing models looks like hard tubing because it is far easier to model it like that, actually I’m going to use soft tubing because there’s no need for any sense of aesthetic inside the case.

I’m a little bit concerned about this big straight wooden box that’ll act as sound box (mostly for the pump, aiming for a fanless PSU) so I’m thinking about lining the inside wall (minus visible entrance and exit vents) with 5mm foam of some sort, would love to take suggestions for that.

 

 

The idea is to cause relatively slow and natural air movement through this chamber and by so achieving a very silent operation.

Another important thing to take into consideration is that I’m WRONG and that I need a bigger PSU. What do I mean? I’m pretty sure four triple radiators from copper will handle a max load at reasonable ambient temprature difference but if I’m wrong I’ll get rid of two radiators and put fans on the remaining ones. This is obviously not ideal for the sake of acoustics but I’ll take Noctua’s because of their relatively silent operation and in order to accommodate the fans which were not in the first design choice, I need enough head room to be able to add 6 fans and still not hit max wattage on the PSU.

 

Wow, that was a long read. If you’re still here, thank you for getting so far and your ability to bear my crazy ideas.

If any other information is needed regarding my artistic choices, components choice or pretty much anything else just ask I’ll answer below.

I am looking forward to your feedback, both positive and negative.

[Streetguru]

3 minutes ago, Kimkash said:

Solidworks, Blender and AutoCAD- both pictures and video.

Well you don't really need a PCI-e 4.0 SSD, and you want faster RAM preferably probably 2 16GB sticks since AM4 is dual channel only. 3600mhz CL16 might be expensive, 3200mhz CL14-16 is likely fast enough.

 

The high end consumer board isn't necessary at all unless you want onboard 10 gigabit or thunderbolt 3, big list of motherboards is at the bottom.

But you do want 2-4 GPUs for blender at least, and if you plan to use this PC for gaming, you should just build 2 systems, so one can render 24/7 and you can do whatever on the other PC or laptop, the render machine doesn't need much in terms of CPU, but you might want an X399 system just for a ton of PCI-e lanes. an 8-16 core CPU will be cheap there.

 

For the GPUs themselves you probably want 1080tis, Vega FEs(might be cheap), or Radeon VIIIs, as they're all the cheapest GPUs with a lot of VRAM.

 

And just get a 4k display most likely, because it's not like 144hz helps with production stuff or workflow?
 

 

 

Also why not just get an 011 Dynamic XL...