Help with ram compatability and water cooling.

[Koraun]

Hi all, I have a few questions that I'm having trouble finding answers to. First of all, I am not new to PC building. Second, price really isn't a consideration so much as performance. My use case is going to be a mix of gaming and higher end workloads. I want to get as much productivity out of it without sacrificing gaming performance. My first issue is that I plan to go with an Asus Rog Zenith II Extreme Alpha motherboard. I think I am leaning towards 128GB of ram, mostly because while 256GB would be useful sometimes(most of the time 128 would be enough), the speed on 128GB kits is a lot higher. I've checked the QVL and the fastest listed kit is 128GB 3600Mhz. Looking at just the ram, anything over 3800 is just listed as being optimized for Intel. There is 1 kit from Corsair https://www.newegg.com/corsair-128gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/N82E16820236536?&quicklink=true that is listed as being optimized for both. I know that ram is especially sketchy on AMD cpu's and that gaming performance goes up significantly with faster ram. I'm curious if anyone has any experience with going with faster ram than is on the QVL with this board, and if it should be alright, or if I really should jsut stick to the QVL. With Intel I've never had issues, but I hear a lot about AMD being a major issue with ram. I think I am going to go with the 3970X, because while the 3990x is a beast for heavy workloads, it is significantly slower with a 2.9 Ghz base clock as opposed to the 3.7Ghz on the 3970x.

My second concern is having to do with water cooling. I've not water cooled a system in years, other than an AIO. I know the basics, but there are some things I'm not up to speed on. I need a decent full cover block for 2 Titans is one issue. I'm not sure where is the best place to shop for water cooling at this point. frozencpu used to be a decent place, but their selection is pretty limited. Other than finding a decent place with a decent selection, I am mainly trying to decide on a case. I want to run 4 4x120mm or 4 4x140mm radiators. I've kind of been looking at the Corsair 1000D case because it can handle that with some add-on parts from Corsair. Are there any other decent cases I should be looking at though? Most cases are smaller now and the more custom case companies I know are out of business at this point. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[Bombastinator]

NOTE: I got general knowledge only.  You’ll get better data from others.  I see a couple things that might be useful.

 

The deal with AMD is because of the way infinity fabric works you want to go no faster than 3600mhz unless you go WAAAAY faster.  Like above 5000mhz.  Infinity fabrics does this clock double thing if it gets above 3600mhz which slows everything down.  So fast it’s very hard to get ram at all, and if you even can it’s terrifyingly expensive.  The standard “sweet spot” is 3600mhz cas 16.

 

”full coverage block” means custom open loop.  No AIO for that.  You’re diving deep for a first timer.

 

4 480mm rads seems like a lot.  2 maybe.

[Koraun]

Thanks for the reply. I haven't went AMD since the I7's were released, so I didn't know what caused the memory constraint. That really helps.

 

As far as the watercooling part goes, I've done full custom loops before, but it's been a very long time. In the past 8 years or so I've only done AIO's. I know 4 sounds like a lot, and it kind of is. It is more than I need to do a decent job, but I plan to overclock a lot and I want to keep it all as cool as possible without making a ton of noise either. I plan to cool the 3970x and 2 Nvidia Titan's. So, yes, more than I need, but it still has it's advantages,