Mike Tyson (build, no mods, he said....)

[AlienALX]

A large slab of good karma landed on my doorstep. So I am building my second dream rig. I did one in 2013 and vowed never to do it again but, well, you know how that always ends. "I'm not mad bro".

 

So this build is going to be everything my other builds are not. No flamboyancy, no lights (apart from some white LEDs) and that is it. It will easily punch well above its weight. I am also avoiding water cooling. I have had some rotten luck with that lately and my Alienware is so complicated that diagnosing anything turns out to be a crap shoot and can take months.

 

More is to come, and this rig changed several times in the last few days but I decided firmly last night and pulled the trigger.

 

Why Mike Tyson? black shorts, black boots, no frills (unless monstrous hardware floats your boat).

 

So here is what I ordered last night. I still need maybe a fan hub, and maybe some more cables as the GPU is 3 8 pin lmao.

 

CPU is the 3950x. I originally planned on 3970x, then it was all getting very daft. This is a gaming only rig, I have tinker toys and fidget spinner PCs for everything else.

 

 

For RAM I changed things. Instead of getting 32gb of 3600 I got 16gb of 4133 it was quite cheap too tbh. £30 cheaper than I paid for my Dominator RGB 3200 kit/s.

 

 

One 256gb for Windees and a 1tb for games (for now, I can hide SATA drives easy in this rig)

 

 

I also changed the board. I just couldn't justify it really. I hope I don't live to regret this, but reviews are very positive.

 

 

I changed the case also. I had my heart set on this one when I was dreaming last week and tbh I'm happy I got it.

 

 

Still utterly determined to avoid RGB I got this, saving a small fortune in the process.

 

 

9 of these (maybe too many but hey, better than not enough)

 

 

PSU I got this.

 

 

Cables. Graphite. Again, super low key.

 

 

And finally the cherry on the cake.

 

 

There's another reason why I chose this route. I want a VR headset for HL Alyx, and spending that much or even more on water cooling would have stopped me getting that. I also don't want this to take months to do either.

Hmmblah. I decided against water cooling. I had three big issues when upgrading my Alienware and tbh I am just so sick of it all. If I spent this sort of money and had issues it would kill me.

I've got four other rigs to play with (well, two that are up and running) so tbh this needs to just work. Yeah, the Kingpin probably wasn't the best idea ever, but I don't know if I will ever get the chance to do this again (last time was 2013 and like now it was sheer luck really) so yeah, call me stupid etc.

It also leaves me scope for upgrades. And space. TBH? I could kill for a Caselabs but they are gone, and this is about the next best thing. You can SLI two GPUs in it vertically lmao.

 

Got the rest.

 

 

Didn't fancy £45 on another full set so just got what I needed. Will look nice. Got this too for the sound card.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It begins !

 

It's a bit of a pile atm lol.

 

 

Unpacked the case. Got a thankyou letter from the president of Lian Li lmao. Any way, they stiff you on the second ribbon and you can't get it any more. Not that I would want to, it's about 80 quid. So I did my research on Amazon for the best X1 ribbon as it's only for the sound card and I got this, for £17.

 

[AlienALX]

OK so I got the build mostly done yesterday, with cable tidying training and ties to go in. It's all up and running.

 

 

Note it still has the umbilical cords attached.

 

 

 

Panels.

 

 

Few issues. The GPU would not go in the bottom and the ribbon reach to the top (or bottom in this case) PCIE slot. Second one is X4, don't even think the GPU would run in that.

 

The X1 PCIE ribbon is far too short to reach the board. Even with another one (and it was expensive) it still wasn't long enough. Also due to it having to be in the bottom due to the way the cable exits it wouldn't fit, pushing the sound card up. I am ruthlessly determined to get my sound card in, and hopefully upgrade it to a Nu Audio soon. However, for right now I found this.

 

 

There are two good things about that. Firstly it will fit under the sound card. Secondly the PCIE connector is right angled to the USB, so it won't stick up like a boner. I was going to ditch the silver PCIE cable, but Cablemod want 70 euros min order. Not worth it for one 8 pin GPU cable, so I will stick with the silver given I already got this for the sound card.

 

 

So I got this for the PCIE riser board power.

 

 

 

And I think it will look better with a bit more silver in there. Not only that but the panels are quite heavily tinted, which will tone the silver down I reckon.

 

It's all up and booting though, so I am well pleased about that.

[Tech_Dreamer]

Nice.

 

( @VenomZ_  : Check out the name )

[AlienALX]

Few things in the pipeline. I ordered a pair of these for the front in 140mm. I am using a 240 rad and there are gaps I don't like.

 

 

I got a sound card set up for the rig.

 

 

Which is now in and fitted.

 

I tried this on the riser but it didn't work.

 

 

So I have ordered some kit to sort out the blue USB cable that shunts the PCIE.

 

 

 

I also didn't realise how Ryzen works, and that the PCH gives you more lanes than I thought you had.

 

 

So I got this for the 256gb NVME drive and this will reside in the full length X4 slot.

 

 

Oh yeah I got this too for storage. It's in the bottom slot on the board (so top in this orientation)

 

 

As the Patriots won't fit under the cover.

[AlienALX]

Ugh. Decided to hook up the frames. I had to get this to do so.

 

 

I wouldn't have, but HWC did a video on the neons today that I was looking at and I cracked.

 

 

I suppose it will be nice to actually see the hardware in there.

[AlienALX]

[AlienALX]

Slowly getting there. Delays unavoidable sadly. No more blue cable, though.

 

 

[AlienALX]

Hands down the best RGB I have used yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeFbmjDkw54

[AlienALX]

OK so the only thing that was clearly an afterthought on this case was the feet. Or rather the lack of feet. They used rubber squares, which on carpet lasted for around ten minutes after the rig started getting heavy.

 

The vented bottom panels are held in with poppers and a single screw at the back. This means that if you rotate the case on the carpet the bottom panels warp and pull out. Not good. I don't know how long it will be until this rig is at my house where it should be, but for right now whilst still working on it I needed to do something. So I shot across an email to a pal with some amazing machinery, and we came up with this out of 10mm black acryl.

 

 

 

 

Every edge has been chamfered using a chamfer tool to prevent them dragging on carpet.

 

 

So they should offer good manoeuvrability on carpet, yet when I get it home onto the linoleum I can add 3m felt pads.

 

They're 70x70mm, btw. Should be here in a couple of days.

[AlienALX]

Oh and after 5 years I figured I was due a new monitor.

 

[AlienALX]

Oh man did I really leave you all hanging there? wow. Sorry ! It was a pretty hectic time tbh. I got the rig all built and working beautifully. TBH? the fact I didn't finish the log or comment on it since is actually a good sign. Mostly because it's the first rig I have had in so many years that I don't bugger with continually. Which is not very exciting, but a position I know many would envy including myself. Like, actually being deep down happy with something, ain't that a thing !

 

One thing I did in the almost two years since this was built was buy a second kit of very similar RAM. It's Team Group 8 Pack, but instead of 4133 this is a 4000 kit. Which is fine, Ryzen wouldn't go higher than about 3680 any way and believe me I tried.

 

Well Just before Christmas I had some bad news. My mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Thankfully it actually took them a month to diagnose, as there really were that few cancerous cells. Any way, she had an operation and is now cancer free, but Christmas was pretty much ruined. Firstly she was in hospital, and secondly I had to house sit for her as my apartment is in a secure facility for autistic people but her house is not. And far more susceptible to break in. So I stayed here. Bored, and wanting to upgrade the PC here. I did ! leaving the one at home as it was.

 

So here it is with said memory upgrade. Thankfully the filters on this case are killer, so it pretty much looks like the day I built it.

 

 

Thing is I bought a 3600 for the Julie's Pants PC at my mother's and wanted to put the 3950x in there (because I have shifted all of my CAD, cutters and tools here) and the 3600 was struggling a bit. I wanted to buy a 5000 series (5900x or 5950x) but AMD have not dropped prices anywhere near to what I thought they would. So, I bought this.

 

 

And this.

 

 

And this.

 

 

I wanted a 360 for Alderlake (it's a 12700KF BTW) and the 240 that was in there is going in the server rig. I then sold the old board (X570 TUF) the 3600 and a Corsair 240 RGB Platinum and got back a decent chunk of coin. Bundles always sell very quickly.

 

I then fitted the CPU but the cooler was at my mother's. So this was as far as I got.

 

 

 

I cleared the space for a 360.

 

 

Then took it home.

 

 

At this point I was ready to fit the new cooler.

 

 

And the finished pics. Note I also changed out the sound card. 

 

 

 

So there it is. A rig so good all I have done until about a week ago is polish it and clean the dust filters whilst playing far too much PUBG.

[AlienALX]

Sorry forgot to post how it ended up. BIOS F6A. RAM XMP to the 4000 profile, with the voltage changed from 1.2v it defaults to to 1.35v, the standard setting for the RAM.

 

Read and write tests.

 

 

 

Latency is 94ns, as it suffers from the same issues as DDR5.

 

It is also now running NVME RAID on two Phison 256gb drives.

 

 

Which works very well.

[AlienALX]

Finally upgrade time. 6800XT Strix in.