RainbowDuck - $1800 R9 3900x. RX5700XT, PC-O11D, *sigh* RGB

[TVwazhere]

This is starting to become a yearly thing, and ideally I'd like to keep it that way. (The helping a friend build their first PC and documenting it, not filling a whole case with Unicorn Vomit)

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 3.8 GHz 12-Core Processor	Purchased For $380.00
CPU Cooler	Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML360R RGB 66.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler	Purchased For $141.00
Motherboard	MSI B550-A PRO ATX AM4 Motherboard	Purchased For $140.00
Memory	G.Skill Trident Z RGB 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory	Purchased For $90.00
Storage	Western Digital Blue SN550 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	Purchased For $110.00
Storage	Seagate Barracuda 6 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive	Purchased For $140.00
Video Card	PowerColor Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB Red Devil Video Card	Purchased For $440.00
Case	Lian Li PC-O11 Dynamic ATX Full Tower Case	Purchased For $140.00
Power Supply	Corsair RM (2019) 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	Purchased For $135.00
Case Fan	upHere T7SYC7 120 mm Fans 6-Pack	Purchased For $0.00
Custom	Phanteks Vertical GPU Bracket, 220mm PCI-E x16 Riser Ribbon Cable Kit	Purchased For $0.00
Custom	Cablemod Pro Cables (Carbon and Red)	Purchased For $0.00
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$1716.00
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-08-03 18:38 EDT-0400

Price included a $20 CPU discount but doesnt include taxes, so add about $100 to get the $1800 titled price.

 

Intro and disclaimer:

 

Firstly, All the items shown on the table and listed in the PCPP price breakdown (except the CPU Cooler and technically power supply) were purchased at Microcenter, for two reasons. One, my friend who I planned and help build this lives near one, and two, the experience of getting to walk into isles full of Computer parts you only really get to see on the web page of newegg or amazon is something all PC builders should be able to experience. The current global situation limited the number of persons allowed in the building, we all of course wore masked and practiced social distancing o the best of our abilities. The exception parts were the CPU cooler (due to them not having ANY sort of 360mm cooler that wasnt the $280 Asus one...) and the power supply, which up until about two weeks from the date of build (Aug 2, 2020) showed the location was out of sock of most parts including PSU's. The type of PSU mattered because in my usual tradition I wanted to donate some parts to the build (whether it be for aesthetics, function or both), and instead of extensions I wanted to do full replacement cables for the PSU, so knowing which PSU we were getting was imperative beforehand so I could order the correct pinouts on the PSU side. 

Secondly, because 90% of parts were purchased at Microcenter, other than the CPU and motherboard discount we didnt get anything exceptionally of inherent "better value" than you could otherwise get online. (Ironically the RM850 we got was $135 on newegg, while they had it in store for $160) all the other prices were around the same prices on the given day we bought them at Microcenter as they would have been on any other site. We just didnt have to pay shipping for items that would have otherwise had shipping costs associated with them. Additionally, we were limited to the selection of one store specifically; we didnt have as many options as users would shopping multiple stores online, so it's possible if not likely that other more value parts exist online (in case anyone tries to copy this). The goal of this build was not squeeze every damn dollar of performance we can possibly get (as we could have easily bought a less expensive GPU model, AIO, RAM, ETC and upgraded the GPU model or CPU to still be under $2000), but more that it was stay under $2000, RGB the crap out of it, practically quadruple the performance of an FX 8320 and GTX 1060 and allow my friend to Game, Stream, and have friends gawk as his new PC. 

 

If you've read any of my build logs in the past, you know that I have my friend who will own the PC do basically 100% of the install process minus the wiring since most people hate doing that (and I actually got to the point where I enjoy it) so the following images will have been of instructing my friend how to assemble the PC, showing them ow simple it is and how relatively low risk it is (fears of bent pins, broken motherboards, snapped RAM sticks and dead GPU's be damned!)

 

The B550A-Pro was chosen for three reasons. Buildzoid at GN and HardwareUnboxed both did videos on this board stating that for it's price, it's one of the best value B550 boards that can support a 3900X without much issue. Secondly, This board has the Front USB-C front header, something a surprising amount of B550 and sub $200 X570 boards lacked. Thirdly, a week before I went down to my friends house, this and the B550 Tomahawk showed up as in stock. Now the Tomahawk is overall a better motherboard, everyone from the employee at Microcenter to HardwareUnboxed's VRM review to commenters in my recent status update will tell you that, but since we're not doing a 3950X and it actually comes with two less USB's on the back (a factor that became very critical after the PC was assembled and plugged in) we went with this board. The Troubleshooting LED's buildzoid mentioned came in handy when the CPU LED stayed on during the first boot (a re-socket and re-seat of the CPU cooler seemed to fix it) and everything otherwise worked as expected out of the box.

 

 

Normally I LOVE the Sapphire cards; their sleek minimalist Pulse series or their still stylish NITRO series are the cards I usually lust after when I'm shopping Team Red, but the aggressive design and color scheme of the Red devil card matched the theme of this build best, even if it was $50 more than the better value priced Pulse. The card also performs well, only hitting 78ºC on average on a Heaven unigin Loop with the fan profile settings that are shown further down below. 

 

 

The test boot eventually posted, so we moved onto building in the case, the long anticipated by myself PC-O11D. 

 

In case you're new here, let me spell it out. Hi, I'm TVwazhere, and Welcome to Jackass I'm fucking bat shit crazy about PC cases. Ever since I first laid eyes on the PC-O8 in 2015, the case that inspired the O11 which Derb8uer used as the style for the Dynamic, I've been enthralled with the concepts of PC cases; their design, function, fit and for, aesthetic, utility, space, ability to blend in or stand out, personalize a build in a way only a case can. Sure I was interested in cases before that but I wasnt as hardcore; like comparing public Gokarters to sprint rally Racers. So for a long time my dream was to build in the PC-O8, if not for the $400 price tag, relatively user unfriendly build nature and apparent lack of usable space. It was one of the first cases to implement Tempered glass and true RGB that i'm aware of, so to finally be able to build in the "Best case of 2018" as voted by many outlets such as Gamers Nexus and HardwareCanucks was a treat, and I was not disappointed.

 

 

"Oh the space for activities"

 

Installing everything in the case goes about as smooth as you'd expect for "Best case of 2018", all the motherboard standoffs come pre installed, the cable cutouts were all well placed, the cables were long enough (especially the USB 3.0, which on this board is at the bottom) the HDD cage was easy to access or remove if you so wish, cable management was brain dead easy (I put nearly no effort into it other than bundling the fan cables together) the panels are secured by the top panel through pegs which feels very sturdy and are way better than thumb screws or Allen keys through the glass. The flexibility in this size for watercooling is practically second to none; air tower cooler users will have to turn to the XL version to fit their NH-D15, DRP4 and Ninja 5 (if using tall ram) users, but FUMA 2, Freezer 33 Esports one and Cryorig H7 users should be able to eek out of the 155mm height limitation. Some might fault the case for not coming with any fans, others will state that the cost savings of of not having to purchase case fans gives them more budget to add their own that they were planning on doing anyways. That area is neutral to me. A 5 pack of Arctic P12 fans can be had for $30 on amazon and punch way above their weight class in terms of performance (Just ask Optimum Tech) so if it really bothers you, it's not a hard thing to fix. The construction of the case is solid everywhere. It is still steel and it's not super thick gauge so it will bend a bit when installing the radiator at the top for example, but almost every case does in this price category and not something I'd critique harshly. All of the dust filters are magnetic and easily removable (though only the bottom one is removable without having to remove anything else first unlike the top and rear ones) so cleaning fllters isnt as quick as it would be on something like a Fractal Design case for example. Ironically the B550A-Pro's SATA data cable plugs are shifted slightly inwards towards the center of the board which would actually be good for the run of a normal ATX case, but not as much with this case especially when using 90º connectors at the bottom slot, but that's an uncommon feature and not a fault of the case.

 

 

Two things I'll touch on as I know I'll get comments and questions about both. Firstly, are these uphere fans any good? The short answer is Yes. Yes they are. The 6 pack of ARGB fans costs $42 for the 3 pin and $46 for the 4 pin ( I used 3 pin only because the 4 pin was out of stock and the restock time would have been past the build date) they come with an ARGB controller that uses the reset switch on your case or the provided one to either change the RGB pattern, or can be press and held for two seconds while the pc is turned on to automatically sync to your motherboard. The controller use SATA power (FUCK molex) and can hold up to 7 RGB fans, DC or PWM (the controller is the same regardless of which you buy) The DC versions spin at about 1200rpm +/- 10% (motherboard reported around 1300 which seems high and is out of tolerance but whatever) and only 14 dBA per fan. When all fans (including GPU and CPU cooler) running, it was approximately 40-42dba of low frequency humming at idle; this can be tuned to be quieter with the PWM version, however I asked the PC owner and he was comfortable with the noise as he usually wears headphones anyways. Unfortunately, every time the PC resets, you must press and hold the reset switch to re-sync it. Which means unless I modded the case to have the reset switch poke out the back, you have to remove the top panel to remove the side panel to re-sync the ARGB. A minor pain, but a pain. Theoretically you could bypass the ARGB controller and use a 6 to 1 spliter (the Coolermaster AIO came with a 5 to 1 spliter, and it runs perfectly well) and then just use the included hub for the fan control only.  

 

Secondly, about the Phanteks Vertical GPU bracket. I ended up choosing this for a number of reasons, though I'd make one change to it if I could. The Vertical bracket actually fits perfectly in PCI-E slots 2-7, leaving just enough space to install a fan underneath it and technically a CPU cooler above the GPU (although at this card's "height", it would actually feed some of the exhaust air directly into the CPU fin stack which could play a small factor in CPU thermals). I do wish however the card was pushed a bit further away from the glass, as the face of a 2 slot card would be parallel to the edge of the PCI-E bracket covers. This means some cases with narrower widths would still leave the GPU pretty close to the glass (less than an inch) but in mist cases should be ore than an inch (including this O11D) so it's not a huge concern (unlike native PCI-E vertical slots which unless you're watercooling your card or you dont care about getting max performance out of your GPU, you shouldnt do). So why Did I go with this one? Well, Cablemod's option does actually sit the card back a bit further from the side panel, but it extends the card further into the case (not an issue here) but also costs #20 more and has an overall bigger bracket that could interfere with a fan placement below. Coolermasters original bracket would potentially fit better, but the V1 was A more expensive, B out of stock, and C, the V2 they list on their website I couldnt find anywhere. Lastly, Lian Li's native Vertical mount design. This design intends you to mount the GPU to the floor of the case (again, preventing fan mounting) but you CAN if you're daring move it up in PCI-E slots and have the GPU "hang" off the PCI-E I/o cover on the GPU. PUS, it has the added benefit of being flexible with how close or far you mount the GPU from the side wall. However at over $100 (nearly the cost of the case) and long shipping times, this was impractical. I could have left the card vertical, but there was concern on both the card height giving me issue with the PCI-E cables hitting the glass, AND I've heard that some tall card users actually saw a small improvement in temps when going vertical due to the exhaust air being able to be directed away from the GPU instead of exiting to the glass and getting sucked back into the GPU since the space was so small. Plus, it looks 100% better given everything around it, and IMO as long as it's not hindering performance, I'm okay with doing it. 

 

 

The Cable management is probably the best I've encountered so far,at least in terms of being able to hide everything behind a gaping hole of a back side and cover it with the SSD/HDD cover. Even with 9 ARGB fans, full length ATX PSU cables and at least one fan/RGB controller, the backside has no issues taking it all in stride. I even left the HDD tray open just in case a second HDD is installed, and positioned the cables so that it would be easy to plug in the SATA power ribbon cable. 

 

 

With the PC booted, I could get into the software and attempt to do some overclocking. I've done multiple R5 1600/2600's, should be easy right?.......... No. I actually spent about two hours trying to get the CPU to not immediately spike to 80ºC in Cinebench R20 when overclocked (was trying 4.2ghz @1.35V as a "start") and the further I dived, the worse things got, to the point where I had to clear CMOS to get back into the BIOS. Turns out I really didnt understand how the separate CCX (the chiplets) affected how the CPU as a whole performed, and while some internet browsing told me "it's easy to OC the CPU", a quick reach-out to @Den-Fi prescribed my computer some Precision Boost Overdrive instead of Auto OC or Manual OC, which instantly had the CPU running at 4.1ghz all core while maintaining temps at about 75ºC (for ONE pass of R20, multiple passes would likely rise to about 80ºC as the fluid reaches equilibrium)so I was happy with that. Thanks Den! (ignore the "4.2ghz" in the Ryzen Master and Task manager, that was from the manual OC that gets overridden depending on the amount of power needed (4 cores hit 4.6ghz easily before dropping to 4.1 all core))

 

For GPU, as usual I just increased the power limit (max frequency? I'm SUPER not familiar with this new AMD software, I kinda liked Wattman) and adjusted the fan curve to keep the card under 80ºC fo the Unigin Heaven run. 

 

Some videos of the ARGB (if they load...) The Uphere fans matched the MasterFan and the RAM fairly well. Better than the Coolermaster fan on the Hyper 212 RGB did with a 3 pack of their same type RGB fans (RGB Build 2019). 

[dizmo]

Nice build.

I've always found the RGB hate kind of pathetic. It really just spells laziness of the user, since it can be changed to literally any color.

But whatever gets them clicks, right?

[TVwazhere]

2 minutes ago, dizmo said:

I've always found the RGB hate kind of pathetic. It really just spells laziness of the user, since it can be changed to literally any color.

But whatever gets them clicks, right?

For me, it's the hate of people value RGB as if it makes the system immediately better than it would be without it. I personally wouldnt have minded either a top white or red led strip at the top for some case lighting, I'm just tired of rainbow colors in a cycle. The thing could literally have a R3 3100 and a GTX 1050, but have the same fans and AIO and some people would still think it's the bees knees. 

[Radium_Angel]

I don't think there are enough fans in that build. Surely you can cram one or two more in there! 

[TVwazhere]

18 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

I don't think there are enough fans in that build. Surely you can cram one or two more in there! 

An 80mm fans in the rear slot is possible I believe. Dont you tempt me LOL

[TVwazhere]

7 minutes ago, DutchGuyTom said:

This is system looks great because the RGB lights are almost all synced with each other. I did notice the ram isn't synchronized but I am sure that's because RGB software is terrible. In fact, if I had two things to ask of RGB manufacturers is that they need to make their software significantly better and they should make their colours more accurate.

That was my goal. Fortunately I was able to get everything synced ( the first video is unsynced but the last two are)