Preparing for the RTX 3000 series...

BSpendlove · September 9, 2020

This isn't an amazing custom built case or fully custom hard tube watercooling greatness, but it's mine... I've built the majority of this setup in the past 2 months and I'm proud of it (more upgrades to be done... which I will note in this thread).

I'll go through the past 2 months and include some pictures I've managed to grab along the way but my plans are to potentially purchase a new case, get better/more RAM, upgrade to the 3xxx series when they arrive and potentially start my first custom water cooled project... (along with custom sleeving my cables, I was tempted to just purchase the pre-sleeved bundles, but my last build I custom sleeved the cables, it took a few hours but the outcome was fantastic...)

Current part list for those who don't like reading:

Case: Corsair 760T V2 White

CPU: Ryzen 7 1800X

Motherboard: MSI X370 XPOWER Gaming Titanium

RAM: Corsair Vengenance LPX 16GB @ 3000Mhz

Cooler: Corsair H150i Pro XT RGB

GPU: Gigabyte GTX 1080 Gaming RGB

Storage: Samsung 1TB 970 M.2, Samsung 500GB 850 Evo, Samsung 250GB 960 M.2

PSU: EVGA Supernova 750 G2 (First time I've ever used anything other than Corsair...)

Monitors: 3 x MSI MAG272CQR

Mouse/Keyboard: Corsair K95 Platinum RGB/Logitec G703 Mouse

Headphones: Sennheiser GSP 550

Where do I start... technically I built this computer a while back when the GTX 1000 series came out and have just been upgrading it along the way. Firstly, I actually gave away my i7 6700k and gigabyte motherboard to a friend because I wasn't playing games and I was saving for a motorbike... I was mainly using my laptop for work (a lot of the time I was travelling around the UK) and so the first thing I purchased after having the base of a computer to work from (psu, case, etc...) I went and tried the new Ryzen chips, I've never owned an AMD chip before but wanted to see what Ryzen was all about... I don't have any pictures of the installation but that was the initial click in my head that urged me to keep spending more and more money..

Anyway, I'll skip a few upgrades/purchases until I have some pictures... (I managed to snag a brand new K95 and the mouse from a colleague at work for less than £100 and he had used it once or twice... it was in top condition with 0 visible marks and literally looked brand new...)

What a heck of a year it's been, I started working remotely at the start of the year and needed an upgrade to my desk. My desk was extremely tatty and worn and I had a cheap Acer 1080p monitor so I went ahead and order a fairly large desk along with a new monitor.. The MAG27CQR (more to come on this...)

(I would decorate the room, but I'm on the brink of finally putting a deposit down for my own home so not too bothered about the walls and flooring)

Here is my temporary work space while I wait for another order before I start cleaning up a little bit...

I instantly started noticing that soon, the cable management behind the desk is going to start becoming a mess... But again not too bothered until I move out in a few months...

These bloody games are taking up all of my storage on my SSDs and I refuse to put them on my 2TB hdd that I store useless data on... So I went ahead with the 1TB M2 since it was like £30 off... I installed it and thought, ewww... I haven't cleaned out my case for some time... Just look at the dust....

I then started looking at my cable management... it was horrible since I didn't care but since I'm buying more and more stuff, I better start taking care of my cable management... I don't have any before and after pictures to compare but just know I am planning on custom sleeving all my cables black/white or even trying to find a nice colour that pops out in a black and white build... Look at the awful cable management... It isn't too bad but I need a PSU shroud to hide those hideous cables... And what idiot installed the Hyper evo 212 like that lol... Whoooops I swear I've had like 3 PCs with this cooler and have never installed it that way before... Look at all the room at the top for a 360 Rad in the future....!!!

Let's come back to the monitors... Knock knock... delivery......

You would of thought I'd be able to purchase a better camera for less than the cost of 1 of these monitors lol... But the whole choice of having a triple monitor setup was really for my work flow (I'm a network/netdevops engineer and we all know the more monitors, productivity is only increased... )

About 5/6 years ago, I had a triple monitor setup with Alienware monitors and I rarely played games on all 3, I just love the aesthetics (beware, I still haven't found a nice looking triple monitor stand that I like)... The feeling of having 3 monitors all the same brand/model is pleasing... I was running the single MSI monitor along with the small TV in the picture above for a week or so. The problem is that I haven't still made the time to get the monitor positioning fluent across all 3 monitors and fix the gaps/heights between monitors... Shame on me.... I will get round to it...

A bonus upgrade (with no pictures...) was that my hyper-x cloud 2 headphones were broke (mic stopped working) so I opted to purchase a new pair of headphones. After reading many reviews, I gave the Sennhiser GSP550 a go, I hate the green/black combo in the picture but they also provide you with black cover that you can swap out the green. I wanted to mention these because they are extremely good quality... I still need to purchase a connector so I can hook them up to my piano and try them out on it...

Also, silly me... The cables that come with the monitors did not reach my PC on the floor, so I opt'd to put my PC on the desk... They still didn't reach... So I went ahead and bought some nice DP cables... Mmmm very nice...

P.s I've started to notice that my desk gets dirty within a week of cleaning it so I've tried to make it no food/sticky drinks at my desk which also helps me to get away from the PC during my working hours for lunchtime...

So remember me mentioning about the cooler? My temps on the 1800x were shocking.... I not recently cleaned my PC since I let it build up with quite a lot of dust (you can probably see some dust in these pics I took some time ago)... Let's pop off this chunk of metal...

(Anyone notice that dust? I didn't... and I've cleaned it since the picture was taken!

It wasn't time to build a full custom loop yet and I thought the h150i wasn't expensive so went ahead and.....

made a quick cheeky purchase last week....!

I watched a review on the new Lian fans along with the fan controller starter kit (3 fans + controller?), not sure how long it's been out but I really like how slick they look but they're all out of stock. I will be purchasing that soon along with changing out my current fans (front and back) with the Lian 120 rgb fans (can't remember the model...)... Anyway I haven't showed my full setup with the 3 monitors yet because the picture would of gave it away... Apologies with the picture quality, you can even see some of the awful cable management routes that I done and I was too lazy during the h150i install that I just told myself, I'll wait until I get that new case... Who knows what case... (p.s I've noticed in the picture the h150i looks like an extremely tight bend but I can assure you, it isn't as bad as it looks in the picture, there is some slack, I did rotate them slightly to get more slack but it looked ugly and made them more straight)

So, with all of that... Here is a half-decent quality picture showing my full setup. The monitors look better in the picture than in person (with the gaps etc..) but I'm enjoying them... I still have a few items to arrive (Saitek rudder pedals and yoke for my FS2020 needs but I'll be upgrading to the 3xxx series when we can pre-order them because I need the most I can squeeze out... Thankfully, you don't see too much of the mess behind my desk with cables at the bottom in this next picture...

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Triple 1440p 100+hz monitors with a 1080 pftttt? Yeah it struggles... Only game I've tried so far on surround was modern warfare... I won't really need these monitors during my FS2020 gaming when they release VR compatibility

While I'm at it... Here is a little surprise..... I wanted to see how the Ryzen 3900x performs so.... yeah

That bad boi is ready to be installed since it arrived today... It's listed as a compatible CPU for my motherboard (probably needs a bios update?) but my plan is to take my 1800x, mobo and old ram and build a docker server/dev server for personal projects since I just currently do personal projects in a vm on my current system (hence why potentially I wanted to change my ram out, maybe a 64gb kit)...

I'm currently looking around to purchase all the needed tools to depin the modular cables and sleeve them myself but trying to figure out if I should just go black/white or add an extra colour... Open to suggestions on that one...

Other plans as previously mentioned is to rip out the 1080 and replace it with a 3080 or 3090.... Potentially introduce a custom loop (rip money I wasted on a h150i... lol), maybe upgrade the PSU to a 1000w, purchase a new case and also get some RGB fans... Buying new memory would force me to go RGB because we all know that is the rules in 2020, RGB everything...

I'm also debating to perform benchmarks on my most played games to compare the 1800x to the 3900x but I just don't really have time to be faffing around with stuff like that... Maybe I'll try over the next few weekends if I'm not eager to install the 3900x.

Belac F · September 9, 2020

Nice! I thought I was cool with my 2 1080p monitors... Might have missed it but which RTX 3000 card are you upgrading to?

BSpendlove · September 10, 2020

57 minutes ago, Belac F said:

Nice! I thought I was cool with my 2 1080p monitors... Might have missed it but which RTX 3000 card are you upgrading to?

I'm probably going to go all out and get the 3090 and not worry about price to performance etc... But my opinion may change when we get to see some benchmarks between the 3080 and 3090

BSpendlove · September 10, 2020

I'm so glad I was lazy yesterday and didn't install the 3900x. I've just returned it and I'm going to be waiting for the 3rd Generation Ryzen to be announced next month... Bring on the 4xxx series...!