Does this cooler/motherboard/graphics card look way too crowded?

Farfalle · September 20, 2020

I'm building a new PC and thought my parts list made sense. The key part are:

- Gigabyte Aurus X570 Pro Wifi mobo

- Ryzen 3950X cpu

- Noctua NH-D15 cooler (huge!)

- Samsung 970 Evo plus m.2 ssd

- Fractal Define 7 case

- 4 sticks of G.Skill DDR4 3200 memory

- MSI Gaming N770 TF 2GD5/OC GeForce GTX 770 (a placeholder graphics card from old system while I wait for a RTX 3080 to become available)

I don't have any cables connected yet or the PSU but have put in all the other components. I had to raise one of the cooler fans to clear the memory sticks, but the glass panel on the case still easily clears the cooler fan. Phew!

I'm wondering though, is this arrangement way too crowded? I'm kind of shocked at how close my graphics card is to my cooler. I'm anticipating getting an MSI RTX 3080 Trio which I think is substantially larger than the GTX 770 that's in there now. And just looking at the card seated in its slot I'm a little nervous about how my fingers will fit to open the slot clamp to release the card. I may have to completely remove and remount the cooler in order to do it! The graphics card also completely covers my m.2 slot that contains my drive - should I move that drive down one to the second slot? I just wish there was a lot more room around everything. I know from research that this size case and parts is pretty common, but it just seems a little crazy to me now that I'm dealing with it in real life. Would an extended ATX board been a better choice? I have no plans on adding the larger hard drive cage to this case (there's a 2 bay cage inside the PSU shroud which is all I'll ever need) or even an optical drive, so I think a larger mobo would have fit in the case easily. Oh well...

I will probably not be able to do any more on this build until next weekend which leaves a lot of time for second guessing. I guess what I need is a knowledgeable someone to tell me I'm overthinking this and that everything is fine. Or not, if that's the case! Thoughts?

Farfalle · September 20, 2020

14 minutes ago, DutchGuyTom said:

Yes, it looks overcrowded. But it will still work.

Thanks for the feedback and advice, much appreciated. At the end of the day, it working is what I care about almost to the exclusion of anything else.

14 minutes ago, DutchGuyTom said:

The Noctua coolers look awful but that's not their purpose. However, since you have a glass side panel, I am a little shocked you went with them and not something more visually appealing (like their black versions).

Those four case fans are recycled from an older system, so no Chromax. Also, I don't mind the appearance, and think the white case and brown fan combo ain't that bad! Got a glass side panel case mostly to shame myself into doing a cleaner job on cable management. Look what I can do when no one will see it :