Sleeper PC Project (First ever build)

[NOOCH_55]

Budget Aim: $2000

Budget total after Completion: $2263.20 

Country: Australia (AUD)

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: General gaming including new and older titles with decent performance.

Parts:

• Be Quiet! Pure Wings 80mm x3, Noctua NF-A12x25 12mm x1
• Cooler Master Hyper 212x CPU cooler 
• Cooler Master MWE 750W Power supply 
• Seagate Barracuda 2TB HDD
• WD Green 3D NAND 240GB M.2 SATA SSD
• ASUS Tuf Gaming GeForce RTX 2060, 6GB
• G.Skill Trident Z RGB 32GB 3200MHZ DDR4
• Intel I9 10850K, 3.6GHZ 
• MSI MPG 2490 Gaming Edge WIFI Motherboard
• Unknown Beige Case
• Several fabricated brackets and some nuts and washers as well a standoff and screw kit 

Peripherals:

• MSI Optix MAG321CURV 4k 60hz 
• ttesports Black V2 mouse
• Logitech G512 Carbon Tactile (soon to be an AKKO Silent 3108 Cherry MX Red to keep with the retro theme as much as I can)

Project Constraints, Considerations and conclusions: 

• After doing some research it was clear airflow and cooling was going to be a concern in an old style case. I chose the Hyper 212X as It was affordable and seemed to have good reviews. I've so far found it to be really good with the testing and usage of the system I've done so far as such I would highly recommend it for budget builders. 
• Although this cases was designed to fix ATX Motherboards the mounting spots had square holes and only two center brass standoffs. After reading a forum post I almost used washers to combat this issue but didn't like the look and decided it would be too tedious and instead measured up and made two washer plates that riveted to the Mobo base I then tested fitted the Mobo marked mounting holes when aligned with the IO hole and drilled little holes for my standoffs and used small washers to step them out about 1mm. I also used little nuts on the back of the standoffs to secure them tightly
• In order to achieve decent exhaust flow I removed the two expansion slot covers on the top and bottom of my GPU. 
• To allow room for the 120mm front fan and give more space for cable management the disk drive caddy was trimmed to only accommodate the disk drive that was then gutted and used as a HDD caddy. the CD Drive face clipped to the front and the tray shield was screwed to an inner lip. the audio jack and volume control are glued in place and non functional but the volume slider still spins. 
• The Floppy disk drive is still completely assembled but not plugged in as I didn't want to deal with more cable management or finding out it doesn't work all together. 
• While all the case buttons and lights are fully functional the HDD light plug was 3 pin and had to be cut down into two single pins with a razor blade making it difficult to plug in.
• In some of the photo's you will see that I mounted the CPU fan backwards!!!!! I quickly picked up on this and fixed it as those photos were taken. 
• I would like to note that I'm aware that I could have added more floor fans. I didn't do this because the steel of this old case is thin and I didn't want to compromise the integrity too much. even when drilling the first fan I noticed a lot of flex. I understand its only the floor but keeping this hard to find case as original as possible was important to me. the bottom of the front panel has a gap as well as the small holes at the front. if down the track I find the cooling to be inadequate I will look into adding an additional exhaust fan and maybe another floor fan making both larger or even water cooling. I do have case fan filters coming in the mail but they didn't arrive on time so I will be adding them in the near future. 
• Please take into consideration that I am still new to Pc building and did my best to build this computer. I really want to get some feedback on how I went. 

                        

Build Description/ Explanation:

I would like to start off by saying that this is actually my first ever attempt at building a pc and have been mostly a console gamer my whole life. I began gaming many years ago playing such games as aoe1, aoe2, Total Annihilation and Runescape as well as early sims titles. It wasn't long before I made the transition to PlayStation and have been primarily a console gamer since. After a brief stint owning Old Alienware M18x R2 Laptop my interest in pc gaming and gaming as a whole expanded and I soon found myself finding much to be desired with my old laptops performance (which was surprisingly good all things considered) and even the PlayStation hardware I was so familiar with. After some friends had also made the transition to Pc I was inspired to look into buying a much better system and then eventually convinced myself that in order to save money it would be a great idea to attempt building one. After some thought and reminiscing about the great times I spent playing old titles in my childhood and the old beige/white systems my family owned at the time I was inspired to build a new system that would preform excellently into one of these old towers. After many hours of late night research on various tech forums (including this one) and countless Linus Tech Tips YouTube videos I built up enough knowledge and confidence to start looking for a case and parts. which led me to my current tower that I found on eBay that is almost identical to the towers I was surrounded by at a young age. With a case that supports ATX form factor I was ready to get my parts and begin case mods to assemble the system. With a few clever mods some determination, concentration and basic DIY skill I was able to have all my cuts, gutting, drilling, painting (case floor is painted) and fans mounted in a day. this includes removing the old PSU cables and drives, cutting the drive tray mount down, gutting the disk drive to be used as a HDD caddy, Step drilling holes for floor fan, making and riveting plates for the Mobo mount tray as well as mount for the upper front fan all done in a day. the next day was spent test fitting the the Mobo then marking and drilling holes for the standoffs. With some trips to Bunnings (Australian hardware store) and a few hours later the Mobo was assembled and mounted and I began slowly mounting the rest of the parts and spent the rest of the night neatly labeling some wires and hiding spare plugs. on the Third and final day my cable management was done and I was ready for the first boot. Having read and watched many tech videos I was expecting to have some issues as I was aware that your supposed to test all your parts outside of the case first. I disregarded this advice as I don't have a test bench and didn't feel confident setting up parts on my table in my busy crowded living environment. To my surprise everything started and booted on the first button press without a single issue. I was quick to set up some basic overclocking (only to 4.0GHz as I will need to gain some experience and possibly update my cooling solution before pushing the i9 too hard) and play with my fans a little then installed windows followed by some drivers. I did some testing on Cinebench and used Speccy to monitor temps that I found to surprisingly good ( between 30-45°C at idol and between 55-65°C under load for about and hour). Finally I installed the highly anticipated first game. That game being aoe1 definitive edition. At the time of writing this that was the only game I've played as I suffer from the notoriously bad condition known as Australian Internet. I thoroughly enjoyed going back to the basics and cannot wait to get some newer more demanding games installed and see how they run as well as continue learning and building on the system as time goes on. Please give me feedback and constructive criticism and enjoy the build photos. 

Build Updates: 

Tuesday, 5 January 2021, Added another front intake and a lower rear intake fan that has greatly improved cooling. Both rear fans (exhaust and intake) are a Noctua NF-A8 80mm fan while the be quiet fan was relocated to the front.  

Spoiler

                                                  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 4, 2021 by NOOCH_55
Moved most photos into Spoiler to streamline thread.

[jaslion]

Your "Overclock" on the i9 is making it run a lot slower then if you were to not oc it at all as it will automatically boost to well beyond 4ghz. So remove that and leave it be by itself. Also why is the fan of the 212 backwards? Or was that just in the one picture?

 

Also don't be too concerned about structural integrity of the case it's plenty strong enough to handle some more cutouts. Why I would do to really help is put a fan directly under the gpu. Also something you should really really do is raise the case up more by giving it tall feet currently both the front and bottom fan have to work extremely hard to get air from those tiny gaps and just lifiting it up will allow for a lot more air to flow.

 

Another small modification is something I've done before too and that is making a cutout for a secondary back fan by just removing all the metal and then putting 2 fan grills over the dual 92mm fans I placed. Really helps.

 

Otherwise neat mod attempt.

[NOOCH_55]

10 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Your "Overclock" on the i9 is making it run a lot slower then if you were to not oc it at all as it will automatically boost to well beyond 4ghz. So remove that and leave it be by itself. Also why is the fan of the 212 backwards? Or was that just in the one picture?

 

Also don't be too concerned about structural integrity of the case it's plenty strong enough to handle some more cutouts. Why I would do to really help is put a fan directly under the gpu. Also something you should really really do is raise the case up more by giving it tall feet currently both the front and bottom fan have to work extremely hard to get air from those tiny gaps and just lifiting it up will allow for a lot more air to flow.

 

Another small modification is something I've done before too and that is making a cutout for a secondary back fan by just removing all the metal and then putting 2 fan grills over the dual 92mm fans I placed. Really helps.

 

Otherwise neat mod attempt.

Hi thanks heaps for the feedback. I will look into getting some more Noctua fans for the floor and rear. I will remove my attempt at overclocking as well haha. And with the 212 there's two phots showing it and I believe the backwards one is towards the bottom as I did have it fitted the wrong way around at one stage.

[jaslion]

1 minute ago, NOOCH_55 said:

Hi thanks heaps for the feedback. I will look into getting some more Noctua fans for the floor and rear. I will remove my attempt at overclocking as well haha. And with the 212 there's two phots showing it and I believe the backwards one is towards the bottom as I did have it fitted the wrong way around at one stage.

No need for noctua when arctic p series exists. Same silence and performance but you can easily buy 5 for the price of one noctua.

[kelvinhall05]

Awesome build but please use a spoiler next time, lol. Gotta scroll so much...

[NOOCH_55]

1 minute ago, jaslion said:

No need for noctua when arctic p series exists. Same silence and performance but you can easily buy 5 for the price of one noctua.

Sounds good. Could you confirm which photo has the cooler fan incorrectly placed as I believe the Arrow was facing on the label side so I placed towards the front of the cooler to draw air through the front and through the fins. Also it's currently sitting on blocks until I can find a more permanent solution for longer legs.

 

[jaslion]

3 minutes ago, NOOCH_55 said:

Sounds good. Could you confirm which photo has the cooler fan incorrectly placed as I believe the Arrow was facing on the label side so I placed towards the front of the cooler to draw air through the front and through the fins. Also it's currently sitting on blocks until I can find a more permanent solution for longer legs.

 

6th pick is correct

[NOOCH_55]

6 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

Awesome build but please use a spoiler next time, lol. Gotta scroll so much...

Haha sorry I'm new to forum posting what do you mean by spoiler? 

[NOOCH_55]

2 minutes ago, jaslion said:

6th pick is correct

Awesome thanks for your feedback

[kelvinhall05]

2 minutes ago, NOOCH_55 said:

Haha sorry I'm new to forum posting what do you mean by spoiler? 

Spoiler

Click the little eye here and paste your images inside the spoiler. They will be collapsed until someone clicks the spoiler to open it.

 

[NOOCH_55]

Cool thanks for the tip 

[WhitetailAni]

Yay, forum sleepers have floppy drives unlike Alex who just sticks in the face plates to taunt me

[NOOCH_55]

On 1/4/2021 at 2:13 AM, jaslion said:

No need for noctua when arctic p series exists. Same silence and performance but you can easily buy 5 for the price of one noctua.

Hi thought I'd share my recent mods. I added another exaust fan and another floor fan. But have only seen improvements of about 1-2°C (30-40°C at idol and 50-60°c under heavy load). I played around with some cinebench testing with the i9 unrestricted but getting way too hot. I suppose if I wanted to push it harder then a water cooler is essential. Unfortunately my local pc shop only had Noctua fans in stock that weren't rgb so that's what I went with. 

Spoiler

 

Edited January 4, 2021 by NOOCH_55

[jaslion]

You don't need a watercooler at all it's just that the hyper 212 evo isn't rated for a core i9. What are the temps? Anything under 100 whilst hot is ok for it. A decent air cooler above the hyper 212 is plenty for a i9.

[NOOCH_55]

2 hours ago, jaslion said:

You don't need a watercooler at all it's just that the hyper 212 evo isn't rated for a core i9. What are the temps? Anything under 100 whilst hot is ok for it. A decent air cooler above the hyper 212 is plenty for a i9.

this is after a full hour of stress testing at 4.18ghz. I have reason to believe that the auto settings are cranking the volts too high causing way too much heat but for what I'm doing the current performance is more than good enough. Someone with more experience could easily tune the system to preform miles better at cooler temps. These figures tell my the cooling is doing a great job since I turned the lower rear fan into an intake as well. At night time under medium load its getting no hotter than 29°C. I could have also set all my fans to max rpm and achieve even better figures but the noise isn't worth a few more numbers. 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited January 4, 2021 by NOOCH_55

[NOOCH_55]

On 1/4/2021 at 2:15 AM, kelvinhall05 said:

Awesome build but please use a spoiler next time, lol. Gotta scroll so much...

you will be pleased to see I made the thread a little more user friendly