My first build in 10 years - nickname "Goliath"

JamZam · May 10, 2023

Hi!

So, following some greatly appreciated help here on the forum with putting together the shopping list, as well as a lot of help from the PCMR Discord server during the arduous 9 hours of building, I can finally show off the finished product (pending peripherals upgrade). Call it a mini-build log if you will. Huge thanks to everyone who helped me out along the way! You can check out the full spec list for the build here:

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/mHp7mr

The finished build, in case you don't care about the process leading up to this. I'm going to swap out the right side monitor to fix the change in height between the two (which also gets me more than 60hz refresh rate)

Parts arrived and prepped for assembly

Case mostly prepped - let the build begin!

I assembled motherboard, CPU, RAM, and CPU cooler before putting that into the case. I quickly realized the second fan on the Noctua NH-D15 cooler interferes with the RAM, and moving it ever so slightly interferes with the glass side panel on the case. The best solution I came up with was to run the CPU cooler with only the middle fan installed.

GPU installed - but it's sagging. Damn these new heavy cards!

With great effort, I installed a GPU brace support

The first bootup

And again, I present to you the final result:

I haven't had time to test many games yet, but this thing absolutely handles Star Citizen as well as I'd hoped (200+ fps in space, 40-80fps in heavy cities, in v3.19.0 PTU. Sitting around 4.8ghz on the CPU with mostly 60c degrees).

I also ran it through 3D Mark Time Spy for some context, you can see the results here: https://www.3dmark.com/spy/38380467