Zen 4 the Unkillable? Brucifer's 2024 (and beyond) Build

Brucifer · March 15

The title is a joke referencing my other thread in this forum, Haswell the Unkillable, where I detailed the entire journey of my previous PC from 2015-2023. At the end of that post, I said I'd have all the parts needed for its successor by the first week of April. Well, I ended up being way ahead of schedule. My new PC was completed yesterday.

The case is an InWin CE685, just like the last PC. Rather than reuse what I already had, I just bought another one so that I can keep both PCs functional (mainly, I needed the old one to live longer while I gradually moved over all my old stuff, and also to hand down to my brother). I also took the power supply and GPU from the old PC and transplanted them here. With that, here's the full spec list:

Motherboard: MSI PRO B650M-A WiFi

CPU: Ryzen 7 7700

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L9x65

GPU: RTX 4060 Low Profile

RAM: 32GB DDR5-6000

Storage: 2x 1TB NVMEs

PSU: SilverStone TFX 500W

Used For: Gaming, software development, photo/video editing

Fun Fact: There are 12 fans in here! 5x Noctua PWM 40mms, 3x GPU fans, 1x Noctua 92mm, 1x Noctua CPU cooler, 1x NVME Heatsink fan, 1x PSU fan

At the top right you'll notice what looks like a crooked 3.5" expansion card. Yes, InWin will say you can install any 3.5" card here, but what they don't say is that you can't unless you remove the fan. Believe me, I've tried many of them. With the components I'm packing in here though, removing the primary case fan isn't an option, so I actually cut the expansion card's housing roughly in half so I could slide it in, with enough room to route the wires around the fan. I really wanted front panel USB-C here, and my motherboard supports it, so I made it happen! Downside is, now it sits in the slot very loosely, hence why it's crooked. I'll end up super-gluing it in place, maybe.

Here are both NVME drives. The top one has an absolutely outrageous cooler (with a 30mm PWM fan on the top side that's very hard to see, so here it is on Amazon). These are WD Blues, so it's totally overkill and perhaps stupid, but I thought it looked so goofy and cool that I couldn't help myself. Speaking of outrageous cooling...

In the 5.25" bay sits this dual-fan insert I found on ebay. It was actually in my last PC, but I ripped out the included fans and replaced them with two 40mm PWM Noctuas.

Underneath the 5.25" bay is another 40mm Noctua. I wanted to put two here, but couldn't make them fit/flush. Lastly...

There are two more 40mms, crudely zip-tied to the back of the case. I was wondering how effective these would even be, before they were here, GPU temps while gaming would be around 88-89C. Once I "installed" these, it now sits tightly at 83C. Still not great, but I don't really know what to do about that in this case (literally, heh). Speaking of temps, I knew Ryzen 7000 series was gonna be weird, but it's not as bad as I thought. While gaming, it's right around 75-78C when I was expecting 85+. It idles around 55-60C though so I'm gonna learn how to play with voltages and whatnot.

That's it! Fresh install of Windows, and outside of upgrading the GPU (whenever we get a worthy low profile replacement) and cleaning, I built this hoping I'd never have to touch it again for many years.

I will use this thread, of course, to document anything else that happens along the way. Hope I get nine years out of this one, too.

Edit: I have no idea why the quality of that first pic is abysmal. I'll try to get a better one later.

Brucifer · March 18

My 4060 is really hating this case. Hitting 83-84C in all games (even rocket league, granted at 240fps 1440p), with Cities Skylines 2 even pushing it to 88C. Clocks drop from the max of 2700Mhz to around 21-2200 just to try and keep temps down.

Today I tried undervolting for the first time, using MSI Afterburner, and the results surprised me! I've only tested RDR2 and Sons of the Forest, both of which I run nearly maxed (with DLSS) at 1440p, and I've lost no performance - that I can tell, anyways. Both still stick reliably around 60fps, with dips to around 55-58 in heavy areas.

GPU core boosts to 2610MHz now and never drops, and memory is up to 9000MHz. Power usage is down to 90-97W, from 115-120. Best of all, temps dropped anywhere from 10-15 degrees. Even on Cities Skylines 2 I've yet to see it rise above 76C. RDR2 and SotF stay around 68-73C.

What a relief. I was about to cut holes in my side panel over this. The only loss is in Passmark. Scoring ~19800 now when before it was ~21300, but I'm still above the average shown on their website, so...