The Foundry

[Troika]

This is The Foundry, The name is inspired by its high heat output, or supposedly high heat of the main components involved. Every single part in this build was found in one of my parts bins or was purchased used through the hardwareswap sub-reddit.

Discounting the parts I had already owned previously, I spent $808 usd. About 40% of that is made up of the gorgeous Nvidia & EVGA Geforce GTX 780s, Those were originally purchased together under the assumption that both were Nvidia reference cards but upon closer inspection, only one was a reference card and the other was an EVGA unit with the same reference cooler. Not that I'm complaining, the stock cooler is beautiful and surprisingly effective at cooling these two bad boys!

As for this awesome tank of a case, I had originally planned on reusing my Phanteks Enthoo Evolv mATX but when I picked up a FX 9590 for $65, I knew that whatever motherboard I picked, it was gonna be a full atx sized case so I had to find something used or a not real expensive new option. I couldn't really find something I particularly liked with good cable management so I turned to trying to find something locally. Enter the Cooler Master HAF XM. Yes, its scuffed and it shows its age but all that adds character and doesn't change the fact that it has all the right features. Tool-less drive cages that support both 3.5" drives and 2.5" drives without additional adapters, upto 4 huge 200mm fans and a single rear 140mm fan or in my particular config, two 200mm intake fans, one of which was "borrowed" the my Phantek case, the two 140 SP140L that came with the well hidden Corsair H110i GTX and a single 140mm in the back, also "borrowed" from the Phantek case. The 140s are all exhaust fans. The last key feature I desperately wanted was good cable management and this thing delivered, easily hiding all the beefy cables on that RMx 1000w. The litter shroud covering the routing to the back of the case is also a very nice touch to hide the cables. Not that anyone would see them since it lacks a window of any kind, which suits me just fine.

With the FX 9590 comes the requirement of a beefy vrm on the motherboard. Originally I had planned on picking up a Asus Crosshair V for $150 but it had been sold before I got to it. Sad day but I found a Sabertooth R2 which is only a step down from the Crosshair V and I got it for a decent bargain with a 16GB kit of ram.

It took me about a month to pull together all the parts but it was well worth the wait for this. I still need to fine tune it to get the full potential out of the 9590 and the 780s but even as is, the performance was actually better than I was expecting and at 1080p, those 780s can trade blows with the 980 and even trail a 1070 at half the price! (for now, the prices may be coming down soon!) The only downside I for see, aside from the usual problems with sli (which I hope to mitigate with some tinkering in Nvidia Inspector), is gaming at 1440p. The 3GB of vram that's available is gonna struggle in certain games but that'll be an issue for a later date when I upgrade my aged Asus VK248H-CSM. Its served me well for the past 4 years but now its time for an upgrade that will likely come this summer. I was eying something like this guy but I may try and find something for a little less or maybe snag something during the 4th of July sale that will inevitable happen. I'll post a few benchmarks and temps later after I finish tuning up the 9590 and dial in a comfortable OC on the 780s.

 

FYI, that's my discord. I had entered Scattervolt's Super Smash Builds contest and it was one of the requirements. Dragon was added for some bonus points. c:

[Oshino Shinobu]

Nice specs by the looks of things, though I'd want to change that SLI bridge for at least a black one. 

 

Also, paragraphs, man. I'm not even going to try to read that. 

 

EDIT: Also, interesting that you have AMD FX, Ryzen 7 and Intel i7 badges on the case. 

[Troika]

15 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

Nice specs by the looks of things, though I'd want to change that SLI bridge for at least a black one. 

 

Also, paragraphs, man. I'm not even going to try to read that. 

 

EDIT: Also, interesting that you have AMD FX, Ryzen 7 and Intel i7 badges on the case. 

I have a really nice EVGA HB Bridge but its one slot too big because I had bought it while I was using a Asus Crosshair II with a pair of 570s. I'm wanting to get one with a 1 slot spacing but they're out of stock.

Lol, I'll split it up into easier to digest chunks Xp

Heh, kinda gives you an idea of what all has lived in this particular case. The i7 badge is for 7th gen but at least three of them are accurate. The EVGA ones, the FX one and the powered by Asus.  I do wish the board had two usb 3.0 headers so I could use the extra 3.0 ports under the optical drive. Oh well, maybe I'll get a usb 3.0 add-in card or better with a 3.0 header to use it.

[This kid builds pc]

This is beautiful man. Just beautiful.

 

Edit: also whats that dual gpu in the back? Looks pretty cool

[Troika]

12 hours ago, This kid builds pc said:

This is beautiful man. Just beautiful.

 

Edit: also whats that dual gpu in the back? Looks pretty cool

That my curious friend is a Sapphire Radeon HD 4870x2 and yes, it does work. I picked it up for $15 along with a handful of other gpus and the one next to it, a BFG Geforce GTX 295. BFG's last gpu release before they went bankrupt and disappeared. Unfortunately, that one doesn't work but its still a cool piece to own.

 

Edit: I'm thinking about doing like video series on youtube about the stuff I find at my semi-local computer recycler amd whether they work or not. I think it would be cool so show what you can find if you look in some less than ideal places. I few weeks prior to me getting these two, I got a Galaxy Geforce GTX 680 for $20 and I was able to resell it for $110 without a struggle.

[This kid builds pc]

1 hour ago, Troika said:

That my curious friend is a Sapphire Radeon HD 4870x2 and yes, it does work. I picked it up for $15 along with a handful of other gpus and the one next to it, a BFG Geforce GTX 295. BFG's last gpu release before they went bankrupt and disappeared. Unfortunately, that one doesn't work but its still a cool piece to own.

 

Edit: I'm thinking about doing like video series on youtube about the stuff I find at my semi-local computer recycler amd whether they work or not. I think it would be cool so show what you can find if you look in some less than ideal places. I few weeks prior to me getting these two, I got a Galaxy Geforce GTX 680 for $20 and I was able to resell it for $110 without a struggle.

Nice pickup! I almost got a gtx 670 for 25 recently but the guy was too far.

[Troika]

12 minutes ago, This kid builds pc said:

Nice pickup! I almost got a gtx 670 for 25 recently but the guy was too far.

D'aww, that would have been a nice buy.

[Troika]

Here are The Foundry's Superposition and Firestrike scores. I suspect that the not super great physics performance is holding back the system as a whole.

https://www.3dmark.com/fs/15193582