My AMD Ryzen 2700x build, In-Win 301c

[ai_dude]

The case: In-Win 301c is a quality mATX case.

This case is fairly small even for a mATX case. They do this by cutting off HDD space.

 

 

The case is quite a beauty. There is no top vent and there is no reason to be. PSU is there for that reason. PSU will vent hot air that's gathered on top. Only the bottom has a filter. But I've felt over the years that, with filter or without, I end up cleaning out dust from a PC once every few months regardless.

 

 

The case does not feature cable routing holes that's common on most cases. Instead, it intends to route cable via sideways.

[ai_dude]

PSU (Power Supply Unit) : Thermaltake Smart Pro RGB 650W 80+ Bronze Smart Zero 256-Color RGB

For the record, I didn't mean to grab a RGB PSU. I was actually looking for a full modular, flat cable, PSU. And this was what I ended up with.

 

 

Installing the PSU and necessary cables (Power, CPU power, PCI-E power, and a single SATA power) reveals how little of space I am working on with.

[ai_dude]

Motherboard, RAM, CPU, GPU, and few other stuff

I've chosen MSI B450M Gaming Plus motherboard due to it having two internal USB 3.1 headers. Yes, that's the only reason I chose this motherboard over all other choices. If it wasn't for me wanting USB C internal header, I'd have chosen Asrock B450 motherboard.

 

 

RAM is two sticks of 8GB 2133 DDR4 RAM I had in storage. With the RAM price so high, I had no extra budget to go for something nicer. This pair will do the job for now.

CPU is Ryzen 2700x. My original plan was to wait for i9-9900k but it seems Intel is going to price it way too high, so I chose to go with AMD. Besides, with Intel, I'd shop for an aftermarket CPU cooler as well which would probably add extra 50 CAD or so.

With 2700x, I'd get the nice-looking RGB wraith cooler.

 

 

(Lian Li) Li PW-INC1TR is a neat gadget that lets you convert one of your internal USB 3.1 header into a single USB-C type. If your case has an internal USB C header and your motherboard doesn't have one, this is one to get.

I got this from FrozenCPU @ 26USD. Shipping was a killer to Canada though, costing another 26USD, costing me a total of 52USD for this tiny thing.

 

 

I will be honest here. The last AMD CPU I used was from AMD 4x4 era. It was also known as AMD QuadFX platform. This means it's been more than 10 years (A decade !!) since the last time I used an AMD CPU.

It certainly took a while for AMD to catch up. My main activities on PC involve rendering, browsing, productivity related workloads. I do not game as much as before anymore and gaming is the least of my concern when I chose this CPU.

Let me rephrase; I found absolutely no reason to choose i7-8700k. I could have waited for 9900k but Intel seems to have decided to price is out of my budget, so forget it. I am going AMD this round.

 

 

I don't have a problem with using the default thermal paste. However, they tend to stick like glue and end up pulling CPU out of socket when pulling out the cooler. AMD's socket was notorious in my time I used them. Seeing the CPU socket looks identical, I reckon the same issue still remains.

So, I am wiping it off and using 3rd party paste.

 

 

PNY 1060 6GB. I purchased it when it just came out a year ago or so. I mainly used it for CUDA activities.

 

 

It's getting tight and packed, seriously. But I've dealt with worse because I used to build ITX rigs. mATX rigs at least have some space to deal with it. 

 

 

 

[ai_dude]

Final words and few benchmarks.

I do like the AMD's included cooler. It's very visually pleasing stuff. I am not into this RGB craze but it does look pretty nice. The tinted glass panel of In-Win 301c nicely reduces color level to a point that it's neither bothering me nor hurting my eyes.

I am going to include HW info of a gaming session (30 minutes) and a rendering session (10 minutes).

 

 

 

 

It is clear that I need to improve the cooling. Now, I am not going to swap out the cooler. Instead, I will add 1 or 2 more fans to the case to create a better flow.

 

And, for me, Cinebench is the only thing that matters.

 

The original build log is located @ my site which I launched just yesterday.

[Orangeator]

Nice build log, thanks for sharing!