I'll admit I was surprised by how feature poor the board was, which if I'm honest, is probably part of why I posed the question here in the first place.
I'm building a showcase system, that I will also use as my daily driver. I'm doing so because when I went around looking to see what was being done out there, I'd see headlines like "ULTIMATE" "EPIC" "$20,000 GAMING RIG"... And honestly? A couple of them were built competently, but none of them were very impressive - and almost all of them were gimmick manufacturer supplied assemblies.
This bugged me - can't say why. So I decided to do an actual five figure build - screw multiple cards - I want distinction. To that end I spec'd a reasonable system in light of the material and tooling costs the rest of the build would entail. All of the hardware save a couple USB adapters and the CPU has already been obtained.
The hardware list:
Corsair 1000D, 9920X CPU, 2080 TI Founders Edition, X299 Dark, AX1600i PSU. Also, an EVGA Nu Audio, and EVGA Hydro Copper block (primarily for it's alignment with the CPU location - loop routing - you understand.), Gigabyte Titan Ridge expansion, An Intel X540-T1 10GbE, and sundry other bits.
So far, we're just talking about your typical HEDT. It starts to get good when you throw all that out and realize the build is in the case system. The whole thing is powered by Aquacomputer's Aquasuite. This will provide a manufacturer agnostic, elegant, single point of interaction for all things system related. Powered by an Aquaero 6 LT, 1x Farbwerk 360, 1x Hubby7, 6x Quadro's, and 6x Splitty4's - Aquasuite will control 24 Corsair LL120 fans, a EK Revo Dual D5 pump, all temp and flow sensors, and all lighting - Regardless of the maker - and it will do it all without having to be logged in to some brand's portal site, without stupid 'social' features, and without the glaring security vulnerabilities their low-priority software development often brings with them (looking at you ASUS...) It will be simply designed and built with German aesthetics and precision, and it will be fully system independent once configured - the software won't even have to be installed in the OS!
But, where it starts to get interesting is the case modifications.
I think the Obsidian 1000D is a beautiful - stupidly realized case - dripping with wasted potential so I'm going to rebuild it, ground up. The materials will all be real, structural, elements. While there will be a fair amount of acrylic, there will also be Pyrex, high carbon steel, real carbon fiber, silver and gold (sparingly). The case will be fully toolless in it's execution; once assembled, it can be fully disassembled in a modular fashion. Meaning that panels and areas of access will be hidden but effortlessly accessible without the use of a single tool (magnets!). It will be Perfectly minimalist and quietly complex at the same time and it will include a series of ridiculous quality-of-life features (that I haven't finished sketching out yet).
Now, I want to be clear, I'm not fantasizing: Most of the tooling and components have already arrived. Nor am I attempting to brag or misrepresent what it is I'm creating. What I am trying to do is redefine a segment of the industry that has become boring and tacky, and unimaginative. I'm doing it because I can and I'm doing it because I have nothing but time. What I'm not doing is quad SLI stupidity, or unicorn vomit aesthetics. I'm also not doing absolute top of the line hardware because it can always be upgraded at a later time, and the cost savings between the 9920x and the 9980XE bought me a table saw and a 24" plotter instead.
Things like that.
So... The Dark is the board I've chosen to sit at the center of this exercise in avarice. In the end I want the system to look, feel, and be controlled in an air of effortless sophistication. Teenagers don't have the money, and kids don't have the experience or the skill to pull this kind of thing off. I'm tired of techno-samurai designs being marketed to 40+ year old tech enthusiasts (like me), so I'm going to offer an alternative - if only the once.
I don't necessarily care if anything comes from it, but I will eventually be posting some form of build log on overclock, reddit, hardforums, or whatever... My wife thinks there should be some kind of Youtube video, but I'm not set up for that, and I've gotten fat - idk, maybe. Right now I'm trying to learn Blender to build it all digitally to save on material costs - that's probably the hardest part so far. If I end up sucking, there's always apps like Inkscape or Smartdraw that are easy enough.
Anyway, that's where I'm coming from, and that's how I'm looking to use the board. It will be overclocked, but nothing extreme, I'm primarily attracted to it's build quality and the purity of it's engineering. An area of potential concern is that there's just nothing out there about it. No one uses it, talks about it, makes accessories for it (monoblocks, etc...) It just feels a bit like a forgotten board. Maybe it's because people resent X299? I don't know, but AMD burned me once before - I'll give them a couple generations to prove they're going to stick around before they get my money again.
So yeah... Words.
post edited by Praemonitus - 2019/05/10 10:52:33