It all started a few years ago.... I got an EVGA DG-84 case, I thought this would be the ultimate case to build a custom water loop in, but I hate it. Lower panel never worked, and it's not cheap to return-ship a 40+ pound case. One of the most annoying aspects of the case for me is the lack of a 5.25" bay & lack of front working USB 3 ports. Yes, I use a Blu-Ray burner frequently, and it's a real hastle to have an external drive when you have this much case real-estate, especially when it has a slanted top that the external drive likes to slide off of. Not sure if I'll ever get around to a custom water loop or not, if I do, it'll probably be in a different case....
Enter: Rebuild 2.0:
https://modsrigs.evga.com.etail.aspx?BuildID=47589This time around, I made sure to find a case that actually has at least 1 5.25" bay AND a front mounted USB-C which I use almost daily. With help from CoolGTX I chose the Phanteks Enthoo Pro. I don't care about seeing inside & all that so, I just went with the basic windowless case. If I wanted a work of art, I would have gone with that AZZA pyramid case, or built my own case - something I've been toying with for the past 15 years...
In the end I just want a PC I can game on in 4K, and edit 4K video without much hassle & without a lot of wait time for 4K encoding. Although the previous version was very much up to the task, it wasn't a "knock my socks off" experience. Some gaming I had to cut back details or play in 1440 instead of 4K, and 4K encoding was fast but still had considerable wait time for longer (15+ minute) video's. In the end, it was the gaming performance that kicked this whole transformation off. Especially after I saw real-world gaming performance (not synthetic benchmarks) from the new 4070 Ti showing it matching very closely with the 3090Ti - I was blown away. Not going to go into why I think that despite the price tag, the 4070 Ti IS a great buy here.... I just hope Intel comes back with a much better second effort to put some real competitive pressure against Nvidia / AMD to help reign in the pricing insanity.
But of course it didn't stop there. I also decided on a new CPU (& by default new motherboard) as well, cause core count is king for 4K encoding. When I found out I could keep my current RAM with the 4 generation newer CPU
Not buying new RAM meant I could then splurge on a 2TB NVMe for the OS
I ignored the troubles Samsung seems to be having & went with the 990 Pro 2TB. I posted a thread about it about 3 days after it was installed... way out of proportion writes, & the same rapid rapid reduction in "remaining life" as has been reported for both the 980 Pro & 990 Pro drives. While the writes leveled off after the first firmware upgrade, the remaining life continued to degrade until the 2nd firmware upgrade where it seems to have stabilized. But not liking how things are going with Samsung right now, I went ahead & got a different 2TB drive. I got the latest Intel - or rather Solidigm (horrible name IMO) 2TB P44 Pro - which is basically a SK Hynix Platinum P41 with a newer & better firmware.
- I'm starting to wonder if Microsoft shares some of the blame.... the Solidigim shows 2.7TB writes in 14 hours....
My other NVMe drives:
I decided that if I'm going all-out, I'm gonna get a new PSU as well. Don't NEED a new one mind you, but since there's a new style power connector for the 4000 series GPU's, I figured I'd change over to a PSU with the new connector - so I grabbed a Seasonic Vertex Gold 1,200 Watt PSU for the final piece.
Start of build:
Most of the PSU cables are too short to use with the EVGA case, so it's good that I switched. The motherboard cable was a tight fit even in this case but neatly routed in the backside of the motherboard tray.
Here it is mid-build:
Basically just need to figure out the AIO at this point.
And fully assembled:
Notice how it's nice & dust free this time around! As I mentioned previously, when ever I complete build, I always either do a really good cleaning of any re-used components, or just use new components!!!
I washed the radiator out in the kitchen sink, then took it to the air compressor to blow out all the water & any loose dust I missed. Also carefully cleaned up 4 of my old fans of which, I'm currently only using 2 out of the 6 that were in the DG-84 case in the Phanteks case.
I'm keeping the other 4 with the DG-84 for the rebuild of my older computer for use with my Atomstack X7 Pro laser engraver & Cricut Maker pattern-cuting & crafting machine.
Final build specs:Before the rebuild +
new components in RED /
sold components in blue> EVGA DG-84 Full Tower case >
Phanteks Enthoo Pro>
EVGA Z370 Classified K >
Gigabyte Z690 Gaming X DDR4 >
Intel i9-9900K CPU with Kraken X63 AIO >
Intel i9-13900KS with Kraken X63 AIO
>
WIN 10 PRO 64bit >
WIN 11 Pro 64bit>
EVGA 3070 Ti XC3 Ultra Gaming >
MSI 4070 Ti Gaming X Trio > Corsair Vengeance 64GB(4x16GB) RAM
>
Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB M.2 (OS) >
Solidigm P44 Pro 2TB M.2 (OS)> Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB M.2 (storage - using in another rebuild) >
Samsung 990 Pro 2TB M.2 (was OS in original rebuild, but now storage)> Intel 665p 1TB M.2 (storage)
> Samsung 980 1TB M.2 (scratch disk) > Samsung 980 1TB M.2 (
Ubuntu OS)
> WD RED 2TB HDD (Internal backup) > WD RED 2TB HDD (
External backup)
> EVGA SuperNova 850 Platinum PSU >
Seasonic GX-1200 ATX 3.0 PSU> Samsung 50 inch QN90A 4K TV/monitor
Welcome to Rebuild 2.0. I've only run a couple benchmarks so far:
> Userbenchmark:
https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/59524735 - not sure why the userbenchmark didn't go right with the Solidigm
CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4 shows it to be a pretty solid performing drive.
Vs 990 Pro
> 3D Mark Port Royal:
https://www.3dmark.com/pr/2174082 Gotta restart & finish installing some updates then run more benchmarks!!!
EDIT to add CDM results & more 3D Mark results
> 3D Mark Time Spy:
https://www.3dmark.com/spy/36132789> 3D Mark Fire Strike Ultimate:
https://www.3dmark.com/fs/29607367 - check out the core speed & temperature of the GPU - I may be able to stretch this card to 3GHz or more!
Shadow of the Tomb Raider without overclocking:
post edited by SM-71 - 2023/02/26 19:09:58