Question Help deciding new build

Pyrocreation

Junior Member
Oct 5, 2010
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Was wondering what the community thinks regarding my build. Thinking of this:


Or swapping out the case for a CORSAIR iCUE 5000T with ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 360 A-RGB for cooling.

My old rig, posted here at https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/new-computer-builder-looking-for-imput-on-my-rig.2110630/ is more than showing its age. Was initially going to keep the HAF X as the case but the lack of ability to replace the 230mm fan on the front and side is making it difficult to accept.
 
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BoomerD

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Sorry but a lot wrong with that list, mainly due to pricing.

13600K would be faster in many cases.

You can easily get a Z790 mobo for cheaper than that Gigabyte Z690.

Please don't get a lame 8 GB graphics card. It will age really badly.

You are going to need a hefty NVMe heatsink for that 970 SSD.

Or get this: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/gc...0-nvme-solid-state-drive-cssd-f1000gbmp600pxt

I'm definitely wishing my GPU budget earlier in the year would have let me buy a card with more than 8 GB vram. I bouthe an EVGA RTX3070 8gb card. It's a bit faster, but still runs into the same problems as my 8gb RTX 2070.
 

BoomerD

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OP, If you have your heart set on the i-9-12900k and Aorus z690 pro combo, there's one for sale in the FS/FT forum. Just a bit more than my rebuild budget wilk allow, but the seller says he'll beat any price.
 
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It's a bit faster, but still runs into the same problems as my 8gb RTX 2070.
It's all coz of evil Nvidia. I say everyone should have a voodoo Jensen doll and put pins into his balls until he makes up for the evil he has done, by recalling all 8GB cards and offering to upgrade them to 12GB minimum.
 

Pyrocreation

Junior Member
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To answer your replies:

8g card was all in stock at the time and was an order of magnitude cheaper. I bought it cheap during cyber monday so I already have the card with plans to upgrade down the line if/when it bottlenecks the system. Other than the card, I have the harddrives/SSDs already from prior build + plans to upgrade my build and just never did...so I am currently not even using an SSD. o_O dont judge my laziness.

Boomer: I keep seeing the 200mm fitting but posts saying it doesnt for the side fan. Have you personally tried? Would love the salvage the case I have since I like it, although the USB cable management is a sh*t show.

biostud: I have the old hard 3.5 hard drives already, they are in my current rig so I was planning on using them as a psuedo storage. Although the original HD is 12 years old and is sure to fail sooner than later. The 300 dollar case is just because i like the look of them. I had the same thought when i bought my HAF X 12 years ago.

Igor: "You are going to need a hefty NVMe heatsink for that 970 SSD. " do you have one your recommend? Never had to use a heatsink for a SSD...or an SSD before.
 
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Tech Junky

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@Pyrocreation

You don't 'need a heat sink for the drive. It's just if you plan on benching it constantly because they will hit 100C when you hit them with constant data for a prolonged period of time. My SN850 sits around 40C in normal operations. If you have proper airflow it's usually not an issue to keep it stable / cool / throttled. I use the same in my laptop and it stays a bit warmer ~45-50C due to the compact nature of laptops. I also use a SN770 as a secondary drive in the laptop and it does the same for temps.

As to the HDD's though... 12 years is a bit much for my comfort but, if it's not spitting out errors and data isn't becoming corrupted it's just something to keep an eye on if there's data you can't lose. If it's not a huge drive then pairing it up with another one of the same size and mirroring it would be an ounce of prevention to keep the data safe for when it does die.

Just keep in mind that some newer boards will require switching the boot drive to GPT due to UEFI. It's a simple process to move the data around and convert over but, likely a better idea to do a fresh install of the OS since it's a new drive to be used anyway. As long as the mobo is set to UEFI the drive / OS install will automatically do this for you in the proper format.

Since the HDD's listed on PCP are only 1TB/ea picking up a 4TB shouldn't be a huge leap to consolidate things and expand your storage. I would actually go higher to avoid the issues with some drives using SMR which slows things down a bit when you need to re-write the data.


Since you picked an AIO the cooling issue on the NVME will be less because of the CPU heat being diverted completely through the loop instead of an air tower. Though you could use an air tower for $50 and put the other $125 into something else. I use a SE-226-XT and a graphite pad instead of paste and keep my 12700K at room temp 99% of the time it's running. This might go up when you're gaming but, generally LC isn't really needed even though it's hyped to the extreme all over the internet.

As to the case, that's just personal preference. I went a bit more subdued with a Meshify 2 from Fractal and it's got tons of fans inside to push air. It has room for 6 x 140 / 1 x 120 and even more if you get creative with mounting. As for the fans I'm using the Arctic P12/P14 PWM PST because you can chain them together on a single header to keep wiring out of the way. Also, they allow me to put 2 of them on the cooler for the CPU using the single CPU header.
 
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BoomerD

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To answer your replies:

8g card was all in stock at the time and was an order of magnitude cheaper. I bought it cheap during cyber monday so I already have the card with plans to upgrade down the line if/when it bottlenecks the system. Other than the card, I have the harddrives/SSDs already from prior build + plans to upgrade my build and just never did...so I am currently not even using an SSD. o_O dont judge my laziness.

Boomer: I keep seeing the 200mm fitting but posts saying it doesnt for the side fan. Have you personally tried? Would love the salvage the case I have since I like it, although the USB cable management is a sh*t show.

biostud: I have the old hard 3.5 hard drives already, they are in my current rig so I was planning on using them as a psuedo storage. Although the original HD is 12 years old and is sure to fail sooner than later. The 300 dollar case is just because i like the look of them. I had the same thought when i bought my HAF X 12 years ago.

Igor: "You are going to need a hefty NVMe heatsink for that 970 SSD. " do you have one your recommend? Never had to use a heatsink for a SSD...or an SSD before.

Have I tried? No, but a few years ago when one of the 230s in my HAF932 died, CoolerMaster recommended the ones I linked as replacements.
I'm thinking about doing a new build in the 932 case. I will probably replace at least one or two of the 230s with 120s for increased air flow....but I know they're going to be just a skosh louder.

Google the part number on the back sticker on the fans you want to replace. IIRC, they're not all exactly the same. (other than the LEDs in the front fan)
 
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Igor: "You are going to need a hefty NVMe heatsink for that 970 SSD. " do you have one your recommend? Never had to use a heatsink for a SSD...or an SSD before.
The 970 NVMe SSD doesn't have a great reputation. It can get hot even under normal usage. It would be better if you get this instead for a little extra money: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/gc...0-nvme-solid-state-drive-cssd-f1000gbmp600pxt

It comes with a heatsink.

If for some reason you are dead set on the 970, use it without the heatsink for a while. If you see the temperatures rising above your comfort level, here are some heatsink options:


The last two are pretty crazy.
 

Pyrocreation

Junior Member
Oct 5, 2010
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Thank you very much Igor and boomer for your replies regarding the fans and heat sinks. I was very nervous about switching out the fan on the side unless it was an identical match but if they recommended those replacements to you then thats completely fine. I will also pick out a heat sink for the SSD just for safety since they seem to be discounted atm.

Techjunky, I plan on just tossing the old 3.5'' HDs as they die. I have a single one atm and the second was for the purpose of backing up/mirroring the original one...i just never did it. The 250g SSD is for the OS and the 1tb SSD for everything else. Next step would be as you mentioned just bringing it all to a 4T drive but since i have the 250gig and 1tb SSDs and the 2 HD already was going to use them for now.

what was this I heard about using my win 7 key instead of the win 11 key? professional discouraged?

Biggest question for me now is just on if I should force it all into the HAF X case, with new fans and a 240 AIO cooler for the CPU rather than the 2 cases/AIOs listed above.
 

BoomerD

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FWIW, I'm probably going to make an Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360 fit in the top of the HAF 932. It's not ideal...the fan closest to the front panel won't have great airflow...I'd rather have their 280mm variant...but no east way to make it fit.
 

Pyrocreation

Junior Member
Oct 5, 2010
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EJZ_Nerd

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