New Build for my brother
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05-11-2021 10:56am#1
My original plan had been to buy a 12600K and lower end mobo and DDR4 for a build for my brother. However while researching a week or so ago I got caught up in the hype for Alderlake and decided to buy myself a 12900K/Maximus Hero and 2x16GB of Dominator Platinum RGB 5200mhzCL36 DDR5 and give him my 5900x and assosciated parts instead.
Thankfully the Z690 motherboard launch day absence of stock meant the 12900K's didn't ship launch day which gave me time to read and watch reviews and I started to have my doubts. I was flip flopping about cancelling the order and going back to the original plan of keeping my 5900x and getting my brother the 12600K setup when finally on another subreddit someone pushed me over the edge into cancellation when they suggested an option I hadn't considered. That was to still give my brother my 5900x and get myself a 3D V-Cache 5900x when they launch at CES 2022 in January. That got the cogs turning in my head and I realised that I could keep my Strix X570-F for myself and pop in the V Cache 5900X when I get it and get my brother a more suitable motherboard for both his use-cases and for his literal case which is a HTPC form-Factor case that will sit in a shelf in his IKEA TV Unit.. ie. A Mini ITX B550 motherboard. Already got the brother an RTX3070 (Funded by the sale of a spare GTX1080 and RTX2060 I had) Have figured out how to mod the case to fit the GPU, 3x HDD's, 3x SSD's and a 360mm AIO.
It'll be a real Stealth Beast of a PC lookin' all innocent and discrete in his TV unit for his 4K60 Flat gaming, PCVR gaming with his Quest 2 and for his Adobe Suite for his Photography hobby. Thats his wedding present and his next few Birthdays sorted! LOL The important bit of info though is that assuming AMD in reaction to Intel and Alderlake don't increase the price of the 3D V Cache versions, the purchase of a new V Cache 5900x for myself and cheaper DDR4 Ram and B550 mITX mobo for the brothers build will come in about €600-€700 cheaper than the 12900K/Maximus Hero/Dom PLat 5200MhzCL36 DDR5 was going to cost me. That **** was going to cost me about €1500 in total!! LOL Thankfully I saw sense before it was too late!!....but not before I received the Dom Plat from Corsair costing me €369. Its yours for €400 Cash/Collection from Bray Only!! LOL (Will actually be returning it to Corsair shortly)
Post edited by Calibos on0
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Thats a bit of a stretch to say it was near impossible to read, but that said, I take your point and you don't owe me any squinting. Fair enough mate.
(I guess I need to start researching more about layers and drop shadows. I am but a humble shop-keep not a Graphical artist! LOL)
Rest assured, although its not a showcase build and is going to be reasonably discrete considering the powerful gear inside and very efficiently and quietly cooled, I still wouldn't be caught dead with cable mess like that inside any of my builds whether it was ever going to be visible or not.
One of the mods planned with parts already on the way is an Aida64 Sensor Panel that I will mount/inset into the front fan grille which I will also sand to bare metal and glossify so my brother can see how the PC is performing and get advanced warning if temps get too high or fans fail etc...and it'll help the PC look cool rather than a monolithic Black box on that shelf in the IKEA TV unit.
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Thanks for your kind words mate.
I wasn't offended by K.o.Kiki's comment though anyway as it was obvious he didn't cop that it was just photo's of a Test Fit and not a finished build. It also may not have been 100% clear that this Thermaltake Core G3 case normally used upright conventionally with a side window would actually be used on its side on an IKEA TV unit shelf with only the front visible anyway. He may also have been visualising that upright and exposed on top of a desk where even cable managed well would probably look mediocre if not indeed horrific like he said. LOL
Context here is important when understanding what and why I was I was going to do things this way or that. Unfortunately in trying to give context I invariably produce walls of text that invoke the TLDR response and so I get replies based on initial impressions that didn't take the context into account.
Below is a photo of the Thermaltake Core G3 case how its normally configured and another stock photo of the IKEA TV unit its going on a shelf in.
Most people who bought this case used it standing up with the internals configured pretty much as intended by the designers with a SFF PSU, mITX, Micro ATX or ATX motherboard, a GPU mounted as shown with PCIe 3.0 Riser (a crappy Thermaltake one, most have to replace it) and either a low Profile Air Cooler or a 120mm AIO due to clearance issues with the GPU even 250mm long ones. As you can see it is also possible to use it on its side like a HTPC form-factor case and Thermaltake anticipate this and make the upright feet easily removable and provide feet for the underside if the case is used on its side. The reason I didn't actually buy one of those other HTPC form-factor cases to begin with is that I saw more modding potential with this one than those and this was also cheap as chips compared to those. My intuition about the suitability of this case to make my ideas possible was proved correct after the pictured test fit the other night. Now I feel safe taking the dremel to the case and whipping out the cans of plasti-dip.
By shifting the GPU all the way over to the side fan grilles and more conventionally perpendicular to the motherboard albeit still using a Riser extension cable (A better 3.0 one than thermaltakes freed up from my main rigs Coolermaster vertical mount when I replaced it with a Link-Up PCIe 4.0 Riser cable) it meant the GPU can pull cool air in directly from outside the case by itself and is shifted far enough to the left, that when one also removes this cases 2 Bay HDD caddy on the front right of the case, there is actually now room for a full 360mm Rad including fans on the front of the case.
Yet I don't lose HDD space by removing that front Twin Bay, I actually gain space for 3 HDD's because I can fit one of my spare 3 Bay Hotswap Caddies in the space between a mITX motherboard and the moved GPU with the GPU's Riser cable running under the Hotswap bays. So the dremeling work to the back of the case will be two fold. ie. Create a PCIe Mounting slot and Video Outputs opening for the GPU which will allow the GPU to shift backwards about 2cm compared to whats shown in the test fit photo which means I can shift the 360mm rad all the way to the left. That makes it viable to actually de-rivet the front of the chassis and then re-rivet it once flipped to move the front Ports and power-button over to the right side of the case with the power button on the bottom rather than top. (Otherwise the power button would be behind that lip visible in the photo of the IKEA unit). The rest of the dremel work on the back will be to create an opening for the Hotswap Bay Caddies to mount into so that I can add and remove drives from the rear of the case without having to remove the case from the TV unit or open it up. All dremeled openings trimmed with rubber U-Channel I already have.
The shifting of the Hotswap bay backwards by about 2cm compared to the position shown in the test fit photo will mean I will be able to mount a third 120mm exhaust fan in the Fan Mesh Grille 'Roof' of the case compared to just the two shown in the test fit photo's which like some of the other parts where just placeholder parts I had on hand for test fit purposes. Those were the crappy fans that came with the case. The 360mm AIO Rad will have Corsair ML120 High Static pressure fans and I will also use 3 of the same ML120 fans for the exhaust in the roof.
This is all about keeping some very powerful components (5900X/B550/32GB 3600CL18 DDR4/RTX3070/1TB Samsung 980Pro Gen 4 NVME/2TB Samsung 970 Evo+ Gen 3 NVME/3x 8TB Shucked WD Elements Drives for a Parity protected 16TB Windows Storage Pool/360mm AIO) densely packed in this case cool and quiet all the while the case resides in a tight shelf space in a TV unit. ie. GPU intakes directly through the fan grille on the left side of the case, 5900X cooled by a 360mm AIO pulling in cool air from the front, GPU exhausting most of its hot air straight out the top of the case, 3x 120mm Exhausting most of the heated air out the roof of the case and positive pressure dealing with the rest pushing it out the back.
I'm ordering plastidip for other mods on other builds I have in the planning or building stages anyway and realised that I will probably plastidip the removable front of the case white for the black plastic frame and silver/metal plastidip for the actual fan grille which will also tie in with the aluminium frame of the sensor panel that'll I'll integrate into the front fan grille. In other words, the front visible part of the PC will be White/metallic which will look better on that middle shelf of the Ikea TV unit than a big black monolith on its side.
Opps! Just TLDR'ed ye all again didn't I!! LOL
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