Intel Core i5 12600
MSI Z690 Edge Wifi DDR4
2x 8Gb Teamgroup Dark Pro 8Pack Ripped edition 3600mhz C14
Gigabyte RTX3070 Vision OC
2021 Corsair RM850x
Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2Tb NVME
Adata XPG Gammix S70 Blade 1Tb NVME
Thermalright Peerless Assassin PA120 SE
Self built case set into my desk with 4x 200mm fans running at a silent 600rpm.
Dell S2716DG 27" 2560x1440 Gsync screen.
This was pretty much a compromise pc and at the time of building was fully water cooled. It's primarily a 1440p 144hz gaming pc. The 12600 was the first non K verion cpu that I had ever bought and I must say that it's done me proud and coped easily with everything I have asked of it. The thought was at the time to buy it as a stopgap and then upgrade to a 13700k in a couple of years time but that idea has been knocked on the head now and if any upgrade does happen down the line it will be to a 14700k but not anytime soon. Maybe when they start to pop up in the MM in a couple of years time.
The graphics card was bought from here in one of Gibbo's forum only deals back in the gpu shortages and cost a eye watering £600, way above what I would normally pay. The thing is I tied myself to Nvidia years ago by going for a Dell Gsync monitor with a proper Gsync module in it so it doesn't do Freesync and I am not willing to abandon the excellent Gsync it has. A swap to AMD would also mean a new monitor so makes that option even more expensive initially. I do really like this monitor and the gpu is a great match for it and even if it is only a 8Gb card it has given me zero problems with the games I play.
The thing I am most impressed about with this rig is the cooler. As I said previously, when built the pc had high end custom watercooling with a pair of Black Ice Nemesis GTX280 radiators, two of the best radiators available with 4x Arctic P14 fans in push/pull on each of them running at a silent 780rpm. After over 17 years of watercooling I made the choice to ditch it due to maintenance issues and the complexity of my setup (over 10m of tubing/12mm copper pipe and a huge rad box mounted in a window sucking in outside air). It wasn't a easy choice as my temps had always been ultra low with water temp rarely going above the mid 20's and down to single figures in winter but I bit the bullet and did some research on air coolers. I am a Cornishman so am tight when it comes to money which ruled out ridiculous priced fans and coolers. I wanted bang for buck so when I found some reviews of the Thermalright Peerless Assassin PA120 SE I started hunting for UK stock and found it on Amazon for a cracking price (it's even cheaper now) and went for the ARGB version. I had used Thermalright coolers back in the early Athlon days so knew that they were good. It was simple to fit, not overly large and looks good. I set the profile to silent mode in the bios and haven't touched it since. The 12600 maxxes out in the 48-50 degrees C range when gaming and even in the hot spell we had only hit 55 degrees C without the fans ramping up so they remain silent. I was so impressed with the fans that came with the cooler that I bought a additional 3 pack for less than £15 and fitted a extra fan to the rear of the cooler. It only dropped the temps a degree or two but probably helped keep the temps low during the hot spell without ramping the fans up. It truly is a impressive cooler.
With my choice to go back to air that meant sticking the stock cooler back on the GPU which I knew was a decent cooler as I tested it thoroughly before putting a water block on it. One thing I was curious about though was the backplate is all metal but does not contact any hot spots on the card so was purely there for the look. This has know changed. When putting the cooler back on I used Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut on the GPU die and swapped the stock thermal pads to Gelid Extreme pads. One thing I always noticed was that the rear of the card where the GPU die is always ran pretty warm and I wanted to do something about this. I had measured the space between the card and backplate and got Gelid Extreme thermal pads of the correct thickness. I stuck one on the rear of the GPU die so that any heat will be passed to the metal backplate. This has worked a treat and the backplate is now doing something other than looking good. It gets pretty warm now but being right in the centre of the airflow from the front and rear left hand 200mm fans the heat gets dumped out of the case pretty quickly. Another thing I noticed due to going back to air was that the NVME drives were getting cooked even though they had heatsinks fitted. This was purely down to the GPU so I decided to do something about this as well. I bought a Kolink (
) pci-e 4.0 riser card as it was the cheapest on here. It's actually pretty well built and decent quality and works perfectly. The next part of my plan was to make a shroud for the GPU to sit horizontally in so the fans face up. This was easily made out of some old case panel I had lying around and the riser card fitted to the left hand side. it stops any heat going down on the motherboard or drives and due to it's location between the front and rear 200mm fans any heat is quickly carried out of the case. Weirdly it dropped GPU temps as well and in normal gaming the GPU tops out in the low to mid 50's. The hottest I have seen was 62 degrees in the hot spell and the fans only ramped up to 75%. They don't even run at 50 degrees or below so at 55 degrees C they are more or less silent. I have undervolted the GPU as I was horrified by it's stock power consumption. Coming from a GTX1070 and total system power around 200w it shot up to 450w pretty much continously with the 3070 when gaming. I managed to save just over 100w of power while overclocking the vram by 600mhz, The card now boosts slightly higher while running cooler so I have gained performance and lost none yet the whole system draws a maximum of up to 344w while gaming (normally in the 275-300w range depending on the game).
I have had zero problems with this pc, no faults, no overheating, no software problems, it just works as it should. It's probably going to be as it is for a couple of years more before I upgrade anything unless a decent priced 14700k pops up in the MM. Graphics card wise I am probably going to stick for a couple of years and am going to stick with my normal £400 max. Never again will I overpay for a GPU. I may even jump ship to AMD when the time comes as I have a itch for a 32" 1440p IPS screen.
Sorry for rabbiting on, I got carried away a tad. Wifey says I do the same when I text as well. Here's a couple of pictures of the insides of the pc.
I really have to do something with those damn ARGB cables!!
very clean and neat. GGs!