Associate
Hey all, hope you are safe and well. Intel has asked if I can put together a dual system build to celebrate Intel Gamer Days and guys, this thing is going to be absolutely enormous!
If you haven’t seen or heard about Intel Gamers Days, it’s a 10-day virtual festival packed with incredible deals, exciting streams, and exclusive giveaways for gamers around the globe. If you don’t already follow Intel on social media then now is the time to start because later this year they will be bringing a load of content including influencer workshops, exclusive gameplay previews, game developer panels, and much more.
So to celebrate Intel Gamers Days as I said, Intel has asked me to build something a little bit over the top, they want me to put together a dual system to include a main gaming system, and a streaming PC all under one roof.
Any dual system build is challenging and typically incorporates both an ATX and ITX motherboard but we are going all out for this, both systems are going to be ATX using ASUS motherboards. Of course, given this is an Intel based build they will be Z590 and subject to any last minute changes, the front will be using the ROG Maximus XIII Extreme Glacial while the rear will be getting the ROG Maximus XIII Hero.
The Glacial will be running an 11900K while the Hero gets an 11700K, both boards will run Seagate FireCuda NVME drives. I think I’ve gone for 6TB total for the front system and 4TB for the rear so storage won’t be an issue for steam libraries any time soon. Ram will be all Corsair with 64 and 32GB kits respectively. Graphics are to be covered, subject to confirmation, by two ASUS RTX 3080 cards, I’m not going to dwell on GPUs because I know everyone’s trying to get hold of stuff. Power supplies are SFX the Seasonic 1000W units, great little solutions for high-end builds in tight spaces.
The cooling is going to be predominantly Alphacool with Corsair GPU blocks, dual res per system, and two 480mm radiators per system. Il be using Corsair LL120mm fans with Commander Pros to tie all the fans and lighting together, it’s not the easiest system to use and personally, not one I have used before so that will be a bit of a learning curve to suss out.
With all that in mind you might be thinking what case, out of the box supports all that and well, there aren’t any, or at least not that I know of and so I needed to come up with a solution.
Enter the Raijintek Enyo, or for this, two of them. The Enyo, if you are not familiar with it is a huge open frame chassis designed to mount a system to the front and additional water cooling and power supplies to the rear. The modular design of this case is what caught my eye though, it seemed quite feasible that I would be able to create a flipped mirror image of the front of the case and install that mirror image to the rear. So the cases were ordered in and arrived this week, I then spent the day planning out the design and making sure everything would fit. Once I was confident it would, then it was time to drill some of the panels and build the case into the final; design.
I’ve had to modify a couple of bits to get it all to fit but overall it's worked out great, the bottom shrouds are typically used for radiator mounting and fans but these are going to be clad in backlit acrylic and will house the PSU and lighting control. The front and top of each side will accommodate the cooling and since it’s built for up to EATX boards, I can then easily fit both systems. The glass on this is getting some small detailing for Intel, something that’s not going to draw you away from the system itself.
One interesting point about the Enyo is it comes with predrilled bulkhead holes. In planning the idea was to pass through the coolant from the pumps on one side to feed the opposite loop and vice versa to get a contrasting coolant for each side. Now it’s here, once everything is built the system is going to be so heavy and complex that for taking this to Intel, that might not be the best option so I still need to figure out how to make that happen. It may well be that I keep the loops separate and just use a contrasting coolant. This way the system can be split relatively easily for maintenance and changing out components if ever needed.
So now that the case is built, it needs stripping back down ready for painting. The front side is to be painted blue, with the back being yellow, matching up to Intel's colors. While this is being painted the rest of the hardware should be arriving so I can get them built up for testing before fitting them to the case. I think with the colors and the backlit panels, case fans, and lighting this should be a nice bright system, not too over the top with the lighting effects
So that’s the plan, in theory from here it should be a fairly straightforward build, cable management needs to be spot on because of the open nature of the case but if everything goes to plan, this should be a pretty cool-looking system when it’s all finished. Il be dropping a couple more videos as I go through the build process so I hope you will drop by to watch them.
Until Part 2, stay safe all!
If you haven’t seen or heard about Intel Gamers Days, it’s a 10-day virtual festival packed with incredible deals, exciting streams, and exclusive giveaways for gamers around the globe. If you don’t already follow Intel on social media then now is the time to start because later this year they will be bringing a load of content including influencer workshops, exclusive gameplay previews, game developer panels, and much more.
So to celebrate Intel Gamers Days as I said, Intel has asked me to build something a little bit over the top, they want me to put together a dual system to include a main gaming system, and a streaming PC all under one roof.
Any dual system build is challenging and typically incorporates both an ATX and ITX motherboard but we are going all out for this, both systems are going to be ATX using ASUS motherboards. Of course, given this is an Intel based build they will be Z590 and subject to any last minute changes, the front will be using the ROG Maximus XIII Extreme Glacial while the rear will be getting the ROG Maximus XIII Hero.
The Glacial will be running an 11900K while the Hero gets an 11700K, both boards will run Seagate FireCuda NVME drives. I think I’ve gone for 6TB total for the front system and 4TB for the rear so storage won’t be an issue for steam libraries any time soon. Ram will be all Corsair with 64 and 32GB kits respectively. Graphics are to be covered, subject to confirmation, by two ASUS RTX 3080 cards, I’m not going to dwell on GPUs because I know everyone’s trying to get hold of stuff. Power supplies are SFX the Seasonic 1000W units, great little solutions for high-end builds in tight spaces.
The cooling is going to be predominantly Alphacool with Corsair GPU blocks, dual res per system, and two 480mm radiators per system. Il be using Corsair LL120mm fans with Commander Pros to tie all the fans and lighting together, it’s not the easiest system to use and personally, not one I have used before so that will be a bit of a learning curve to suss out.
With all that in mind you might be thinking what case, out of the box supports all that and well, there aren’t any, or at least not that I know of and so I needed to come up with a solution.
Enter the Raijintek Enyo, or for this, two of them. The Enyo, if you are not familiar with it is a huge open frame chassis designed to mount a system to the front and additional water cooling and power supplies to the rear. The modular design of this case is what caught my eye though, it seemed quite feasible that I would be able to create a flipped mirror image of the front of the case and install that mirror image to the rear. So the cases were ordered in and arrived this week, I then spent the day planning out the design and making sure everything would fit. Once I was confident it would, then it was time to drill some of the panels and build the case into the final; design.
I’ve had to modify a couple of bits to get it all to fit but overall it's worked out great, the bottom shrouds are typically used for radiator mounting and fans but these are going to be clad in backlit acrylic and will house the PSU and lighting control. The front and top of each side will accommodate the cooling and since it’s built for up to EATX boards, I can then easily fit both systems. The glass on this is getting some small detailing for Intel, something that’s not going to draw you away from the system itself.
One interesting point about the Enyo is it comes with predrilled bulkhead holes. In planning the idea was to pass through the coolant from the pumps on one side to feed the opposite loop and vice versa to get a contrasting coolant for each side. Now it’s here, once everything is built the system is going to be so heavy and complex that for taking this to Intel, that might not be the best option so I still need to figure out how to make that happen. It may well be that I keep the loops separate and just use a contrasting coolant. This way the system can be split relatively easily for maintenance and changing out components if ever needed.
So now that the case is built, it needs stripping back down ready for painting. The front side is to be painted blue, with the back being yellow, matching up to Intel's colors. While this is being painted the rest of the hardware should be arriving so I can get them built up for testing before fitting them to the case. I think with the colors and the backlit panels, case fans, and lighting this should be a nice bright system, not too over the top with the lighting effects
So that’s the plan, in theory from here it should be a fairly straightforward build, cable management needs to be spot on because of the open nature of the case but if everything goes to plan, this should be a pretty cool-looking system when it’s all finished. Il be dropping a couple more videos as I go through the build process so I hope you will drop by to watch them.
Until Part 2, stay safe all!
