So having got a wee refund for PPI on October I decided to update my i7 6700k, 16GB 2133MHz and 2070 Super build for something that I'd hope would suffice for a minimum of 3-4 years, maybe even 5 without touching a thing. The 6700k has served me well, even going from a GTX 980, then a GTX1080 and now my 2070 Super but it really was starting to show it's limitations in newer games like CP2077, despite my playing Apex Legends most of all but the opportunity was there so I decided it was the time.
Obviously a 5x00 Ryzen would be the thing to buy and I decided on a MSI X570 Tomahawk Max Wi-Fi to go along with it. Given the intent for it to be a 'build and forget about cracking it open again for years' build I figured as 32GB pricing is coming down into the realms of affordability, despite it being overkill at the moment that as some games are starting to show benefits to having 32GB I might as well. Storage would be a 1TB PCI-E3 Samsung 870 NVME that I managed to get Currys to price match on as I had some vouchers.
Now I just had to try and get it all.
The X570 was bought from a competitor sadly (the price difference was over £20 at the time), and the RAM came from the rainforest, a pair of Crucial Ballistix Black RGB 3200MHz 16GB stick were purchased around Black Friday thanks to a decent deal. I couldn't find any stock anywhere else, even on Crucial's own website. These have done 3600Mhz with absolutely no problems at all.
Now for the CPU. Remember this was when these things were properly like Hen's teeth. Stories of four or five CPU's coming into stock weekly across retailers were common place and while I didn't initially want anything like a 5900x or even a 5950x (the plan was a 5800x to match the new Consoles in core count, thinking that most games would be optimised for 8 cores in the future) when Currys had a 5950x in stock I kind of panicked a bit and bought it. Again this was thanks to reward vouchers my place of work gives out as bonuses so the CPU 'cost' me just over £100. Positively bargainous.
The graphics card was a much more difficult process. Given the monochromatic style of the build I was going to end up with I absolutely wanted a white card and I really wanted a 3080 for future proofing which basically left me with two choices. The incredibly rare, hardly sold anywhere ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3080 White OC Edition 10GB GDDR6X | Graphics Cards (asus.com)]ASUS ROG Strix White Edition[/url] or the easier to find GeForce RTX™ 3080 VISION OC 10G Key Features | Graphics Card - GIGABYTE Global]Gigabyte 3080 Vision[/url]. Given the limited availability of the ASUS card (very few stockists in the UK I found, even rarer than the Gigabyte,) it had to be a Vision. Using some Stock discords proved fruitless as cards were literally gone in seconds I even had an 'inside man' as I again had Currys vouchers to spend as my workplace allows up to £1000 in Vouchers to be taken 'interest free' and paid off your wages over 12 months. But I still couldn't get that elusive card as I was relying on Currys stock which, given their reasonable attitude to scalping meant they were being watched by everyone, everywhere, ever second. So I eventually sold the Vouchers for a 10% loss and managed to get a 3080 Vision from a member here via the 'unofficial' discord. 3080 Secured!
Case wise I'd decided very quickly on a White Lian Li O-11 Dynamic. I've never had a Lian Li case before, they're usually very expensive to my mind but I thought this was an amazing looking case, lots of glass and a great 'two chamber' design so the clean look I was after was easily done as cabling wise everything was easily hidden. It even felt like good value too for the look I wanted. This also came from a competitor to I'm afraid, they got stock in late at night as I got a in stock notification. Rather weirdly it had an Overclockers sticker on the side, Not sure if there's some sort of agreement or what, but strange enough. It even came with a packet of Haribo which raised suspicions even more.
Cooling wise I actually picked up an Arctic Cooling Freezer II from the rainforest before I bought my 5950x but the fact it was black and only 240mm with what would be such a hot chip I eventually sold it for a small loss on the MM here. It's replacement was, eventually a Lian Li Galahad 360mm in White. Which I promptly sold the included fans for and went with the same fans as on the rest of my build.
These were 9 Lian Li SL120 Uni fans which proved the devil to find in stock with them being backordered everywhere for weeks and weeks at a time. Jayztwocents did a great video on them which really turned me onto them. I've done an RGB build for a friend's son for Christmas and the masses (and masses) of cables annoyed the crap out of me so these fans were ideal.
When the 3080 arrived one look at it made me think what a shame it would be hide the beautiful aluminium style front plate by facing it down towards the fans so the idea was born to vertically mount it. This proved difficult as there were quite a few mounts that wouldn't work with fans at the bottom of the case which I wanted to keep for airflow and looks. I picked up a Lian Li official mount which turned out to be wrongly identified as being compatible with the standard O-11 Dynamic when it was actually for the Dynamic XL so didn't fit.
I eventually settled on a ▷ Phanteks Vertical GPU Bracket & Flatline 220m… | OcUK (overclockers.co.uk)]Phanteks vertical mount[/url] which did just the job. It feels very secure with little to no movement or sag despite only holding the card at one end. It even has clearance from the bottom fans which is what I wanted. The plan for the clean look now made me think about the GPU power cables as well so a set of 180' 8 pin Adaptors were ordered to keep the clean 'hidden' look.
The clean look made me start looking into 90' connectors for the 24 pin and even the 8pin and these were ordered from Hong Kong but eventually discarded. I did however go for some custom cable extensions in black and white as the original cables looked a bit messy and really distracted from the clean look.
First test build putting together what I had.
I realised pretty quickly that I'd put some of the fans on backwards as I wanted intake at the bottom and side with AIO at the top with exhaust.
Next I tried the 90' 24 pin connector and the 90' EPS 8 Pin but I quickly disliked these and discarded them. The Ballistix RAM and NVME were already in. No pics of the initial fit and build I'm afraid.
First CPU fit occurred a few days ago along with the 90' 24 pin still in place as I hadn't received the sleeved cables yet. The 3080 was also here and was test fitted as the Vertical mount wasn't bought yet.
The Lian Li Vertical mount arrived the same day but as you can see, it didn't fit. Not to mention it was a gloss white and completely different! THis is to be returned.
The Sleeved black and white cables arrived also along with the 180' 8 pins which I had to order two sets of as they come as a pair, but actually come with a 'left' and a 'right' which was no use to me.
The vertical mount arrived along with the Galahad 360mm so they were fitted, the vertical mount was just a test fit really to make sure there was plenty of clearance and there was.
A quick power on test to make sure everything was connected correctly and I had no duff fans or LEDs on the fans and there were none, thankfully.
Finally I managed to get hold of the last three Uni Fans and they were duly installed. The Pump and cooler as well as each bank of three fans are all connected to the Lian Li Controller hidden round the back of the case beside the PSU and the cabling is currently a real mess, but will be tidied up.
Finally got everything all connected today and managed to get into the BIOS but I had to put the GPU back into the slot to change the PCI-E slot mode to 3.0 but I was expecting this.
The final power on with all the fans in place connected up etc.
I haven't put windows on it yet, my Windows USB drive has officially been declared MIA but I'll update the post with temps and the colour scheme I go for. Chances are it'll be single colour rather than unicorn vomit but my 2 sons think it looks cool.
There are two drives to be transplanted from my current PC, a 480GB SATA SSD and a 2TB mechanical but there's mounting for these on the back of the case as well which is great for the clean look.
I'm also really glad I went for a vertical mount as the silver gives some nice reflections from the RGB fans on the bottom I think.
Overall I found the case really easy to build in, I can see why it's so popular even for air cooled builds despite it really being a case for water cooling. It's nothing absolutely amazing but I'm loving it!
Obviously a 5x00 Ryzen would be the thing to buy and I decided on a MSI X570 Tomahawk Max Wi-Fi to go along with it. Given the intent for it to be a 'build and forget about cracking it open again for years' build I figured as 32GB pricing is coming down into the realms of affordability, despite it being overkill at the moment that as some games are starting to show benefits to having 32GB I might as well. Storage would be a 1TB PCI-E3 Samsung 870 NVME that I managed to get Currys to price match on as I had some vouchers.
Now I just had to try and get it all.
The X570 was bought from a competitor sadly (the price difference was over £20 at the time), and the RAM came from the rainforest, a pair of Crucial Ballistix Black RGB 3200MHz 16GB stick were purchased around Black Friday thanks to a decent deal. I couldn't find any stock anywhere else, even on Crucial's own website. These have done 3600Mhz with absolutely no problems at all.
Now for the CPU. Remember this was when these things were properly like Hen's teeth. Stories of four or five CPU's coming into stock weekly across retailers were common place and while I didn't initially want anything like a 5900x or even a 5950x (the plan was a 5800x to match the new Consoles in core count, thinking that most games would be optimised for 8 cores in the future) when Currys had a 5950x in stock I kind of panicked a bit and bought it. Again this was thanks to reward vouchers my place of work gives out as bonuses so the CPU 'cost' me just over £100. Positively bargainous.
The graphics card was a much more difficult process. Given the monochromatic style of the build I was going to end up with I absolutely wanted a white card and I really wanted a 3080 for future proofing which basically left me with two choices. The incredibly rare, hardly sold anywhere ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3080 White OC Edition 10GB GDDR6X | Graphics Cards (asus.com)]ASUS ROG Strix White Edition[/url] or the easier to find GeForce RTX™ 3080 VISION OC 10G Key Features | Graphics Card - GIGABYTE Global]Gigabyte 3080 Vision[/url]. Given the limited availability of the ASUS card (very few stockists in the UK I found, even rarer than the Gigabyte,) it had to be a Vision. Using some Stock discords proved fruitless as cards were literally gone in seconds I even had an 'inside man' as I again had Currys vouchers to spend as my workplace allows up to £1000 in Vouchers to be taken 'interest free' and paid off your wages over 12 months. But I still couldn't get that elusive card as I was relying on Currys stock which, given their reasonable attitude to scalping meant they were being watched by everyone, everywhere, ever second. So I eventually sold the Vouchers for a 10% loss and managed to get a 3080 Vision from a member here via the 'unofficial' discord. 3080 Secured!
Case wise I'd decided very quickly on a White Lian Li O-11 Dynamic. I've never had a Lian Li case before, they're usually very expensive to my mind but I thought this was an amazing looking case, lots of glass and a great 'two chamber' design so the clean look I was after was easily done as cabling wise everything was easily hidden. It even felt like good value too for the look I wanted. This also came from a competitor to I'm afraid, they got stock in late at night as I got a in stock notification. Rather weirdly it had an Overclockers sticker on the side, Not sure if there's some sort of agreement or what, but strange enough. It even came with a packet of Haribo which raised suspicions even more.
Cooling wise I actually picked up an Arctic Cooling Freezer II from the rainforest before I bought my 5950x but the fact it was black and only 240mm with what would be such a hot chip I eventually sold it for a small loss on the MM here. It's replacement was, eventually a Lian Li Galahad 360mm in White. Which I promptly sold the included fans for and went with the same fans as on the rest of my build.
These were 9 Lian Li SL120 Uni fans which proved the devil to find in stock with them being backordered everywhere for weeks and weeks at a time. Jayztwocents did a great video on them which really turned me onto them. I've done an RGB build for a friend's son for Christmas and the masses (and masses) of cables annoyed the crap out of me so these fans were ideal.
When the 3080 arrived one look at it made me think what a shame it would be hide the beautiful aluminium style front plate by facing it down towards the fans so the idea was born to vertically mount it. This proved difficult as there were quite a few mounts that wouldn't work with fans at the bottom of the case which I wanted to keep for airflow and looks. I picked up a Lian Li official mount which turned out to be wrongly identified as being compatible with the standard O-11 Dynamic when it was actually for the Dynamic XL so didn't fit.
I eventually settled on a ▷ Phanteks Vertical GPU Bracket & Flatline 220m… | OcUK (overclockers.co.uk)]Phanteks vertical mount[/url] which did just the job. It feels very secure with little to no movement or sag despite only holding the card at one end. It even has clearance from the bottom fans which is what I wanted. The plan for the clean look now made me think about the GPU power cables as well so a set of 180' 8 pin Adaptors were ordered to keep the clean 'hidden' look.
The clean look made me start looking into 90' connectors for the 24 pin and even the 8pin and these were ordered from Hong Kong but eventually discarded. I did however go for some custom cable extensions in black and white as the original cables looked a bit messy and really distracted from the clean look.
First test build putting together what I had.
I realised pretty quickly that I'd put some of the fans on backwards as I wanted intake at the bottom and side with AIO at the top with exhaust.
Next I tried the 90' 24 pin connector and the 90' EPS 8 Pin but I quickly disliked these and discarded them. The Ballistix RAM and NVME were already in. No pics of the initial fit and build I'm afraid.
First CPU fit occurred a few days ago along with the 90' 24 pin still in place as I hadn't received the sleeved cables yet. The 3080 was also here and was test fitted as the Vertical mount wasn't bought yet.
The Lian Li Vertical mount arrived the same day but as you can see, it didn't fit. Not to mention it was a gloss white and completely different! THis is to be returned.
The Sleeved black and white cables arrived also along with the 180' 8 pins which I had to order two sets of as they come as a pair, but actually come with a 'left' and a 'right' which was no use to me.
The vertical mount arrived along with the Galahad 360mm so they were fitted, the vertical mount was just a test fit really to make sure there was plenty of clearance and there was.
A quick power on test to make sure everything was connected correctly and I had no duff fans or LEDs on the fans and there were none, thankfully.
Finally I managed to get hold of the last three Uni Fans and they were duly installed. The Pump and cooler as well as each bank of three fans are all connected to the Lian Li Controller hidden round the back of the case beside the PSU and the cabling is currently a real mess, but will be tidied up.
Finally got everything all connected today and managed to get into the BIOS but I had to put the GPU back into the slot to change the PCI-E slot mode to 3.0 but I was expecting this.
The final power on with all the fans in place connected up etc.
I haven't put windows on it yet, my Windows USB drive has officially been declared MIA but I'll update the post with temps and the colour scheme I go for. Chances are it'll be single colour rather than unicorn vomit but my 2 sons think it looks cool.
There are two drives to be transplanted from my current PC, a 480GB SATA SSD and a 2TB mechanical but there's mounting for these on the back of the case as well which is great for the clean look.
I'm also really glad I went for a vertical mount as the silver gives some nice reflections from the RGB fans on the bottom I think.
Overall I found the case really easy to build in, I can see why it's so popular even for air cooled builds despite it really being a case for water cooling. It's nothing absolutely amazing but I'm loving it!
. I naively assumed they would be the same and haven't bother unpacking anything yet (or even looked at the box/images online properly I guess).
.
.