Just to close this off, if anyones interested.....
CPU - i5-13600K
CPU cooler - Scythe FUMA 2 Rev B
Mobo - ASRock Z790 PG Riptide
Boot drive - WD_BLACK 1TB SN770 M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 NVMe
RAM - Corsair VENGEANCE DDR5 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 5600 (PC5-44800) C36 1.25V
PSU - Corsair RM850 850 Watt 80 Plus Gold Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
Case - Fractal Design Define 7 XL Full-Tower (with 3 x 140mm non-PWM fans included)
Extra case fans - 1 x 140mm non-PWM (same model as provided in the case) + 3 x 140mm PWM fans
Parts reused:
GPU - Radeon RX 5700
Soundcard - Creative AE-5X
Data drives - 2 x Crucial BX500 2TB SATA SSD in RAID1
other drives - 1 x Crucial MX500 1TB SSD
other drives - 1 x Seagate BarraCuda 4TB HDD
This thing is awesome.
The case is great but the "instructions" are not, so it took me a while to figure things out. I must've took the DVD drive in and out about 4 times in order to
get other things to fit. Things are nice and tidy inside. I know I said previously I'm not a big flashing lights fan, but I might add an LED strip or maybe some
of those LED add-ons for case fans. Are they any good or worth avoiding?
The case has 7 x 140mm fans, plus there's the two fans on the Scythe FUMA 2, plus there's the fan on the AMD RX5700 GPU but this is still way quieter
than my old case. I went for the fan configuration as shown below but I've spotted a problem with it - a lot of the PSU cabling gathers in the space immediately
above the bottom fan (and there's nothing I can do about that, it's got to go somewhere....) so I might move that bottom fan closer to the front of the case to
improve air flow. I'll keep an eye on this as temperatures rise throughout the year.
Temps for the i5-13600K when interweb browsing is 30-34°C. I haven't installed any games yet to tax it more, plus it's damn cold here just now but I think this
is a decent set of temps? The 3 x PWM fans are connected to the fan headers on the MB (#2, #3 and #4) and I increased their speed curve slightly from the defaults.
The 4 x non-PWM fans are connected to a header inside the case and is therefore powered from a cable from the PSU. I assume they're turning at their full speed,
which is 1000rpm?
I went for a dual-boot of Win10 and Win11. The WD_BLACK 1TB NVMe drive is the boot, my 2 x 2TB SSD drives in RAID1 are my data drive, and my old 1TB SSD
boot drive will now store my VMs that were taking up lots of space on the data drive. The external 4TB HDD backup drive is now inside the case, with a short power
lead so that I can disconnect it easily when not in use. The extenal case that held the 4TB drive will shortly have an 8TB HDD for external back-ups.
Many thanks to everyone who offered suggestions. I really appreciated it.
Merry New Year.
CPU - i5-13600K
CPU cooler - Scythe FUMA 2 Rev B
Mobo - ASRock Z790 PG Riptide
Boot drive - WD_BLACK 1TB SN770 M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 NVMe
RAM - Corsair VENGEANCE DDR5 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 5600 (PC5-44800) C36 1.25V
PSU - Corsair RM850 850 Watt 80 Plus Gold Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
Case - Fractal Design Define 7 XL Full-Tower (with 3 x 140mm non-PWM fans included)
Extra case fans - 1 x 140mm non-PWM (same model as provided in the case) + 3 x 140mm PWM fans
Parts reused:
GPU - Radeon RX 5700
Soundcard - Creative AE-5X
Data drives - 2 x Crucial BX500 2TB SATA SSD in RAID1
other drives - 1 x Crucial MX500 1TB SSD
other drives - 1 x Seagate BarraCuda 4TB HDD
This thing is awesome.
The case is great but the "instructions" are not, so it took me a while to figure things out. I must've took the DVD drive in and out about 4 times in order to
get other things to fit. Things are nice and tidy inside. I know I said previously I'm not a big flashing lights fan, but I might add an LED strip or maybe some
of those LED add-ons for case fans. Are they any good or worth avoiding?
The case has 7 x 140mm fans, plus there's the two fans on the Scythe FUMA 2, plus there's the fan on the AMD RX5700 GPU but this is still way quieter
than my old case. I went for the fan configuration as shown below but I've spotted a problem with it - a lot of the PSU cabling gathers in the space immediately
above the bottom fan (and there's nothing I can do about that, it's got to go somewhere....) so I might move that bottom fan closer to the front of the case to
improve air flow. I'll keep an eye on this as temperatures rise throughout the year.
Temps for the i5-13600K when interweb browsing is 30-34°C. I haven't installed any games yet to tax it more, plus it's damn cold here just now but I think this
is a decent set of temps? The 3 x PWM fans are connected to the fan headers on the MB (#2, #3 and #4) and I increased their speed curve slightly from the defaults.
The 4 x non-PWM fans are connected to a header inside the case and is therefore powered from a cable from the PSU. I assume they're turning at their full speed,
which is 1000rpm?
I went for a dual-boot of Win10 and Win11. The WD_BLACK 1TB NVMe drive is the boot, my 2 x 2TB SSD drives in RAID1 are my data drive, and my old 1TB SSD
boot drive will now store my VMs that were taking up lots of space on the data drive. The external 4TB HDD backup drive is now inside the case, with a short power
lead so that I can disconnect it easily when not in use. The extenal case that held the 4TB drive will shortly have an 8TB HDD for external back-ups.
Many thanks to everyone who offered suggestions. I really appreciated it.
Merry New Year.
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