PUBG crate. The spares build.

[ALXAndy]

I do need a spare. Not that I have ever had any serious issues with the main PC at my place, but I do think I would suffer not having one if it did go down. I'm autistic and agoraphobic, so having the PC is essential, given it is my main means of comms and gaming etc. This is why when I built the dream rig (the Lian Li PC12) I did so using AIOs, because the main cause of down time before was sodding about with a loop switching out parts etc. I do still have all my WC gear in my set up at my mother's house, but thankfully it has been very reliable so far and I don't get itchy wanting to continually mess with it and change out parts etc.



It also has a 2080Ti which is slightly dodgy. What I mean is the VRAM does not work at the stock forced overclocked setting. It is fine in everything but Unreal Engine and Bethesda's engine for FO4. I then have to under clock the VRAM and the card simply does not work on air at all. It just gets way too hot, and crashes due to said VRAM issue. I did think about possibly modding the Kingpin with one of these.



And then putting it in that rig but in all honesty there is just no point. Modding a £1700 GPU would be a bit daft, given that the Aorus behind the Bitspower block does function very well once you take 100mhz off the VRAM. In PUBG of course, which again is about all I play now. I did play through FO4 on it a while ago and had to down clock it by 400mhz, but again it was more than enough to smash the FPS limiter of 60 FPS at 4k with the 4k extreme texture pack.

That's why the spare rig will be AIOs again, and reliable. I would buy a second gen TR for it but man they sell for insane money. In fact, looking earlier the original TR4 boards still fetch £300 on their own which is pretty mad.

 

[ALXAndy]

Oh ho ! up yours Lian Li.



I knew it would have to be somewhere. To avoid any confusion in the future I think I will literally just solder in a proper RGB connector. Like they should have done.

 

[Jay85]

I do need a spare. Not that I have ever had any serious issues with the main PC at my place, but I do think I would suffer not having one if it did go down. I'm autistic and agoraphobic, so having the PC is essential, given it is my main means of comms and gaming etc. This is why when I built the dream rig (the Lian Li PC12) I did so using AIOs, because the main cause of down time before was sodding about with a loop switching out parts etc. I do still have all my WC gear in my set up at my mother's house, but thankfully it has been very reliable so far and I don't get itchy wanting to continually mess with it and change out parts etc.



It also has a 2080Ti which is slightly dodgy. What I mean is the VRAM does not work at the stock forced overclocked setting. It is fine in everything but Unreal Engine and Bethesda's engine for FO4. I then have to under clock the VRAM and the card simply does not work on air at all. It just gets way too hot, and crashes due to said VRAM issue. I did think about possibly modding the Kingpin with one of these.



And then putting it in that rig but in all honesty there is just no point. Modding a £1700 GPU would be a bit daft, given that the Aorus behind the Bitspower block does function very well once you take 100mhz off the VRAM. In PUBG of course, which again is about all I play now. I did play through FO4 on it a while ago and had to down clock it by 400mhz, but again it was more than enough to smash the FPS limiter of 60 FPS at 4k with the 4k extreme texture pack.

That's why the spare rig will be AIOs again, and reliable. I would buy a second gen TR for it but man they sell for insane money. In fact, looking earlier the original TR4 boards still fetch £300 on their own which is pretty mad.

I can't imagine mate, it must be tough though but im glad you've found a way to manage it and to make life a little easier. Its very therapeutic for me when im building a pc and creating something that i've imagined. Gets the creative juices flowing and i can be at it for days just changing things and making things work the way i want it to or the way i've envisioned it.

Hey if the 2080ti works it works lol, no point binning it or trying to sell it as some geezer will want it for peanuts. Especially if you still have use for it now, just use it until you can find a decent replacement. I did this to a 1060, totally pointless but i wanted silence in a media/emulation rig so i used a Thermosphere waterblock from EKWB and it worked like a charm!

 

[ALXAndy]

Oh yeah dude I am always doing something. My mind never stops. Just finished the subwoofer, and major upgrades to my bike.



Always doing something.

I don't like selling things tbh. If it's not a really high value item I just donate it to my gaming friends. I don't have any kids, so I am OK. One of my pals works his ass off and has an autistic son, so I gave him my monitor when I upgraded, and sent down some parts for the guy who hosts the LAN (they go every Weds) to keep the rigs running.

But yeah, I do like to keep my brain busy.

 

[ALXAndy]

Will get rid of the stickers later.

 

[Removed User 345456]

that looks MAD!

 

[ALXAndy]

I'm pretty certain it was logged on Bit dude. Should be here also.

 

[ALXAndy]

Wow. That tool is actually insane. I've never used one that required absolutely no force whatsoever and no yanking and wrecking your hands. I figured I would be there all day, it took about 5 mins to do all of it !



I originally did 4. I thought I was brave doing that ffs. But it wasn't enough, 6 looked better. I then changed two of the blue 8 pin to red (so it works out the same on 3 8 pin PCIE) and removed the extra 4 pin from the secondary EPS (I need an 8 and a 4).

So the cabling is done.

 

[ALXAndy]

SSDs were in a bad way. Labels were torn and scraped. So I tarted them up a little.



Still waiting for more decals. That said you don't see much of them any way.



Rear fan in, first hose clamp fitted.



GPU and tons more wiring later.



I've also double clamped the hoses. Stops them from pushing out onto the case window.

I managed to get the RGB working beautifully. It comes out of the mobo into the left side of the lower strip, up the case into the right side of the top strip and out of that into the fan. So any chase effects go around the case beautifully. Right now she's farting rainbows as I am way too busy on the software side to worry about it.



I ended up going with the SB ZXR.

Still to do. Get more extensions on the fans and fit the hub to the floor of the case. Then fit the memory coolers and wire those in.

 

[LePhuronn]

Gotta love a spare bits build from ALXAndy. Speaking of spare bits, you content with that Threadripper 1920X? Or want something with a bit more poke?

 

[ALXAndy]

Gotta love a spare bits build from ALXAndy. Speaking of spare bits, you content with that Threadripper 1920X? Or want something with a bit more poke?

haha I am only 3 months or more late...

As you know now it wasn't in the budget. Got too many AV things going on right now. I did finish this rig, and was using it on the TV at 4k. Stray was amazing. Sadly I am changing out the stand and it won't fit where it was so it's literally a spare rig now.

Will try and get some pics tomorrow.

 

[ALXAndy]

OK so I got lazy and didn't finish it. I did however try and use it, and my findings were...

The 1920x sucks balls for gaming. I connected it up to the PC and the 2080Ti is more than man enough for what I was doing but yeah it didn't run well at all. Stray was fine, and I completed it, but stuff like Spiderman even at moderate settings wanted a faster CPU. With Dead Island 2 coming in April (I've bought it already) I don't want to be stuck on my desk for many hours at a time what with it being an RPG I will absolutely play with the controller. I am not carting my main desk rig around either, as it's 90% glass. I did think about overclocking the 1920x, but the very same CPU before needed a 360 rad *and* a 120 to remain stable at 4.1. When the 120 broke it could not even do 3.9 on the 360, so I knew on a 240mm AIO I had absolutely no chance. An ill fitting 240mm AIO at that.

So, I bought a new CPU. 11400F, the best deal I think I have ever gotten on a PC part ever. It's absolutely superb at gaming, beating my 3950x easily.



Just needed a board. Z590 boards now go for absolute peanuts. And I mean, peanuts. The Z590i Vision D I bought for Modular cost me £129. Which is what has put me off of all modern AMD CPUs, as well as the older ones (with ITX boards no longer being available so scalpers be scalping). It's not worth it, given the 3600 is slower than the 3950x in gaming. I found this. It's absolutely hilarious !



Quite possibly the most daft coupling ever, but it was £199 delivered brand new. £318 all in, for a total brute of a board.

 

[Cenedd]

Needs more black on that board
'ere, you can't sell me a 1920x and then go posting how bad it is! Anyway, you're doing it wrong as it'll run a stress test at 3.7GHz all-cores and not top 40°C....you just need Mo' Ra' That reminds me, now I've got the RAM stable I must see if I can open those all-core taps a bit....can't have it under 4GHz now can we!

 

[ALXAndy]

Needs more black on that board
'ere, you can't sell me a 1920x and then go posting how bad it is! Anyway, you're doing it wrong as it'll run a stress test at 3.7GHz all-cores and not top 40°C....you just need Mo' Ra' That reminds me, now I've got the RAM stable I must see if I can open those all-core taps a bit....can't have it under 4GHz now can we!

Well I didn't think you would want it for gaming ya nana. I figured you'd want it for server etc use.

I think it would help if I could OC it, but like I said it was bodged, with about 20% of the CPU at the ends having no cold plate contact. So I didn't wanna take the pee

Been doing some reading and that board is a bit of a nutter. I don't think GN's "Waste of sand" review helped Z590 much lmao. Seems all of the Z590s cost peanuts now.

I think I can get the locked CPU to overclock itself too. Apparently Intel left a hole in it where if you change the power limit from 65w to 125 or higher it overclocks itself on the power. Apparently from the 12 series they fused that out of the micro code.

That may explain why the one I have at mum's seems to run so well. Great thing is on the 11 series you get full access to all of the M.2 slots too, whereas apparently on some boards on the 10 series only the one connected to the CPU works.

 

[Cenedd]

Nope. More cores and cooler-running (definitely important if you're shutting it in a cupboard!) on the server already. And it was roughly equivalent to my existing CPU...but with 8 more cores, who could say no?! And besides, even at stock it's still managing 60fps in Cyberpunk 2077 at medium-high and 2.5K. Doesn't seem CPU-bound in the slightest.
Gotta love some decent M.2 striping (and backup!) for a decent boost of speed.

 

[ALXAndy]

Yeah to be fair when I sold it to you it was much more current than now. That was like aaaages ago.

It was fine in Stray. I played it all the way through in 4k. Problem is with other stuff the 2080Ti wasn't enough for 4k, and the CPU wasn't good enough for 1440p. Rock and hard place.

I am praying that the engine in DI2 is older. And thus it won't totally stink like Dying Light 2 in terms of performance. And may be a bit more optimised and well polished, given it's been in dev for 8 years and through numerous devs. It doesn't look like the same engine that DL2 uses, that's for sure.

 

[ALXAndy]

You will all be absolutely gutted to hear I can't use the case. HARUMPH. It is pretty tight in there, and this board I bought is friggin huge and has a side loading 24 pin. I could have possibly taken out the "NZXT bar thing" but that is their way of getting around the fact they use thin metal on the case. As such when you remove it she goes a bit floppy. Given I once cracked a radiator by lifting a floppy case just like it (some cheap Phanteks thing) I was reluctant to do that, and potentially crack the rad on the Kingpin. Yeah ouch, that doesn't bear thinking about. So I bagged this from OCUK on sale.



My mate got one last year. Given I need to move the rig from room to room the straps on top are super handy. Perfect even. I have a real mixed bag of fans, and actually want to bring lots of air in now so I found these on sale. I bought two sets (so 6)



Which marry up perfectly with the bargain one of these I got last year.



You'll also cry when I tell you that I did not carry the red and blue cables forward. I know, just try to cope and get by one day at a time.... I have packed all of that back in the original PUBG box. I got these. Super cheap and have what I need (2 8 pin, 3 8 pin PCIE)



I also got really annoyed trying to find the correct plates for my AIO, so grabbed this on sale too for £24.



And providing it fits should work lovely. I say that because look.



Gawd knows, but I am sure I will find out.

 

[Cenedd]

Funny looking cold-plate on that water block. Not seen one with fans before ;p

 

[ALXAndy]

Hahahaha. I know dude. it's my first air cooler since 2009

I can't find the wings I need in the UK. They are £10+ from China and £15 from Corsair but all out of stock. Besides. There is a big issue with 99% of pc cases. And that is that they assume you are going to use either your CPU or GPU on water but not both. If you do? Then you can't run any intake fans because all positions are then blocked with rads.

This way I can have 3 120s on intake, the CPU on the air cooler and the GPUs rad in the top.

It will quite probably cool better than any other rig I have.

The day they make large cases with three useable areas (front top *and* bottom? The problem will be solved. Well it is in the 011 XL. Problem is it's foogin dear.

I'm really stoked with the epic half priced bargains ive bashed out here. That said the mobo RRP was £540. So I super duper scored on that animal of a board.

 

[Cenedd]

I'd settle for the day that what rads they say will fit, actually fit...with enough room for fittings and fans...that actually line up.
Oh, you can get a 360 in the roof up there....yeah, but only if you flatten it first. Oh, you want to connect the loop to it?!
Of course there's room for fans on the rad! Really, even with an actual motherboard installed?!