Requesting Feedback on Proposed H/W Spec for New Build

[ytene]

Hey Everyone,

I think I'm getting to the point where it's time to replace my existing gaming system [built 2020] with a new setup. I've been looking at components offered by OcUK and I have an outline idea for what I'd like to build... but... I'm aware that there are reports of compatibility issues with AMD systems... and I also want to double-check general parts selection. I'd welcome feedback on proposed components, preferably with alternates suggested if you think I'm heading the wrong way. All advice gratefully received... Thanks in advance!

And sorry - this turned out to be way longer than I expected... but I hope it makes for an interesting read...

System Use Case / Requirements
I have a small fanless system that I use for my day-to-day requirements, but 2 activities - gaming and photo/video editing - are quite a bit more demanding. The machine outlined here will be used primarily for those activities, with roughly a 50-50 time split [maybe 60-40 in favour of gaming in the winter months, reversed in the summer]. Because a I do edit large video files, I also own a pair of QNAP NAS boxes, each running RAID 6 and then which are replicated [kind of like a poor man's RAID-12], all running at 10Gbps - so I also want good network speeds...

Proposed Hardware
I'll go item by item... and add a few comments for insight...

Case - Corsair 9000D Airflow - in a perfect world this would have some 5.25" drive slots as I still use optical media... but this looks like a practical option that gives me plenty of water cooling options...
PSU - BeQuiet! Dark Power Pro 1600W 80 Plus Titanium - this generates 9.8db at 50% load... so I'm hoping that it will be quiet unless I'm hammering the system hard...
Motherboard - Asus ROG Crosshair X870 Hero - 4 DIMM Slots, good RAM support, 4 USB-C sockets on the backplane, supports 5Gb Ethernet for fast network speeds...
CPU - AMD Ryzen 9 9950X - OK, there's no doubt that the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is the out-and-out fastest CPU for gaming, but I also need something with really strong multi-core performance for video editing. I have hunted around, and the detailed reviews by e.g. LTT suggest that this gets to with 2-3% of the performance of the 98003D but also gives much better multi-core.
CPU Waterblock - Heatkiller IV Pro AM5 Pure Copper - I have a Heatkiller waterblock on my i9-7920 [which runs perfectly at 4.6GHz] so I like the brand...
Radiators - Black Ice Nemesis 480/360 - OK, so this is where I'm keen to take advice... I hunted for detailed scale diagrams of the Corsair case but I can't find anything that will allow me to determine what combination of radiators and fans can be accommodated without experimentation. So in terms of the specific models that I'm looking to buy, I will just say that
1 - I would like to fit 4x480 if they will all fit in the case at the same time... if I have to, I'll compromise with 2x480+2x360...
2 - I've been advised to go with radiators that have a relatively low FPI count - this model offers 16, and can also be provided in conventional and crossflow configuration, which might be useful for neater/shorter tubing loops
Radiator Fans - Noctua NF-P12 PWM 12v 1300rpm - I've always used Noctua fans for as long as I've water-cooled PCs... and they have always out-lasted my systems. Not sure this is the PWM fan I will go with, but if not it would be close to this profile - 19.8dB(A) in operation and 1.68mm of Static Pressure. OK, that's not the highest, but the Black Ice rads are only 16FPI and the combination should work well...
Pump/Res Combos - AquaComputer D5-150s - I've had reasonable results from the AquaComputer range. Please note, I'm looking to buy 2 of these and run 2 separate loops... more questions to follow on that...
RAM - Corsair Dominator DDR5 96Gb 6000MHz CL30 - Black - OK... this is where I definitely need to ask for advice, as compatibility between CPU, Board and RAM appears to be one area where AMD systems appear to be a bit fussy [my last AMD build was a 1GHz AMD Athlon, so it's been a while...]. The amount of RAM is important to the video editing work and other regular tasks... though I think I'm right in saying that high amounts of RAM can slow down overall system performance thanks to the refresh overheads. Would like to understand if that is likely to be significant?
GPU - Gigabyte GeForce RTX5090 Aurus Xtreme Waterforce - I'm reasonably confident that a single 5090 should be at least as good as a pair of RTX2080Ti's running in SLI. Please also note that, as part of this upgrade, I'll be migrating to a triple set of XHD monitors [ 2560x1440 each, giving a 7680x1440 desktop ]
Storage - likely to be a pair of M.2 drives. I'll probably go with 8Tb, since although I don't need the capacity, the way that that these drives re-use storage locations means that this will give me the maximum possible longevity of the drives - important given the amount of data writing I anticipate from video editing...


OK, let's get to the questions...

First: Compatibility - I'd be very interested to know if anyone has direct experience of this combination of parts [or a sub-set] in particular with respect to the CPU, Mobo and RAM... The specific RAM I list here is captured in the mobo documentation as being compatible...

Second: Case - I'd love to hear from anyone who has one of these cases and can speak to which permutation of radiators and fans will actually fit.

Third: Cooling - When I look at the TDP ratings for the CPU and GPU, the AMD defaults to 170W and the GPU to a claimed 575, though obviously both would go higher if I overlock... If we do some crude rounding and suggest that CPU is ~200W and the GPU is ~600W, then this might make the case to split the Radiators with 3 going to the GPU and 1 to the CPU. If this is the plan, then the next question is whether the case will allow me to use 4x480s or 2x480s and 2x360s... If the former, then that's pretty straightforward... If the latter, then I'd want to offer the CPU a single 480 and give the GPU a pair of 360s and a 480. Does anyone have experience of what this case can handle in terms of radiators please?

Fourth: Fan Controller and fan setup - my current gaming rig uses an Aquero 6XT - which does the job. But it occurs to me that there might be other options out there... even on-board controllers in the BIOS. Overall I expect this system to have 16x120mm fans on the radiators [maybe 14x120 if I have to go with a couple of 360s in the mix]. I'll also have a pair of D5s - 2 discrete circuits - and I think it makes sense to put at least 1 and likely 2 ultra-quiet 140mm fans on the rear of the case. I'd like to ask for suggestions on the best configuration...

Specifically, I saw a Jayz2Cents video where he experiemented with whether it makes more sense to have fans on a front radiator pulling fresh air in or sucking warm air out. Let's assume that I can get 4 x 480s in this case... Obviously the 2 in the case roof will vent and pull warm air up out of the case. I'd like to put a pair of 140s on the back to help with maintaining positive pressure... but that won't be possible if I set the 8 front fans to exhaust/vent rather than draw fresh air in... Really interested to learn of your experience with something like this. I'm expecting I'll have 8 front/2 rear fans drawing fresh air in and 8 roof fans venting. That should give me a bit of positive pressure. But I've never really gone in to this in detail, so keen to learn.

Fifth: PSU - my current machine has an 8-Pack 2000W PSU... and to be honest that was the worst component selection I made for the build. It's a solid, stable component, but it's crazy noisy, even at low draw. I'm thinking that a model that is likely to sell in higher volumes will have more engineering behind it - and the claimed noise performance strongly suggests that is the case. Does anyone have any experience of ultra-quiet PSU's offering more than 1600W nominal output and high efficiency please?

Sixth: CPU Paste - interested in what people recommend as the best to use? In the past I've used Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut and have no real complaints... but back in January Tom's Hardware ran a review and suggested the best premium paste is Noctua NT-H2... In the alternate, curious to know what experience people may have using cryosheets like the Honeywell PTM7950 or the Thermal Grizzly Kryosheet please? The other option, of course, might be to go with a liquid metal thermal paste like Alphacool Eisfrost Extreme. I have zero knowledge of liquid metal options and would be extremely grateful for guidance on this decision...

Seventh: Tubing - When I built my last system I got a friend to help me with hardline tubing in the visible side of the case and we used soft tubing "out of sight". The hardline was a lot of faff to get right and this time I think I'll stick with soft tubing. However, one of my concerns is that I noticed the soft tubing [pretty sure that I bought Mayhems from OcUK] leached the plasticiser out pretty quickly and went from a very, very clear material to something with a white milky haze. I always attributed that to my i9-7920, in particular, running a bit warm at 4.6Ghz - up in to the 75-75 centigrade when pushed. I always use clear fluid in my loops - I don't see the point of getting dye stains in everything - so I don't need to use clear tubing... though I have found it very handy for spotting bubbles or flow issues when I've had them. I see that OcUK stocks "Mayhems Premium Ultra Flex" and "Mayhems Premium Hyper Clarity" in their 19/13mm range [1/2"], as well as offerings from Bitspower and XSPC - I would be extremely grateful for advice/experience from anyone running soft tubing in hot systems... especially regarding changes to the tube material over time. [Though of course, with soft tubing it isn't a great hardship to drain a loop, replace the tubing and then refill, if needed].

Eighth and Last: Anything else ... My experience with system building is "few and far between" and because I tend to buy top-end components that I want to last, I've previously had help building my machines. This is likely to be my first solo build since systems ran a lot cooler than they do these days, so I'm interested in suggestions or pointers to guides as to how

And that's about it. Phew! Thanks so much if you've had the stamina to read this far!!!

 

[Tetras]

RAM - Corsair Dominator DDR5 96Gb 6000MHz CL30 - Black - OK... this is where I definitely need to ask for advice, as compatibility between CPU, Board and RAM appears to be one area where AMD systems appear to be a bit fussy [my last AMD build was a 1GHz AMD Athlon, so it's been a while...]. The amount of RAM is important to the video editing work and other regular tasks... though I think I'm right in saying that high amounts of RAM can slow down overall system performance thanks to the refresh overheads. Would like to understand if that is likely to be significant?

The speed impact isn't really because of the RAM itself, it is due to the capacity.

If you use 4 dual rank sticks, you'd expect to run them much slower than their rated speed (AMD only officially support 3600 ), which does reduce system performance outside of those tasks that need memory capacity.

Generally speaking, the loss of performance is not worth worrying about IF you need the capacity, since the penalty of running out of RAM is usually MUCH worse than running slow(ish) memory.

Note that the X3D CPUs suffer less of a hit from running slow memory, so you will lose more frames from running a 9950X and lots of RAM than 9950X3D and lots of RAM.

The above is assuming you plan to run 4 sticks, if you're staying with 2 that's less of an issue.

Motherboard - Asus ROG Crosshair X870 Hero - 4 DIMM Slots, good RAM support, 4 USB-C sockets on the backplane, supports 5Gb Ethernet for fast network speeds...

You could look at the X870E Tomahawk if you want to save a bit (still has 5Gb LAN). X870E Creator has 10Gb LAN.

 

[ytene]

Thanks, Tetras, I'll check out those two boards you recommend.

Can you suggest somewhere I could look to better understand the trade-off between running say 48Gb vs 96Gb RAM [assuming I can't go beyond 48Gb with just 2 sticks] please? Daft as this might sound... I'm wondering if it's worth considering the purchase of a 96Gb pack as 4 sticks but only adding 48Gb to start with. I could run a bunch of tests and get a general feel for usability, then add the remaining RAM and re-test. Wondering if that might be an option? And if I decided to go with the 48Gb and hit a wall, then I have the remaining RAM in reserve if I need it?

Sheesh, trade-offs are never fun, are they? A bit like dropping from thje 44 PCIe lanes on my i9-7920 down to the 24 on the AMD CPU. I presume this was to give AMD more room to increase clock speeds and/or improve instructions-per-clock... but it limits in other ways. Sigh.

 

[Tetras]

Can you suggest somewhere I could look to better understand the trade-off between running say 48Gb vs 96Gb RAM [assuming I can't go beyond 48Gb with just 2 sticks] please? Daft as this might sound... I'm wondering if it's worth considering the purchase of a 96Gb pack as 4 sticks but only adding 48Gb to start with. I could run a bunch of tests and get a general feel for usability, then add the remaining RAM and re-test. Wondering if that might be an option? And if I decided to go with the 48Gb and hit a wall, then I have the remaining RAM in reserve if I need it?

It is hard to say exactly what the trade-off is, because every CPU/motherboard/RAM kit will give you different results.

Running 2x dual rank sticks (e.g. 48GBx2) is not really an issue, I wouldn't worry about running 96GB or 128GB with 2 dual rank sticks.

From what I'm aware, 192GB (48x4) usually tops out around 5000-5200, with 4x32 likely to be lower than that, in the range of 4000-5000. I don't know why the newer sticks fare better. BIOS updates have improved things since launch (at launch the results were really bad).

The difference between say... 5200 and 6000 with an X3D CPU is not significant, you're looking at only a few percent in most workloads and gaming. The difference with a non-X3D is larger, it can be around 2-10%, depending on the workload or the game/game settings and resolution.

If you were unfortunate and ended up at e.g. 4400, that would be a bigger hit for games, especially with a non-X3D CPU. I'd want to avoid that scenario unless memory capacity is critical.

If you're thinking of expanding the memory beyond 256GB at some point, you might be better off looking at a Threadripper, especially since your budget is pretty high if you didn't go with water.

Puget often have productivity focused articles, e.g.

Impact of DDR5 Speed on Content Creation Performance (2023 update)

DDR5 memory has kits rated for up to 8400 Mbps, while desktop CPUs only officially support up to 5600 Mbps. How much does running at official specifications actually impact performance in common content creation applications?

www.pugetsystems.com

Here's one for games:

Sheesh, trade-offs are never fun, are they? A bit like dropping from thje 44 PCIe lanes on my i9-7920 down to the 24 on the AMD CPU. I presume this was to give AMD more room to increase clock speeds and/or improve instructions-per-clock... but it limits in other ways. Sigh.

Yeah, it isn't great. Since affordable HEDT was dropped, this has been an issue for a long while and it hits both AMD and Intel PCs. It isn't a huge deal for the mainstream parts, but for a high-end build with something like a 9950X, the limited connectivity can be a real pain. That said, you do get CPU performance that would have previously cost thousands for the CPU+motherboard, so I guess that's not so bad.

 

[ytene]

Tetras, thanks again for your advice...

Having looked, it seems as though opting for the 9950X3D and then maybe a 2-stick pack of 128Gb Crucial RAM is the way to go... The RAM gives me capacity for more of the work-related stuff - like buffering videos when editing - but keeping it to 2 sticks should help with keeping the performance reasonable.

I also went back and had another look at motherboards, based on your comments... and although it's more expensive [and not currently in stock] the Asus ROG Crosshair X870 Extreme not only claims to support RAM up to 9000MHz [your warnings apply], but it has 4 x USB-C with speeds up to 40Gb and 10Gb Ethernet on the board...

It's just a shame that the 9000 family don't offer more PCIe lanes, to enable use of more of those 5 M.2 slots!

One note of concern... when I go to the Asus support site and look at the Crosshair X870 Extreme, it says that it supports the 9950X3D, but if I then go to the "Memory" tab and plug in "2 x 64Gb" and a RAM Speed of 5600MHz, then I get 4 package options for a 7000 CPU [all Kingston], 3 options for an 8000 CPU [all Kingston] and no listed options for a 9000 CPU. In fact, there is only one 96Gb option for a 9000-Series CPU - from G.Skill, clocked at 6800MHz and with timing quoted at 34-46-46-108.

Wondering if this means my above suggestion for Crucial RAM simply won't work, or that it hasn't been tested and confirmed?

 

[Tetras]

Having looked, it seems as though opting for the 9950X3D and then maybe a 2-stick pack of 128Gb Crucial RAM is the way to go... The RAM gives me capacity for more of the work-related stuff - like buffering videos when editing - but keeping it to 2 sticks should help with keeping the performance reasonable.

Yeah, those 64GB sticks are an interesting option now.

One note of concern... when I go to the Asus support site and look at the Crosshair X870 Extreme, it says that it supports the 9950X3D, but if I then go to the "Memory" tab and plug in "2 x 64Gb" and a RAM Speed of 5600MHz, then I get 4 package options for a 7000 CPU [all Kingston], 3 options for an 8000 CPU [all Kingston] and no listed options for a 9000 CPU. In fact, there is only one 96Gb option for a 9000-Series CPU - from G.Skill, clocked at 6800MHz and with timing quoted at 34-46-46-108.

Wondering if this means my above suggestion for Crucial RAM simply won't work, or that it hasn't been tested and confirmed?

My opinion is that a spec and QVL for high speed memory is pretty much bunk, for similar reasons explained in this video:

As for the 128GB kit specifically, I'd imagine that not many manufacturers have tested these because they're only recently available. I'd expect any board that supports 256GB (or has the BIOS updated to the latest) to run them.

The Extreme is darn near Threadripper (or server board) money and if you need one of those for your requirements, I'd say you're doing it wrong (e.g. need to look at a different platform or third party hardware to add the features).

The Hero and Creator are still pricey boards, but they're at least more realistic.