Sim Rig PC - The never ending upgrade

mikehhhhhhh · 4 Mar 2021 at 14:37

Jasseh said:
Looking at this has me thinking "why did I put my Galahad the other way round?". Might have to turn it around when the rest of my fans turn up as it looks much cleaner the way you have it.

The rotating "head" on the Galahad was part of the reason why I chose it to replace my Corsair unit - I always hated the pipes draped across the case.

mikehhhhhhh · 10 Mar 2021 at 14:09

All the time I've been building this, I've been upgrading items with the possibility of having a dedicated machine for the Sim Rig in mind.

I'll soon be moving and I'll want to put the rig in a different location to my main PC.

I'd collected my Asrock x570 board, 5800x, 32GB RAM, Corsair AIO and my old Fractal case and had just been looking out for a graphics card.

I managed to get hold of a Powercolor 6900XT at close to MSRP yesterday. I didn't want to go so big after already overspending on a 3090 but who knows when we'll be able to get these good value 3080s and 6800xts again.

I got started on the "new" build in anticipation of the card arriving early next week which ironically, is something close to the build I displayed at the beginning of this thread

I just hope the 6900xt fits!

mikehhhhhhh · 11 Mar 2021 at 15:08

Well it's arrived!

This 6900xt is somehow longer than the 3900 but I was able to plan the fans around it, as well as open up the bottom for a third intake fan.

Untitled by mikehhhhhhh, on Flickr

Zeeflyboy · 11 Mar 2021 at 15:10

Which is going to be the dedicated sim rig pc?

mikehhhhhhh · 11 Mar 2021 at 15:15

Zeeflyboy said:
Which is going to be the dedicated sim rig pc?

This new machine with the 6900xt is going to be the dedicated sim rig.

I may swap cards around, depending on performance and how much each gets used but I think it makes the most sense this way around.

Zeeflyboy · 11 Mar 2021 at 15:31

I think with the multi monitor setup you may find the 3090 wins out - it seems the higher resolution you go the better it does relatively speaking.

Will be interesting to see which you settle on.

mikehhhhhhh · 11 Mar 2021 at 15:40

Zeeflyboy said:
I think with the multi monitor setup you may find the 3090 wins out - it seems the higher resolution you go the better it does relatively speaking.

Will be interesting to see which you settle on.

Yeah, that's the only thing making me doubt my choice.

It'll come down to how it performs on ACC and how much I need to tweak to get the same level of performance. With the 3090 I'd tweaked settings to get 100fps without any real noticable losses in fidelity.

mikehhhhhhh · 12 Mar 2021 at 10:49

Zeeflyboy said:
I think with the multi monitor setup you may find the 3090 wins out - it seems the higher resolution you go the better it does relatively speaking.

Will be interesting to see which you settle on.

Well, the combination of SMP and high res performance has left me using the 3090 for the Sim Rig initially.

Which gave me the opportunity to put the 3090 and 6900xt head to head. I was pleasantly surprised to see the 6900xt so close to the 3090.

Both tests are with the cards auto-overclocked with power limit maxed. Nvidia run has a CPU overclock, AMD is PBO.

https://www.3dmark.com/compare/spy/18427029/spy/18961348#

The 3090 has done higher scores, but with a benchmark-only overclock that's only stable in Timespy.

Zeeflyboy · 12 Mar 2021 at 10:56

Nice. Will be interesting to see how RDNA2 matures too.

I was very interested in either a 6800XT or 6900XT this time round but couldn't get one :rolleyes:

- hopefully next gen AMD both not only compete well but also have availability, I'd like to give them a go - I think my last AMD GPU was back in the 2000's!

mikehhhhhhh · 12 Mar 2021 at 17:01

Zeeflyboy said:
Nice. Will be interesting to see how RDNA2 matures too.

I was very interested in either a 6800XT or 6900XT this time round but couldn't get one - hopefully next gen AMD both not only compete well but also have availability, I'd like to give them a go - I think my last AMD GPU was back in the 2000's!

It'll be interesting to see how they compare next generation, you'd expect them to close the gap if they continue their current form.

Managed to finish the sim rig PC today. RGB fans are wasted in this windowless case, but it's all I had.

Untitled by mikehhhhhhh, on Flickr

john_smith · 21 Mar 2021 at 19:02

Great thread Mike and really useful information for fellow racers. Cheers