What happens when the PC building advice guy builds a PC:

[Krom]

It takes a month to finish, and I had to order practically every bracket in the EKWB catalog to finally get something that fit the pump/reservoir I wanted, where I wanted it. (I do have a smaller reservoir tube as a backup solution if nothing else worked.)

Power supply, MB, CPU, GPU, SSD and water blocks installed:


Radiators installed:


Pump and Reservoir installed:


Tubing and fittings installed:


Filling / Bleeding (after pressure testing):


Up and running (RGB normally off, but switched on for show):


CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 4.2 GHz 8-Core Processor ($369.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus ROG STRIX B650-A GAMING WIFI ATX AM5 Motherboard ($239.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Flare X5 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory ($191.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 990 Pro 4 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive (Purchased For $0.00)
Video Card: NVIDIA Founders Edition GeForce RTX 4090 24 GB Video Card (Purchased For $0.00)
Case: Corsair 7000D AIRFLOW ATX Full Tower Case ($269.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Corsair RM1000e (2023) 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($155.99 @ Corsair)
Monitor: Alienware AW2721D 27.0" 2560 x 1440 240 Hz Monitor (Purchased For $0.00)

How much did it all cost? There is over $5000 just in the case after the drives are added. Not including peripherals/monitors/sound.

11 fans, 2 radiators, 1 pump. All PWM, all controlled by coolant temperature, dead silent 99.9% of the time. Still not particularly noisy even at 100%. Not shown: 3x mechanical HDDs, 1x SATA SSD.
Ran through some quick game tests, seeing as much as a 30-50% minimum framerate improvement over the same GPU in my old Intel i9-9900k system.

When it is all said and done:

[woodchip]

Reminds me way back when someone here enameled the whole inside of his computer and then submerged it in water to cool it and upped the power. Congrats on a job well done.

[CDN_Merlin]

Why did you go AMD?

[Krom]

More efficient, faster, less expensive. It beats the best Intel has to offer solidly in everything I play, uses significantly less power, and cost half as much. It was an obvious choice.

[dissent]

Sweet!

[Neo]

Probably spent a fortune on it. You must be rich.

[Vander]

I built this up from Black Friday deals:

AMD 7800X3D
Thermalright Peerless Assassin cooler
32GB GSkill DDR5 6000 CL30
Gigabyte Aorus Elite AX V2
Gigabyte RTX 4070
WD Black 2TB NVMe
Crucial 4TB NVMe
Seasonic Focus Plus 850 Gold
Lian Li Lancool 216
XBox controller

I kept my existing Keychron TKL keyboard, Logitech G Pro wireless mouse, and Asus Pro Art 27" 1440p monitor. I added a USB-C PD dock and HDMI KVM so I can swap between my M1 Macbook Air (which had been my daily driver for years) and pc.

It's my first gaming computer since I gave my old one away years ago. (i5-2500k/GTX 1060) Once I figured out how to disable RGB, it's been great. It runs cool and quiet.

I've been working my way through Cyberpunk 2077 that I picked up on sale. (along with Red Dead Redemption 2, but I haven't started that one yet) I've also been tooling around in Flight Simulator. (video card came with 3 months of XBox PC Pass)

[Tunnelcat]

If one was going to build a system just for office use, what processor would be sufficient and somewhat future proof? My current workstation can't be upgraded to Windows 11 because it doesn't support TPM 2.0, period, so I'm going to either have to purchase a new system, or upgrade the innards of the case I currently have, an HP Z220, with a new motherboard and processor. I'd like to keep the DVD ROM drive too, although I know it's old school.

Vander, you'll love Red Dead Redemption 2. Never has been riding a horse been so much fun.

[Krom]

Almost anything proper desktop class currently sold will do "office use" for pretty much as long as it runs. Word processing/spreadsheets/etc is a solved problem.

[Vander]

Vander, you'll love Red Dead Redemption 2. Never has been riding a horse been so much fun.

Yeah, it looked like something I'd be into. It's always a pain to start up a new game, though. Ever since Descent 1, I've only been able to use AZXC on the keyboard, never WASD. So every single shooter I've played since I've had to remap everything. The movement keys are easy enough, it's all the crap surrounding that takes forever to figure out. It's even worse when separate vehicle controls mapping is required.

When I built this computer, I forced myself to use WASD. After two weeks, it never once started to feel natural, so I broke down and remapped Cyberpunk to AZXC. Instantly I could move without thinking.

[Tunnelcat]

How'd you get used to using AZXC? I bought a Chinese small gaming keyboard years ago with a hand rest, which makes WASD a lot easier. I've been using WASD for decades and I still have trouble with it on a full size keyboard. Too many keys to accidentally hit.

[Vander]

AZXC was the default in D1 shareware I think, which was the first shooter I got hooked on. It's not so much the hand position, but which fingers do what. Slide left/right with ring/index fingers just doesn't work for me. I need to slide left/right with just index. For ground pounders I use A to jump Z to crouch. Left Shift is backwards with my ring finger, and I use the side button on my mouse for forward. It's weird and a pain to configure and it all evolved from D1.