Any PC Builders Out There?

Noctua makes every kind of air cooler and has always been the best at doing so. Their colour scheme sucks though, and yeah it’s intentional for marketing but who really wants tan and brown fans in a tempered glass build?

What’s funny though is if you buy AMD there is no point in buying most air coolers. The stock Wraith coolers are better than the lower or mid tier Noctua coolers. I think that’s what’s killing the air cooler market. AMD is pretty dominant right now with home system builders and those builders aren’t buying many aftermarket coolers anymore since the stock ones are good even for mild overclocking.

 

I hate Corsair AIOs. I had a H105 fail right outside of warranty and my first AIO almost a decade ago, which was a H55, leak out and take out a PC.

Plus Corsair Link blows. It’s a multi step process to get the fan speed curve working in the software. I’ve actually had friends who are very tech savvy bring me their PC just to fix Corsair Link, what a crap program.

I’ll buy Corsair PSUs, cases, and memory all day long but I’ll never touch another AIO with their software required. It just doesn’t work.

Asetek makes 70-80% of all AIOs. That’s why you can find so many good adapter kits for many companies Asetek made pumps, they all use the same mounting rings. That being said Asetek builds to order and most companies go cheap. The only company I know that sells a quality Asetek AIO at a decent price is Fractal Designs. I’ve build about half a dozen rigs, including my last two, with their AIOs with no issues. Better pump, better tubing, and real threaded pressure connections.

 

Glad its up and running! Kind of funny you mention mini ATX since i just found an old ITX board with i3-2100t on it lol.

 

Yeah, I checked out some reviews/tests when I built my older daughter's AMD rig and just stuck with what came with it since there was very little performance difference. We built an unlocked Intel rig for my younger daughter, so we went with a low-profile Noctua on that one since it came without a cooler. Agree, Noctua's brown plastic is not appealing. Made of melted Latino Barbies.

 

This is all I really see of my DH-15. Does match the mainboard a little. The cover has a tinted window, so the colors are less noticeable.

 

Is it a complete waste of time to try and sell a rig on here....

It’s a setup I custom built for someone from Texas and they had some family emergencies and cannot follow through. I refunded the deposit.

 

They've made all black fans for years but don't put them on their coolers lol. Asus has Noctua fans on their AIOs.

 

Finally starting to get parts for my new build. It wont be anything absolutely spectacular, but I've been playing on a modified 10 year old prebuilt HP for the past 5 years so, it'll be leaps and bounds better than anything I had before.
I have the case and bought Windows 10; I think I might wait until cyber monday to buy the rest of the parts, but I'm not sure yet. Either way, I want all of the rest of the hardware to come at the same time.
And I know, I know, it's a ThermalTake case, lol. It's much less flimsy than the last one I had, and it was one of the cheapest cases I could find that had ventilation everywhere, minus some other weird brand with these really ugly, ornate, flashy cases. I was leaning towards getting a Fractal Design case but the one I wanted was gonna be a while before it was available.

Anyways, the plan is:

Add some Noctua fans to the case as well, and I'll be moving my GTX 1060 from my current computer into this one as well as my 4TB Western Digital Black HDD. I'll probably add another SSD at some point, but the build was starting to get a little pricey for my blood, haha.

 

Why go 9700k over a 3700X? You won't see much of a frame rate jump from the 9700k but the savings if you use a B450 board with the 3700X would buy a smaller boot or scratch SSD. Not much point in going Intel unless you're trying to push max frames with a high overclock, and then you should go with a 9900k since they're binned tighter. Except then you're just paying $200 more for maybe 5 fps lol. The 3700x gives you 8 cores with multithreading and 99% of the single core performance of the 9700k at a bit lower cost than the 9700k. Worth it unless you're dedicated to running Intel.

 

Tbh, I'm not well versed in AMD's newer processors. I do lean Intel for sure. I did want to look into possibly overclocking, but that most likely wont be done, just wanted the option to remain open. A main concern for me was cooling; I didn't want to run any sort of fancy cooling through the PC, I know AMD has always run a little warmer than Intel. As far as what the computer is being used for, my current one runs games fine as long as they aren't soaking up ram; I only have 8gb in my current computer. I'm mainly upgrading for better processing during the use of professional applications, which I've heard Intel is a bit stronger at.
I'm a stick to what I know kinda person, so Intel is what I'm running with for now. I've heard there were a lot of improvements with the release of the Ryzen, so I might possibly look into AMD in the future, but for now I'm sticking with Intel as I just feel more comfortable with it.
I'm pretty sure feature set is better/cheaper with Intel as well. But yeah, honestly it's mostly a matter of preference. You're definitely not wrong about it being cheaper though, and it's probably something I should look a bit more into; we'll see.
@Slashaar helped me pick it out; anything to add?

 

Clock for Clock Intel is superior, however in recent years AMD has stepped up.

 

This is the route I would go personally, use the savings to go towards either an M.2 NVME drive or another large Sata SSD, you also wouldn’t need the noctua fan as the wraith is fine for stock clocks from what I understand.

 

Hmm debatable. Keep in mind the Intel won't hold boost even with high end air cooler while the AMD will. Once you get to real world performance the 3700X trades blows with the 9700K depending on the game and resolution. The savings and future proofing are worth it.

 

https://youtu.be/6u4ew6IT4Vo

Intel actually runs slightly hotter now even though they are often rated for a lower TDP. TDP is not a standardized measurement. Check it out. Either way you'll be happy. The 3700X adds multi-threading which will give you a bit more future proofing at a lower cost. That's all.

 

Yes the Wraith can handle stock clocks fine. It's not completely useless like a stock Intel cooling solution.

 

This is odd, first photo is my PC hardwired to the router and the second is my sisters new PC attached to a gigabit switch via an in wall run and the switch is attached to the router via another in wall run, about a 40’ run all together.


After about 1 hour of checking for electrical interference, checking the keystones, and checking the driver on her PC I used the keystones to link together short cables to feed my PC from the switch, I got full bandwidth that way.
So I switched the linked cable to the keystone that runs to my sisters PC and it dropped the bandwidth down to low 90’s again.
Now that i’ve Isolated the single run as bad I’m going to put new ends on it but if that doesn’t work I won’t replace the run, she really doesn’t need more than 20-30 Mbps for any of her uses so it’s not important that she gets full bandwidth, I was mainly concerned with the switch getting full bandwidth because that will also feed the 4K tv in the living room as well as the sound bar (for access to Plex and YouTube 4K) and was concerned about lack of bandwidth for streaming 4K.

 

I'm guessing it's the power saving features on the ethernet adapter. Try turning the green ethernet setting off in the adapter properties for whatever PC is connected to that run. Not many people know but some older cables and cables that were run parallel to power have too much interference to be compatible with the lower power green standard.

 

Not true, I run an i7-4770k with OC constantly without any heat issues whatsoever. Running a Noctua cooler in a CM HAF 912 case with 3 200mm fans, and 4 140mm(2 from the Noctua).