Planning. Opinions welcome.

[AlienALX]

It's a bit of a pile atm lol.

Unpacked the case. Got a thankyou letter from the president of Lian Li lmao. Any way, they stiff you on the second ribbon and you can't get it any more. Not that I would want to, it's about 80 quid. So I did my research on Amazon for the best X1 ribbon as it's only for the sound card and I got this, for £17.

 

[Tolemac]

Have fun putting it together Alien i'm looking forward to seeing that 2080ti Kingpin in action

 

[AlienALX]

Cheers dude. Hopefully it will be fun lol.

I just pre ordered the der8auer bracket so hopefully I can put that in there too. Not sure of ETA.

 

[AlienALX]

Second order came (Rift, cable extensions and fan hub. Oh and TIM). Did forget a couple of things so I ordered those.

Three boxes of those (so 9 total) and this.

So I can get it set up here at mum's.

 

[hmmblah]

Hmmblah. I decided against water cooling. I had three big issues when upgrading my Alienware and tbh I am just so sick of it all. If I spent this sort of money and had issues it would kill me.

Can't really blame you. It's a lot of work. That's how I was with my last rig. I had intentions of watercooling and sleeving cables etc, but couldn't find the motivation to do it. I actually surprised myself with getting my current rig watercooled. Now to finish that damn sleeving....

Btw, that pile is drool worthy.

 

[AlienALX]

Thanks man. I had three pretty major leaks with my 51 since upgrading it. It's such a pig to work on too, given nothing is stock at all.

I'll use it for a server once it's done folding for CV.

Got my 1x ribbon today. Hopefully I'll start tomorrow.

 

[Bartacus]

I'll be interested to see how your temps are. I have a 2080ti that sadly never gets used, but even overclocked to the moon, that thing refuses to go higher than 35C. Those things run cool even when you crank the core and the voltage!

 

[AlienALX]

I'll be interested to see how your temps are. I have a 2080ti that sadly never gets used, but even overclocked to the moon, that thing refuses to go higher than 35C. Those things run cool even when you crank the core and the voltage!

It was idling around 22c. Room temp. Sadly my back gave out after over 8 hours on the floor, so I crawled up to bed lol. Windows is on and acto'd, so today I will tidy up and clean it etc..

OK so the build was pretty much done yesterday. I hit a few pitfalls along the way though.

Firstly because this is a water cooling specific case I could not fit a rad in the top on push pull. I wanted the Kingpin up top, but had to remove the rad as it was a good 3cm from seating. The hoses were hitting the mid plate.

I mounted the GPU in the bottom slot, then found out the ribbon cable did not reach the top X16 slot on the board. This would not be an issue on a HEDT, because many of the lower slots are X16. Sadly on mine it's X4. So I took it all apart for a third time and put the GPU in the top section. Ribbon fits OK. Bit of a curve, but it does look nice coming into the board. I can't fit the two SSDs. I didn't realise just how few lanes these CPUs have, and I didn't want my GPU not running at all (8x minimum will do me). So right now I have the 1tb in the top slot and I will put the 256 into my triad (as I robbed the one out of there for my TR build lol). The H100x lives in the top on pull.

Other than it being really super difficult to build into (because you have to do things in a weird order, so GPU first for example) and having to take it all apart on three occasions to rethink and start again I did get it all in. The kingpin rad is in the front on push pull (because that is how the air gets in so I wanted the second fan just to shove it along a little bit and that worked well) and besides the outer fans are controlled by the GPU so will spin up when needed.

Big shout out to Asus for the Strix PSU. It's absolutely lovely. They give you magnet plates to put on if you want it to be extra gamery, but I decided against that as you won't see the PSU. I don't have much more to do now other than general tidying and removing all of the fingerprints. Few cable ties and I can reassemble it.

The 1X ribbon was woefully too short, so I am going to have to bite the bullet and get a longer Lian Li one for the sound card. I don't mind, and I am hoping to possibly pick up a Nu Audio for it but the STX is more than good enough.

In short it is an absolute beast. Even on my potato BIOS set up it scored 4200 in CB15 which is pretty barbaric. IIRC the 16 core gen one TR scored 3000.

Then I need to figure out how all of the BIOS options work and so on. It's been ages since I even bothered. I would imagine enabling PBO is good though right?

The carbon CM cables look stunning. The whole rig does really. It's just black on black on black on black etc with the Corsair pump lighting up white. The board has some RGB, but that is being set white. As are the LEDs on the Kingpin when I figure all that out. Was seeing 90-120fps+ in Timespy, about the most I have ever seen before is 60-70. It's also very quiet indeed and I am thrilled with it. Does need one minor mod, but I will show why and what I have planned for that tomorrow.

OK. Tried getting pics, but the sun is brutal. This is with the curtains closed FFS. It's still very messy with some umbilical cords and etc. Windows is on and activated though, so it's just tidying and cable tying today.

Ribbon needs some shaping.

GPU is in.

Cables need some training.

Panels :/

The one thing I am not happy about is being able to see the back side of the mobo because I had to move the GPU up. IDK if I will find a ribbon long enough for the sound card, but I hope I can. If not I will put a plate of matt acrylic there. Need to get it all back together today as I am leaving tomorrow and returning later in the week.

 

[AlienALX]

Someone suggested linking two of the X1 ribbons. So I went and did some measuring. Two problems. Well, three. First problem is the ribbon exits from the bottom so would make the sound card stick up. Secondly it won't go behind the GPU because the connector is too fat and thirdly even with another one it still wouldn't reach. That ribbon was £17.

So, and I never thought I would be thankful for anything to do with mining (spit gob) I found this for £5 on Prime.

Perfect for a few reasons. Firstly it sits flat under the sound card (so won't force it up) secondly I can easily fit a USB cable behind the GPU and thirdly it is angled so it doesn't stick up and look like a sore thumb. I will get a black USB SS cable for it (high quality) but yeah, can't see why that won't be the best solution. I already bought this for the sound card itself.

Now I was going to do away with the silver, but I think with a tiny bit more it will look better. So I ordered this to power that wee board.

As I have to hook up the MOLEX run to the PSU any way to power the card. I also think it will look a lot better once those heavily tinted panels go back on.

Total cost £12.

 

[AlienALX]

I got it all finished last night. Still need to revisit it when I get back to it as I need to try and get the sound card sorted. I ran a load of benchmarks and as you can guess it's pretty barbaric. Wasn't sure how the boost clocks all work and the overclocking, but the card was boosting to 2150 straight away. And it's fast. Very, very fast. I didn't get any pics because it was dark but it's all cleaned free of fingerprints and is waiting for my return. I'll upload the stock benchmarks then, and then set about overclocking the CPU and RAM.

Oh, and the highest temp I saw on the GPU was 38c. Pretty sure it will climb a bit once I start really pushing hard. Currently debating whether to use the totally unlocked BIOS, given I have no idea what I am doing lol.

 

[Bartacus]

That's a serious starting point at 2150, LOL! But that's what you should get when you shell out the big bucks, in a perfect world.

 

[AlienALX]

That's a serious starting point at 2150, LOL! But that's what you should get when you shell out the big bucks, in a perfect world.

Yeah. It's an A chip and then they're all binned. Thing is it's only (he says like he's rich lol) £400 more than the dual hybrid.

It should hit 2200 really. It's nothing like the 10 series though so I have some reading to do.

Edit. Ahhhh. It seems I auto tuned the card by clicking the Scan in the kingpin software.

I did try 230 like my XP but it bombed. Now I know why. To get 2150 all you do is add 100. 2200 is about the limit on the AIO unless you install the BIOS that unlocks the voltage and voids the warranty.

It's still faster than a Titan RTX, cooler and cheaper.

 

[Bartacus]

Once you get to a certain point (like where you are now), the gains beyond that aren't really worth the trouble IMO. Unless you're bored, and looking to get that 'absolute highest score' on some benchmarks, I'd rather set it and forget it. I put mine at +250 core + 800 memory, and it seems happy as a clam. I can push the memory higher (it has benched at +1000), but the instability isn't worth it.

 

[AlienALX]

I'm pretty sure it boosts to 2050 out of the box. Hence why it's quicker than the Titan RTX.

Watching the benchmarks made it pretty clear the rig is insane fast.

If Nvidia can nail DLSS then ray tracing will be much less of a penalty and make it worth using. I see they've renamed it DLSS 2, probably to put the debacle behind them which is good.

 

[Warchild]

Yeah. It's an A chip and then they're all binned. Thing is it's only (he says like he's rich lol) £400 more than the dual hybrid.

It should hit 2200 really. It's nothing like the 10 series though so I have some reading to do.

Edit. Ahhhh. It seems I auto tuned the card by clicking the Scan in the kingpin software.

I did try 230 like my XP but it bombed. Now I know why. To get 2150 all you do is add 100. 2200 is about the limit on the AIO unless you install the BIOS that unlocks the voltage and voids the warranty.

It's still faster than a Titan RTX, cooler and cheaper.

2200 will be easy for that card. Wont break a sweat. If mine can handle 2250 im sure yours can hit that.

 

[AlienALX]

2200 will be easy for that card. Wont break a sweat. If mine can handle 2250 im sure yours can hit that.

Which card did you have? Aorus? Stick it in your sig dude.

 

[Warchild]

Which card did you have? Aorus? Stick it in your sig dude.

MSI Gaming X Trio.

Its a real beast. It helped having it under water. Hits 50C maxed out which is acceptable to me. I tried the OC Scan and it put 165hz on the clock. For the scan alone I was impressed, so I slapped in an offset and tested it in Division 2 on ultra which is quite intensive at 3440x1440 and the monster pushes it all the way up to 85 fps (100 in quieter areas)

I think this is by far my best ever performing card.

it clocks at 1800 out of the box, but when I monitored usage in AB, I saw it hitting 2100. I just put 210 offset in and it takes it like a champ. With boost etc, I saw it hitting 2250 in Div 2.

 

[AlienALX]

Yeah when pushed hard they don't like going above around 52c. You definitely got lucky there though, as that's brutal clocks for a 2080Ti, even a Kingpin. Most cards crap out around 2050, the accepted top OC is around 2030.

I also realised I am not on the OC bios yet. So that will provide a bit more voltage without voiding the warranty.

 

[Warchild]

Yeah when pushed hard they don't like going above around 52c. You definitely got lucky there though, as that's brutal clocks for a 2080Ti, even a Kingpin. Most cards crap out around 2050, the accepted top OC is around 2030.

I also realised I am not on the OC bios yet. So that will provide a bit more voltage without voiding the warranty.

I think you should talk in terms of Offset because talking max clock means nothing for Nvidia.

Offset allows you to know what your base clock was otherwise 2030 for some could be a 10hz offset on a high end card, or 200 offset on a founders etc. You get the point im making I suppose.

btw, the OC bios does nothing to the clocks. It just ramps up the hybrid fan and VRM fan. Ok, lower temp means a higher boost, but thats about it.

 

[AlienALX]

I think you should talk in terms of Offset because talking max clock means nothing for Nvidia.

Offset allows you to know what your base clock was otherwise 2030 for some could be a 10hz offset on a high end card, or 200 offset on a founders etc. You get the point im making I suppose.

btw, the OC bios does nothing to the clocks. It just ramps up the hybrid fan and VRM fan. Ok, lower temp means a higher boost, but thats about it.

Yeah it's not the same as Pascal, so I have some learning to do once I sit down with it all set up. Won't bother with the BIOS switch then, I'd hate it to be noisy.

Currently deciding what I want to do about storage. Not for games so much but for my music collection. Do I get a couple of 1tb SSDs, or a couple of 2tb 2.5" drives (for quieter operation) or something like an Ironwolf 6tb?

Or do I just say screw that and get a newer, much faster NAS? I'm kinda leaning toward that.