New toys.

[claydoh]

Well, new to new-ish. Some used and refurb/open box

i7-9700
RX6600 8gb
https://pcpartpicker.com/b/P4tp99

[Snowhog]

Sweet! Got to love a water cooler that's what, ten times+ the size of the CPU? hehe

You leaving it open case?

[claydoh]

Sweet! Got to love a water cooler that's what, ten times+ the size of the CPU? hehe

You leaving it open case?

That is not a water cooler, just a fairly generic Be Quiet air cooler. It seems to be about the same size as most well-rated coolers for the CPU.

I have the case sides and top installed, now that the build is done

[Montmorency]

That's a very reasonably powerful rig particularly at $808.04

[GreyGeek]

Sweet! Got to love a water cooler that's what, ten times+ the size of the CPU? hehe

You leaving it open case?

I thought it was water cooled too! Those are might thick power cables if they weren't conducting water!

[Qqmike]

Pretty cool. It's always good to keep the DIY PC-building "hobby" (= market) alive and cookin'! 👍

[claydoh]

I thought it was water cooled too! Those are might thick power cables if they weren't conducting water!

Those are just braided PSU cable extensions, for looks/flexibility/looks/cable management. And looks. They kinda stay where you flex them, a bit.


Top view:


The case is a cube, so I can down the road change up the orientation of the interchangeable panels, and have a traditional vertical motherboard orientation, if desired. It also has plenty of room for numerous AIO cater coolers, though probably a bit awkward to do a custom piping setup.

https://www.thermaltake.com/core-v21.html
This is an older case model, so it is "outdated" a bit, style wise, but idgaf, as usual, anbd have no desire for RGB unicorn vomit. An access light might be handy, though.

[oshunluvr]

Jealous.

I bought new mobo, ram, cpu, etc recently but haven't had the TIME to stick it together. I DO use water cooling and last build I switched to hard tubing. Takes a while to get the hang of bending and fitting the tubing so I'm dragging my feet. I'll post my new build when I finally get it done.

[claydoh]

I haven't built a computer since 2010-ish? I can't even recall what it was lol

I did start out with a refurb mobo, open box cooler, use the i5, ram, nvme and my old rx480 from the HP pavilion

I effed up the pins on the mobo when swapping out the i5 for the used i7, dragged a cloth across the socket and pulled a bunch of pins out of place I am only out 60 bucks on that, unless I get it fixed.

So I blew my leftover money on a new board and ram. Then I saw decent enough GPUs selling for..... MSRP!!! (I think).. AND THEN best Buy had an open box at a small discount. So, yeah. I am broke now

I don't think I will need to get into water cooling, I can't overclock unless I go to a K-model cpu, or switch over to AMD. I am fine with what I have.

For now.

[claydoh]

Jealous.

I bought new mobo, ram, cpu, etc recently but haven't had the TIME to stick it together. I DO use water cooling and last build I switched to hard tubing. Takes a while to get the hang of bending and fitting the tubing so I'm dragging my feet. I'll post my new build when I finally get it done.

I can't wait to the the pics, when you find the time.
My build was too easy, and quick. I only bough the braided cable extensions to give me some extra, new things to do - cable management

[oshunluvr]

Yeah, nice to see SOME GPUs finally back to near-normal prices. I have an XFX Radeon RX 580 GTX XXX Edition that I bought in Sept. 2020 for $195. It was a fairly high-end card in 2018 so I got it new in 2020 for what I thought was a very reasonable price. You can buy the exact same card today at the exact same place (The "A" store) for $720
I didn't know it at the time, but this video card has dual BIOS - one for high re graphics and the other for crypto mining! Which explains the exploded price. I could get twice selling it used than what I paid for it new. Kinda like used cars have been of late.

I have been building my own since the late 80's. It was cheaper than buying one off the shelf. That's no longer the case, but I want to point my dollars at the things that matter to me. Most of the time, I rarely do a full rebuild. I'm usually replacing some part of it rather than a total rebuild. This time I went in pretty deep, replacing everything but the case, PSU, GPU and cooling system. This will be the 2nd build in this case and GPU and I upgraded my cooling reservoir and went to hard tubing last build, 3rd build for the PSU. I usually shuffle my storage devices along with the new capacity of the Chipset/CPU - meaning I add one new drive to take advantage of new speed or interface and relegate the older ones to backup and storage. This time, its an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (up from an i7-6700k) so I HAD to buy a PCIe 4.0 NVME drive. No sense on paying for all that speed if I don't use it.

I went to water cooling about 15 years ago, mostly for noise control but I do a little OCing too. My "office" at the time was in an open area outside my bedroom door and loud cooling fans made my wife unhappy during those late-night gaming sessions!

[claydoh]

Even my older XFX RX480 was selling for huge dollars not too long ago. They are down to around $100 for the 4gb model. I paid 75 plus shipping on it , just over 2 years ago.
My RX 6600 (NOT an XT ) is 300 new.

My cooler seems quiet, so far, and I have yet to hear any fans, even when gaming, but I am right next to the AC vent in my apartment, and run an oscillating fan next to me as well. I may sing a different tune come fall, and the room gets quiet
I just now manually put the GPU fan to 100%, and can definitely hear it, but I guess playing Doom Eternal or Fallout 76 isn't stressing it much, heat wise. That must mean I can overclock it a little, maybe