New Build Day (Long boring nerdy post. Don't click. Seriously. You'll fall asleep reading.)

[Shane_B.]

Got ya to read it! Haha. Jokes on you! 

I finally got all the parts for my new build and got everything all set up done last night.

I was freaking out because an I9 14900K based system and everyone was scaring me to death saying I'd be able to percolate fresh brewed coffee on my PC case. So far I haven't seen it go above 33°C. My ultimate test was running Fallout 4 with all ultra settings. Not a single hitch. The fans don't even ramp up on the CPU, GPU, or case.

The test for me was running Fallout 4 in 2K and comparing it to my old i5 PC. That's the only game I play. I read on the internets that my RTX3060 would bottleneck severely because it's not paired properly with the new Gen i9's and it's a Gen 4 PCIe GPU. The internets was dead wrong on that one. It runs significantly better.

I had to overclock it using MSI afterburner and  ramp the fans up to keep it just below the overheating point and turn off a lot of eye candy on my old i5. On the new build I didn't have to do anything and the fans stay at idle speed running in 2K Ultra settings. I did see that it appears as though the entire game is loaded into system memory. It says it's using 46GB Ram. My i5 never utilized anywhere near that much memory. Maybe the new 5600 Ram is faster than the old Vram on the GPU? I'm at a loss. All I can say is, I just saved a grand by not having to buy a new GPU just to play a 10 year old game.

The parts I got for this build run full speed Jedec 5600 without overclocking and no lane splitting between the 1st pcie slot and the 1st m.2 drive slot. It was kind of hard to find a mobo that would support all that. IOW I'm running my GPU and Boot drive directly controlled by the CPU and not the mobo controller at full Gen 5 speed for both. 

System Specs:

i9 14900K
Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Elite X Wifi 7 (Gen 5. No lane splitting between 1st PCI-e and 1st M.2 drive slots.)
My old RTX3060 12GB GPU (Base card. Not the Ti version.)
Kingston Gen5 2T M.2 drive
Kingston Non-OC 5600 Ram 64GB (2 x 32GB)
MSI Mag A750L PCIE5 PSU
CoolerMaster Atmos 360 AIO Cooler
Thermalright Anti-Buckle plate.
Fractal Design Define R5 Case (Comes with 2 fans and 360mm AIO support)
Windows 11 Pro (Retail Ver.)

A couple of notes on some things I ran into, in the order I should have done them, but didn't irt to step 2 and 3.

1. During assembly install an Anti Buckle plate. It replaces the CPU clamping mechanism on the mobo. It holds the CPU in place and prevents the metal housing from warping. Do not overtighten. Watch some youtube vids. Very slowly turn the screws in multiple times in an X pattern until the plate is fully seated on the mobo. Then, barely do a final tightening not even doing 1/16 of a turn. If you tighten one screw fully then do the rest, it angles the plate and may damage something.

2. Put it all together and plug your monitor into the embedded graphics port on the mobo. Before you install Win 11, put the latest firmware on a thumb drive and update your bios. There were problems with default bios settings being set wrong for the I9 series and some bios updates fixed that for some manufacturers. Look up the settings online and verify the bios update changed them and made them default and if not manually change them. There's lots of articles and youtube video's about these settings.

3. After updating the bios go back in and set your graphic card settings. Mine had the Embedded GPU setting set to Enabled by default and it was also set to look at the 1st PCI-E slot for a GPU. Set the Embedded setting to Auto and leave the PCI-E setting to 1st slot, if that's where your GPU will go.

I didn't install my GPU until after everything was set up and all my software was installed. When I hooked my monitor up to the GPU I wasn't getting any video and I was locked out of being able to access my bios. I couldn't even enter bios through the UEFI method. I was totally locked out. I took the GPU card out, plugged my monitor into the Embedded graphics port, set the embedded graphics to Auto, put the GPU back in, and it worked and I could enter bios normally again.

4. It's super easy to download Win 11 and make a bootable thumb drive. Make the bootable thumb drive on a working PC, then download your Wifi and LAN card drivers for your new build, create a folder on the bootable thumb drive, and put the drivers in it.

5. Install Win 11 and if it can't find it's own drivers for your Wifi or LAN then click your way to the folder you saved them in. You can't move forward with the install until you have it connected to the net. If the drivers were only available as EXE files, hit Shift + F10 when Win 11 asks you for the driver and a DOS box pops up. Using DOS commands navigate to the thumb drive and manually execute the EXE. Make the folder you save them in a short name and rename the EXE files to something simple when you download them so you don't have to type a bunch of dashes and numbers. I didn't and it was a PITB's. Example: Folder name "DRVRS". File Names "WIFI.EXE" and "LAN.EXE". Don't leave the 48 letter model/filename/fileversion/date name they give the EXE's when you download them. Lol.

All that added a lot of time and stress, but it was all simple stuff that if I had known ahead of time and been prepared, I swear the entire bios and software installation phase of the build would have only taken 20 minutes.

If you need a case that has mounts for an optical drive and AIO, the Define R5 was the cheapest option I could find, but they don't tell you in the online ads you can only use up to a 240mm AIO and the optical drive at the same time. All the ads online say it supports a 360MM AIO and optical drives. You don't find out otherwise until you RTM. Which I should have done, but didn't.

The mobo has all the LED light controllers embedded on it. The AIO came with a controller box and a trillion wires, but it wasn't needed. I'm not into that anyway and with the case together I can't see them even if I was.

I had a lot fun building it and so far it's running fantastically and far far cooler than what I expected. Don't believe everything/anything you read on the internets. Maybe when I get my BluRay authoring software installed and buy an external 4K drive (grrrr), then try to render and compile a 45Gb disc, it'll heat up. But comparing how Fallout 4 made smoke come out of my i5 to this new PC, it's not even cracking a sweat. What I saved on a video card more than covered what I paid for in extra horse power under the hood.

[mettelus]

3 hours ago, Shane_B. said:

The test for me was running Fallout 4 in 2K and comparing it to my old i5 PC. That's the only game I play. I read on the internets that my RTX3060 would bottleneck severely because it's not paired properly with the new Gen i9's and it's a Gen 4 PCIe GPU. The internets was dead wrong on that one. It runs significantly better.

+1, unless you are doing hefty 3D rendering, you are not going to see a "significant" difference in performance with the higher end models.

(I wrote that two hours ago but woke back up to hit send  )