New PC

[Arima]

Most of the parts arrived.

Looking at this Noctua cooler.

C14s.jpg (6.01 KiB) Viewed 2431 times

It's kind of a unique design but I can't see any problem with this style? It should fit.

NVMe drives went missing at the post office. Need to figure out an OS on a flash drive while i wait for the NVMe to find it's way home.

[Burgerman]

As long as it cools adequately. Modern CPUs get hot. Then throttle. The better the cooling the faster they run. Even if its inadequate all that happens is it doesent throttle as high. But depending what you are doing you may never care. Or know.

[martin007]

Do you have a complete list of what you are going to ride?
Total money invested?

[Burgerman]

I use a memory "stick" that IS an NVMe USB3 drive. It boots, runs normal windows 10. Anything else you try to boot from a normal USB drive will be super slow. Best to wait.

[steves1977uk]

I've booted Win10 from a SATA SSD via an USB-to-SATA cable on an old Dell Inspiron 1545 and it booted fine. So any PC within the past 15 years should be capable of doing this.

Steve

[Burgerman]

That will work. With an SSD. Its memory sticks that dont like it. Very basic memory controllers in them dont much like read/write all at once on boot/use of windows. It can work. But its rediculously slow.

[Burgerman]

Arima do you ned a copy of anything?
Photoshop, premier, office, windows etc?

[Arima]

Arima do you ned a copy of anything?
Photoshop, premier, office, windows etc?

At some point I might. Thank you for asking! I won't be shy about letting you know.

I've booted Win10 from a SATA SSD via an USB-to-SATA cable on an old Dell Inspiron 1545 and it booted fine. So any PC within the past 15 years should be capable of doing this.

Steve

If I ever fully understand all the USB versions (and how to maximize them) this project will be worth it just for that I'd like to discuss this further in the future as it's still churning around in my brain right now.

Do you have a complete list of what you are going to ride?
Total money invested?

Off the top of my head...

CPU______________$190
32gb Memory______$ 70
2tb NVME drives____$110
Cooler____________$ 80
Pwr Supply________$ 95
MOBO____________$150
Case_____________$ 80
Monitor__________$180
GPU_____________$400

[Burgerman]

USB is easy.
USB1 forget it.
USB2 real world around 17MB per sec.
USB3 real world 300MB per sec. Maybe 330, 350.
USB3.2 about double that.

All limited and often hugely so, by whatever the actual drive itself tops out at. And write performance is usually slower than read on most storage.
USB C is just the type of connector. Not the speed. But usually same as USB3.1 on a fast modern board. Or USB3 otherwise.

[Arima]

Part of the confusion is the external device speed never comes close to the rated socket standard. If I understand correctly the rated capacity for

Type A (gen 2.1) max 10 GB/s

Type C (gen 2.2) max 20 GB/s

1st question is what kind of device ever makes use of the 20GB/s rating? A monitor or external wifi antenna?

As you said the real world numbers never meet the advertised rated capacity. The fastest external drives I can find advertise 1000MB/s. What is the NVMe USB3 drive you are running? An actual NVMe with a USB adaptor like this

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VVNGYFV/re ... HJ1ZQ&th=1

[Burgerman]

Type C has no speed. It refers only to the design of the connector.
Type C is typically USB 3 or 3.2 speeds depending on the motherboard. But the SPEED of the DEVICE determins actual transfer speed UP TO the max of the USB port.

If using a NVMe drive in external caddy, as I do then the drive can do "up to" Gigabyte's per second so is never the limit. Many small files is MUCH slower...

And then with the above as a superfast device you get this:

USB1 forget it. I can count faster and no longer used.
USB2 real world around 17MB per sec.
USB3 real world 300MB per sec. Maybe 330, 350 max peaks.
USB3.2 about double that.

When buying memory sticks beware speed figures. That will be the initial transfer speed they then slow down to a crawl. Hence my NVMe removables. Or SSD removable USB drives.
My camera has 2 512GB cards. Thse have sustained read/write speeds well in excess of 400MB per sec, in a USB 3.2 socket card reader. 4K high bit rate movies need this in the camera and 12fps raw/jpg writes to card. Or the buffer fills. Things are getting faster, and more expensive!

[Burgerman]

External NVME? I use something similat to this, several different.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/LEMORELE-Enclo ... B08TWWQ9ZS

I tend to upgrade my laptops, PC etc and shove the older smaller drives in a case. In my case I fitted 2TB ones into 3 laptops. And a 4TB one for storage/2TB boot into my PC. So ended up over the years with some 256, some 512, and a 1TB NVMe removables. And a 2TB SSD on a cable. Something like this, cant see mine. https://www.amazon.co.uk/USB-SATA-Adapt ... 1680988016

[Burgerman]

1st question is what kind of device ever makes use of the 20GB/s rating? A monitor or external wifi antenna?

Nothing. My gen 4 internal NVMe drives frequently see 4 or so GB per second when doing large file transfers. Makes moving a lot of data fast! Backups fast.

[Arima]

I think you were right...best to wait. But I don't want to. Buying another 1tb NVMe drive for $50 seems the best option. Maybe some day I'll want the enclosure/adaptor.

[Arima]

Ordered a new NVMe drive and some extra case fans.

What do you use for paste on your cpu when test fitting the cooler? Not sure I need to waste thermal paste when bolting the parts together testing the fit of everything. Or maybe it's okay to dry fit everything?

[steves1977uk]

Modern CPUs thermal throttle themselves to protect from overheating, so you can test quickly without any heatsink just to see if the setup POSTs ok.

Steve

[Burgerman]

I use liquid metal. Very carefully. Its tons better than anything else. But it is conductive. And can get in the wrong places and take out your motherboard or CPU. So if you go this route watch a few vids on how first.

[Arima]

Modern CPUs thermal throttle themselves to protect from overheating, so you can test quickly without any heatsink just to see if the setup POSTs ok.

Steve

I'm not that brave but I am curious about the first post. It should post with just a cpu and no memory installed? Plug a monitor into the mobo and I should see the bios onscreen?

I use liquid metal. Very carefully. Its tons better than anything else. But it is conductive. And can get in the wrong places and take out your motherboard or CPU. So if you go this route watch a few vids on how first.

Not brave enough for this either. One video was enough. Liquid Metal needs to be maintained yearly? How long does typical thermal past last before it needs replacing?

[Burgerman]

Liquid metal never needs to be touched. Never changes. Stop believing youtube experts! If your water block or cooler is nickel plated as most are. If copper it gets absorbed slowly. VERY slowly up to a point. A few atoms deep. Dont use copper heat sinks... Thats all.

My last PC was 9 years old and when I checked it over before giving to my nephew and running 24/7. It was still perfect. So I just reassembled it again exactly as it was. The liquid metal was all still good so was just re-used.

Current one uses it on both the GPU (60C inc memory chips) )and CPU on both its water blocks. Neither gets above 70C even when both are very heavily overclockedand/benchmarked and under a long stability burn in test. CPU alone runs up to 220 to 245 watts which is over double the stock figure... And a 31% overclock on all 16 cores at once with zero heat issues. And so it runs fast! And 300 plus watts on GPU. And it all stays remarkably cool. Part of this is big radiators/pump etc and water, but its not possible to even do it without liquid metal (at this huge overvolt/frequency level). But yes a little bravery needed. At least the first few times! Then you get used to it and dont worry.

[Burgerman]

I'm not that brave but I am curious about the first post. It should post with just a cpu and no memory installed? Plug a monitor into the mobo and I should see the bios onscreen?

No you need memory. Or will get an error. But you can boot for maybe 20 secs. It shouldnt be done but you can. CPU will throttle low. Best to fit a cooler regardless even if no compound. CPU is intelligent. Its frequency and performance are dependent on the voltage headroom and temperature. If the motherboard can provide enough power (look at the specs) and enough voltage, and if that doesent overheat the CPU (hence my daft water system) the CPU will run at very high frequencies across all cores and will do so for longer or indefinitely. If the power/cooling are not enough it wont. So it will run at slower speeeds and boost less and lower and only shorter periods. With no cooler it runs at very slow fully throttled speeds. And with no overclock settings configured in the default bios it also wont make much heat or run fast anyway. So you can get away with a few seconds test without a cooler. I did. But probably unwise...

[Burgerman]

Inspiration. And huge double radiator cooling overkill...
A year and 4 months after building. Used daily. Water is as clean as it was 16 months ago. Who says water is high maintainance. Will change it next year maybe. Not even enough dust to wipe out.

CPU and GPU porn...

[Arima]

Took about 50 pictures yesterday playing with some different lighting. Not sure what to show. Here are 3 that I like.

The case almost becomes an open frame with the panels removed. Going to need the access to get things plugged in.

[Burgerman]

That cooler only just goes in there! But it does fit well. Is there room for the fan with clearance? I like the case. You will need good case fans too. Dont worry about overkill / high speed fans etc as they can all be set to ear safe speeds at idle and only ramp up as required.

Mine is silent quite literally, for all normal daily use scenarios. Fans actually stop or rotate slow enough to count RPM by eye. But ramps up fast as water temp sensor sees increases over around a 5 degree change above 35C. And the pump speeds up only with CPU temp and or GPU temp rise. So even the pump turns slowly it idle. Silence is golden. I use a bit of invaluable software that is free for fan control.

You NEED this! Everyone does. Its very advanced and takes some learning and a week to fine tune as you figure out your temps and how it works. But if you value control its way better than th bios or anything else available. https://getfancontrol.com/

[Arima]

Not sure if the fans will fit but I hope so. Bookmarked the getfancontrol link, thank you for that. Have not figured out exactly which fan to put where. Here is what I have to work with.

Started plugging things together and it got messy. Forgot the I/O shield and still waiting on the second NVMe drive. Suppose I could waste a couple days cleaning the used GPU.

[Burgerman]

When you finish that theres going to just enough room to hide a joint in it and only if you dont use most of those fans I admire your optimism!

[Arima]

The 2 fans that came with the case seemed bulky from the beginning. Hoping the slim fans will do the job. Never seem to be able to think stuff thru far enough in advance. So I tied a couple fans to the lid to get moving on the next thing. Think all my cables are safe from melting or touching the cooler fins. Need to add paste and secure the cooler, plug in the gpu, and it should be ready for the first post.

[Burgerman]

With my fat digits, and the restriction of parts and fight for space and ports etc I am not sure I would build in anything but a normal sized case. I understand the appeal of small, but its definitely not for me. Custom water is already hard work, and difficult to swap parts as it is.

[Burgerman]

You might find that an all in one water cooled setup will fit easier. And save space. And the radiators fans are also the case fans.

[Arima]

I like the all in one water kits but I'm to far down this road to turn off. It posted and I think there is a newer bios version. The Asrock download page is telling me to unzip the bios download file to a FAT32 file system. My only free ssd won't give me the option to reformat to FAT32. Remember having some issues with this drive before. Wonder what would happen if I unzip to NTFS and try to install from there.

[Burgerman]

Bios wont read it. Use USB stick.

Your boot drive must be split into a small fat32 and a larger NTFS windows partition anyway in order to be using the modern UEFI system.