End of Year PC Build

#1 step for choosing motherboard:

CHECK DPC BASE LATENCY! - After its done and its very very low (I'd say it needs to be under 200µs by default), you can be sure the mobo is not the culprit in message passing, especially for audio.

Ok, so you weren't kidding about the land line, huh? Maybe shoot a video with a webcam and take screenshots? Assuming you have a webcam, of course.


Something like that should be easy to modify, yes.


Noctua makes good fans, so I'd go with those. Like you said, P12s for intake and F12s for exhaust fans. And the more powerful A12s go to the GPU. That should do it.

Only buy Redux if you really hate the look of the OG Noctua, or are on a budget.

Chromax is an equivalent to the OG in terms of performance and build quality. Redux is a good fan, but it isn't the same as the original (neither is the price, but I don't mess around with fans, I prefer to pay for quality).

The only real caveat with Chromax (and this exists with Redux as well) - you have to use extension headers, as the connected header is an inch long. OG Noctuas come with long headers, which is pretty great usually.

I've never really liked the whole "RGB Craze" where people just go nuts and make their entire PC, top to bottom, inside out, back to front light up and flash so much you could see it from Space.  But I will admit the RGB DDR4 from G.Skill does look nice.  Though for me....I suppose because I am using a glass panel, I do try to coordinate the colour of my DDR4 with a main or accent colour of my motherboard.

For example, my Phoenix SLI is black with orange and white accents, and orange internal lighting......So I thought the best looking RAM would be black.  I wouldn't go with bright blue or yellow for example. But that's the builder in me raging who has an eye for subtle details.  In the big picture however...especially if I had a case that was solid all around where I would never see the innards of my PC, it is all about performance and how all the components perform together.

Visual aethetics is a small detail that, I suppose only matters, for those who have a sizeable amount of cash behind them and who can afford to be picky about little details such as 'colour coordination'.

I'm currently testing out the new fan setup for summer. I've basically added three more 120mm fans on the bottom of the case as intake, and they are synchronized with the fans on the 360 AIO but at a much lower custom fan curve.



That gives me six 120mm intake fans (three on bottom and three on side) and the three 120mm fans on the AIO as exhaust mounted on top of the case. Oddly the noise level has been pretty much the same even with the extra airflow. I guess by adding three extra fans means the rest of the fans don't have to work as hard. Hopefully the dust build-up won't be too bad given the more positive pressure inside the case.

So far the average temperature reading is about 1 to 5 degrees lower. It's not much but it's an improvement. If I decide to keep this setup, I'll need to use a different video card support bracket instead of the one in the picture.

The one that I'm currently using is basically a stand. You don't really need two of those. It's only there to prevent the video card from sagging too much. I don't like to put it on top of the fans. It just looks too "ghetto."

I have another GPU support bracket that looks like this but it is currently in my other PC. I'll swap them because it is much cleaner looking.

Yeah, I tried that already. It was a lot easier for me to just use a bracket or a stand, that's why I still bought them after watching the video. Haha.

I know. More cases should have built-in GPU support bracket or support arm. Some video cards like my old Zotac GTX 1080 AMP Extreme flex way too much without it.

The good thing is that manufacturers now just make the coolers so large that your entire video card just sits on the motherboard (basically leaning against adjacent PCIe slots and chipset cooler) without flexing or sagging too much.

Or another free solution to remove gpu sag would be to turn the case on its side...