End of Year PC Build

Random thing, but surprisingly one of the harder things to find when I was shopping for my build was a case that had what I wanted. Mostly I was surprised at how many of the options coming up lacked an external 5.25” drive bay. Apparently those have just completely fallen out of fashion? Maybe it’s just been too long since I’ve shopped for a case.

It doesn't matter though, the number of PCIe lanes still doesn't change. It would still split the PCIe lanes if your system didn't have enough lanes. In this case, it would also run at the slower PCIe 3.0 rate which is basically half of PCIe 4.0. It's the same as running two video cards on SLI or Crossfire on a desktop platform.

So if the NVMe expansion card ran at x8 speed, that means you could use two drives and each would get its dedicated 4 lanes from the CPU. If the card ran at the full x16 speed, you could use up to four drives instead.

Edit: I forgot to mention that your mobo also needs to support PCIe bifurcation natively in order to use that Asus Hyper M.2 expansion card. Threadripper mobos all support PCIe bifurcation so you can just go to BIOS and split the x16 PCIe lanes into four x4 PCIe lanes for your four NVMe drives. As far as I know, there aren't too many normal desktop mobos that have PCIe bifurcation support and even if they do, you shouldn't expect these NVMe expansion cards to work as they are intended on them. If your mobo doesn't support PCIe bifurcation, you need to get a NVMe expansion card that also has a built-in chipset/switch in order to use all those M.2 slots. Those expansion cards with built-in switches are also very expensive.

Haha. I honestly thought I was the last person on earth who still used an optical drive before I planned my new build.

Most people just don't need to have a DVD/Bluray drive and case manufacturers have realized that by removing the 5.25 bays, it gives the case a much cleaner look. They could also significantly shrink the size of the case, put fans in the front, and give it a much better airflow.



I still keep a USB DVD/Bluray drive in my closet in case I ever need to pull something off one of my old CD-ROM discs or DVDs.

Yeah, I didn't say we were talking about different things. I just wanted to clarify your point. Haha.

The bottleneck is negligible especially for PCIe 4.0 devices. Just keep in mind that if your X570 mobo supports three NVMe M.2 drives, two of them will be connected to the X570 chipset and they will all use the same 4-lane bus that connects the X570 chipset and the CPU.

If you have a B550 chipset, you don't get that kind of flexibility. B550 uses PCIe 3.0 to connect to the CPU, so you don't get any extra PCIe 4.0 lanes. Instead, B550 gives you 10 extra PCIe 3.0 lanes. That's one of the reasons to pay a little extra for an X570 mobo especially if you want to use multiple PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 drives.

Yeah, the X570 is definitely the way to go. The only downside currently (besides the price) is getting those heat shields to fit. MoBos are getting crowded.

I just love reading threads like this when my entire rig cost <$500.

Oh nice. The Corsair maglev fans. I thought about getting the ML120 Pro, but those were constantly sold out and were also quite expensive.

Are you gonna use a Commander Pro for these fans?

Any idea of the longevity of magnetic levitation fan versus fluid dynamic and ball bearing fans?

i.imgur.com/Pjf52tP.png (old picturew when I opened it for cleaning as it has GTX970, now 1070OC)
i7-4960X on X79 chipset & Noctua SE2011 24/7 on since 2013

I'm thinking something along these lines will be my new machine www.scan.co.uk/3xs/shared/043ae9d5-dee3-4e70-83b1-ca86770abfb2?utm_source=3xsconfigshare&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=copypaste
(note its Intel build version, also note this 3XS is pro audio machine maker, they make sure nothing gets in the way of audio starting from BIOS and drivers etc.)

Would this be for Linux or Windows? I'm not an audio guy, but it has been my understanding, that Win10 is particularly crappy for audio builds?  Other than that it is a nifty heavy duty workstation.