Oct 28, 2019
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I want to build a very powerful gaming PC. Before I start, I would like to check with other forum members if my list of components will work as desired, if anyone see any compatibility issue, or if there is some suggestion or recommendation how to make it better.

I decided to go with be quiet! Dark Base 700 mid-tower chassis. My goal is to build a powerful and silent desktop PC without any RGB lighting. Since the Dark Base 700 case comes with tempered glass on one side, I am considering to buy a spare insulated steel panel (~ $20) and use it instead of the glass panel. This way my tower should be even more quite. The power supply be quiet! Straight Power 11 850W should work great with the same brand chassis, and 850W should be more than enough.

The motherboard ASUS ROG Maximus XI Hero (Wi-Fi) Z390 will be hopefully a great choice for the Intel Core i9-9900K CPU. In case I want to overclock the CPU, Alphacool 11594 Eisbaer Extreme Liquid CPU Cooler 280 should take care of the heat, I believe.

Powerful CPU without a lot of memory would be a waste of money, therefore I plan to go with 64 GB (4x16), using Corsair Vengeance LPX 64GB DDR4 DRAM 3200MHz C16 Memory modules. My choice for the storage is to use 2 of Corsair Force Series MP600 1TB Gen4 PCIe X4 NVMe M.2 SSD, using motherboard's RAID 1 (mirroring), having a total capacity just 1 TB, but redundant storage. Later I may need to add some additional HDD, if 1 TB won't be enough.

Last, but no least is the GPU Asus ROG STRIX GeForce RTX 2080TI Overclocked Graphics Card, which will definitely work great with the same brand motherboard.

Besides of the compatibility issues, if any, my concern is the cooling and noise reduction. Should I place the liquid CPU cooler in front and move pre-installed font fan to top? Should I add extra two be quiet! Silent Wings 3 140mm PWM High-Speed cooling fans to top of the chassis, to have 3 fans there, with one pre-installed on back? Should I also consider to add some cooling solution to 2 SSDs? Motherboard comes with SSD pseudo-cooling solution that I won't be able to use due to bold design of the Corsair MP 600 modules. Are these modules designed to cool themselves enough?

What are your thoughts?
 
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Solution
I use a M-ATX sized case, the silverstone TJ-o8e.
https://www.newegg.com/black-silverstone-temjin-series-microatx-mini-tower/p/N82E16811163182
The main reason is that I have limited depth available for a case and the TJ-08E is only 15.3" deep.
Yes, I applied the foam to the side panels. The panels are a bit thin .
My cooling is the 180mm front fan running on slow speed.
I have a 120mm fan as exhaust.
One other thing I like is that there is an easily removable front filter so my parts inside never need cleaning.
Oct 28, 2019
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Thoughts? Actually I have some.

Were you trying to choose most expensive parts possible?
£400 for motherboard and £240 for cpu cooler? You could get parts costing 1/3 of the price and not sacrifice any performance.

64GB of RAM? What's the usage scenario for this system? Video/photo editing? Running multiple VMs?

Definitely not just for gaming, but mostly for app development, compilations,, CAD, graphics processing and real-time VR visualizations.
 
For quiet computing, go to spcr

Nothing with moving parts can be truly silent.
But, you can bake things quiet and all but inaudible.

Some thoughts on your build.

It seems a shame to abandon a nice window which is one of the features of the case.
You could buy some silverstone acoustic foam like this:
https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16811999222

Liquid cooling is really air cooling.
The difference is where the radiator heat transfer takes place.
I think a better cooling alternative would be a noctua NH-D15s air cooler.
It will cool about the same as the aio you linked but cost 1/3 less.
and... it will not leak.
Past that, the noctua fans are particularly good and quiet.

I would use the two 140mm fans that are included as front intakes.
Add a single 120mm at the rear as exhaust to direct airflow past the cooler.
Do not use more fans than necessary. More fans mean more noise.
If you do want more front intake capability, noctua sells some good 200 and 300 rpm fans.
You can slow down a fan, but not speed it up.
Since price seems to not be a big concern, look for that.
Not so much for the impressive performance, but for the better binned chip that will not run as hot.

Lots of ram never hurts, but unless you are running ram capable batch apps, 16gb should be plenty for gaming.
Even then, 32gb in a 2 x 16gb kit would normally be the most I could recommend.
3600 speed is about right. Intel is dual channel so there is no value in a 4 stick kit.
But, if you want 64gb, I think you need a 4 x 16gb kit.
Look at the ram qvl list for your motherboard and pick a supported kit.

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/...OG_MAXIMUS_XI_HERO_SERIES_Memory_QVL_0225.pdf

No sense in raid1 for a m.2 nvme ssd.
You are protecting precisely for a ssd failure, but doubling the cost and opportunity for failure.
You have no protection from malware, viruses, ransomware, fite or even operator error.
Protect your data with some sort of EXTERNAL backup.
With ssd prices down, I would consider a 2tb samsung 970 EVO.
I would not worry about ssd cooling.
Heat builds up and you might throttle if you had sustained reads for over 30 seconds.
That is not likely excepting perhaps for a virus scan.
90% of your activity will be small random I/O
If you ever need more bulk storage, it is easy to add a hard drive later.
 
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Oct 28, 2019
25
0
30
For quiet computing, go to spcr

Nothing with moving parts can be truly silent.
But, you can bake things quiet and all but inaudible.

Some thoughts on your build.

It seems a shame to abandon a nice window which is one of the features of the case.
You could buy some silverstone acoustic foam like this:
https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16811999222

Liquid cooling is really air cooling.
The difference is where the radiator heat transfer takes place.
I think a better cooling alternative would be a noctua NH-D15s air cooler.
It will cool about the same as the aio you linked but cost 1/3 less.
and... it will not leak.
Past that, the noctua fans are particularly good and quiet.

I would use the two 140mm fans that are included as front intakes.
Add a single 120mm at the rear as exhaust to direct airflow past the cooler.
Do not use more fans than necessary. More fans mean more noise.
If you do want more front intake capability, noctua sells some good 200 and 300 rpm fans.
You can slow down a fan, but not speed it up.
Since price seems to not be a big concern, look for that.
Not so much for the impressive performance, but for the better binned chip that will not run as hot.

Lots of ram never hurts, but unless you are running ram capable batch apps, 16gb should be plenty for gaming.
Even then, 32gb in a 2 x 16gb kit would normally be the most I could recommend.
3600 speed is about right. Intel is dual channel so there is no value in a 4 stick kit.
But, if you want 64gb, I think you need a 4 x 16gb kit.
Look at the ram qvl list for your motherboard and pick a supported kit.

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/...OG_MAXIMUS_XI_HERO_SERIES_Memory_QVL_0225.pdf

No sense in raid1 for a m.2 nvme ssd.
You are protecting precisely for a ssd failure, but doubling the cost and opportunity for failure.
You have no protection from malware, viruses, ransomware, fite or even operator error.
Protect your data with some sort of EXTERNAL backup.
With ssd prices down, I would consider a 2tb samsung 970 EVO.
I would not worry about ssd cooling.
Heat builds up and you might throttle if you had sustained reads for over 30 seconds.
That is not likely excepting perhaps for a virus scan.
90% of your activity will be small random I/O
If you ever need more bulk storage, it is easy to add a hard drive later.

Excellent reply. Thanks!

Unfortunately I cannot keep original chassis fan in front if I stay with my proposal of CPU cooler. The CPU liquid cooler is too bulky to have it installed on top, as it would very likely collide with memory modules, unless some very low profile type is used. That being said, do you think having just one 140 mm fan on top and one rear 140 mm fan would be enough, if in front I will have 2 CPU cooler fans and no other intake fans?

I was thinking of your suggestion to not use liquid CPU cooling, but for i9 overclocking it might be the only option, I am afraid.

As far as liquid cooler leaking, do you have any such bad experience? Why you think it may happen?
 
Oct 28, 2019
25
0
30
For quiet computing, go to spcr

Nothing with moving parts can be truly silent.
But, you can bake things quiet and all but inaudible.

Some thoughts on your build.

It seems a shame to abandon a nice window which is one of the features of the case.
You could buy some silverstone acoustic foam like this:
https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16811999222

Liquid cooling is really air cooling.
The difference is where the radiator heat transfer takes place.
I think a better cooling alternative would be a noctua NH-D15s air cooler.
It will cool about the same as the aio you linked but cost 1/3 less.
and... it will not leak.
Past that, the noctua fans are particularly good and quiet.

I would use the two 140mm fans that are included as front intakes.
Add a single 120mm at the rear as exhaust to direct airflow past the cooler.
Do not use more fans than necessary. More fans mean more noise.
If you do want more front intake capability, noctua sells some good 200 and 300 rpm fans.
You can slow down a fan, but not speed it up.
Since price seems to not be a big concern, look for that.
Not so much for the impressive performance, but for the better binned chip that will not run as hot.

Lots of ram never hurts, but unless you are running ram capable batch apps, 16gb should be plenty for gaming.
Even then, 32gb in a 2 x 16gb kit would normally be the most I could recommend.
3600 speed is about right. Intel is dual channel so there is no value in a 4 stick kit.
But, if you want 64gb, I think you need a 4 x 16gb kit.
Look at the ram qvl list for your motherboard and pick a supported kit.

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/...OG_MAXIMUS_XI_HERO_SERIES_Memory_QVL_0225.pdf

No sense in raid1 for a m.2 nvme ssd.
You are protecting precisely for a ssd failure, but doubling the cost and opportunity for failure.
You have no protection from malware, viruses, ransomware, fite or even operator error.
Protect your data with some sort of EXTERNAL backup.
With ssd prices down, I would consider a 2tb samsung 970 EVO.
I would not worry about ssd cooling.
Heat builds up and you might throttle if you had sustained reads for over 30 seconds.
That is not likely excepting perhaps for a virus scan.
90% of your activity will be small random I/O
If you ever need more bulk storage, it is easy to add a hard drive later.

See also
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9UI4-E1ylg
 
If you insist on a liquid cooler, I agree that front mount is probably best.
You would only need a single 120/140 mm fan at the rear to direct the airflow over the motherboard and to your graphics card.
All of the intake air will exit SOMEWHERE taking heat with it.
The purpose of an exhaust fan is to direct the airflow out the back/top.
Realize that both the motherboard and graphics card cooling will be using the heated air from your cpu.
That is not so good for either.
Consider:
The 280mm aio cooler has 2 140mm radiators side by side.
This is exactly the same as a noctua NH-D15s which has two 140mm radiator towers.
Yes, the stock nh-D15s uses a single fan, but mounting a second fan is allowed. It adds marginally to the cooling capability.
I judge the cooling capability of a 280 aio cooler to be comparable to the NH-D15s or to the NH-D15. Better cooling would require a larger 360 aio.

As to leaks, yes, they are not frequent, and the cooler makers do help with recovery but it is a pain.
Curious, I googled "alphacool leak"
Here is the first hit:
 
Oct 28, 2019
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If you insist on a liquid cooler, I agree that front mount is probably best.
You would only need a single 120/140 mm fan at the rear to direct the airflow over the motherboard and to your graphics card.
All of the intake air will exit SOMEWHERE taking heat with it.
The purpose of an exhaust fan is to direct the airflow out the back/top.
Realize that both the motherboard and graphics card cooling will be using the heated air from your cpu.
That is not so good for either.
Consider:
The 280mm aio cooler has 2 140mm radiators side by side.
This is exactly the same as a noctua NH-D15s which has two 140mm radiator towers.
Yes, the stock nh-D15s uses a single fan, but mounting a second fan is allowed. It adds marginally to the cooling capability.
I judge the cooling capability of a 280 aio cooler to be comparable to the NH-D15s or to the NH-D15. Better cooling would require a larger 360 aio.

As to leaks, yes, they are not frequent, and the cooler makers do help with recovery but it is a pain.
Curious, I googled "alphacool leak"
Here is the first hit:

You are Noctua lover, aren't you?
What do you think about be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 CPU Cooler ?
 
You are Noctua lover, aren't you?
What do you think about be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 CPU Cooler ?
DRP4 is equally good.
Yes, I am using a NH-D15s see my sig.
Noctua has the simplest mounting system around.
Under load, my temperatures are in the 65c. range and I never hear anything.
I get no commission from noctua, but perhaps I should.
I seem to keep suggesting them.
About the only negative I hear is about the beige fan color, but there is now a black version of the NH-D15.
 
Oct 28, 2019
25
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DRP4 is equally good.
Yes, I am using a NH-D15s see my sig.
Noctua has the simplest mounting system around.
Under load, my temperatures are in the 65c. range and I never hear anything.
I get no commission from noctua, but perhaps I should.
I seem to keep suggesting them.
About the only negative I hear is about the beige fan color, but there is now a black version of the NH-D15.

I am glad you are satisfied with their product(s). What chassis you have? That is also a critical part of the puzzle. Had you installed additional foams to reduce the noise? Please advise. THANKS!
 
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I use a M-ATX sized case, the silverstone TJ-o8e.
https://www.newegg.com/black-silverstone-temjin-series-microatx-mini-tower/p/N82E16811163182
The main reason is that I have limited depth available for a case and the TJ-08E is only 15.3" deep.
Yes, I applied the foam to the side panels. The panels are a bit thin .
My cooling is the 180mm front fan running on slow speed.
I have a 120mm fan as exhaust.
One other thing I like is that there is an easily removable front filter so my parts inside never need cleaning.
 
Solution
Oct 28, 2019
25
0
30
I use a M-ATX sized case, the silverstone TJ-o8e.
https://www.newegg.com/black-silverstone-temjin-series-microatx-mini-tower/p/N82E16811163182
The main reason is that I have limited depth available for a case and the TJ-08E is only 15.3" deep.
Yes, I applied the foam to the side panels. The panels are a bit thin .
My cooling is the 180mm front fan running on slow speed.
I have a 120mm fan as exhaust.
One other thing I like is that there is an easily removable front filter so my parts inside never need cleaning.

Very nice.

BTW, I believe the be quiet! Dark Base 700 mid-tower chassis has 2 filters (front and bottom).
 
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