(Warning: This is a long post, might want to spread it out over multiple bathroom trips so your legs don't go numb. Also, if you have any insight into just one or a few topics I talk about, that's fantastic, no need to reply to everything.)
Just completed a build and I'm looking for some general feedback and/or suggestions, as well as answers to some specific questions. The build is:
Win10
Arock Phantom gaming 4 MOBO
Intel 9600k CPU
Corsair H115i Pro AIO Cooler
EVGA 850w Gold Semi-mod PSU
EVGA RTX2080 XC Ultra Gaming
Silicon Power 1TB NVMe Gen3x4 M.2 SSD
G.Skill Ripjaws V 16GB (2x8) DDR4 3600 RAM
Inateck 4-port USB 3.0 expansion card
Phanteks Enthoo Pro full tower Case /w additional Arctic F-series 140mm fan
Link to front/back pics of completed build: View: https://imgur.com/a/IZvD2qg
Questions:
Cooling: I got this case thinking to give myself maximum fan/radiator options (and because it had among the best reviews of any case on the market, definitely best at its price point). However, while it is a fantastic case and far superior to any case I've worked with including much more expensive ones, it doesn't have great support for 140mm. I wanted to go full 140mm fans/rad for good cooling with lower noise, and additionally I wanted to front-mount my H115i as an intake. However, I had to make some layout changes I'm not entirely happy with because of the limited 140mm support. I ended up using an unusual setup where the 280mm rad/fans are top-mounted as intakes, the rear 140mm is also intake, and the front 200m and bottom 140mm are both exhaust.
Additionally, I've got the included-with-case fan manager (shown close-up in one of the imgur pics) connected to the CPU_fan slot on the MOBO, and then the other 5 case fans (including the 2 rad fans) connected to that. One limitation of this setup is that the MOBO can only read the RPM of the 1st fan (of the 5) connected, which is one of my rad fans. Is that a problem? I assume PWM works based on % of maximum rather than a set RPM, right? eg. the fan controller won't be trying to tell my 200mm fan to run at the same RPM as the 140's, but rather just be sending a signal such as "run at x% of your max RPM". Is that correct?
As for the cooler pump, I connected that to a Chasis fan/Waterpump connector on the mobo, but I opted to not connect the Corsair Link USB cable because I won't be using the Corsair link software. My only concern with this is, how can I make sure/tell that my pump is running at 100%? This is my first time using an AIO cooler - I've done many builds before but always on air.
SSD) This is my first time using an M.2 SSD, and I've got a few questions. First, it looks like M.2's had/have some heating concerns, and in my case I have to place it either directly above, or directly below my giant heat-monster video card. I opted to place it above, hoping that the radiant heat from the GPU backplate would be less than the blown heat from the GPU fans, but would below be better? I haven't had a chance to do any gaming yet (something that will be using the CPU/GPU/SSD all at once), but from doing some CPU and then GPU testing with OCCT, the SSD was regularly in the 40-60C range according to HWinfo which seems a bit worrisome, though again I've never used one before. Lastly, heat issues aside, any thoughts on the specific drive I picked out? The one review of this specific drive that benchmarked it got performance better than their Samsung 970, includes a 5 year warranty, and this is the cheapest 1TB gen3x4 NVME drive I could find. Seems like their must be a downside I'm missing or else people are really sleeping on this one.
RAM) This MOBO definitely wasn't my first choice, but I got it as a combo with the 960k for a huge discount. I was surprised that the RAM went straight to 3600mhz with no issues after enabling the XMP profile. That said the timings aren't fantastic (19-20-20-40) and I'm no expert on RAM overclocking. I've only ever used default XMP and/or dialed back the frequency a bit to get things stable. From what I've read though, unlike CPU/GPU OC'ing, the performance gain/loss in real-world applications (specifically gaming) are so miniscule as to make the effort of fiddling with RAM bios settings pointless. Anyone with experience care to chime in if that's correct?
CPU) With the new TIM I was really hoping for a nice all-core 5ghz OC on the 9600k, and while I've still got a lot of testing to do it looks like I once again lost the silicon lotto. Initial testing puts me at all-core 4.9ghz, fixed 1.35v, L1 LLC (lowest Vdroop setting). I generally don't like going past 1.35v, but my temps are quite low (64C max under stress test so far). Wondering if there's anyway I could squeeze out that 5ghz.
One strange issue: initially I was using 0 AVX offset and the newest version of Prime95 to test (which I've now read is a bad idea). Temps/stability were fine up to 1.3v/4.7ghz, but when I tried out 1.31v/4.7ghz temps went wild. I'm talking going from 30C to 75C INSTANTLY according to HWinfo, on like 4 of the cores, while the other 1-2 cores stayed down in the 30's/40's. I stopped the test immediately, read that new P95 wasn't good for testing now anyway, and used OCCT instead with no issues, but that was definitely strange.
Lastly, any thoughts on just leaving voltage fixed? On my previous builds I've used ASUS mobos that offer adaptive voltage, which is quite nice. This ASRock board only has fixed or offset, and offset doesn't seem to work well at all. If what I've read is correct though, there's no harm in leaving voltage fixed in terms of CPU degradation (as long as the voltage is reasonable to begin with) and the difference in power consumption is negligible, like <10w. That sound right?
GPU) Got a few short and specific questions about this one. 1) Do the 20xx series cards still force stepped downclocking at low temps? I hate that the 10xx series start lowering clocks at 50C with no way to adjust that, and the 20xx seems the same, is that true? 2) Is having 3rd party software such as Afterburner always running still the only way to OC the 20xx series GPU's and/or set custom fan curves? Still no way to just set an OC/fan curve and have it "stick" without the 3rd party software always running in the background? 3) Anyone have any tips/link to a step-by-step tutorial on using the new Nvidia OC scanner API (either with afterburner or another software)? I can't seem to find one, and it isn't intuitive at all.
Chapter 2: Just kidding. You made it.
Thanks for reading, and hopefully for some helpful replies!
Just completed a build and I'm looking for some general feedback and/or suggestions, as well as answers to some specific questions. The build is:
Win10
Arock Phantom gaming 4 MOBO
Intel 9600k CPU
Corsair H115i Pro AIO Cooler
EVGA 850w Gold Semi-mod PSU
EVGA RTX2080 XC Ultra Gaming
Silicon Power 1TB NVMe Gen3x4 M.2 SSD
G.Skill Ripjaws V 16GB (2x8) DDR4 3600 RAM
Inateck 4-port USB 3.0 expansion card
Phanteks Enthoo Pro full tower Case /w additional Arctic F-series 140mm fan
Link to front/back pics of completed build: View: https://imgur.com/a/IZvD2qg
Questions:
Cooling: I got this case thinking to give myself maximum fan/radiator options (and because it had among the best reviews of any case on the market, definitely best at its price point). However, while it is a fantastic case and far superior to any case I've worked with including much more expensive ones, it doesn't have great support for 140mm. I wanted to go full 140mm fans/rad for good cooling with lower noise, and additionally I wanted to front-mount my H115i as an intake. However, I had to make some layout changes I'm not entirely happy with because of the limited 140mm support. I ended up using an unusual setup where the 280mm rad/fans are top-mounted as intakes, the rear 140mm is also intake, and the front 200m and bottom 140mm are both exhaust.
Additionally, I've got the included-with-case fan manager (shown close-up in one of the imgur pics) connected to the CPU_fan slot on the MOBO, and then the other 5 case fans (including the 2 rad fans) connected to that. One limitation of this setup is that the MOBO can only read the RPM of the 1st fan (of the 5) connected, which is one of my rad fans. Is that a problem? I assume PWM works based on % of maximum rather than a set RPM, right? eg. the fan controller won't be trying to tell my 200mm fan to run at the same RPM as the 140's, but rather just be sending a signal such as "run at x% of your max RPM". Is that correct?
As for the cooler pump, I connected that to a Chasis fan/Waterpump connector on the mobo, but I opted to not connect the Corsair Link USB cable because I won't be using the Corsair link software. My only concern with this is, how can I make sure/tell that my pump is running at 100%? This is my first time using an AIO cooler - I've done many builds before but always on air.
SSD) This is my first time using an M.2 SSD, and I've got a few questions. First, it looks like M.2's had/have some heating concerns, and in my case I have to place it either directly above, or directly below my giant heat-monster video card. I opted to place it above, hoping that the radiant heat from the GPU backplate would be less than the blown heat from the GPU fans, but would below be better? I haven't had a chance to do any gaming yet (something that will be using the CPU/GPU/SSD all at once), but from doing some CPU and then GPU testing with OCCT, the SSD was regularly in the 40-60C range according to HWinfo which seems a bit worrisome, though again I've never used one before. Lastly, heat issues aside, any thoughts on the specific drive I picked out? The one review of this specific drive that benchmarked it got performance better than their Samsung 970, includes a 5 year warranty, and this is the cheapest 1TB gen3x4 NVME drive I could find. Seems like their must be a downside I'm missing or else people are really sleeping on this one.
RAM) This MOBO definitely wasn't my first choice, but I got it as a combo with the 960k for a huge discount. I was surprised that the RAM went straight to 3600mhz with no issues after enabling the XMP profile. That said the timings aren't fantastic (19-20-20-40) and I'm no expert on RAM overclocking. I've only ever used default XMP and/or dialed back the frequency a bit to get things stable. From what I've read though, unlike CPU/GPU OC'ing, the performance gain/loss in real-world applications (specifically gaming) are so miniscule as to make the effort of fiddling with RAM bios settings pointless. Anyone with experience care to chime in if that's correct?
CPU) With the new TIM I was really hoping for a nice all-core 5ghz OC on the 9600k, and while I've still got a lot of testing to do it looks like I once again lost the silicon lotto. Initial testing puts me at all-core 4.9ghz, fixed 1.35v, L1 LLC (lowest Vdroop setting). I generally don't like going past 1.35v, but my temps are quite low (64C max under stress test so far). Wondering if there's anyway I could squeeze out that 5ghz.
One strange issue: initially I was using 0 AVX offset and the newest version of Prime95 to test (which I've now read is a bad idea). Temps/stability were fine up to 1.3v/4.7ghz, but when I tried out 1.31v/4.7ghz temps went wild. I'm talking going from 30C to 75C INSTANTLY according to HWinfo, on like 4 of the cores, while the other 1-2 cores stayed down in the 30's/40's. I stopped the test immediately, read that new P95 wasn't good for testing now anyway, and used OCCT instead with no issues, but that was definitely strange.
Lastly, any thoughts on just leaving voltage fixed? On my previous builds I've used ASUS mobos that offer adaptive voltage, which is quite nice. This ASRock board only has fixed or offset, and offset doesn't seem to work well at all. If what I've read is correct though, there's no harm in leaving voltage fixed in terms of CPU degradation (as long as the voltage is reasonable to begin with) and the difference in power consumption is negligible, like <10w. That sound right?
GPU) Got a few short and specific questions about this one. 1) Do the 20xx series cards still force stepped downclocking at low temps? I hate that the 10xx series start lowering clocks at 50C with no way to adjust that, and the 20xx seems the same, is that true? 2) Is having 3rd party software such as Afterburner always running still the only way to OC the 20xx series GPU's and/or set custom fan curves? Still no way to just set an OC/fan curve and have it "stick" without the 3rd party software always running in the background? 3) Anyone have any tips/link to a step-by-step tutorial on using the new Nvidia OC scanner API (either with afterburner or another software)? I can't seem to find one, and it isn't intuitive at all.
Chapter 2: Just kidding. You made it.
Thanks for reading, and hopefully for some helpful replies!
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