Share your rig thread

codezer0

As the title says, this is about sharing your systems. New, old, retro, vintage, any platform, what gets you through work, what handles your play. Whichever you care to share, show it off.

So, here’s my present main pc. I tend to name my builds after Pokemon. So with that, Meet Solgaleo. Specs are:

9800×3d
X870 Aorus Elite WiFi 7 Ice
64gb ram
2tb nvme
(Imported) Rx 6800
Audigy Rx
Random usb3 card
Blu-ray burner
Cherry (brand) keyboard, Cherry Red switched
Redragon mmo mouse
Razer basilisk white mouse

codezer0

Formerly main pc, prepped for redeployment. Meet Arceus. Used to have this on an Asus motherboard that was able to keep it at 5ghz all core all day. However, snafu killed it and hence, the MSI as a replacement. Better sensors, worse power delivery, so I only get 4.5 all core on here.

Specs are:
I9 9900K, delid + direct die
MSI z390 gaming plus
64gb ram
2tb nvme
Radeon vii + EK waterblock and backplate combo
X-Fi titanium

Octavean

AMD RyZen 7950X
CoolerMaster Master Liquid 240mm AIO
ASRock B650E PG Riptide WiFi
32GB DDR5 6000 RAM G.Skill FlareX 5 (2×16GB)
1TB NVMe
2TB SATA SSD
ASRock Phantom Gaming RX 7800XT
10GbE NIC
650W PSU
Fractal Design Focus 2 Case
Dual Monitor setup (1440p IPS 27” / 1080p IPS 32”)

It had an Asus ThunderboltEX 3 card installed but the card eventually failed and I haven’t replaced it. The CPU, motherboard and RAM were a bundle purchased from Microcenter and the video card was a later addition. I started the build with a GTX 970 video card. I wanted to upgrade the RAM to 64GB but I never got around to it.

The previous build which I still use is as follows:

AMD RyZen 3950X
CoolerMaster Master Liquid 240mm AIO
ASRock X570 Taichi
64GB DDR4 3200 RAM G.Skill Ripjaws
1TB NVMe
4TB SATA SSD
ASUS RTX 3050
10GbE NIC
650W PSU
Triple Monitor Setup (4K 28” / 4K 28” / 1440p 27”)

OmegaWolf747

This is my Sloan Great Wall PC.
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D Raphael CPU 4 GHz
Asus Tuf Gaming B6750-E Wifi motherboard
Corsair Vengeance DDR5 RAM 32 GB
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT 20 GB graphics card.

Octavean

codezer0 What PC case are you using with this build? PSU?

codezer0

Octavean With Arceus, it’s a Phanteks Enthoo pro. PSU is a Phanteks branded model, that I recall.

For Solgaleo, it’s a Dark Base Pro 901. For it, I have one from a brand called Gamemax, but the more important thing was that it was 1050watts, all white and curiously, 80plus Titanium rated. Wasn’t specifically looking for such a high rating; it just happened to be the least expensive white PSU above 1000 watt rating at the time of purchase.

Octavean

codezer0

Wow, nice! The Dark Base Pro 901 is a sleek looking case. Somewhat customizable too. A bit expensive though depending on what you’re willing to spend on a case since it’s what a ~$280 case?

In contrast I bought my Fractal Design Focus 2 case for something like ~$40 on sale. I came close to buying an NZXT H7 Flow from Microcenter a few weeks back because it was on sale for ~$29.99. However, I couldn’t be arsed to get there fast enough before the deal elapsed. It’s still a good deal at about ~$60 though.

I’ve found that usually I can get by with a PSU around _650w at the lowest but I prefer _750w and up

codezer0

Octavean The case itself weighs about 40 pounds, before factoring in the accessories you get for the order.

Considering I had to deal with a month and a half of Amazon ordering hell because they were the only official channel for the white one, it was a right pain in the ass to get. That said, I’d be remiss to say it wasn’t a great result. The featured thermaltake d5 pump res combo actually looks normal sized in such a thing. That said, hoisting it up is not something I’m looking forward to regarding loop maintenance.

Technically it can fit three 360mm radiators. But not all three with their fans. Granted its specs allow fitting a 420mm radiator in the front; however, I’d be giving up the space for slotting in an optical drive if I did. And part of the point was to have something big like this with an optical drive space.

Maybe one ordering cycle for it, I should just eschew the normal style of loop fluid and roll my own blend of distilled and propylene glycol. Technically have Arceus running 25% ethylene glycol and distilled (diluting antifreeze to mix) as an experiment and it’s worked out well. Should lead to being able to handle longer service intervals.

Octavean

Pix of my RyZen 7950X system:

This is a slightly older picture when I was swapping out a GTX 1060 for the 7800XT which started to sag immediately. So I had to install the ASRock B650E PG Riptide WiFi motherboard’s included GPU support bracket. I’ve since added a rear 120mm exhaust fan. I also installed an Asus ThunderboltEX Thunderbolt 3 add-in card in the open PCIE X16 (really X4) slot but ended up removing that for a 10G NIC.

Octavean

FWIW, I think I might move my PCIe X4 10GbE NIC to the PCIe X1 slot to see how well it works. According to the manual, the pictured above PCIe X1 slot is Gen 4, so it might work well enough. If so then that would free up the the remaining PCIe X4 slot for something like a Thunderbolt add-in card or whatever. I could buy a PCIe X1 10GbE card but that seems like a waste if my current card can pull off reasonable speeds.

I noted earlier that the ASRock Phantom Gaming RX 7800XT card required some support with respect to sagging. I have pictures of it doing just that after install. However, I should note that I often have to setup computers on their side due to space constraints. So even though there is a GPU support bracket if the PC is on it’s side (which it is) it doesn’t necessarily need it.

Octavean

I’ve been toying with the idea of adding a circular LCD display on the CoolerMaster Master Liquid 240mm pump as well as adding something like a ₇″ rectangular LCD in the front of the case just under the mesh screen. Unfortunately, I typically don’t look inside my case side window due to orientation so I’ll likely forgo the internal circular display. Also its unfortunate that a lot of these small cheap displays seem to require proprietary software that you have to dodge malware to get or is malware itself.

Therefore the ₇″ front display might work well if its HDMI based but I’d have to route the cable outside of the case to an open HDMI port. I could probably use the onboard HDMI port from the 7950X processaor rather then the RX 7800 XT.

codezer0

Not my rig personally, but have worked on it a fair bit.

This one’s the wife’s PC; I’ve nicknamed it Giratina given its aesthetics most resemble that Pokémon to me.

I was trying to puzzle out some liquid cooling for a different retro system… The tower for it wouldn’t support the thicker radiators I had already bought; moreover, came to realize that the fans that were equipped for the wife’s PCs custom loop kinda… Sucked. I’m used to picking fans that have about a measured static pressure of between 2 and 3mm/H2O. The ones before were only 0.5 when I looked them up to compare.

So, I felt obligated to make things right. Mercifully, her present case had more than enough room to accept new radiators in both places.

Pics are the result, here are the specs:

Ryzen 5900X
64GB RAM (hey remember when that much was affordable? Good times…)
Rx 6800
MSI b550 gaming plus
x-fi sound card

In so many words, the Arctic P12 Pro’s at full tilt are quite substantial. Not just the sound but the amount of air they can pound through. I initially thought Arctic was bluffing… But I think said bluff has been called and answered.

codezer0

So, over the summer, in addition to handling Giratina I was able to then set up liquid cooling for a couple of my retro builds. So, update on Mega Gyarados in these pictures.

I was planning on liquid cooling the CPU and GPU together in the same loop. However, the screws that came with the block were just too thick to fit through the holes for it. Even if I got past that, the fittings would have collided with something nearby. So, just lucky I (re)found that Chinese sun flower VGA cooler I had on hand.

Since I wasn’t able to find a way to have the pump reservoir combo right side up without colliding into something, it felt rather genius to mount it under the motherboard. Everything else fell into place after that.

Specs are as follows:

Intel q6600
asrock 775i65g rev 2.03
2GB ram
geforce 6800gt
audigy 2 as
windows 98se; no, that’s not a joke

codezer0

And now, let me introduce Morpeko.

Pics from when I finally was able to finish the liquid loop. The GPU block coming in handy here, and was able to repurpose the thinner radiators yoinked from the wife’s build.

Specs:

amd x2 4600+
dfi lanparty nf4
2GB ram
4GB gtx 960
sb x-fi sound card
I think a Linksys PCI WiFi card
Windows XP, naturally

While I did want to do SLI or crossfire in xp, the matter nowadays is how incredibly difficult it is to find a working, matched pair of cards that are supported by the drivers. Ask me how I know this. And nowadays, it would be better going forward to have a card recent enough to be able to drive a 4K panel. The newest cards to have xp drivers are just about it for that party trick.

Why Morpeko? “It’s powerful, and power hungry.” 😁

real_aurgathor

codezer0 Intel q6600
asrock 775i65g rev 2.03
2GB ram
geforce 6800gt
audigy 2 as
windows 98se; no, that’s not a joke

What did you do to handle that much memory? If I remember right, both 98 and 98SE have issues with more than 512 MB of memory.

codezer0

real_aurgathor Used to be had to drop down to get it installed, get to where I’d run the unofficial service pack and then install the desired amount.

Granted, now with the Win98 quick install, it can kind of just preemptively do that patching for you. Still fussy some times, so might need to just wipe and try again until it takes. That being said, some device drivers (cough via chipsets cough) will actively fight you over it. This board being an Intel chipset, seems to just miss that mess.

real_aurgathor

The issue is mostly with 98’s buggy memory manager, though VIA chipsets certainly have their own quirks. I had one such board, and could never get to work properly, and it had some issues with memory controller since it worked best with only a single stick, relatively low capacity memory. In any case, did you use rloew’s patch for your 98SE?

codezer0

real_aurgathor not sure, maybe? If I did, it was either part of the patching that came with the Unofficial 98SE service pack, or part of the patches that are included with the Win98 Quick install bootable media.

That said, I make a point to install it on any of my bare metal installs on principle. Granted, even my lowest end 98SE machine has about 1GB of RAM installed once everything is kosher. I am aware that Windows Me can natively support up to 2GB (reduced to 1.8GB usable); but there’s almost zero support for that OS whatsoever from the community. Comparatively, newer builds of the Win98 QI stuff can even add (experimental) patching to allow bare metal installs on UEFI systems, and NVMe media.

codezer0

real_aurgathor It definitely gets fussy based on whether drivers want to reserve system memory for address space. Since there are modded drivers for 9x that allow it to detect and install a Geforce 7K card, there was another practically mandatory patch made to allow it to operate with the 512MB vram cards of that generation. I’ve not seen anything to suggest it wouldn’t work the same with Radeon cards of such (relatively) high VRAM, but through the years it’s painfully clear that Radeon drivers are much harder to modify successfully. Ask me how I know 😭

real_aurgathor

codezer0 ot sure, maybe? If I did, it was either part of the patching that came with the Unofficial 98SE service pack,

I searched, and it’s free now, and apparently part of the Unofficial service pack. But I paid $20 for it back in 2012.

The latest versions of the Unofficial Windows 98 Second Edition Service Pack (such as version 3.65 and later) include Rudolph R. Loew’s memory and SATA/file-size limit patches. Following his passing, his patches were made public domain by his heirs and integrated into the service pack.

codezer0 I’ve not seen anything to suggest it wouldn’t work the same with Radeon cards of such (relatively) high VRAM, but through the years it’s painfully clear that Radeon drivers are much harder to modify successfully. Ask me how I know

I still have at least 2 sort of functional 98SE/2K boxes with high end PIIIs, but I’m not trying to use any high end video card in them, and they were probably all installed at least 5+, if not 10+ years ago.

I attempted to install of 98SE on some old boxes that were still newer than wtat was originally supported by 98SE (P4 or better), and both failed. In one case it was allegedly due to “recursive SATA controllers” or some similar., absolutely weird error message.