Building a PC: Chasing The Performance Dragon (Premium)

Back in October, I got my first taste of high-end computing with an AMD Threadripper rig that I thought was going to be my daily driver for a few weeks but the PC gods had other ideas.

After the initial rig died on me and it was necessary to send it back for repairs, add in a trip to the Qualcomm summit, and sprinkle in two holidays, I never got time to fully review the hardware. After sending the machine back, as it was a review unit, I convinced the higher powers to let me build a high-end rig that will help power a couple of our upcoming projects.

For this machine, I did far more research than is logical or required to build a PC from scratch but I wanted to make sure I was ordering exactly what I needed for the usage scenarios I had outlined for the hardware. And this was a true build as I ordered all the parts and assembled them in my basement like an artisan bread maker; nothing came pre-assembled.

The last machine that I built from scratch was an AMD-K6 II and let me tell you, things have changed. And by changed, I mean they are a lot easier now.

I didn’t have to change any jumper settings, cables can only be plugged in one way, and there is very little confusion about how to assemble the rig as there is only one logical spot each component can be installed. The hardest part is figuring out how you want to route cables and managing airflow; even the motherboard standoffs come pre-installed these days.

Airflow being key here as this is a workstation setup and while I do game quite a bit, the focus of this build is on single-core performance with the ability to also run multiple VMs as well (simultaneously). With this in mind, and knowing I wanted 8 cores or more based on the apps I needed to be running, there were only two options for the CPU, an i9 from Intel or a ThreadRipper from AMD.

Here is the part list breakdown:

• CPU: Intel – Core i9-7900X 3.3GHz 10-Core Processor
• CPU Cooler: NZXT – Kraken X62 Rev 2
• Motherboard: Asus – PRIME X299-DELUXE ATX LGA2066
• Memory: G.Skill – Trident Z RGB 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory
• Storage: Samsung – 960 EVO 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive
• Video Card: NVIDIA – GeForce GTX 1080 8GB Founders Edition
• Case: be quiet! – Dark Base 700 ATX Mid Tower Case
• Power Supply: EVGA – SuperNOVA G2 850W 80+ Gold

Why Intel? After doing a bunch of research, I know that the 8700k has the best ‘per core’ performance but it tops out at 6 cores and I’d prefer 8 or more and AMD certainly has a better value proposition here with the 1950x but after my bad luck with the rig from October and the available motherboards all having bad reviews, I went the Intel route.

Not included in the parts list are three additional Be Quiet Silent Wings 3 fans and I do want to point out the GPUs were part of another project rig which helped reduce the cost of the build since miners have caused serious inflation in GPU pricing. Finally, RAM prices are absurd, I’d prefer to have 64 GB in this build but settled for 32 as these prices are also inflated by miners too.

To help with airflow since the Dark Base 700 has a partially closed front panel (there are air gaps on the side), I put the 280mm radiator in a push/pull configuration (this means fans on the front and back of the radiator) as well as two exhaust fans on the back of the case.

Much to my surprise, this worked far better than I was expecting. My CPU, at idle, sits around 30C with the CPU being overclocked about 10% and this is with the fans on a low setting. One thing I love about the case is that there is a physical switch on the front that is linked to a fan controller; I can adjust the RPM of the fans with a 4 position toggle.

Building in the Dark Base was a lot of fun, there are ample cable routing options, plenty of space and all the materials have a premium feel to them. One annoying aspect is the brushed aluminum is a fingerprint magnet but it’s easy to clean and aside from that, no other complications from the case.

NZXT makes several Kraken AIO water-coolers, I went with the x62 as it’s a 280mm radiator which means improved cooling for a minimal premium over the 240mm iteration. Seeing as the Dark Base 700 is designed for a 280 or 240, the decision was easy.

I’m a fan of RGBs in a PC but there is also an upper-bound on how many you can shove into a case. In this rig, I opted to have RGB ram, I put two LED strips on the top of the case out of view, and the motherboard has a couple lights as well. I skipped having RGB fans as I think they may have overdone it and the GPUs do not have any lights either.

The RAM and motherboard are using Aura lighting to sync everything up and the waterblock is controlled using CAM; the front case lighting and LED strips are controlled via a physical button on the front of the case.

As for why I went with the Asus Prime Deluxe motherboard, two main reasons: Better SLI support with multiple 16x slots and it also has a Thunderbolt header for a bit of ‘future-proofing’. There is also an onboard LCD screen that shows temperatures and other various stats which is somewhat pointless but can help if the machine doesn’t boot.

Speaking of SLI, it’s still a mixed review about the benefits of this setup. If I were only buying one card, I already had the 1080s in-house, I would have gone with a single 1080Ti as having games properly utilize this setup is still a bit underwhelming.

It took quite a bit of tweaking with the settings to make PUBG benefit from two card setup even though it’s supposed to be SLI optimized. That being said, once you get everything up and running, it works well for the limited scenarios where it is supported.

When it comes to performance, 3d Mark (Time Spy) generates a score of 13012 with graphics test 1 showing 90.3 FPS and graphics test two showing 76.19; CPU scored 35.2 FPS. Running Cinebench 15, multi-thread returned a score of 2172 and single thread returned 191.

Overall, I am very pleased with how this turned out. Building a machine was quite a bit of fun and picking each component (researching it as well) was part of the experience and likely something I will do again; hopefully before 20 years pass by.

If you are on the fence about building a PC, I’d say take a shot at it. It’s much easier to build a PC today than it was even a few years ago and with sites like PC Part Picker, they take care of the compatibility for you which means you have little to worry about when ordering parts.