Upgrade complete, happy player.

I finally completed my planned upgrade LvL 1 today when my new case was delivered.

I decided to upgrade the case as well because despite my best efforts in trying to cool it down by adding fans, it just turned into a oven from the moment I had the EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti fitted on the motherboard.

It was never designed to handle a modern system, in fact, it has been with me since 2001, it was so strong, built like a Humvee, I decided to keep it through all the upgrades you can imagine from Pentium III to today.

The GTX 1080 Ti demands a lot more attention to cooling than my previous cards, more power equals more heat radiated, but the whole system generates more heat.

The bound between it and the Ryzen 5 3600X works quiet well but I decided to focus on giving the system a better environment to work into.

So First thing, I fitted an Artic 7X cooler to the CPU, it's cheap but particularly efficient for the price.

More to the point, it blows backward toward the exhaust fan and is aligned between it and one of the front case fans, it runs silent as well.

I increased the voltage of the back fan (Noctua NF-F12 120mm) so as to create a depression behind the CPU and retained the stock (Dynamic X2 GP-12) 120mm front fan to feed them with fresh air.

Just below it and aligned to the GPU is another Noctua120 mm, they have a high airflow (93,4 m³/h) and Static pressure (2,61 mm H₂O) and I figured the Ti would be better off when feed with cool air at this sort of rate, it also runs at higher voltage.

As a matter of fact, I was right, running benchmarks or the game, it stays stable at O.C settings where it would simply quit before and the temperature stays below 78°, the whole case is also much cooler when the system runs at full load.

The third front fan, another stock Dynamic X2 GP-12, cools the PSU at the bottom of the case, which is also a source of generated heat, there are two dust filter fitted front and bottom, with a third provided for the top.

It took me a little bit more than one hour to swap the whole system from my old case to this one, fit the fans, sort the cabling and get it to run.

When I could ear the system quiet loudly when playing DCS while wearing my CV1 head set before, now I had to take the headphones off to figure how fast it worked.

In short, a very good operation for a brand new mid-range system capable of handling the high resolutions I need for my next VR head set, the HP Reverb G2.

Can't wait for X-Mass.

For those interested:

I recommend the cooler and fans!

https://www.arctic.ac/en/Freezer-7-X/ACFRE00077A

https://noctua.at/en/nf-f12-industrialppc-2000-ip67-pwm

Good case, relatively cheap but you'll need an external DVD player and it is better suited for SDD, it can take 3 of them on the back with room to spare for more HD at the bottom.

https://www.fractal-design.com/products/cases/define/define-c/black/

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Update.

Fine tuning my system with MSI Afterburner Beta and AMD Ryzen Master.

Benchmark is 3D Mark Fire Strike Ultra.

MSAA x 2 at 3840 x 2160.

Graphics score

7 360

Graphics test 1

41.22 FPS

Graphics test 2

26.15 FPS

Physics score

20 381

Physics test

64.70 FPS

Combined score

3 945

Combined test

18.35 FPS

MSI Afterburner GPU settings:

Core Voltage = + 0.

Power Limit + 120%.

Temp Limit (°) + 84

Core Clock (MHz) + 48 Clock 1974 MHz (1557 MHz)

Memory Clock (MHz) + 485 Memory clock 1499 MHz (1376 MHz)

Fan Speed Auto

AMD Ryzen Master setting: Auto Overclocking. Clock frequency 4300 MHz

Memory from Motherboard auto overclocking settings: 32GB Crucial BALLISTIK GAMING DDR4 - 3198 MHz.

Pick GPU temperature: 76°

Pick CPU temperature: 67.25°

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You use a high end MSI b450 motherboard. Out of curiosity, why did you choose to use AMD Ryzen Master instead of msi bios auto OC?

You use a high end MSI b450 motherboard. Out of curiosity, why did you choose to use AMD Ryzen Master instead of msi bios auto OC?

I find the BIOS setting harder to use, the whole process is slower and not as clear as Ryzen Master, but it's my perception of it, other might not come up with the same conclusions.

Btw the MSI B450 GAMING PLUS MAX is the lowest specs of the whole GAMING series, not really high end, I'd call it mid range.

I picked it for the cost but I'm very pleased with its features and especially the support for Gen2(PCI_E4), Ryzen 9 and DDR 4 4133 MHz if I chose to upgrade in the future.

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