System Build Time Suggestions From Experience

[MentalAcetylide]

About 4 hours, more if you were fine tuning it (which stores never do, they get it together, turning on, and call it a day)

They just dont want to open any boxes and risk losing parts, before 100% of the order is ready to go


"CASE/RADIATOR FANS: Thermaltake Riing Quad 12 RGB Radiator Fan TT Premium Edition x10."

Dont. Don't over complicated the build with crap like that - those fans need special controllers, which means a heap more wiring mess and more labour.
Stay with the stock fans and get the system working and only worry about changings to it later.

Just change to a smaller SSD in the meantime, get the system up and running and add the 4TB SSD In later (I bet its a slow-ass samsung QVO)

The quad fans I certainly can live without, but iirc, the case doesn't come with fans and I'm not about to wait another 1-2 weeks for him to order different fans.
I don't want a smaller SSD for the drive I'll be using for the OS & games, and the 4TB SSD is non-negotiable since that is where I'll be putting all of my render content/databases. Without it, I won't have anywhere to install all of the content.
If it is a QVO, its still going to be much faster than a mechanical hard drive, but at this point I haven't talked to him yet regarding "which" type it is. Right now I'm more concerned about getting the damn thing finished. Hardware changes can be made later on if needed.

 

[thesmokingman]

Oh those are proprietary? That is dumb.

 

[ThaiTaffy]

Yea, true that. RGB can be a huge time sink. I lost more than a few hours dialing stupid RGB controllers and the Gigafail software sucks too. A lot of time is lost just figuring out how many extensions, mixing 5v or 12v, controllers and what not. It's not exactly hard just time consuming.

It's a waste of time and money when the system already has working integrated fans that do the job just fine

I will never recommend anyone use TT fans, after having a controller die in a clients system and being unable to source a new one - we had to toss 6 fans in the bin, because they wouldnt fit generic fan/ARGB connectors, only a proprietary TT one that they change every few years

Don't get me wrong I wouldn't use anything Thermaltake any longer. I have also had way too many of their products die on me or just be bags of trash. I'm just trying to point out that fitting something like that is still not that complex especially for someone who runs a IT repair and build business.

Personally the thing I would think was the worst part if I was in poor OP's boots he is just pissing his warranty away waiting for this build to be finished.

 

[thesmokingman]

The quad fans I certainly can live without, but iirc, the case doesn't come with fans and I'm not about to wait another 1-2 weeks for him to order different fans.
I don't want a smaller SSD for the drive I'll be using for the OS & games, and the 4TB SSD is non-negotiable since that is where I'll be putting all of my render content/databases. Without it, I won't have anywhere to install all of the content.
If it is a QVO, its still going to be much faster than a mechanical hard drive, but at this point I haven't talked to him yet regarding "which" type it is. Right now I'm more concerned about getting the damn thing finished. Hardware changes can be made later on if needed.

Btw, what's your locale?

 

[ThaiTaffy]

The quad fans I certainly can live without, but iirc, the case doesn't come with fans and I'm not about to wait another 1-2 weeks for him to order different fans.
I don't want a smaller SSD for the drive I'll be using for the OS & games, and the 4TB SSD is non-negotiable since that is where I'll be putting all of my render content/databases. Without it, I won't have anywhere to install all of the content.
If it is a QVO, its still going to be much faster than a mechanical hard drive, but at this point I haven't talked to him yet regarding "which" type it is. Right now I'm more concerned about getting the damn thing finished. Hardware changes can be made later on if needed.

What kind of store is he? Surely he has some regular pwm fans laying about that would be far easier to swap out after.

I have a drawer full and I'm not a store

 

[MentalAcetylide]

Btw, what's your locale?

I'm located in the US, northern part of the east coast. Its winter, too, so the snow is going to be coming soon. We already had a coating a few weeks ago.

 

[thesmokingman]

Oh ok, no biggie. If you were in socal I'd give you a hand etc. I don't miss the winters, went to college back east.

 

[MentalAcetylide]

Oh ok, no biggie. If you were in socal I'd give you a hand etc. I don't miss the winters, went to college back east.

Winter itself isn't a problem, its having to drive through the shit with the way they build cars nowadays(i.e. lighter for mediocre gas mileage improvement). I really do miss my 98' Plymouth Breeze. I could drive through anything on the road(treated or untreated) at a slow and steady pace with it as long as the snow wasn't too deep. Try that with modern 4-door sedans and you'll be slipping & sliding all over the place.

 

[claes]

Pull through NYC; I’m bored and can have it ready in two days

 

[MentalAcetylide]

Pull through NYC; I’m bored and can have it ready in two days

And you wouldn't be disappointed with the pay, but no thanks, that would still be one hell of a drive for me. Also, my neighbor does IT and the only reason I didn't have him do the build in the first place is because he lacks experience when it comes to render/gaming systems. Computer techs like that tend to make mistakes or implement undesirable settings for rigs like mine more out of habit & not having working experience on such systems. Plus he has his own business unrelated to computers, so he wouldn't have much time to put into it.

 

[Mussels]

And you wouldn't be disappointed with the pay, but no thanks, that would still be one hell of a drive for me. Also, my neighbor does IT and the only reason I didn't have him do the build in the first place is because he lacks experience when it comes to render/gaming systems. Computer techs like that tend to make mistakes or implement undesirable settings for rigs like mine more out of habit & not having working experience on such systems. Plus he has his own business unrelated to computers, so he wouldn't have much time to put into it.

All you need is someone to assemble the system and get it to POST, and then install your OS of choice

You can tweak fan speeds yourself in the BIOS, and install programs - anyone can do those tasks, even if slowly. Anything beyond that that you get stuck on, ask here.

 

[MentalAcetylide]

All you need is someone to assemble the system and get it to POST, and then install your OS of choice

You can tweak fan speeds yourself in the BIOS, and install programs - anyone can do those tasks, even if slowly. Anything beyond that that you get stuck on, ask here.

I spoke to him just before on the phone and we agreed it would be completed by Wednesday, barring any unexpected hardware issues(i.e. RAM). I did specifically ask, and he confirmed that all of the parts were tested as they came in, so everything does work.
I also made things a bit easier and suggested that we can forgo placing the Thermaltake fans on the RTX 3090 radiator & the radiator for the CPU cooler and stick with the defaults while just putting 3 of them on the front and one in the rear for the case. I'll just keep the extra controller & fans as spares or if I decide to put more in, I can do that later on. Right now I just need a working render rig that I can move stuff over to before this Alienware craptop dies, which probably won't be very long given I haven't shut it down, unplugged, or rebooted it for the past couple of weeks.

I also wanted to mention since someone asked before, yes its a QVO 870 4Tb model, which I'm happy with since its going to be used mainly for storage and where my installed content for renders/models/etc. will be located. Everything else, OS, games, applications, and programs will be going on the 2Tb Sabrent M.2 SSD.

 

[Mussels]

I spoke to him just before on the phone and we agreed it would be completed by Wednesday, barring any unexpected hardware issues(i.e. RAM). I did specifically ask, and he confirmed that all of the parts were tested as they came in, so everything does work.
I also made things a bit easier and suggested that we can forgo placing the Thermaltake fans on the RTX 3090 radiator & the radiator for the CPU cooler and stick with the defaults while just putting 3 of them on the front and one in the rear for the case. I'll just keep the extra controller & fans as spares or if I decide to put more in, I can do that later on. Right now I just need a working render rig that I can move stuff over to before this Alienware craptop dies, which probably won't be very long given I haven't shut it down, unplugged, or rebooted it for the past couple of weeks.

I also wanted to mention since someone asked before, yes its a QVO 870 4Tb model, which I'm happy with since its going to be used mainly for storage and where my installed content for renders/models/etc. will be located. Everything else, OS, games, applications, and programs will be going on the 2Tb Sabrent M.2 SSD.

Good choice, the QVO's are the only real option for large SSD storage, but the write speeds and endurance are not great for an OS/heavy task drive

 

[MentalAcetylide]

Good choice, the QVO's are the only real option for large SSD storage, but the write speeds and endurance are not great for an OS/heavy task drive

Yeah, and the way I see it, I'm damn lucky to have been able to get the parts that I did. If I can't fill my rig with Thermaltake fans or not have any at all while having all the rest of the hardware working by the deadline, I'll still be 100% grateful and satisfied.

 

[Mussels]

The best advice for any system, is to always keep it as simple as possible

The less parts (especially additional things like ARGB controllers, fan controllers and so on) - the easier

And if you can avoid custom proprietary connectors, even better.
Nothing worse than say buying say 10 fans, only to have one die out of warranty... and you cant buy a single fan to replace it with. Gotta replace all of them, or none of them with yet another new connector type.

Wiring spaghetti gets worse as you add them all together too, corsair (semi-custom*) and thermaltake (full custom) both need ARGB controller and fan controller boxes, which means two sata connectors, two USB motherboard headers, and a spaghetti mess of wiring.

*Corsair at least use standard 4 pin fan headers, and while the fans use custom RGB connectors to the RGB fan hub, that hub can connect to regular ARGB mobo/other controller with an adaptor cable

 

[MentalAcetylide]

The best advice for any system, is to always keep it as simple as possible

The less parts (especially additional things like ARGB controllers, fan controllers and so on) - the easier

And if you can avoid custom proprietary connectors, even better.
Nothing worse than say buying say 10 fans, only to have one die out of warranty... and you cant buy a single fan to replace it with. Gotta replace all of them, or none of them with yet another new connector type.

Wiring spaghetti gets worse as you add them all together too, corsair (semi-custom*) and thermaltake (full custom) both need ARGB controller and fan controller boxes, which means two sata connectors, two USB motherboard headers, and a spaghetti mess of wiring.

*Corsair at least use standard 4 pin fan headers, and while the fans use custom RGB connectors to the RGB fan hub, that hub can connect to regular ARGB mobo/other controller with an adaptor cable

Yep, lesson learned. Hopefully doing just 3 fans in the front and one in the ass-end isn't as much of an issue. On the "bright" side, I'll have 6 extra Thermaltake fans & controller on hand if the others crap out. My only regret is going with 128 Gb RAM instead of 256, lol I'll definitely be shrinking textures & removing any unnecessary normal/bump/displacement maps in bigger iray scenes. That's what sucks about iray. A single RTX 3090 with 24Gb VRAM could easily use up 128Gb+ system RAM = program or system crash if insufficient RAM. I watched a youtube video of someone experimenting to see how many different characters they could render in one scene with an RTX 3090 on a system with 64Gb RAM and they ended up running out of RAM first. They were able to reach a VRAM usage of 17.8Gb with 14 characters total, which includes 14 different skin sets(4k diffuse, bumps, normals, specular maps, etc.,) before it crashed.
I'll be using two different cards together for preview renders, so I'll have to keep that in mind since using two cards will double the RAM needed.

 

[Happy_but_Sad]

Your reason for building does not match the type of components chosen, if you were acquiring a rendering PC for commercial use then an off the shelf Dell or HP would do the job.

That 2019 Threadripper is SLOW by modern standards, ditto cores and efficiency by modern Intel standards. Its almost 2022,

Your list suggests ghetto gaming PC. and you would have been better off buying that from a local custom builder.

A rendering work PC should be kept separate from any gaming system.

And if you want a monster rendering system, you should cluster cheap PCs not have one single big expensive PC that could suffer an early MTBF problem.

 

[MentalAcetylide]

Your reason for building does not match the type of components chosen, if you were acquiring a rendering PC for commercial use then an off the shelf Dell or HP would do the job.

That 2019 Threadripper is SLOW by modern standards, ditto cores and efficiency by modern Intel standards. Its almost 2022,

Your list suggests ghetto gaming PC. and you would have been better off buying that from a local custom builder.

A rendering work PC should be kept separate from any gaming system.

And if you want a monster rendering system, you should cluster cheap PCs not have one single big expensive PC that could suffer an early MTBF problem.

Ghetto gaming PC compared to what exactly? Sure, its not the top best of the best for gaming ultra high FPS with every piece of hardware overclocked through the roof, but its very far from the worst. And wtf would I get a system from Hell or Hewlett-fudgePackert with all of their proprietary nonsense? Yeah, cluster cheap PCs so I can have a cluster**** mess. No thanks.
This isn't a commercial operation that I'm running here, its a hobby that I want to do while also being able to use the same system to game on when I'm not rendering.
Anyway, it sounds to me like you're stating uninformed opinion, thanks, but no thanks.

 

[Selaya]

I mean, as long as you are using the computer to do workstation tasks (eg rendering), you're good! Nothing wrong with (re-)using the same hardware for multiple purposes
If you however were exclusively using it for gaming, it'd have been questionable. As-is however, you're absolutely fine (as long as you're not chasing the maximum fps at 1080p).

 

[MentalAcetylide]

The best advice for any system, is to always keep it as simple as possible

The less parts (especially additional things like ARGB controllers, fan controllers and so on) - the easier

And if you can avoid custom proprietary connectors, even better.
Nothing worse than say buying say 10 fans, only to have one die out of warranty... and you cant buy a single fan to replace it with. Gotta replace all of them, or none of them with yet another new connector type.

Wiring spaghetti gets worse as you add them all together too, corsair (semi-custom*) and thermaltake (full custom) both need ARGB controller and fan controller boxes, which means two sata connectors, two USB motherboard headers, and a spaghetti mess of wiring.

*Corsair at least use standard 4 pin fan headers, and while the fans use custom RGB connectors to the RGB fan hub, that hub can connect to regular ARGB mobo/other controller with an adaptor cable

Well, some good news and some bad news... Bad news is that I'm unable to use the Thermaltake fans at all due to the controller issues they have with Ryzen motherboards, so we have to order different fans(four total), which means another 2 days. The good news is I won't have to eat the cost of those 10 fans + 2 controllers; especially since I told the builder well in advance of potential issues & possible fixes.

I mean, as long as you are using the computer to do workstation tasks (eg rendering), you're good! Nothing wrong with (re-)using the same hardware for multiple purposes
If you however were exclusively using it for gaming, it'd have been questionable. As-is however, you're absolutely fine (as long as you're not chasing the maximum fps at 1080p).

Oh I would never ever buy such a system strictly for gaming. That would be like buying an expensive unbalanced sledge hammer to drive tacks into a wall. The A6000 is for rendering only, and the 3090 is to help the A6000 speed through preview renders quicker and also for gaming. I would've went with a lesser 3000-series card but none of the models below a 3090 have enough VRAM to work as good without getting kicked out of the rendering process due to insufficient VRAM. The 128Gb RAM is needed for renders and will eventually be bumped up to 256Gb depending on if my rendering needs grow.
Being that I also wanted to game on the system, Ryzen was the better choice since the 24-core Threadripper has a higher single core clockspeed compared to the Intel counterparts that would support more than 128Gb system RAM. While I'm sure the Intel CPUs can be overclocked, I don't want to deal with overclocking.

Most of my gaming will be at 1440p resolution on a G-Sync monitor, and I probably won't have any need to use ultra-high settings in games. I should be ok with it.

 

[Selaya]

Actually, you should dial your settings all to the max if you have a 3090 and an A6000; lower settings will shift your bottleneck to the CPU and yours will be hit sooner than a MSDT's, and you have the GPU power anyways (should still be good for like 100+ fps so yeah xd)

 

[Mussels]

Actually, you should dial your settings all to the max if you have a 3090 and an A6000; lower settings will shift your bottleneck to the CPU and yours will be hit sooner than a MSDT's, and you have the GPU power anyways (should still be good for like 100+ fps so yeah xd)

That's not how bottlenecks work

 

[thesmokingman]

Your reason for building does not match the type of components chosen, if you were acquiring a rendering PC for commercial use then an off the shelf Dell or HP would do the job.

That 2019 Threadripper is SLOW by modern standards, ditto cores and efficiency by modern Intel standards. Its almost 2022,

Your list suggests ghetto gaming PC. and you would have been better off buying that from a local custom builder.

A rendering work PC should be kept separate from any gaming system.

And if you want a monster rendering system, you should cluster cheap PCs not have one single big expensive PC that could suffer an early MTBF problem.

Gibberish, what drugs are you?

 

[MentalAcetylide]

Finally! Tomorrow I'm going to pick it up from the shop. We replaced the Thermaltake fans with Coolermaster on the Ryujin 360mm radiator(3) & the front/back case fans(4), and left the default fans on the Kingpin. I don't know which fans exactly, but they're much simpler than the Thermaltake Quad Riing & don't have compatibility issues with Ryzen boards. Had to tag on an additional 2 days to get the new fans. With everything that needed to go into the case(Lian Li O11 Dynamic XL ROG Certified -Black), it ended up being a tight fit, though not so much that it restricts airflow or components are pressing up against each other. I also opted to leave out the RGB strip since there ended up not being any place to put it in the case without having the strip lights in plain view(which I don't want). We also got a lithium ion battery for the APC UPS, so it will at least be a bit lighter compared to a lead acid battery. It doesn't need to power the rig for hours, but just long enough to shut everything down.
Now if I can get it home & up two flights of stairs without any mishaps, I'll be a happy camper!

 

[AusWolf]

Finally! Tomorrow I'm going to pick it up from the shop. We replaced the Thermaltake fans with Coolermaster on the Ryujin 360mm radiator(3) & the front/back case fans(4), and left the default fans on the Kingpin. I don't know which fans exactly, but they're much simpler than the Thermaltake Quad Riing & don't have compatibility issues with Ryzen boards. Had to tag on an additional 2 days to get the new fans. With everything that needed to go into the case(Lian Li O11 Dynamic XL ROG Certified -Black), it ended up being a tight fit, though not so much that it restricts airflow or components are pressing up against each other. I also opted to leave out the RGB strip since there ended up not being any place to put it in the case without having the strip lights in plain view(which I don't want). We also got a lithium ion battery for the APC UPS, so it will at least be a bit lighter compared to a lead acid battery. It doesn't need to power the rig for hours, but just long enough to shut everything down.
Now if I can get it home & up two flights of stairs without any mishaps, I'll be a happy camper!

That took a while! Normally, I build and test PCs in 1-2 days, depending on how busy/tired I am.

Reading back the thread, I'm glad you're finally getting the machine.