System Build Time Suggestions From Experience

[cvaldes]

Sorry I did not reply earlier as I have been taking a break from this site while the operators have been trying to fix the site issues.

Anyhow, user maxfly and a few others are right. The physical build should have taken about 6-8 hours for an occassional builder. A technician working in a mom-and-pop PC store should be able to accomplish this is about 4-6 hours. Add another 4-6 hours to install an OS on a handy m.2/SSD and test out basic functionality.

I will point out that tardy delivery of the UPS and SSD should not have slowed down the builder from doing the initial hardware build and software testing. This should have been done within 48 hours.

In the future, you should look for a well-established (preferably around for decades) mom-and-pop PC shop that does a *LOT* of this building, not some sloppy hobbyist slacker. These mom-and-pop stores live and die from their customer service and will hire technicians who can get the job done efficiently and reliably (two things your particular builder doesn't seem to be very good at).

Anyhow, enjoy your build and hope your guy got it right.

 

[MentalAcetylide]

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.

"A while" would be the understatement of the year. What kind of annoys me is that despite all this time, it wasn't 100% exactly what I wanted due to either parts issues or just plain something screwy. However, despite this, it meets all of my specs in regards to RAM upgradeability & CPU/GPU horsepower. I'm going to have to bum rush installing World of Tanks so I can at least catch the tail end of the Christmas event, which runs until 12 Jan iirc. 2021 has been one hell of a year...

 

[cvaldes]

"A while" would be the understatement of the year. What kind of annoys me is that despite all this time, it wasn't 100% exactly what I wanted due to either parts issues or just plain something screwy.

Well, the year is only three days old. You have plenty of time to wait for other understatements.



I suggest you seek out alternatives for PC hardware assistance for future projects. The builder should have delivered 2-3 days after receiving the final critical component. There was zero justification to delay the build for the UPS.

 

[MentalAcetylide]

Sorry I did not reply earlier as I have been taking a break from this site while the operators have been trying to fix the site issues.

Anyhow, user maxfly and a few others are right. The physical build should have taken about 6-8 hours for an occassional builder. A technician working in a mom-and-pop PC store should be able to accomplish this is about 4-6 hours. Add another 4-6 hours to install an OS on a handy m.2/SSD and test out basic functionality.

I will point out that tardy delivery of the UPS and SSD should not have slowed down the builder from doing the initial hardware build and software testing. This should have been done within 48 hours.

In the future, you should look for a well-established (preferably around for decades) mom-and-pop PC shop that does a *LOT* of this building, not some sloppy hobbyist slacker. These mom-and-pop stores live and die from their customer service and will hire technicians who can get the job done efficiently and reliably (two things your particular builder doesn't seem to be very good at).

Anyhow, enjoy your build and hope your guy got it right.

I think he just has bad time management skills and is one of those builders that likes to do certain parts of the build in one shot(which can be a problem if you're trying to juggle too many jobs and running short on employees). I don't know what all he has on his plate, and I did delve into researching his establishment beforehand(which has been around for several years at least). All of the reviews for his business have been positive and nothing stood out as abnormal or raised any red flags. If a business owner has a habit of screwing their customers and/or messing up customers' hardware, I don't think you can hide something like that for such a long time, and like I said before, getting in touch with him is easy. So while it pissed me off that he kept kicking the can down the road, I don't think anyone else had the connections to get me the components that I wanted, which included a Lenovo branded A6000.

That's the problem. There aren't any well-established mom-and-pop PC shops in my area that do custom PC builds. All of them only do IT or PC repairs, and the ones that do build PCs only stick to certain parts due to whomever they're using as a supplier. I'm sure there are people in my area that can build custom systems, but none are well-established or do it as a business, and need you to handle ordering all of the parts.

Well, the year is only three days old. You have plenty of time to wait for other understatements.



I suggest you seek out alternatives for PC hardware assistance for future projects. The builder should have delivered 2-3 days after receiving the final critical component. There was zero justification to delay the build for the UPS.

I look at it this way: if I get the system home tomorrow, booted up, and everything working properly without any hardware failures, I'll be happy. I would rather have it late than never given the present condition of the market.

 

[AusWolf]

I think he just has bad time management skills and is one of those builders that likes to do certain parts of the build in one shot(which can be a problem if you're trying to juggle too many jobs and running short on employees). I don't know what all he has on his plate, and I did delve into researching his establishment beforehand(which has been around for several years at least). All of the reviews for his business have been positive and nothing stood out as abnormal or raised any red flags. If a business owner has a habit of screwing their customers and/or messing up customers' hardware, I don't think you can hide something like that for such a long time, and like I said before, getting in touch with him is easy. So while it pissed me off that he kept kicking the can down the road, I don't think anyone else had the connections to get me the components that I wanted, which included a Lenovo branded A6000.

That's the problem. There aren't any well-established mom-and-pop PC shops in my area that do custom PC builds. All of them only do IT or PC repairs, and the ones that do build PCs only stick to certain parts due to whomever they're using as a supplier. I'm sure there are people in my area that can build custom systems, but none are well-established or do it as a business, and need you to handle ordering all of the parts.

Ah, so it's a business! That makes it look even worse, as I'm not. I only build for friends and family (and for myself of course) as a hobby while also having a non-IT related full-time job.

 

[MentalAcetylide]

Ah, so it's a business! That makes it look even worse, as I'm not. I only build for friends and family (and for myself of course) as a hobby while also having a non-IT related full-time job.

Well I got the new system home and all put together without screwing anything up, and I'm on it right now typing this post. Still have a bug I need to squash. I'm downloading World of Tanks right now and the connection is only around 12.5 Mbps, and browser page loading in Firefox is a bit sluggish with the download, so I'll probably have him remote in and take a gander at it if it doesn't improve afterward.

I will say I can really feel the heat coming out of the top but the glass and the sides of the case feel cool and just "barely" warm around the sides on the top, which means the fans are doing their job. He did a 24-hr stress tesst on it and all of the temps were fine. The Kingpin display is showing between 45-54C temps for VRM 1 through 5 @ 122 watts without any other load on it while just driving the display. Surprisingly, the damn APC UPS unit was lighter than the case which probably weighed at least 65 lbs. If I had to guess, the UPS unit weighs around 40 lbs. Its a lithium ion battery that is capable of powering the whole system(monitor, speakers, & all case components). Pictures coming soon.
All I can say is that despite the silly wait time for completion, this thing is a work of art compared to anything I've had before.

Just finished downloading & patching World of Tanks, so going to take it for a spin after installing Aslain's Modpack.

Holy crap! I couldn't aim for squat in World of Tanks. The mouse sensitivity is just crazy! I'll have to try playing the training mode and gradually re-adjust the sensitivity down to more reasonable levels. Everything in regards to the graphics is set on ultra(by the game after detecting the system graphics) & getting around 140 FPS at 1440p resolution, so I'm thinking that might have a little to do with the sensitivity. Its buttery smooth, but way too sensitive.
This system is definitely going to take some getting use to; especially when it comes to typing on this keyboard.

FPS are all over the place from 300 to 120 at the start of the matches, but stabilize to around 150+ afterwards with wattage going to around 400 on the 3090 without much change in the temps. This is looking really good so far. I still have to download and install 500+ Gb worth of content for rendering. Checked speedtest.net and its reporting I'm getting 100 Mb/s downstream & 10 Mb/s upstream, so maybe its just the websites & game server.

 

[basco]

go to mouse settings - disable smoothing and put acceleration to number 6 and your dpi levels to the one ya like.

ok exactly its called in win10= pointer speed to 6
disable pointer speed precision
and dpi levels should be in your mouse software

 

[MentalAcetylide]

go to mouse settings - disable smoothing and put acceleration to number 6 and your dpi levels to the one ya like.

ok exactly its called in win10= pointer speed to 6
disable pointer speed precision
and dpi levels should be in your mouse software

The mouse speed & responsiveness is fine, its just that in the game it was still insanely high when using the same settings I had on the other system. I was able to get it to the way I prefer it by making adjustments in the game settings. The Corsair Harpoon has its own dpi settings switch on the mouse itself with around 5-6 different levels iirc with red being the lowest, so no need to mess with it in Windows.

 

[Mussels]

The mouse speed & responsiveness is fine, its just that in the game it was still insanely high when using the same settings I had on the other system. I was able to get it to the way I prefer it by making adjustments in the game settings. The Corsair Harpoon has its own dpi settings switch on the mouse itself with around 5-6 different levels iirc with red being the lowest, so no need to mess with it in Windows.

that would be related to in-game settings, mouse software, or the physical DPI buttons on the mouse
Two different mice will not behave the same out of the box

I always leave settings at default for the OS, change DPI to 1100 (works for me on my logitechs) and adjust in game from there. I dont like DPI switching as it breaks my muscle memory

 

[Vicious]

Entire build should take about a day to complete with OS installed. It usually takes me about 4 - 6 hrs to put together a build and then I take the rest of the day to install OS, drivers.. etc.

Even if he took his sweet time... it shouldn't be longer than 2 days and at that point everything should be flawless.

400W seems like that's nothing for KINGPIN 3090.. so I wouldn't worry about it. I've seen people with KINGPIN 3090s on forums mention GPU alone goes above 800W lol.

My STRIX 3080 without even overclocking.. just power limit slider maxed out and it goes above 460W+

 

[MentalAcetylide]

Entire build should take about a day to complete with OS installed. It usually takes me about 4 - 6 hrs to put together a build and then I take the rest of the day to install OS, drivers.. etc.

Even if he took his sweet time... it shouldn't be longer than 2 days and at that point everything should be flawless.

400W seems like that's nothing for KINGPIN 3090.. so I wouldn't worry about it. I've seen people with KINGPIN 3090s on forums mention GPU alone goes above 800W lol.

My STRIX 3080 without even overclocking.. just power limit slider maxed out and it goes above 460W+

They're probably overclocking the shit out of their Kingpin and have a spare or two lying around. I had mine set up so that there's no overclock. Given the cost & availability of these cards, I don't see the point in doing it.
Looking at the case & how everything fit, I would imagine it was a pain in the ass. Everything had to be arranged and fitted so components/cables weren't pressing up against other stuff. The Kingpin radiator lines barely fit between the top of the card and the interior side of the case due to how thick they are and that you can only bend those lines so much. The Ryujin 360 cpu cooler also barely fit in between both sets of RAM slots where it gets seated on the cpu.
Its going on 5 days now and no issues with temps, crashes, or errors. I only had one problem come up where I had to restart(ctrl+alt+del and selected Restart System) due to getting a black screen when World of Tanks was running, which was most likely due to the game itself since it didn't occur during actual gameplay. I couldn't get the task manager screen to show up to force close WoT. I think the WoT app just froze up and due to how Ryzen systems do not have any kind of integrated graphics, I had to just restart the system to get out of WoT & the black screen.
I'm also only using the studio drivers for both the Kingpin & Lenovo RTX A6000.
Overall, I'm very satisfied at this point.
Now I just have to get all of my directories properly set up for Daz Studio and hope I don't screw anything up. This is one of those 3D software suites that has absolutely NO instructions manual or documentation for using the various features. Its like trying to figure out for the first time how to set up a custom hardware RAID without any literature.

 

[cvaldes]

Now I just have to get all of my directories properly set up for Daz Studio and hope I don't screw anything up. This is one of those 3D software suites that has absolutely NO instructions manual or documentation for using the various features. Its like trying to figure out for the first time how to set up a custom hardware RAID without any literature.

Out of curiosity I visited the Daz Studio website and there was a link to Advanced Documentation at the bottom of the page. There appears to be a large amount of online user guides and reference guides. I looked at one briefly and one glaring shortcoming is the dearth of screenshots. Almost all of the instructions are text. Pity.

Oh well, I guess you get what you paid for.

 

[MentalAcetylide]

Out of curiosity I visited the Daz Studio website and there was a link to Advanced Documentation at the bottom of the page. There appears to be a large amount of online user guides and reference guides. I looked at one briefly and one glaring shortcoming is the dearth of screenshots. Almost all of the instructions are text. Pity.

Oh well, I guess you get what you paid for.

Yeah, Daz Studio is free software. Most of their income is probably generated from the product store, which is like 70% content for female characters and most of that being skimpy outfits. Its irritating because Daz publishing artists then only want to create that particular content since its the only thing that sells enough to make it worth their time. I think even a pair of high-heeled running shoes would sell like hotcakes there.
Yes, they have a lot of documentation, but none of it really goes in-depth enough or step-by-step, plus a lot of it is outdated.

I did manage to figure out just enough so that I was able to have all of my content installed on the storage drive. It took two tries to install Daz Studio itself because I think the Install Manager screwed up the order of component installation(i.e. different download rates) on the first try, so some stuff got installed while others didn't because this or that file was missing. I screwed around with the public file directory thinking I didn't have admin access to it due to one of the error messages in the log, but that wasn't it. So I tried it again and it worked. Took about an hour to download & install 400 Gb of content.

I loaded up a character and HDRI environment, and the A6000 rendered it to 100% within 3 seconds. On my laptop using the cpu, it would take about 30+ minutes so I'm definitely happy with that. Now I have to download & install my Renderosity content, which shouldn't be as bad since I only have about 50 Gb worth of stuff from them.

 

[cvaldes]

Well, I'm glad to hear you mostly solved your problems.

As far as I can tell, your experience with Daz Studio (a program I have never used) has nothing to do with your hardware or the competency/efficiency of the person who built your new computer. It really has to do with Daz Studio's operations/software QA which is a separate discussion.

I will point out that your trouble with Daz Studio manifested itself after you received your VERY tardy build.

This thread was about how long a hardware build like this should take and I stand by my original estimate of about 2-3 days after the last critical component arrived.

You let the builder drag this out way too long. I suggest you don't use this person in the future.

Best of luck.

 

[MentalAcetylide]

Well, I'm glad to hear you mostly solved your problems.

As far as I can tell, your experience with Daz Studio (a program I have never used) has nothing to do with your hardware or the competency/efficiency of the person who built your new computer. It really has to do with Daz Studio's operations/software QA which is a separate discussion.

I will point out that your trouble with Daz Studio manifested itself after you received your VERY tardy build.

This thread was about how long a hardware build like this should take and I stand by my original estimate of about 2-3 days after the last critical component arrived.

You let the builder drag this out way too long. I suggest you don't use this person in the future.

Best of luck.

Well I guess things worked out for the best. My biggest concern was that he was either lying or not telling me something, but when I went down to pick the system up, he must've had at least 30 different laptops, desktops, etc., either waiting for pickups or needing repairs. It ended up being a meticulous build due to the case alone. I probably should've went with a bigger case.
I think part of the problem was waiting on the different fans since they were one of the first things needed to be installed probably after the motherboard. I'm not too familiar with the build order of things, but looking at my system's interior and how everything is put together, I would imagine it certainly wasn't an easy build.