Hybrid Gaming/Workstation Build Advice

Edited by AwkwardAndNerdy - 24 Feb 2022 at 6:35am

The Velox has incredible airflow. The case is totally mesh in front, on top, and in back. The upside motherboard allows my EVGA FTW3 ULTRA RTX 3080's beautiful full card length LED display to shine beautifully compared to just looking at the metal backplate if the MB was right side up.

The Velox black interior coating along with the RGB lights on the case and AIO radiator fans glow and glimmer behind the lightly smoked glass sides.

I have my computer on my left side so I can stop and stare at the pretty innards and colorful lights and be mesmerized in minutes.

My Velox case is always cool to the touch unless I am running some AAA game on ULTRA settings and then the heat dissipates quickly via the fans and mesh openings. Never have any heat issues even when running all CPU cores 100% in a benchmark or having the RTX3080 run at 100% cranking out superb graphics.

It is a great case but be aware it is heavy. The shipping weight was 65 pounds as I recall. It reminds me of the equipment we had in our Boeing computer server center as regards build quality.

    

At the time I bought my AMD 5900X system the new i9 chips were not out. Matter of fact they became available at Digital Storm as my system completed its build and was headed my way.

Everything I read is that the new i9 chips are the better way to go and I would have got it instead but mine was on its way already.

I love my AMD 5900X system but as I said I would have chosen the newer i9 chips if I could have. It increases FPS especially on more CPU bound games. But with a good graphics cards like a RTX 3080 for example the difference doesn't seem to make much difference in actual game play.

Is anybody actually getting their systems with DDR5 yet? I knew the memory was delayed and I don't know if it is shipping with a system yet. I am not convinced that it is that big of a deal especially if you want your system now. I don't believe that motherboards can support both so it is a pretty big decision to pick the motherboard that matches your memory and realize that it will be what you live with from now on.

I would have got the i9-12900 instead of my 5900x.

The 5950x doesn't add almost anything in games but does add better performance in hard core graphic applications. I am just referring to the differences between the 5900 & 5950.

I believe the i9-12900 excels over both the 5900 & 5950 in most applications if not all. It does use more power from what I have read and perhaps runs hotter when heavily utilized.

I followed a Forum recommendation and am using a small super fast 500GB 980 PRO for OS & key daily played games. I use a 1 TB 970 EVO Plus for my main game library. There is a school of thought that a smaller basically isolated OS disk or at least Partition is a better way to handle OS in case of any SSD grief and quick virus scan etc. A few folks should chime it one way or the other on OS isolation.

Oh, I got a motherboard that had Bluetooth & Wi-Fi. The Bluetooth is great since I have a Microsoft wireless controller to play my racing simulation games like Forza Horizon 4 on my PC.

Unless you just want an extra beautiful system with the HydroLux I would be tempted to get a no maintenance AIO dual fan radiator CPU cooler. Sure would beat having to add fluid occasionally and discoloring that can occur. But as far as beauty nothing beats the Hydrolux cooler.

Well that is my 2 cents. Hopefully a few folks will give you some ideas especially since you plan to use your system for both CAD & Gaming.

Well over 30 years ago I used to install Computer Aided Design systems for McDonnell Douglas Architectual & Construction Company. This was back with Tektronix monitors and Calcomp plotters using Dec & Prime computers.

I installed a nice system for I.M. Pei the architect in NYC that designed the glass pyramid at the Louve in Paris. Long long time ago. I retired 8 years ago as a Systems Admin from Boeing.

I have been a Digital Storm customer for over 12 years and just upgraded a few months ago. My old system was an i7 920 OCed to 3Ghz with an original Titan GPU. Still works great. The only part that failed in 12 years was a fan. Not bad!

Digital Storm builds solid commercial grade systems!!!!!!!

     

    

Edited by Onkel_Ken - 25 Feb 2022 at 9:30am

MrCheetah appears to be right on all counts. Again.

The 10980XE is a major step backwards compared to either of the more modern chips.

The "OS Boost" is a complete waste of your money. It's a throwback to days long gone when tuning Win might help make a bit more RAM available when the system total was 2GB or less. With 16 GB or more, there's no issue at all.   

Originally posted by Enriquez45 Workstations tend to outclass gaming PCs, it is safe to say that any decent workstations will perform just as well as a top-notch gaming PC. However, this depends mainly on the GPU. If it features a high-end Quadro or RadeonPro graphics card, then it will keep up with a high-end gaming PC with ease.

In my experience, the RTX gaming cards are always faster at gaming when compared to the workstation cards. For example, this benchmark shows that the 3080 Ti is 14% faster than the Quadro A6000.

RTX 3080 Ti vs Quadro A6000

I haven't been keeping up with the workstation cards, but it looks like that's the fastest one right now. I think?

Anyway, the A6000 is no slouch. However, the 3080 Ti beats it by a decent margin.

I was sad when i looked at the 5950x Vs the old 10980 XE on this benchmark

https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ec9ef1_202538e29807401997a2221eac5acc9b~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_912,h_716,al_c,q_95/ec9ef1_202538e29807401997a2221eac5acc9b~mv2.webp

That some thing from intel could be on 14nm and more or less be on the same page as something from amd. Yes it has 2 less cores but i was expecting something way more.