The Gamers Arms

I had a good year last year and a healthy bonus as a result, so decided rather than my usual habit of chucking it at my pension or into my savings that I would replace my old rig. It was still perfectly serviceable, but was struggling more and more to play modern titles and I had had it a while, so specced up a new one:

Intel Core i7 13700K Raptor Lake-S CPU
GeForce RTX 4080 16GB Graphics Card
Lite-On eBAU108 External DVD Writer Optical Drive
ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero Intel Motherboard
Samsung 980 PRO 1TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe SSD
Corsair 5000D Airflow Gaming Case - White
Corsair iCUE H150i RGB ELITE 360mm All-in-One Liquid CPU Cooler
Corsair HX1200 1200W Modular 80+ Platinum PSU
Microsoft Windows 11 Home Advanced
Kingston FURY Beast 32GB (2x 16GB) 6000MHz DDR5

I have had great service from Chillblast, so went with them again for the build. Not cheap I must say, but with the amount of time I spend sat in front of it I figured future-proof it as best I could. I was going to go with an i9 but was talked down from that, initially by El Gaucho but then by seeing the running temperatures of them. Didn't actually save money as I went for a nicer mobo instead.

It was delivered last week. I had a minor hassle installing my old 2Tb HDD as the ludicously huge PSU meant the drive cages were lodged behind part of the case, but a call to Chillblast and their talking me through some minor chassis mechanics and I was able to get it up and running. Popped my old 1Tb M2 drive in it as well as another I snagged in an Amazon sale, so now sat on 6Tb storage which should see me right.

Pics!

















I don't usually go in for RGB nonsense but it was included with the components, and actually I have to say it does look lovely all lit up, and gives me nice evening mood lighting when I am gaming after dark.

I couldn't be happier with the new rig. The performance is off the charts, such a difference and much more than I expected to be honest.

Also as splooging silly money on a new PC, then more on an extra M2 drive, clearly wasn't enough, I cashed in £175 of vouchers I had been sat on at work for ages, added some of my own cash, and bought a new wheel and pedals to see if I can get closer to Raid in our joint F1 2022 season (Logitech G923, I sadly wasn't willing to shell out for a direct drive Fanatec system).

That's a seriously heavyweight rig mate. Enjoy!

That looks so sleek inside. Very nice mate.

Nice! Make sure that 16pin cable is properly seated in the gpu

Phwoar!

One question though about this bit: "Lite-On eBAU108 External DVD Writer Optical Drive".

…why?!

That's a thing of beauty.

What was your previous rig? Just curious for the sake of comparison.

Drarok wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 27, 2023 12:56 pm

Phwoar!

One question though about this bit: "Lite-On eBAU108 External DVD Writer Optical Drive".

…why?!

When I ordered it I misread it - I still like to have the option to drop CDs onto my PC (I tend to buy a lot of CDs as the kind of bands I like don't make a lot, so helps them out). External is fine though, will do the same and maintain a sleeker look.

ManBearSquid wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 27, 2023 5:46 pm

That's a thing of beauty.

What was your previous rig? Just curious for the sake of comparison.

A much older i7 CPU with 32Gb of DDR3 RAM, and a RTX2080. I had not anticipated how much of an upgrade this was, the output is just spectacular.

A worthy upgrade to be sure. How are you finding the temps coupled with the 4080?

I haven't been monitoring them tbh Dave. I will fire up the Armoury Crate software and let you know how it performs under load.

Funnily enough I built a very similarly specced PC last month! The only major difference is that I went for a 12700k rather than a 13th gen CPU because I wanted to air cool it and wasn’t sure that would be sufficient for the 13th gen temps. Performance is still incredible, getting 60+ fps in Cyberpunk with full ray tracing and DLSS3 turned off (1440p) and a locked 144fps with it turned on. Flight Sim is similarly glorious and speedy, even across three 1440p monitors. The leap from my 2070 max q laptop is staggering.

Temps are surprisingly low too, even with the 4080. The CPU idles at 30c and goes up to about 50c under stress, while the GPU maxes out at around 70c, which is a lot lower than I’d expected.

Wrathbone wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 29, 2023 12:11 pm

Temps are surprisingly low too, even with the 4080. The CPU idles at 30c and goes up to about 50c under stress, while the GPU maxes out at around 70c, which is a lot lower than I’d expected.

Very similar to what I was seeing yesterday