New Gaming Rig Questions

  • Thread starter Jump_Ace
  • 6 comments
  • 1,328 views

Jump_Ace

Compare Yourself To The Best Of Your Own Abilities
Staff Emeritus
9,422
United States
Portland, OR
Jump_Ace
JUMPxACE
Hey guys!

So the wife and I have had some good fortunes with our small business during this epidemic, thanks to home schooling. The boss gave me permission to build a new gaming PC (yay!). It's been 10+ years since I've had a gaming PC.

While I've built many PCs and work in IT, I've never dabbled in liquid cooling. Here is my processor liquid cooling component. Here is the AIO video card (believe me, I didn't want the 2080S, but every 2070S is sold out - I even tried Alibuba, FFS lol, so I had to spend $250 more : /). Here is my processor.

1) Which way should I mount these in my case? I'm guessing with the fans pointed 'out' to draw heat away from my case? I think I saw a case on youtube where the fans were pointed in. So I just wanted some clarification on that.

2) Same question for the video card, point the fan out to pull the heat away?

3) Do liquid cooled processor components typically come with mounting hardware? I'm assuming yes..... And related to that, I did buy some arctic silver, will it be necessary?

4) Due to how my office is arranged, I had to buy a 20ft. HDMI cable to reach my 4K tv. Will that affect gameplay/framrate? I can move it closer and use a 6ft. cable (I think).

I also plan on having one inbound fan on the front and maybe one at the top/bottom depending, to pull air out of this case.

Thx in advance!

P.S. Modular power supplies FTFW :lol:

P.P.S. I also bought this USB switch so I can use my wheel between my console and PC with the press of a button. I hope it works!


Jerome
 
Last edited:
1) Which way should I mount these in my case? I'm guessing with the fans pointed 'out' to draw heat away from my case? I think I saw a case on youtube where the fans were pointed in. So I just wanted some clarification on that.

2) Same question for the video card, point the fan out to pull the heat away?
It's not really that important when you you are using liquid cooling for both of them, but rads acting as exhaust is generally preferred if only to keep ambient case temps down for stuff that's passively cooled (at the cost of slightly higher rad temps).

3) Do liquid cooled processor components typically come with mounting hardware? I'm assuming yes.....
Yes. If you had an AM4 processor it might have been a problem because even now there's stuff in sales channels that doesn't include adapter brackers for them, but Intel stuff? Shouldn't be a problem.

And related to that, I did buy some arctic silver, will it be necessary?
If the cold plate has thermal paste on it already when you open the packaging, yes, remove it and put new stuff on. AS5 isn't the big bad boy that it use to be, but it's still fine.

4) Due to how my office is arranged, I had to buy a 20ft. HDMI cable to reach my 4K tv. Will that affect gameplay/framrate? I can move it closer and use a 6ft. cable (I think).
As long as you got a quality cable it should be fine. 10 feet is generally the recommendation, but it's not a hard rule; and you won't really know until you test it yourself.



I also plan on having one inbound fan on the front and maybe one at the top/bottom depending, to pull air out of this case.
On a Meshify C when you have two rads I'd put the GPU rad on the back where there is currently a fan mounted (and move that fan to the front above the other one) and the 240 rad on the top.
 
Right on, thanks! Is there something you recommend that is better than Arctic Silver?


Jerome
 
If you're going for Intel, I'd wait for the 10600K or 10700K to release. The 9000 series isn't really worth it (because of the strange lack of multithreading for most CPUs and pricing), unless you're going all out and getting a 9900K. Otherwise, Ryzen would be a much better option.

Regarding the thermal paste, I'd personally just stick with the pre-applied paste that comes with your cooler. If you really want to apply your own paste though, the difference between most brands is negligible, so anything from a reputable brand should be fine.
 
I went with the Noctua NT-H2 thermal paste as the CPU cooler didn't have any pre-applied paste on it.

I don't want to wait for the next gen of stuff, having 8 cores is plenty. I'm just gonna play some emulation games, an Ocarina Of Time port and iracing. I am not into the whole RPG and FPS on pc, so framerates aren't super critical to me.

But the build went just fine, got 'er up and running easily. I decided to have the top case fans suck in cool air and have the liquid cooled cpu/gpu fans push the hot air out. My temps are 28C idle and about 31C during gameplay.


Jerome
 
4) Due to how my office is arranged, I had to buy a 20ft. HDMI cable to reach my 4K tv. Will that affect gameplay/framrate? I can move it closer and use a 6ft. cable (I think)
I run several long hdmi cables from my media equipment room throughout the house. Some are as long as 50ft running 4k@60hz. Amazon has lots of reputable hdmi cable retailers guaranteeing their cables.
 
Back