a reply to:
Vroomfondel
Well, as I mentioned, I saved some bucks by getting things during the holiday season, as well as making a few substitutions from the original specs.
Might be a good idea to re-spec it here for you:
M/B: ASUS RoG Strix B450-F Gaming
CPU: Ryzen 5 2600x (6-C 12-T)
RAM: Patriot PV432G320C6K, DDR4 2x16G 3200
SSD: (I was wrong, Adata instead of Samsung): XPG SX6000Pro 512 GB PCIe 3x NAND
RAID1: (2) Seagate 4TB SATA III 7200 ST4000DM004
Cooler: MasterCooler Hyper 212 Evo
PS: Rosewill Photon 750, Gold
As it turns out, I pretty much had to make a few deals to make this work. I still won't have my RAID5... no native support and just too expensive
otherwise, so I went with the RAID1 and bigger drives. But I got to upgrade my SSD form SATA III to PCIe, which should be a massive jump in
performance. I have an older video card (see below) that fixed that problem... I may need to upgrade later, but it should be plenty to get started
with. I was also able to include a card reader.
I got it together last night. I have a 1G PCIe x16 video card in the shop machine that is not being used that I still have to install... the onboard
graphics on that machine are plenty for what I use it for. I found my Win7 Ultimate disk, so now all I have to do is dig out a PS/2 mouse and keyboard
and I can test out the computer. I have several small WiFi adapters here that I can pick and choose from, since this time I am maybe 20 feet from the
router (shop uses the Signal King).
One thing that impressed me was the case... I could not find a full tower case! Despite my memory claiming otherwise, everything I had was micro ATX.
So I picked up a ThermalTake case, and I have to admit I am very pleasantly surprised! It uses a rearranged layout, with the PS at the bottom. The
built-in chassis fan sits right beside the CPU fan so I'll have a direct push-pull air tunnel through the heat sink. I saw that cooler drop temps in
my shop machine from toying in the 70s every time I pushed CPU usage to rarely reaching 50 degrees with 5 of 6 cores pegged at 100%, so needless to
say I am a big fan (pun intended). Of course, I still have the Wraith cooler in the box if needed.
And even more pleasantly surprising, the cover closes with that monster fan in it! Barely, but at least it closes. The shop machine case will not.
ASUS' layout was pretty good. Everything was easy to get to, except for the SATA ports. They used right-angle ports stacked in three sets of duals, so
that was a bit of a pain. Everything else was easy to get to though. I had some concerns based on reviews about the Seagate drives, but it seemed all
the bad reviews centered around somehow refurbished or not-for-resale drives had been shipped as new. I checked the serial numbers on both of mine at
the Seagate site before I installed them; both showed full warranty until February 2021. So I should be good there.
ASUS has really gone whole-hog with the RoG stuff... the M/B came with a damn library of "RoG" paraphernalia, right down to an RoG "Do Not Disturb"
hanger for a door knob! 200 years from now, when someone finds this machine rusted away in a back room of my place, they will still see the "RoG"
plainly splayed across every inch of the MoBo! I'm not going to tell them I bought it for number crunching and likely will never play a single
high-performance game on it... it would break their hearts!
Anyway, I'll try to remember to update when I get software loaded. I also got the new board installed in my big TV, so as soon as I get it moved
around again and tested, the little 54" should be free to act as my monitor again. I should have the office space this weekend, so it's looking like
I'm about done with this little project.
Fingers (toes, legs, eyes) crossed, anyway.
TheRedneck