I love boring builds, but I also love bombastic builds. The Corsair rabbit hole is one to beholden. That was, until I dove into Noctua. Corsair fans are great performers, with the black SP and AF looking great, the RGB ML's to satisfy rainbow vomit and performance... buuut at the cost of noise.
Anyhow, looking at the case I have been a huge fan of the Lian Li LANCOOL II. The design is simple and non intrusive with the 360mm radiator support I needed which limited my options quite a bit with ample fan room. When the LANCOOL III dropped, it gave me a huge reason to increase my cooling capacity by, A LOT and I finally got to upgrade from my Corsair H150i to the ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 420mm. With 3 140mm up front, 2 140mm up top, a 140mm on the back, and 3 120mm on the bottom. The pressure in this case is immense. Things are cool as a cucumber. There is not much else to say as it performs for it's anasuming looks and is not distracting at all sitting right next to me on the desk.
Looking at the peripherals, you would think some monitor prices are a headache, and they are. When you start looking for certain specifications the prices will jump. I was looking for
IPS Panel
1ms Response Time
DisplayHDR 400 Certifications
Good DeltaE's (dE)
Fairly black and simple design
4K 60hz for productivity
1440p 144hz for gaming
Panel tech has gotten better and good monitors are relatively cheap, but these were both bought in early 2021 and still performing great. Although, with the 4K monitor, finding a gaming ready monitor like that are still expensive and start out at $550.
The Keebs. Vengeance K95 (The old one) I was able to buy a used one that was proably shelved for many years. Good condition, but not the best. The media buttons' daughter boards were all taking a crap and did not function consistently whatsoever. A few of the LED's were dead as this is a common issue with Corsair sourced LED's and it's age. The original keycaps became extremely so I swapped in on some modern updated K70 keycaps from a K70 that met an unfortunate demise. Due the K70 not having that many macro keys I had to get some just blank generic cherry layout keys. The Numpad is literally the cheapest set I could find on amazon because those keycaps were also damaged when my K70 went kaput. The buttons are cool and I have a few things bound for certain Windows actions and programs. It's convenient, but I know I won't use them for intense gaming operations.
I have an imported JP layout K95 Platinum. These aren't sold in the states and I had to pay a pretty penny for it on top of it's MSRP because I bought it BNIB. It performs like any other Corsair keyboard, but allows me to use the proper ISO layout. I have a cheap wireless keyboard with JP ISO, but I could not game on it hence why I bought this one.
For the 60% it's a custom built by me. It features
KBDFans ALU 5 Degree
DZ60RGB-ANSI v2 PCB
ALU Plate
StupidFish Foam
Salvaged Cherry MX Speed Silver
Deskeys Key Films
Krytox GPL 205 G0
Corsair Onyx Keycaps (Standard Row)
I call it the K69 (nice) because of it's build style and key choices. The upgrades to the keys make a big difference. This thing is expectedly heavy, but in being so it can take some pretty good abuse when I play intensive Etterna on it.
Corsair Scimitar Elite because I need buttons for my buttons. The shape is overall good with no complaints. Not as aero as something like my Intellimouse Pro, but it gets the job done. The buttons feel good and I use these more often than I care to admit. If you have not gotten a bungie, get one.
I had a wired pair of the original G Pro's and those were great, but the cables got in the way (duh) so I plunged into the wireless territory with the updated G Pro X's. They were fine when new, but the battery life kept getting worse and worse and they fell out of warranty right when they just couldn't keep a charge whatsoever. The internal batteries were dead as can be. I was using long af wired cables and I am back at square one. It was a good purchase, but sucked they only lasted a few years. I bought a new pair hoping the defect won't happen again and it feels amazing to be able to use them for literally up to 20 hours at a time before needing charging. If I plug them in before I leave they are always there for me and never die even if I game for 16 hours when I have extended periods of time.
That pretty much covers everything that is featured on my desk. It's boring, but everything operates how I like it and will last years to come.
Here are some post results of stability testing I have done for my current overclock. I've already done the 20 loop Port Royal test, just wanted to share my results so re ran in the midst of the night.
I have been able to achieve 5.2 on the P cores and 4.0 on the E cores. I need to do a bit more tinkering as I want to shoot for 5.3 or attempt to keep the current speed and lower the AVX offset while pushing less voltage. As shown I pull a maximum of 1.385v with a pretty aggresive LLC. This is quite high and almost dipping into 1.4v. The temp spikes are really what are gonna be the death of me, but overall CPU temps will average out to 70 at most. This is fantastic as I never induct TJMAX. The 5.2 all core is rock solid the entire way through thanks to Intel's new Infinte Boost Timing. There isn't much to say. Just a power hungry chip.
Hopping over to the GPU, it is a ZOTAC RTX 3090 Trinity (Base Model) With more thanks to TechPowerUp's Database I have been able to download and flash a Trinity OC VBIOS. This actually conveniently enables Resizable BAR in the meanwhile while increasing a few limits. The GPU will pull as much power as the poor 6+2 can provide at a maximum of 390W. I know this card absolutely wants to pull more, but due to the binning I know it won't exceed out of the box OC model even if it had more power. May jump over to a 3x 6+2 pin 3090 for cost efficiency and power delivery reasons as the jump will only be so much more and I am happy with the current performance, or just make the big leap to an RTX 4090. In all honesty I'd rather wait until the 4090 is obtainable to be my last graphics card forever maybe (tm)
In MSI Afterburner. Maxed out Core, Power, Temp sliders at +100, 110%, and 91C respectively. +170mhz Core Clock and +160mhz Memory Clock. The card will top out at 1920, but over sustained loads will drop to 1900. I have been able to sucessfully run up to +190mhz Core in less intensive tests like FireStrike Extreme, with more success in even less non synthetic game work loads with lower utilization, but due to Port Royal's more intensive use of RT Cores it pushes the card better so I will be running only +170 for more stability.
GPU temperature topped out at 73.4C with a max Memory Junction of 80C. This isn't cool cool by any means, but given the amount of power this thing is pulling, it's wonderful this card isn't thermal throttling in the slightest. VRAM of 80C is hot, but not wicked hot compared to others especially considering the VRAM cooling design on this model specifically. I can maybe be finnicky the sliders to see if it will operatore on less power for hopefully 60C maximums across the board.
I might tackle my memory next, but I hate having to constantly reset BIOS for something like that as my motherboard / system with the current CPU overclock might not play well with an added memory overclock load.
I am overall happy with the results I have achieved.