BADCAP
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 22, 2025
- Messages
- 1 (0.50/day)
- Location
- wheel group
Hello everyone!
I'm a (very) long time visitor of TPU, though a relatively more recent lurker on the forums. In a past life I was a computer repair technician, electronics store clerk, and systems integrator (fancy talk for "I built custom computers"); I've been doing this for a while, and mostly from the hardware side of things.
I've wanted to share this shared hobby with others (gasp) on here for a while now, and figured there was no better introduction than just diving right in with (an admittedly simple) project.
On the bench today is a simple case swap: I recently built a new machine, and as I normally do, retired the old one to backup spare duty. Being a tinkerer and struggling (re: consistently failing) with ever being satisfied with any of my machines, I wanted to spruce things up a bit with my old workstation and make changes that might bring me closer to ever elusive contentment. My primary motivation was how well my new build came out and wanting to carry over some of the design elements to my spare.
Enter the only mostly retired workstation:
Gigabyte B550 Vision D (I'd have preferred Big D Visions)
Infineon hardware TPM
5900X with U12S
32GB 3200MT 14-14-14-34 Samsung B-Die G.Skill kit (not tuned or overclocked, chosen for intersection of stability and performance)
AsRock 6900XT Formula OC, blowout-free edition (repadded and given the Laird TPCM7000 treatment)
Corsair RM850X
WD Black SN850 1TB OS, SN770 2TB extended steam library, x2 Sandisk Ultra TLC 1TB 2.5" SATA windows storage space mirror
WH16NS40 BD-RW and stupid fast DVD-RW pulled from an old HP (imo old optical drives are waaaay faster, assuming they still work and their lenses are clean)
Fractal R5 (despite my griping, this is a good case, though just for a different use case than I was using it - great for something like a SOHO server, or quiet workstation with storage requirements)
x6 NF-A14 InductrialPPC-2000 PWM fans (not pictured: one mounted to side panel as intake, with dust filter)
I come from an era where cable management means you keep the cables from obstructing fan blades and they're routed for ease of access, case windows are for those willing to break out metalworking tools (and light it up with cold cathodes), bad fans were ones that had failed bearings or couldn't push air through a packed case, good fans were repurposed from the server world, and watercooling was only practiced by madmen with pond pumps and custom machined coldplates (unless you were loaded and bought a koolance rig). Subsequently, this build had none of those things. It was designed (kludged together poorly) with a somewhat dated perspective- it was the first machine I'd built in a number of years after having stepped away from the hobby for health and financial reasons. This was also a pandemic special, so it was done piecemeal and went through many iterations before settling on this configuration maybe a year ago. It was functional and performant, though always felt incomplete, even if composed of high quality parts.
Anyway.
I was predominantly bothered by three design issues with this machine:
1) Potential for damage to the GPU because it is gigantic, heavy, and mechanically connected at a right angle to the motherboard via the relatively fragile PCIe finger/socket. GPU sag causing issues down the road was in the back of my mind, though considering that this particular card is fully encased in metal (and the shroud/backplate assembly is screwed to its I/O shield) it probably wouldn't ever be an issue, though more likely just to damage the PCIe connector. Case flex, which caused motherboard backplane torsion, was also a contributing concern- this was a problem when I still had the drive cages in the front and only got worse after I removed them. Remember old server chassis with solid motherboard backplanes and crossbar supports? If only...
2) Thermals were acceptable, though they could have been better. Some areas of the motherboard, particularly under the graphics card and around the PCIe x16 slot were getting uncomfortably hot for me (50C after extended heavy whole system loads). Refer to my username and the 10 degree rule for capacitors to get an idea why I'd care. Also, my cable management could be better. A lot better. Existent would be a good start.
3) Difficult to transport. I really didn't feel comfortable transporting it without removing the GPU and CPU heatsink, especially considering their weight and their 90-degree orientation to the plane of the motherboard making for an excellent lever. I skipped on a LAN party and a vacation partially because of this and being spectacularly lazy and averse to effort (like how water is averse to traveling uphill). Seriously.
On my new build I mostly remedied most of these concerns by:
1)Vertically mounting the GPU. Mechanically decoupling the card from motherboard helps me sleep better at night. It also improved thermals compared to normally mounting it.
2)Using an AIO (barf). The pump/block on a simple AIO (meaning without a screen or other fancy bling) is certainly lighter and shorter than a large tower cooler, like the U12S.
3)A case with better cross-support, which these days means a PSU shroud and a motherboard tray that spans the full width of the chassis.
... which sets the stage for this case swap.
First part to arrive was the vertical mount, which I recently picked up on a deep discount. It's a discontinued phanteks model, though I'm fairly sure it should fit in the Antec P20CE I ordered since it looks suspiciously similar to the interior of the Phanteks P600S that the mount is compatible with. I suspect the two cases have shared tooling...
Assembled... I really like the design of this mount with the adjustable retaining clamp.
However, I don't like the thin PCB supported by two standoffs when 1.2kg of graphics card is going to be sitting on top of it...
...which is why EVA foam exists.
Much better. The area to the right looks like it isn't making contact, though that's just a shadow cast from an unintentionally beveled cut.
The fans on this particular card protrude from the shroud, making further adjustments to the foam pads on the clamp assembly necessary- you can see cuts at the edges of the pads I made to give the fans clearance. That was pretty much the best position for the clamp- any other would either have been directly over a fan, obstructed the 8 pin PCIe power connectors, or would have required modifying the base of the mount to extend the channels that the clamp screwed to.
Big heavy large huge 6900XTXH XXX supermassive chungus edition, a certifiable unit:
More posts to follow.
I'm a (very) long time visitor of TPU, though a relatively more recent lurker on the forums. In a past life I was a computer repair technician, electronics store clerk, and systems integrator (fancy talk for "I built custom computers"); I've been doing this for a while, and mostly from the hardware side of things.
I've wanted to share this shared hobby with others (gasp) on here for a while now, and figured there was no better introduction than just diving right in with (an admittedly simple) project.
On the bench today is a simple case swap: I recently built a new machine, and as I normally do, retired the old one to backup spare duty. Being a tinkerer and struggling (re: consistently failing) with ever being satisfied with any of my machines, I wanted to spruce things up a bit with my old workstation and make changes that might bring me closer to ever elusive contentment. My primary motivation was how well my new build came out and wanting to carry over some of the design elements to my spare.
Enter the only mostly retired workstation:
Gigabyte B550 Vision D (I'd have preferred Big D Visions)
Infineon hardware TPM
5900X with U12S
32GB 3200MT 14-14-14-34 Samsung B-Die G.Skill kit (not tuned or overclocked, chosen for intersection of stability and performance)
AsRock 6900XT Formula OC, blowout-free edition (repadded and given the Laird TPCM7000 treatment)
Corsair RM850X
WD Black SN850 1TB OS, SN770 2TB extended steam library, x2 Sandisk Ultra TLC 1TB 2.5" SATA windows storage space mirror
WH16NS40 BD-RW and stupid fast DVD-RW pulled from an old HP (imo old optical drives are waaaay faster, assuming they still work and their lenses are clean)
Fractal R5 (despite my griping, this is a good case, though just for a different use case than I was using it - great for something like a SOHO server, or quiet workstation with storage requirements)
x6 NF-A14 InductrialPPC-2000 PWM fans (not pictured: one mounted to side panel as intake, with dust filter)
I come from an era where cable management means you keep the cables from obstructing fan blades and they're routed for ease of access, case windows are for those willing to break out metalworking tools (and light it up with cold cathodes), bad fans were ones that had failed bearings or couldn't push air through a packed case, good fans were repurposed from the server world, and watercooling was only practiced by madmen with pond pumps and custom machined coldplates (unless you were loaded and bought a koolance rig). Subsequently, this build had none of those things. It was designed (kludged together poorly) with a somewhat dated perspective- it was the first machine I'd built in a number of years after having stepped away from the hobby for health and financial reasons. This was also a pandemic special, so it was done piecemeal and went through many iterations before settling on this configuration maybe a year ago. It was functional and performant, though always felt incomplete, even if composed of high quality parts.
Anyway.
I was predominantly bothered by three design issues with this machine:
1) Potential for damage to the GPU because it is gigantic, heavy, and mechanically connected at a right angle to the motherboard via the relatively fragile PCIe finger/socket. GPU sag causing issues down the road was in the back of my mind, though considering that this particular card is fully encased in metal (and the shroud/backplate assembly is screwed to its I/O shield) it probably wouldn't ever be an issue, though more likely just to damage the PCIe connector. Case flex, which caused motherboard backplane torsion, was also a contributing concern- this was a problem when I still had the drive cages in the front and only got worse after I removed them. Remember old server chassis with solid motherboard backplanes and crossbar supports? If only...
2) Thermals were acceptable, though they could have been better. Some areas of the motherboard, particularly under the graphics card and around the PCIe x16 slot were getting uncomfortably hot for me (50C after extended heavy whole system loads). Refer to my username and the 10 degree rule for capacitors to get an idea why I'd care. Also, my cable management could be better. A lot better. Existent would be a good start.
3) Difficult to transport. I really didn't feel comfortable transporting it without removing the GPU and CPU heatsink, especially considering their weight and their 90-degree orientation to the plane of the motherboard making for an excellent lever. I skipped on a LAN party and a vacation partially because of this and being spectacularly lazy and averse to effort (like how water is averse to traveling uphill). Seriously.
On my new build I mostly remedied most of these concerns by:
1)Vertically mounting the GPU. Mechanically decoupling the card from motherboard helps me sleep better at night. It also improved thermals compared to normally mounting it.
2)Using an AIO (barf). The pump/block on a simple AIO (meaning without a screen or other fancy bling) is certainly lighter and shorter than a large tower cooler, like the U12S.
3)A case with better cross-support, which these days means a PSU shroud and a motherboard tray that spans the full width of the chassis.
... which sets the stage for this case swap.
First part to arrive was the vertical mount, which I recently picked up on a deep discount. It's a discontinued phanteks model, though I'm fairly sure it should fit in the Antec P20CE I ordered since it looks suspiciously similar to the interior of the Phanteks P600S that the mount is compatible with. I suspect the two cases have shared tooling...
Assembled... I really like the design of this mount with the adjustable retaining clamp.
However, I don't like the thin PCB supported by two standoffs when 1.2kg of graphics card is going to be sitting on top of it...
...which is why EVA foam exists.
Much better. The area to the right looks like it isn't making contact, though that's just a shadow cast from an unintentionally beveled cut.
The fans on this particular card protrude from the shroud, making further adjustments to the foam pads on the clamp assembly necessary- you can see cuts at the edges of the pads I made to give the fans clearance. That was pretty much the best position for the clamp- any other would either have been directly over a fan, obstructed the 8 pin PCIe power connectors, or would have required modifying the base of the mount to extend the channels that the clamp screwed to.
Big heavy large huge 6900XTXH XXX supermassive chungus edition, a certifiable unit:
More posts to follow.