UltraMega

Just a note, any feedback about this contest is appreciated. We may do more of there. How did you guys enjoy it? How do you feel about the prizes? We could do more elaborate prizes, or more frequent contests. Any suggestions towards future contests, or if anyone wants to get involved in hosting, feel free to voice your opinions!

Whenever I enter this thread, I feel like I can smell the american chopper fumes.

This case? Terra — Fractal Design (fractal-design.com) After looking at this review: Fractal Terra Mini-ITX Case Review: Build Quality, Thermals, Acoustics, & Cable Management - YouTube I'm not sure you will enjoy this setup. I think it would do well with a mid rang build, but some design flaws will make it much louder if the GPU/CPU fans ramp up. With a 5800X3D and a 7900XTX, you are likely to run into those issues. If you still want to do this with this case, I think there is really only one option for an air cooler: Noctua NH-L9x65, Premium Low-Profile CPU Cooler (65mm, Brown) - Newegg.com Seems like it would be a tight fit, but I suppose you could get a smaller/lower clearance fan if you had to. You would probably also want to run your GPU on quiet mode in the driver settings. I have my GPU set to quiet mode myself, that's definitely not a bad option. When I worked for Digital Storm, I had to assemble the Bolt 2 builds. They were ridiculous, we just stuffed cables in there and they had some custom corsair H100 coolers that had shorter tubes so they could fit. I don't think it would be hard to manually shorten the tubes on a similar cooler to get it to fit in a small case if you really wanted to.

Soo... KInda ironic that not long after I made this thread to talk about my fish tank, it all fell apart. My tank sprung a leak. It happened at about 8AM, I was still in bed but my gf was awake. She heard a sudden stream of water and when she went to check, she saw that my aquarium was pouring out water from the side like a faucet. She came and woke me up and I immediately sprung to action. About 3-5 gallons of water got out onto the floor. Luckily not carpet. The tank was leaking from the side where the silicon seal between the glass panels had failed. Normally, if an aquarium does leak it starts as a slow drip leak, but not in this case. I think because my tank is so tall, when it failed it failed hard as the glass panels had more room to bow out and separate from each other. Long story short, I had to drain the tank right away, while holding the side and putting pressure on the glass to slow the leak. I have a spare 10 gallon tank that was empty just sitting in my backyard so I took that and shoved all my plants and fish in there for now. We threw all the towels we have on the floor to clean up the water, and it was just enough to keep it from becoming a true disaster. I got my tank used. I used to have a neighbor that worked at an aquarium shop, and a customer donated an old tank to him that he then gave to me because it was similar to a tank I already had at the time, only larger. The tank was probably at least ten years old already when I got it, and that was almost ten years ago. It's possible it's actually much older. I had never thought about an aquarium wearing out before but after learning about it, my tank was primed to fail. large, tall tanks that are over ten years old are the worst offenders as far as leaking, and my tank checked all those boxes. I had thought it was a 40 gallon, but after looking into this, turn out it's a 47 gallon. I tried to repair my tank by stripping out the silicon from the inside and replacing it with new silicon, but it didn't hold. It actually leaked in a different spot after the attempted repair, so I did fix the original leak but the silicon cracked on a different side. I figure I would need to completely redo it, take the glass panels apart and redo the silicon not just inside the tank but also between the panels to really repair it, which would be a ton of work. So, at this point I started thinking about replacing the tank. I could get a different sized tank but it wouldn't fit on the stand I have, and the glass lid I have with the LED panel I have would all probably need to be replaced, so if I did get a different tank I would also have to replace a lot of other things. The problem is, my tank is a rare size that, as far as I can tell, is only really sold on the east coast (I live in California). Eventually, I went to an aquarium store that can do custom tanks, and I was able to place an order for a tank of the same shape and size as the one I had. I have to wait 3 weeks for delivery, but the cost wasn't too bad all things considered. Way cheaper than getting a new tank + stand. Now I'm just waiting for the new tank to arrive at the shop, and then I'll be setting it up again. Tank before leak: Temp 10 gallon with everything stuffed in it: What the leak was like:

Makes sense, but you don't need a big cooler for the 7800X3D.

My top 3 picks: 1 - Fluxmaven: Top tier CPU, great color coordination on the parts, 7900GRE edges out the 7800 XT. 2 - Slaughtahouse: Most powerful GPU of any entry, probably the best 4K specs here. (even though the GPU has more ram than the system does, lol) 3 - Damric: Another great build as far as color coordination, only slightly edged out by Fluxmaven's similarly themed build specs. Honorable mention: schuck6566: Probably overkill on the CPU for a gaming PC but almost picked it anyway. This would be the best workstation-gaming combo build. I really liked all of your builds. It really was hard to narrow it down.

I think this is everything. Let me know if I missed anyone.

Thanks to everyone who participated. The contest is now closed, and the voting will begin! Anyone can vote, whether or not they submitted a build. The player with the most points wins. Please vote for your top 3 builds. The first pick will be worth 3 points, second pick worth 2 points, third pick worth 1 point. Some players submitted more than one build which is fine, but you may only vote for one build from each player so please choose 3 builds from 3 different players. Voting will be open for until next Monday the 22nd, and the winner will receive their prize! Below I have gathered all the submitted builds. For this first contest which serves somewhat as a trial, I'm not going to be too strict about screenshots or verifying sales, maybe next time we'll standardize the format a bit better. As the host of the contest, I have omitted my own build submission. Good luck to everyone who participated and thanks again for playing!

Just a reminder, today is the last day of the contest.

Stupid catchy

I'm going to extend the duration of this contest for one week. My 50 gallon aquarium sprung a leak. Wasn't a slow leak either, gallons of water ended up on the floor. Had to take the whole thing down, strip the silicon out and put new silicon in. It's a huge ordeal, I have to deal with it as soon as possible so I can get all my plants replanted before they start to die off. I have a spare 10 gallon tank so my fish and plants are all stuffed in there for now. I also have to help my gfs mom move over the next few days, so I just won't have time to organize the voting process. Been a really crazy few days for me! So the contest will be open until next Monday, the 15th.

After the week is up, so Tuesday.

I think that had to be an error. I think if you had actually bought it at that price, the order would have been canceled. I've messed with the Amazon selling process a bit, it would be easy to make an error like that. It definitely was a good find at the time tho. But on that note, if anyone does submit a build with a price that seems too good to be true, it will have to be verified more throughly.

https://www.guru3d.com/story/intel-arc-battlemage-xe2-gpus-with-448-eus-56-xe-cores-spotted/ Glad Intel. Hasn't given up on this. Hopefully they start gaining traction sooner than later.

If there was a legit sale at the time you put your build together, that is fair and will still be valid even if the sale ends before the competition does. Just make sure you can show proof via screenshots. And yea, no peripherals, no OS. Just the PC.

Hugely useful for AI applications, but seems unlikely to ever become a factor for gaming GPUs. Though maybe with GPU life cycles getting longer and longer, it could happen for gaming GPUs someday.

I love how you guys are getting so close to the budget. $1499.01, using every available dollar.

I started my build with a 2TB NVME. I also had 4000mhz DDR4 ram, but both had to be sacrificed to get the 4080 Super to fit in the budget. I also had to go with a lower end mobo than I wanted to, but still managed to get one with 2x m.2 slots, so in theory it would be very easy to add more storage. For an NVME, personally I wouldn't go any lower than 1TB because drives smaller than that are often also slower. I actually only have a 1TB NVME in my IRL gaming rig. I don't think it's all that necessary since there are so few games that even support direct storage on PC right now, and those games still work well on standard SATA SSDs. I put the games that I play most often and any games that actually use direct storage on my NVME, then I have a 2TB SATA SSD for my other games.

I guess it's not just me then, same issue.

All good stuff! Having some serious variations among builds here is great, seeing all the different options and preferences people have is exactly what this is all about. Winner will be decided by votes, so any style can win, it's not just who can put the best CPU and GPU. Kinda interesting thst no one has gone with Intel so far.

Your build would definitely have a solid look to it. I was determined to go for a 4080 Super. Sacrifices had to be made, but here's what I got: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/VXxhQP CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D 3 GHz 8-Core Processor ($192.98 @ Amazon) CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS9X Performa ARGB 61.36 CFM CPU Cooler ($19.98 @ Amazon) Motherboard: Gigabyte B550M K Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($89.99 @ Amazon) Memory: PNY XLR8 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory ($56.99 @ Walmart) Storage: Kingston NV2 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($57.77 @ Amazon) Video Card: PNY VERTO OC GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER 16 GB Video Card ($959.99 @ Amazon) Power Supply: Thermaltake Smart BX1 750 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($74.98 @ Newegg Sellers) Total: $1452.68 Then for the case which was not on PCPartPicker for some reason, I went with a RAIDMAX Vector V100 - $44.99 RAIDMAX Vector V100 Gaming Case with 4 Pre-Installed Rainbow Fans, ATX Mid Tower Case, Gaming PC (Black) - Newegg.com Grand Total: 1,497.67 I had to cheap out on pretty much everything to get a 4080 Super and a 5700X3D in there. The motherboard does have 2x m.2 slots. The SSD is over 3000mb/s. Standard black color scheme with black glass panel case, good airflow design.

That would have been one hell of a sale. Seems like it was probably a listing error.

Just want to make sure everyone is on equal footing. Microcenter deals would be pretty advantageous.

Hellbalde 2 is nothing short of the most high quality cinematic experience I've ever seen in a game. The game itself is short and simple, but it's an absolute masterpiece as a work of art. As someone who likes to see cutting edge tech in games, I really enjoyed it. I also thought they did a really great job conveying the sense that Senua is just a person, not a super hero. The combat is even more simple than the first game, but it's extremely visceral. It does an extremely good job at conveying the sense that Senua is weaker than her opponents, a frail woman whom perservers through shear grit alone. I loved it. 10/10.