Building a PC + kitty tax
All the necessary parts came in for my open case pc (or so I thought). Since I am living in China I got all my stuff through taobao (chinese version of amazon). I mostly went for Chinese parts since I wanted to explore something new. I got 2 x 8GB of 3200Mhz RAM from ADATA and a 256GB colorful SSD. The double fan CPU cooler is from snowman. I found a second hand graphics card, the RX470D, for about 40 dollars (about 300 Chinese monies). Most likely I saved it from an old crypto mine :P I saw a Ryzen 2600 + ASUS prime B450M-A motherboard on sale for 155 dollars so I didn't bother exploring other brands. When I placed the order I thought I would get the AMD fan with it, but it turns out I was wrong :( I just got this shady package.
The case was pretty cheap but quite sturdy. There are two holes where you can place fans to cool the case. However, I am not convinced that will lead to any improvement. But popping in a fan will probably make it prettier :o)
The total price is about 340 dollars (or locally 2400 RMB). Which seems pretty ok to me.
The most irritating part to install was by far the snowman CPU cooler. It uses a weird click on system which requires applying a lot of force to hook it onto the motherboard's support plate. It actually came with a special support plate but that didn't fit my motherboard :( Anyway, after deforming the cooler's metal side plates a bit I got it on. Well can't complain about the price. It was about 10 dollars and the performance reviews I have seen so far are pretty positive. If that made you want to buy I just want to note that the new RGB-version performs worse than the plane version.
Putting the case together did require a bit of trial and error. I had to put and remove the motherboard several times before I got all the screws in for the case plates.
Unfortunately, I couldn't give it a test run. RX470D has a 6 pin and my powersupply is all 8 pin PCI-E. Searching for 8 to 6 pin PCI-E I got squat. However, 8 to 6+2 pin PCI-E gave plenty of positives. Alternatively, I could use 2x4 pin molex from the SATA power cable to power her but I am not too confident that is a good idea. I will go for the PCI-E option. So hopefully, can boot her up in a couple of days.
And finally some kitty tax:
That looks like a beast. Are you trying to start a world war? 😅
shh don't tell anyone
I've been considering an open air case. I have a computer I seem to frequntly use as a test bench and removing it from the case constantly. I like that design.
I think the retailer should also be on aliexpress but probably under a different name. Let me know if you are interested enough to buy it :o)
There is also a test bench version around the same price.
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looks very interesting! ;0