Yeah, I've been watching their videos for a while. Interesting you like the P400s. I had the P600s near the top of my list for a while with the Be Quiets. Mostly for the additional noise reduction. I like a couple of other cases in their line, from what I recall, too, although they start get pricey for a case.
Cool. Let me know when you get to your purchase phase...because of my OCD, I did a DEEP dive on learning how to optimize setups, so I am happy to share what I picked up. There is a bunch of misinformation / bad advice out there.
My old rig was in a Fractal R4. It was solid, no frills, metal case with foam dampening. While the temps were never bad, I could definitely hear the fans running. So with my new rig, I followed the new advice with a mesh case for improved air flow. I went with a beQuiet 500dx. I don't hear a thing out of that even though it's much more open air. Follow the advice from Gamers Nexus. They test everything thoroughly. I also went with their advice on the heatsink with a Scythe Fuma 2.
On major purchases, I tend to research things for months or years. It drives people around me nuts because they always think "didn't you tell me about this 2 years ago?" Yes, yes I did... and I'm still looking and researching. Nice. Yeah, like I said before, I love the Be Quiet line. Phanteks and BeQuiet are at the top of my list atm. Haven't even thought about the heatsink yet. I see they're the size of a small PC nowadays. lol. Any of you guys consider water cooling/AIO? I would rather stay away from that, tbh. I'm also not going to be doing much in the way of overclocking.
AIO/water cooled can be very clean and aesthetically pleasing with how it attaches to the CPU and any LEDs if that's your thing. You need to make sure there's space at the top of the case for the fans. Aftermarket heatsinks are humongous nowadays. Case width can be tight. I watched videos from Gamers Nexus and Linus Tech Tips that didn't find much difference in cooling between the two types, and I didn't want to mess with any water in my rig so I went with the traditional metal finned heatsink.
Fractal Design Meshify 2 with the solid panel is pretty great. I have the XL and it is solid. The regular cools even better (with stock fans) but fits less stuff. Looks just like a black box. Top mounted AIO is how I am going. You get built in top exhaust fans pushing all the CPU heat directly out of the box instead of heating up your interior to make your case fans deal with it. Tie all your fans to the cases PWM plug and the computer will be very quiet.
I'm still using a old case I modded - just a Cooler Master HAF 932... But I gutted the original 200mm side fan for 4x140mm side fans. Then in the front removed all the 5.25 drives and added fans using L brackets I made. the fans have no obstructions for air, and being that these fans all have high stratic pressure I put on decent dust filters. The other fans are strategicly placed (intake/exhaust and vent on top still for heat etc etc) , but anyway... The custom intake fans on the front basically make it where the cpu fan doesn't need to turn on until the system is in real use because of how much air is being pushed across the cpu/mobo, all with tight cable management. This silly setup has allowed me to keep a 3080 ti maxed mining around 70-80c vram temp (core is low 50s) . Most people run there vram in the 90s... I prefer to keep it low, but basically this setup keeps the entire system well below the norm only on air. I'm not against water cooling it's just that I'll leave this system going for a month at a time sometimes. And don't feel like dealing with extra risks (although probably not much risk any more other than a pump/rare leak). Anyway the fans can also run fairly low and still keep the system cool when not doing crazy bench/mining but I typically ramp most of them up. I mean at one point I was actually running my 3080 ti, a 3070 and a 1080 in this case. And it was still doing really good for air. I also made a lot better set of IO panel cables basically for cable management.
On a sidenote, one of the biggest things I've noticed since really getting into researching PC equipment again a few months ago and figuring out the landscape again is the hatred towards Newegg. I used to buy 95% of my stuff from there. If I needed something, that'd be the place I'd look first. The only exception may have been when MicroCenter had a great deal for CPUs like they used to always have or the odd item I'd get off Amazon or Best Buy (if I needed something quickly). But holy crap, just reading Reddit, various tech forums I've been on for years, and watching YouTube horror stories like from Gamers Nexus and JayzTwoCents about dealing with Newegg and seemingly questionable practices makes me wonder. I stopped shopping at Fry's for similar reasons long before they went downhill and died a slow death.
where should we buy from then? i was using pcpartpicker choosing components, majority of the place to buy the part was a link to newegg... i've had a few custom PC's over the years and i've always used it. what happened?
This hurt their brand more since it was someone with a bigger platform, I have heard of this stuff happening but never had it personally happen to me, of course Newegg is now supposedly trying to do better but this would definitely make me pretty frustrated. I haven't bought from Newegg in years but it was more so due to pricing, I will probably still buy from them if there is a good deal but be more cautious on certain parts for a build/use a credit card with buyer protection.
Yeah, I definitely think it's similar to Frys practices (reminds me of the stories), I do sometimes miss Frys if I need something quick/specific like a capacitor etc and don't want to wait for digikey, especially since RadioShack is gone now too. I mean Austin doesn't even have a Microcenter option, haha.
I wouldn't stop buying from them, I guess. I mean, it's not like there are a ton of choices. I don't usually buy open box items like that, but now I know I won't be buying them from NewEgg. lol. I usually buy parts from reputable places and at the lowest price, so now I guess I'm just going to hope for the lowest price being somewhere else...
Yeah, that was like a 3-part story or something. The last (?) part had him going and facing the "higher-ups" face-to-face in Cali. I loved watching the bs-speak during that episode. Here's another one where he kinda goes off on Newegg and blasts Gigabyte for crappy power supplies blowing up and they continued selling them (and I always loved Gigabyte products). I swear these companies were just trying to make money off of people during the pandemic by whatever means. lol. :
It seriously may make you question buying any recent Gigabyte product. lol. I usually buy Seasonic power supplies, so I wasn't about to buy a Gigabyte power supply anyway, but it killed me when they were testing Gigabyte power supplies for early failure and their RTX 3080 video card died.... which happened to be a Gigabyte. Of course my current motherboard is a 5 or 6 year-old Gigabyte... crossing my fingers I didn't just jinx myself.
As long as it is new, go with the lowest price via pcpart picker. Also if you are in Houston Microcenter is baller as ****. There is no good actors in this game, I have had good experiences with Newegg, but the GN thing was a black eye, and I really didn't like how they did bundles with the Newegg Shuffle to pawn off shitty hardware for people who wanted GPUs. But, at this point, whats the alternative? Best Buy put their GPUs behind a $200 paywall. Amazon treats its workers horribly. B&H is pretty good. As for brands, different products are a mixed bag. Always best to look at the review of the individual product rather than generalize across brands. I personally love EVGA, Asus is pretty good, MSI has some shady practices. My last three builds I settled on Gigabyte Mobos, because they have the right price / feature set, and haven't had issues.
The closest thing Austin has to Microcenter would be Altex Electronics. There's one up here in Addison which I visit from time to time.
