It looks like I made a huge mistake earlier this year when I pulled the trigger on a CPU and motherboard off Amazon. I understood that supply constraints exited and that there would be a shortage of GPU to go around but I didn’t think it would persist this long. It turns out that in the first time in a very long time a pre-built system offers not only superior value but access as well. My hesitation in pulling the trigger on a GPU back in February means that I now have a completed loop where I’m forced to continue using my 6 year old 980Ti. It’s not all bad though as the performance uplift from jumping to a much faster processor has already given me a tangible improvement in day to day usage.
Meshify 2
I tried really hard to go with a case from another manufacturer this time around but at the end of the day the Meshify 2 just seems to fit my needs best out of the box. Popular alternatives from Corsair, Lian-Li, or Phanteks all come with some sort of mandatory aftermarket purchase or include some limitations on things like maximum GPU height. The Meshify 2 just works out of the box and it is an absolute pleasure to build in.
As the case shares much of its tooling with other Fractal Design offerings we see that a lot of the same flexibility is present here as well. Most of the chassis is modular and I have taken the opportunity to remove the panel that doubles as a hard drive rack as well as the rear cable cover as neither are necessary for my particular system and I much prefer the open space. I really love that more and more companies are including the removable radiator bracket up top as it makes life so much easier being able to get everything set up on a flat surface. Mistakes are also much easier to fix when you are not required to fumble around holding the radiator with one hand while struggling with the magnetic screwdriver with the other.
Having all this extra space means that I am also able to finally utilize a basic 360 + 360 radiator layout instead of the previous 360 + 280 I was limited to in the Define R5. From a performance perspective there will not be a meaningful difference but it certainly looks more aesthetically pleasing when both radiators are the same length. I went with the Corsair XR5 and it is basically a shinier version of the GTS 360 as both are slim radiators made by Hardware Labs.
Corsair certainly seems to win in the packaging department as you get everything you’d want in a neat package. The radiator is covered by a soft sheet and everything is wrapped inside a layer of bubble wrap, both ports come with stop plugs, and two sets of screws are also included. While some of Corsair’s other products are rather overpriced the XR5 is certainly a winner in terms of value for money.
10850K + MSI Z490 Carbon EK X
Manufacturers aren’t leaving much performance on the table these days as offerings are pushed close to their limits from the factory. When base clocks are already close to 5Ghz there isn’t much room to play around with all core overclocks as an end user and the premium simply isn’t worth it unless you are deeply passionate about the tinkering process. It’s for this reason that I didn’t hesitate to opt for the 10850K despite knowing that it is in essence a 10900K processor that failed the binning process, I save a bit of money and get close to the same performance at the cost of slightly higher power consumption. The choice to pair it with the Carbon EK X monoblock is for aesthetics and the convenience of the included leak testing kit from EK which I would have purchased regardless.
Building with the Z490 Carbon EK X motherboard is the same as it is with any other offering, the only caveat is that you have to install the thermal pads and the monoblock yourself. Instructions can be found either via Google or by scanning the QR code on the side of the box, neither of which are particularly difficult. A slight point of frustration does lie with the included thermal pads from EK though as they have historically been quite brittle out of the box. It’s possible to reach out to EK and have replacements shipped to you but I opted to go with third party replacements ahead of time with this build. Fujipoly thermal pads seem to be the best performing option but alternatives from Arctic or Thermalright will be just fine as long as they are the correct thickness and installed properly. Aside from the brittle factor most end users should not run into scenarios where thermal pads will make any meaningful difference in performance.
Performance Tuning
Learning to tweak the 10th generation series of processors has been rather interesting. The bios will have its own idea of what voltage to set at each frequency and you play around with the offset at each multiplier in order to dial in your desired settings. As an example my processor will have a different stock voltage at 4.9 than 5.0, so a negative offset of -0.050mv at 4.9 will produce a different voltage reading from the same offset at 5.0. It takes a bit of extra trial and error to see what the starting point is but other than that nothing has really changed when it comes to dialing in the voltage and frequency settings.
The one thing that comes universally recommended is to disable whatever stock turbo setting your motherboard manufacturer has applied to the processor whether you want to overclock or not. As usual the voltages are way too high which translates into excessive heat for no reason. If you run into higher than expected thermals and know for certain that you have built your system correctly in a decent case then this is the first place to look when troubleshooting.
The 10850K is certainly a toasty chip under full load even with custom water cooling, peak temperatures reach 82.5C with my case fans running up to 1,700 RPM in a 24C room when attempting to dial in a 5Ghz all core overclock. This type of temperature is expected as the chips can get rather power hungry when attempting to push voltages and clock speeds into the higher brackets. Thankfully, most of the time I’m going to be using the system for gaming and basic workflow, which means the load placed on the system will be significantly lower.
At 5Ghz the 10850K falls into the 6300 range which seems to be in line with what others are reporting online though some seem to be in the 6400 range, certainly close enough to not lose any sleep over. The performance delta is down to my runs being done in “regular” environments without setting Cinebench to high priority as well as the fact that I’m running my ram at a pedestrian 3400 CL16 instead of the 4400+ mhz kits.
Regardless, this is a gigantic jump in throughput coming from my 6700K which struggled heavily just to get into the 1600 range. Realistically I would have experienced a similar jump in performance had I gone with something like the 5800X from AMD as well, it’s just a shame that none of them were available when I made my purchases at the beginning of the year.
Value
Funnily enough pre-built systems have been the dominant choice in terms of value for the first time in years. At the beginning of the year you could buy an entire system with a RTX 3070 GPU for close to $1000 USD and one with a 3080 for several hundred more, but these days just the 3070 alone will run you north of $1,200 USD! Like many other noobs who aren’t big into crypto I had anticipated that the shortage would not persist for too long. In my attempts to save a few hundred bucks I’d now have to pay close to double the MSRP to have any chance at buying a new card in the current market.
If you’re reading this at the tail end of 2021 and in need of a system upgrade just buy any prebuilt with good internals and move the components into a better case. I’ve been camping Discord and Youtube inventory streams for months without success as anything that gets listed is instantly bought up in some bot vs bot scalping action.
LeetPanda 