Okay, so the goals for today's video are simple.
Goal number one, build the gaming PC for the 1%,
the fastest off-the-shelf gaming rig that money can buy.
Goal number two, don't completely F it up like last time.
That's the intro.
So let's start with what's gonna be the same
as our last attempt that you guys will never see
because it was awful.
First, a handful of you were probably thinking to yourselves
while Ivan and I criticized every system integrator
on the planet, well, could you guys even do it better?
So we are actually going to be trying
to build a system better.
So we're gonna be doing it together today.
And we are sticking with the Core i9-9900K
eight-core processor.
We are sticking with dual GTX 2080 Ti ROG Strix cards
from ASUS, these are the overclocked versions.
And we are sticking with 32 gigs of our DDR4
3200 memory.
We know that's not quite the fastest memory, but okay.
That's the one thing that's not fasted.
Give us a break.
So this is the DarkBase Pro 900.
We have upgraded our power supply
to a 1000 watt DarkPro 11.
And perhaps most importantly,
because this was our biggest problem,
we have changed our motherboard.
Instead of trying to get away with three slots of spacing
between our 28-bit CPU, we have changed our motherboard.
Instead of trying to get away with three slots of spacing between our 28-bit CPU,
we have changed our motherboard.
By the way, pro tip for you guys,
those things run fricking hot.
We have gone with a motherboard
that will allow us to have quad spacing.
And this was actually what necessitated the case change,
because this is one massive Z390 board.
It's actually larger than standard ATX,
but not quite EATX.
It's kind of in that in-between land.
What the hell is going on here?
Is this like an old-school ATX?
Is this an OC dial?
Yeah, it lets you turn up your gaming to 11.
It's madness.
How much is this thing?
Look at it.
It has two regular USB 3s,
two of the new Type-C ones,
U.2, three M.2s.
That's not all of them.
There is an expansion card for, I believe, two more inside.
I mean, I think that's their flagship.
I mean, it says Godlike right on it.
It has a quarter-inch headphone jack.
It even has an infinity mirror up on this.
That's what it is.
Oh, my God.
Okay, anyway.
Let's build a rig, shall we?
Jeez.
So as usual, we're gonna start with our CPU.
So we've got a Core i9-9900K.
Is it the best value for gaming?
No.
Is it the fastest for gaming?
Yes.
There is a small asterisk.
We did run into some weird issues with minimum FPS
with hyper-threading enabled.
Seems to be like a Windows scheduler thing.
Now RAM.
These are pretty memory slots.
I actually haven't used an MSI board
for a build in quite some time.
I think we have orange RAM.
This is being covered by the heatsink
pretty much entirely.
You can even see it.
However, we do have the orange kit.
Oh, really?
Yeah, check over here.
I'll check upstairs, okay?
Okay.
We could just put in like some Trident Z Royal for lulz.
Oh, yeah.
This is 4,000.
I found it.
It's okay.
We're gonna go Trident Z Royal anyway.
This is so far over the top.
Oh, man.
Look at this.
Oh, I mean, come on.
There's a certain point.
Where once you go tackier,
it gets pretty, you know?
Having so much fun right now.
I've never had this much fun installing RAM.
Look at this.
CPU cooler next then?
All right.
All right, let's do it.
I think I lost the English manual,
but I got the German and the Russian.
Which one do you want to go by?
All right, well, it looks like
you're doing the heatsink then.
Okay, German it is, fine.
What?
No.
You don't read German, do you?
No, you don't.
I know you don't.
Take the Russian one.
They can see the cooler, man.
That brookie middick have done cooler.
So here goes our first M.2 device.
It's a 960 Pro.
I know.
We actually have a 970 Pro over there,
but like this already has an OS on it
and it really doesn't make that much of a difference.
Gaming.
Our second M.2 device
is going to be a 32 gig Optane memory module
to accelerate our 12 terabyte hard drive.
That way we can have a great big library of games.
Well, one can say if your M.2 gets shorted,
then you are screwed.
What?
No, no, no one is saying that.
It was your idea to have me in the video, so.
Now I know how all the ROG Rig Reboot kids felt.
Just these jokes and these references.
I can't take it anymore.
So our power supply here is 80 plus platinum certified,
comes with a mostly modular interface.
So the one cable they have pre-attached
is the 24 pin ATX connector.
You'll probably need one of those.
And it uses one of be quiet!'s very quiet fans.
Which one do they use on this one actually?
I believe it's Silent Wings 3.
This is a Silent Wings 3?
Oh, that's pretty nice.
We are German.
It is exactly 135 millimeters.
We don't care that everyone else calls it 140.
So we need for this motherboard, two eight pin connectors.
For our video cards,
we need two dual eight pin PCI Express connectors.
And then for our hard drive,
need a couple of SATA connectors for that.
So I'll grab one of these.
In case you're stuck, there's a manufacturer's opinion,
AKA the manual over here.
Oh, no, I was about to actually acknowledge that.
Man, full marks for like being built like a tank,
but the armor is preventing me
from inserting the power supply.
I am going to figure this out without the manual.
Yes!
All right, so power supply goes in here.
We got our nice filtered air intake for it.
Bippity boppity, done.
Check out the thumb screws this power supply comes with.
And I shipped five just in case one is bad, I guess.
That RAM is really tight.
So I'm running the dual eight pins
that we're gonna need for the top
of our motherboard right now.
So I can run them straight up the back here.
That's not bad.
So I'm just pre-measuring the distance between the card.
Whoa!
What?
Wow, that is really tight.
But what's nice is check this out.
So I'm gonna bring the other one over real quick here.
Unlike our last kick at the can,
we can put our second card right there,
giving both of them ample room to breathe.
I really would not wanna be a PCIe 1X card
installed in between these.
We're just finishing up a little bit of cable management here.
So we've got both of our fans
running off of the CPU fan one connector here.
We're just kind of trying to tuck this
into the back of the case.
And you can see that it's really tight.
I've already tried jamming it in.
So if I couldn't fit, you obviously wouldn't either.
Aw, that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me.
I think I can be happy with that.
The fan can still spin.
No, it can still spin.
All right, so the motherboard's going in.
Someone needs to hold the case.
How about you put it in and hold it
so it doesn't tip over?
It's just really heavy.
Get it?
Linus Tech tips.
Hey, this is my life, okay?
Don't judge.
Man, this is looking good though.
Here's the thing.
You should actually install the upper card first
because see how tight the clearance is?
The right one, I think, is not fully in.
There's a gap.
Oh, they're right.
They disconnected.
Damn it.
All right, it's in now.
Is it?
Oh.
Yeah, yeah, it's in now.
Because I couldn't tell.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, want to grab one of the cards?
Look at this thing.
It's like thicker than my accent.
Yay.
All right, so that's in like fricking barely.
This whole system is nuts.
So we're almost done
with most of the standard wiring,
just connecting a USB 3 header here.
But there's some interesting stuff
about the case at the back.
So we've got, we can have performance or silent
configured along these four or these four ports.
We're gonna go straight to performance
based on our experience last time.
Then we've also got the ability to plug in RGB
for our included LED strips right here.
You can connect the fan controller to PWM
and then you can use the included fan controller.
So if you move it all the way over to the left,
it just lets the motherboard control it.
And then if you move it over,
then you've got completely infinite control.
So no steps, completely stepless control from either,
what is it, 400 to 1100 or something?
Yes, and then the performance mode is like 600 to 1400.
Sweet.
All right, so let's do it.
I'm gonna plug the RGB connector in.
Single most important connector in this entire build.
And we're getting close here.
Aren't we?
So one thing that's still left for us to install
aside from our second graphics card is our hard drive.
Now we can actually install hard drive cages
in all of these guys up here
and they're all included with the case.
But frankly, these two that sit under the shroud
are enough for, I would think most people anyway.
I mean, who installs like seven hard drives
in their systems anymore?
And I'd just rather have the cooling from these fans
than a bunch of hard drives here,
especially with these graphics cards.
Never a dull moment if you're into PCs being built.
Okay, what the hell?
What?
Just, I can't get this back together.
Oh, okay.
Well, that went back together.
Are you doing cable management right now?
Aye.
Okay.
All right.
We are getting really frigging close here.
This is exciting.
If this is where I start singing,
come a little bit closer, baby.
All right.
Here we go.
So this is it.
This is the PC building money shot, really.
When you insert the second graphics card.
Did you take off the protector?
Yeah, I did.
You think I'm new?
You know, in Japan,
they have this expression
that even dogs run into telephone posts.
Where is the RTX bridge?
Because you should not fasten it all the way
because remember,
we might have to move the cards around a little bit.
You're right.
And remember in the old studio
when you had like power wiring to the servers
running under a faucet?
And it wasn't even disconnected?
Yes.
Look, I'm not proud of it.
See, this one looks a little bit like a starfighter, yeah?
Like a three slot one would be fighting,
a dog fighting a quad slot one.
Which one would win?
NVIDIA, because it's just competing with itself.
Okay, that's not bad.
There.
Okay, no, seriously.
Give me a hand operator.
Okay.
Like, I'm gonna have a heart attack.
Like, see, you gotta respect
the hardware.
Like, and he's like,
trims it in there.
I mean.
It's on, it's on.
Dang.
Oh, it's beautiful.
Look at this thing.
I mean, if you're gonna be the fastest system,
you might as well do it in style, right?
Oh wow, I can't reach the peel.
Yeah, the tab for the peel came off,
but not the peel.
Oh man, zero out of 10, worst peel.
Oh, come on.
Look, he's bitching me out about this.
Yes, because like, you know,
you need to adhere to proper building practices.
Thank you.
There, mother.
It's like I'm the town barber, right?
I'll make it pretty.
Say no more, fam.
Who else do you know who carries a 24 pinner
in his freaking pocket at all times?
All right, so this is it.
We are basically there.
Back of the system is cable managed enough,
and the front looks absolutely fantastic.
So I'm gonna clear the desk.
Ivan's gonna grab our one percenter gaming peripherals,
and we are pretty much ready to go.
Okay.
The keyboard isn't quite one percenter,
but I think this G703, sure, we'll call that.
It's pretty.
All right, just making sure it looks good
for the moment of truth.
Do you wanna hit the power button at the back?
It's on.
Look at that memory.
Oh God.
This is like full swagger.
And we got a post on first attempt.
One can say that you've got mail.
Get post.
Nope.
Are there ninjas fighting on that screen,
on the motherboard?
And that is the favorite part of this build.
Look, the dragon defeats the ninjas while freaking dabbing.
All right, so I kept the same drivers.
What do we wanna start with?
We gotta close up the side panel,
because if we're gonna believe
that this thing doesn't thermal throttle,
we have to actually push it.
Can you please stop calling this machine an it?
Okay, it's a she.
It's a she?
All right, stress test.
This is 4K 144.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
So we're back at default,
and there's just a couple things we need to do.
We need to change the SATA mode to RAID slash Optane mode,
and we are going to enable our XMP profile
to see what happens.
Hopefully that'll work.
I thought friends don't let friends enable XMP profile.
Generally they don't, but come on.
We put 4,000 megahertz RAM in here.
Let's see if it can do it.
And it crashed.
Is this where I get the told you so about XMP?
I remember having the craziest conversation
with someone from ASUS when I was like,
yeah, I hate XMP.
And they're like,
I was like, what do you mean why?
Cause it doesn't work.
Most of the time, overwhelming majority of the time.
It's also possible that was just a random glitch
because this didn't have any hiccups so far.
You know, there was no such thing as random, right?
Even random number generator is not quite random.
Here you go.
In Soviet Russia, right?
It's just like you take over by.
Okay, all right.
Just cut.
Maybe he'll stop.
This is kind of incredible, man.
Like I think I've seen one or two dips below 60 FPS.
Never seen this benchmark run this smoothly.
So we're gonna get the score any moment now.
And the goal is that this is the PC for the 1%.
It's over 10K.
Over 10K.
Well over 10K.
Ooh.
Oh, Occupy is alive.
92%.
There's probably a little more we can do here.
Let's go increase our power limit to 125.
I think this core is good for about plus 100 or so.
What's it?
We had a profile.
Oh, before profile?
Oh yeah, there's our profile.
Let's try again.
2%.
You know that one graphics card in there
is worth more than my entire PC setup?
Did you know that one graphics card in there
is worth more than my entire PC setup?
This is looking higher and no crash yet.
And we just broke 11,000.
Time to compare online.
Show me that 1%, baby.
98%.!
Come on!
Okay, what if you boosted the CPU clocks a little bit?
Fine, yeah.
It does make a difference in the simulation test.
All right, all right, all right, all right.
Let's do it.
Okay, so we're going to 4.8 gigahertz.
We're gonna try and keep our memory at 3,600.
And that's a lot of things to change in one go.
All settings were reset to default values.
Goodbye, extreme memory profile.
Hello.
Maybe gonna boot.
We are now running at 4.8 gigahertz locked.
Across all cores.
Let's fire up the CPU-Z.
All right, here we go.
Results time.
Temps still very comfortable.
So it was like 11.2.
Oh, come on!
Well, I'm not expecting this to be any better
because why would you?
But whatever, there it is, 98%.
Okay, fine, we'll push your last 15 megahertz here
and see if that makes the difference.
If this doesn't do it,
we don't have a lot left in the tank.
What, 30 more points or something?
I doubt that's gonna be the difference here.
And it isn't.
Now let's try some actual games, shall we?
So what do you think?
Shadow of the Tomb Raider, graphics, ultra,
with motion blur off, 4K, 120 hertz, SMAA.
Let's see where we end up here.
Before that though, I'd like to share a computer joke.
A computer joke with you.
What happened to the PC enthusiast
whose side panel got all scratched up?
He lost his temper.
I don't get it.
For glass.
Damn, that's smooth.
We might just have to run the benchmark though,
but like, holy crap.
No, display, options, displaying graphics, hit arrow.
Go ahead and cut.
What the hell?
Luke.
Hello.
Whoa, okay, nevermind.
Yeah, you can roll on this.
What?
4K!
And this is fully maxed out with-
Except no motion blur because motion blur is garbage.
Yeah, motion blur is bad, yes.
I don't think I've ever seen a counter break two digits.
I'm here until now.
Holy ballsacks.
That is unreal.
No, this is a Tomb Raider.
What?
Do you see that?
We cracked 200, not for long,
but we cracked 200 FPS for a sec there.
I've never been so enraptured by this benchmark run.
Enraptured?
Yeah.
It's a word?
Yes, I made a joke.
Oh, well, no, that's not, no, no, that wasn't my,
okay, I wasn't making jokes.
I was just serious business.
This is unreal.
128 FPS at 4K.
I mean, this makes me feel a little better about, you know,
not being in the 1% 3D Mark.
And what's really cool about this
is that we actually did experience reasonable,
like not amazing,
but reasonable SLI scaling across a variety of titles.
So once you're cranking it up, 4K, Ultra,
you've got your NVLink bridge, dual RTX 2080 TIs.
Yeah, it's a gaming experience unlike any other.
It was still a lot of fun to build something that,
wow, slab engineering.
Oh, man.
In our defense though, we knew that wasn't gonna stay there.
We didn't even take the sticky table.
Well, no, no, because I only used half,
so we can reuse it. Yes, okay.
Yeah, yeah, I know, I know.
Let's just try that again.
Okay, so we didn't achieve our goal,
top 1% 3D Mark TimeSpy Extreme,
but it was still a lot of fun just being hands-on with,
just experiencing the best of the best of what exists today.
This is an absolutely phenomenal machine,
even if it's only in the top 2% of TimeSpy Extreme.
And something to bear in mind
is that the top 2% of TimeSpy Extreme is well within the top,
1% worldwide anyway.
So that's what I'm gonna tell myself
to make myself feel better.
So a big thank you to be quiet! for sponsoring this endeavor.
We learned a lot, like that you definitely need
the additional spacing between RTX 2080Ti's.
So that was fun.
And thanks to you guys for watching.
If you guys disliked this video, you can hit that button,
but you know I'm gonna know your jelly, right?
And if you liked it, hit like, get subscribed,
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we featured at the link in the video description.
Also down there is our merch store.
Which has cool shirts like this one.
These are more affordable.
And our community forum, which you guys should totally join.