GTX Titan Small Form Factor Gaming PC Build Guide Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,454 words · ~12 min read
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so this is more like a typical gaming rig in fact this isn't even that big
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this is just a standard case with seven expansion slots an ATX board and you
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know it accepts a couple graphics cards but this build guide with the GeForce
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GTX Titan and I'm going to just ground myself there before I touch it the
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GeForce GTX Titan is going to focus on a
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different sort of gaming rig the Titan because of
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its incredible acoustic performance that is to say low noise low power
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consumption compared to something like a GTX 690 and outstanding performance
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enables a new class of small form factor gaming machines so we're going to be
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using a 3770k which is about as fast as it gets for a gaming CPU an ASUS p z77 i
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Deluxe y die motherboard 16 gigs of
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Corsair Dominator Platinum memory an ocz vertex 4 SSD and a cic 550 W power
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supply and last but not least a lowprofile CPU Cooler from thermal right
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this is the ax 100 all of this in a
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19.2 L cubc mini Cube case now we could
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have fited in our F3 mini with a little bit of modification of one of the
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brackets but we opted not to do that so instead we're going to go with a case
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that natively supports it once we're done we're going to show you I mean
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performance numbers later but once we've done this we're going to show you how it
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sounds compared to a 7970 when it's installed in a small form
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factor chassis like this all right so it's update time guys there was no way
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those Dominator platinums were going to fit in this rig unfortunately because
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there's a slight overhang with the memory slots from the CPU Cooler itself
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so we went with a lowprofile Kingston hyperx memory kit that just barely
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touches the heat sink so it should get some you know incidental cooling from
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the downdraft CPU Cooler I could have installed a larger CPU Cooler in fact
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you can see if I put this down in the case I haven't installed the standoffs
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yet but if I put this down in the case you can see that my CPU Cooler could
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have gone up to here but I like using a downdraft CPU Cooler in a build like
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this and I like giving uh you know the Titan and cable management some some
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room so I'm I'm going to go this route and see how it sort of turns out here
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speaking of the Titan I'm going to go ahead and put the GeForce GTX Titan in
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inside the case just to show you guys what this is going to look like once
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it's all beasted out
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here and we've made some more changes so
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instead of the sort of fail thin low
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profile fan that we were going to use not going to use that anymore we've done
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away with it and gone with some Noctua NF F12 fans instead so there's our
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intake at the bottom front here nice high pressure optimized fan so we're
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going to be able to draw air under the case around the feet and then up inside
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that'll go straight to the Titan GPU then I've added another one on the CPU
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with an adapter that gives more incidental air flow to the vrm as well
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as the memory we've also added our power supply so this is an an 80 plus gold cic
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550 W power supply with a modular interface you can see I've run my SATA
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cables so just for laws I've changed the
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scope of the build again and we are actually going to install all of the
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well not all but we're going to do two 2 and 1/2 um 2 and 1/2 in drives and two 3
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and 1/2 in drives just for the laws to show you guys what kind of an insane
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super gaming computer you can fit inside this kind of an
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enclosure all right here's the moment you've all been waiting for guys
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assuming you're still with us this far into the video where we squeeze the 10
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and 1/2 inch Titan graphics card into
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this extreme extremely narrow narrow spot where it hopefully
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will fit um okay we're putting a little bit
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of strain on those front panel connectors but I think it's okay and I
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think that we are in let me just double
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check there's no PCIe lock on this
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particular card because it's uh it say a reference board but I think
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we're in there so let's go ahead
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and screw it in we whoops see
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daisies and let's go ahead and screw it
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in if I was smart I would have done the bottom screw first so that it would hold
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it in place oh that's okay that one worked there we go all right that is one
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dense system
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very dense not not dense in a stupid way
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I'm tired it's late made quite a few videos today so
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there's not much to say other than I'm really trying to trying to get this
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graphics card in here and uh thumb
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screws are both a blessing and the bane of my existence at times because
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sometimes they're just more Awkward to put in actually and right now I'm having
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one of those moments and you guys are getting to enjoy it with me there we
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go ah yes so we are tightened out now
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but obviously the system won't boot because tighten does require external
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power so you can see here this intake fan is going to bring fresh air directly
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to that graphics card and then the CPU is going to be able to hopefully sort of
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somewhat fend for itself up there and uh here my PCI Express connectors so these
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ones I didn't realistically think I was going to be able to run them uh from the
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back which is fine anyway because the the GPU itself is right here so I'm just
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going to run those down here again if I was smart and less tired I would have
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run these before the important thing to note about this build guys is that no
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shortcuts have been taken no special Parts have been used you can build your
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own extremely small form factor gaming
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machine for the well however much this
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costs I don't even know at this point it's not cheap but it'll be awesome and
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that's the most important thing so we'll be back once I figure out how to do
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this so here we go guys this is the
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insanity that is the back of this machine so I ended up going with two
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Samsung 840 Pros so that would be 512
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gigs of raid zero SSD storage then I
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went with two Western Digital 3 tbte hard drives So in theory you could have
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dual 512 gig ssds and then two 4 tbte
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hard drives back here now there was no
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hope in using the actual mounting points
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for the ssds which is fine because the ssds have no moving parts so I'm not
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really worried about um them randomly busting anyway now we've tried pressing
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this flat and we're pretty sure it's going to close but I guess you guys are
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going to find out with us um no no it's okay I got
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it whether it will actually close or not
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this one Yep looks like it so we haven't
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added the Titan to the system yet but that's coming next that's actually the
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last step we also have not yet added the PCI Express power cables needed to power
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the Titan however I've made sure that there is room to install it so this this
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computer will have four cores eight
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threads up to 16 gigs of
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RAM of the most power powerful single GPU graphics
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card um it'll be pretty much near silent
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cuz we're using all Noctua coolers and the Titan itself is extremely quiet
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check that out that actually did close wow look at
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that see look at that just awesome so that is
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what she looks like from this side with the cable management available in this
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cubc case which is actually not bad so we'll be back in a moment once I've
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screwed in the power supply which I just realized I forgot to do and we're going
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to show you guys the moment where we put the Titan
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inside so basically that's it guys check it out these cables are are managed back
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here so they're just kind of wrapped around this noct to a fan here at the
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bottom um the noct fans are both plugged into the motherboard so we can use
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motherboard control to control that fan GPU boost to will control the GPU
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temperatures the fan RPM as well as the
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GPU clocks and we are pretty much ready
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to boot this bad boy up I mean I think the only way we could actually stuff
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more technology in here is if we didn't even worry about connecting it to
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anything and we just kind of you know there there's a there's a pile of ssds
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and like there there's some more ssds and there's a phone and like some memory
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like other more different phone there you go that's the only way we could
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actually make this more densely packed it's all falling we'll be back our Titan
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machine is done so we'd love for you guys to join us for the Moment of Truth
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where we actually try and boot this bad boy up so let's go ahead and press the
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button okay give it a
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sec and there we go oh that's
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beautiful and let's try that one more time just checking around we go
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did it go oh that looks so good does that look
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as good in the camera as it does oh okay she's up she's awake overclocking failed
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yeah don't worry about it it's all good um I don't think we have any
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overclocking running on this board see got my like late night building computer
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snacks uh okay give me a sec here guys so we're going to get into the OS and
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we'll be back in a moment okay guys so I've actually switch
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to this microphone so that uh we can take some audio levels now we haven't
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actually closed the system up yet but we're running uh Far Cry 3 I can't show
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you any benchmarks right now just so you guys know but um we're going to do a
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couple of reference sounds for you guys so you can get some idea of how a system
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like this might run the first thing we have to right oh yeah I need to be over
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here the first thing we have to do is
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actually put the side panel on just to demonstrate
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that Titan can run in a configuration
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like this so let's just get some more let's get a couple more Glam shots of
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what the system looks like inside got some uh LED lighting courtesy of a bit
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Phoenix Alchemy strip up there uh I mean if you were worried about the sort of
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perfect Aesthetics then you might go with something other than knock to a fans but I love the performance of these
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fans and this rig is all about
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performance so we've readjusted our microphone because we couldn't actually
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pick up the noise of the system when it was was at Idol but we're under full
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load now so running Prime 95 small fft on the
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3770k and running Far Cry 3 looking at a
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fire uh to to stress the Titan now I
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can't tell you guys any exact numbers or benchmarks yet as of the time of filming
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this video but what I can tell you is that GPU boost is still working very
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well more than the promised GPU boost
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clock significantly more and actually that's a good idea and just for
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reference we're going to make some different noises here to show you guys just how quiet the system is so we're
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going to drop a coin onto a wooden
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table I'm going to call a Galaxy S3
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that's set to
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Vibe okay and then we're going to show you I mean it's funny because old NVIDIA
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cards used to get compared to hair dryers so let's do the old hairdryer
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test so this is on
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low there's the system again for reference we're really impressed with
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this system here this here's the haird drawer on
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high so temperatures I'll say this much
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temperatures for the GPU are very
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comfortable so it's still boosting oh right I need to be closer to the mic
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temperatures for the GPU are very comfortable it is still boosting like I
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said past the rated minimum sort of boost clock that you should see and
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temperatures for the CPU I'm allowed to talk about those are at about 80° so
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this system is very functional very well within its operating sort of
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specifications and uh ambient temperatures though are a little bit on
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the low side in this room slick could you go ahead and press press that green button for me so I can just see what the
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temperatures are in here so it's about 11° in here so you'd
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probably hit let's say in a normal room you'd hit more like 90 de on the CPU
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which is still you know this is during an unrealistic load Prime 95 small fft
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plus a game running um and then that GPU probably wouldn't boost quite as high
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but the system would work thank you for checking out this build log and sort of
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miniitx type and guide online tech tips
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