Ultimate Mega-Workstation PC Build Guide
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
2,912 words · ~14 min read
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um
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okay secrets out we know
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that the vast majority of the people watching our build guides
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are not at home surrounded by piles of
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new computer parts screwdriver in hand
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following along step by step assembling the exact machine that we're building on
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screen no most of you are just here for
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well hardware porn and that's okay it's nothing to be
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ashamed of and today is all about giving
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the people what they want a workstation
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slash gaming build so high-end that few people will ever have
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a genuine use for it let alone enough spare cash to justify buying it this is
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the drink spitter i mean Threadripper
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all right you guys know the drill
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just kidding we won't need one of those but what we will need is a clean
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workstation an esd strap a screwdriver
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a magnetic parts tray a pair of side cutters
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and i like to have a pair of pliers on hand just in case you gotta you know
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tighten your nuts i also recommend testing the system on
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top of the motherboard box to make sure that it works before you begin the final
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assembly all AMD threadripper cpus have a lot in
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common tons of cash up to 40 megs and 64 pci
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express lanes so it mostly came down to picking how many
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cores we wanted well we wanted all of them so we chose the
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1950x16 core 32 thread processor now i could lie
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and say i'm going to use it to live stream myself playing games while
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encoding 4k video in the background but we all know it's just for facebook and
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streaming web video on the subject of which let's insert the processor now
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normally i just copy paste these instructions from another build guide
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using a similar socket but this time our
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big new chip has a big new socket AMD's
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tr4 and it's a little different to start
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we'll use the fancy Threadripper branded size 20 torx screwdriver that
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actually comes in the CPU box
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loosen the screws labeled three two one
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in that order until the load plate lifts
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itself up next lift the rail frame by gently
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pulling on these blue handles and then slide out the external cap sled
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we're going to replace it with our Threadripper CPU and its carrier frame
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carefully slide the carrier frame into the rail frame making sure it slides all
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the way to the end of the rails and remove the pnp cap that's been
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protecting the socket's 4094 pins
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now gently close the carrier frame so that the CPU makes contact with the pins
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pushing down on the blue handles to fix the carrier frame in place
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then close the load plate and fasten screws one two and three
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in that order with a recommended torque value of 12 pounds per inch of force
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finally take a moment to bask in the glory of the cow tipper the thread
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ripper AMD's threadripper cpus support up to
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one terabyte of wait a minute actually
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yes one terabyte of RAM if you populate all
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eight dimm slots with 128 gig lr or load reduced dimms
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those aren't even out yet they'll be super expensive and
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would be total overkill so we're using eight
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16 gig sticks of trident z RGB RAM from
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g skill because you know we didn't want to be overkill
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and 128 gigs seemed pretty reasonable
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obviously though you could go with 64 or
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32 to save a buck
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to install your dimms pull back the tabs on the memory slots
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align each module according to the key in the socket and press firmly on both
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sides until the latch closes if you're using just four sticks then
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use the lighter grey slots for other configurations refer to your
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motherboard's user guide you'll probably notice that there's one more slightly
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different looking slot that's been left unoccupied leave this one alone for now
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but get excited because we will be coming back to it later we're basically
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using the pant splitter i mean Threadripper of cases it's cooler
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masters latest addition to their hallowed cosmo series the c700p
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it's got many of the characteristics that these cases have become known for
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like the suicide doors and the aluminum skids to make hauling its 49 pound heft
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around just a little easier and
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it is 2017 after all it's got integrated
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RGB lighting and a curved tempered glass
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side panel now as cool as these doors are we start by taking them off simply
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open them and while gripping near the hinge pull upward stash the panels
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particularly the glass one back in the box they came from
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this is also a good time to give ourselves more room to work by taking
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out these screws
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and sliding the internal panels free we're going to replace the case's
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included fans with cooler master master fan pro 140s placing three in the front
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for intake and one for exhaust at the back remove the case's front covers by
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tilting and then pulling up on layer one
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and then simply pushing out layer two
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then it's just a matter of screwing the fans onto the 140 millimeter rails with
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the fan leads pointing towards the motherboard tray
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next pull to remove the case's magnetic rear fairing so you can access the fan
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screws here and mount your new RGB fan with the
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sticker towards the back next check this out one of these SSD
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sleds is actually an integrated fan hub
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in disguise and this is where all of our
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fan leads will go as for the RGB leads we'll connect those
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to the RGB hub that came with the fans
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it's magnetic so we can just stick at any old place and leave the internal usb
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connector dangling for now our motherboard choice the ASUS rog
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zenith extreme is full of badass features like 802.11 ad wi-fi and their
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live dash OLED screen for measuring vitals
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it also has what's called dim.2 a riser
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that adds space for two more m.2 slots
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and a 10 gigabit pci express network card
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which is actually a pretty good value if you wanted one anyway
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if you don't care about that stuff you can still totally follow this guide and
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save about two hundred dollars with the ASUS prime x399a
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so our i o shield is pre-attached that's
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cool meaning that we can jump right to installing the standoffs that came with
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the case in all of the points labeled a
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for eatx
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set the board in place over the middle standoff post then use these screws to
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fasten the board to the rest
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you can plug in the two 8 pin CPU power connectors now to do your future self a
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solid and since we still have easy access to the motherboard we'll also
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show you guys how to plug in the rest of the annoying tiny things
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the front panel connectors for the power led hard drive led reset switch and
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power switch the fancy front usb 3.1 gen2 connector
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here and the usb 3.1 gen 1
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case RGB and system audio along the
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bottom so to keep our rig chilling out maxin relaxin all cool we're going to be
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using the cooler master master liquid 240 all-in-one liquid cooler
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high-end cooling is basically a
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requirement if you are overclocking threadripper
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this one comes with a lot of hardware for all the different sockets it
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supports but we'll be using the socket tr4 mount which at the time of filming
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is sold separately and available only from cooler master's website
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now normally this is the part of the build where i freak out and realize that
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i've installed my motherboard without first mounting the cooler bracket on the
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back but today i don't have to worry about that because the tr4 socket is
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sturdy af and the pump actually mounts directly to
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it like a little baby monkey start by fastening your fans we're using RGB ones
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to match the rest of the case with the stickers against the radiator using
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these long screws letting the fan leads hang towards the motherboard tray
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next mount the radiator to the top of the case by popping off the case's dust
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filter and fastening the rad to the mounting rails using these eight screws
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connect the fan headers to the included y adapter and plug the other end into
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the CPU fan header here we'll connect the RGB leads to the
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included hub like we did earlier but
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right now we've actually got a problem we have two RGB hubs each requiring a
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usb 2.0 header and our motherboard only
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has one such header you know what
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that's it you guys i'm done if i can't have all my RGB
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working i'm leaving just have dinner sent to my trailer
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oh okay so apparently this is a pretty simple
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problem to solve what's 25 bucks for one of these
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internal usb hubs on a 7 000
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build so we're going to mount it here
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connect up all the usb cables then wire
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up its molex power cable now it's time to mount the block to the
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CPU we'll start by peeling off this warning
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label and placing two rice grain sized
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dabs of the included thermal compound on the center of the CPU
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now arrange the two tr4 mounting brackets like this
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and start tightening them down if you think it looks weird that the
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cooler doesn't cover the entire chip don't worry on threadripper the CPU dies
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the parts that actually produce heat are in the center anyway
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so all that's left is plugging in the pump header way down here
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and then using this handy extension cable to route it behind the motherboard
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tray using a power supply calculator might
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suggest that a 600 watt psu would be
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sufficient so naturally we went with
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a power supply that cooler master says will be completely silent up to 600
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watts and is capable of double that with
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efficiency in excess of 80 plus titanium
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now we're not here to mislead you the masterbot maker 1200 mij with its all
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made in japan components and 10 year warranty not to mention
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thousand dollar price tag was a because
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we can move and the v750 at a tenth of
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the price will do you just fine for this build just make sure that whatever power
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supply you go with you grab something with two 8-pin eps connectors
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threadripper can run with a single connector but you'll be losing the
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ability to overclock and risking instability as well as issues with
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higher end memory start by connecting all the cables to the power supply while
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it's still accessible you'll need the 24 pin connector to power the motherboard
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two six plus two pin pci express connectors for the graphics card two
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SATA chains one molex cable and the two
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eight pin CPU cables that you managed earlier unfortunately the cables that
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came with this power supply aren't sleeved and cablemod doesn't make a kit
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for it but they do make cable extenders so we'll connect these to the ends of
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our cables hiding the excess slack in the basement next
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gently flex the power supply cover so you can finagle it on to the little
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pedestal in the basement or you could just take off these four screws and not
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be lazy place it fan side down install
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the four screws in the back like so then
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wipe a tear from your eye when you realize that
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no one's ever gonna see your baller power supply now we could put normal
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storage in here a single m.2 drive would be blazing fast on its own but
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before the end of this year AMD is planning to release a driver update that
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will enable bootable NVMe raid on x-399
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so how could we not be
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f-word future-proof with a view of Corsair's high-speed mp500 ssds we begin
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by removing the m.2 heat spreader by unscrewing these three fasteners being
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careful not to slip and scratch this nice plate here next we'll grab the
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small baggie from the motherboard box that contains the m.2 standoff and cap
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and install the standoff in the nut that matches the length of our m.2 drive this
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one happens to be an 80 millimeter stick so we're using the nut marked 2280 all
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that's left then is to insert the SSD at an angle press it down fasten it on the
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opposite end and replace the fancy heat spreader and you're done
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where are you we're going to use that same mounting
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procedure as before except this time instead of going directly on the board
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our two additional ssds will go on this
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nifty little add-in card one on each side
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we then slot the card into our last remaining dim slot such that this little
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gap hops over the dim.2 signpost press
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firmly until the open tab closes itself hey voila
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over a terabyte of wicked fast storage now you might
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wonder at this point why our build doesn't contain a hard drive we clearly
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have the budget for it and that last bit is exactly why we figure anyone spending
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this kind of money on their workstation especially one with 10 gig networking
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should probably just have a separate storage box elsewhere on their network
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for our graphics card we considered a quadro but from our recent findings
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they're not actually better in many applications
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than consumer cards so if your use case
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specifically benefits from quadro go with that but we chose the gtx 1080 ti
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amp extreme edition from zotac remove these three pci slot covers two
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of them are for the graphics card and one is actually for our 10 gigabit
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network card remove the protective cover from the
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card edge and align the card carefully with the motherboard's PCIe slot and the
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openings at the back of the case push the card in firmly until the slot
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tab snaps shut then put the case screws
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back in finally plug in the two eight pin pci
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express power connectors that we attached to the power supply earlier now
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this technically isn't a graphics card but you can throw your network card in
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at this point too this slot's a good choice but thanks to threadripper's 64
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pci express lanes you really don't have to think about it too much just uh throw
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it in there and put the screw in
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our case is deep covered basement and the wide gap between the motherboard
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tray and the door make cable management a piece of cake especially if you're not
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the perfectionist type since most of the mess not including our RGB hub spaghetti
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monster will be hidden behind the internal panels that we removed earlier
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so once we replace all the doors she ain't looking too shabby
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for peripherals we're using cooler masters master keys pro l RGB keyboard
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their master mouse pro l mouse and a swift rx xl mouse pad now
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let's put it all together now i promise we're getting to the
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sizzle reel soon but first a couple quick tweaks in the BIOS we're going to
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configure our RAM by going to the extreme tweaker tab and changing the ai
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overclock tuner from auto to docp
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then we're going to do a basic overclock
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using the easy tuning wizard in our case we got an easy eight percent performance
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boost now this is also a good time to
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configure your m.2 raid unfortunately we
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can't show you this now because the feature won't be supported for a couple
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more weeks meaning that we save and
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we're done now we've covered installing your operating system pretty thoroughly
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on the path so just check out this guide on the forum that we'll have linked
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below as for drivers your motherboard actually comes with a flash drive with
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the latest ones for audio uh your network card your chipset etc meaning
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you just gotta go over to NVIDIA.com and get the latest for your graphics card
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leaving us with nothing left to do but
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admire our creation is it a great value
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well in its current state it's the most expensive build we've ever done but
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with some tweaks that wouldn't affect performance noticeably for most people
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compared to what you'd have spent for a 16 core bed i mean
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thread ripping pc even a year ago it actually ends up looking pretty
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compelling so long live competition in the CPU
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industry and long live cooler master for sponsoring this build guide
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time for the sexy glam now
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oh
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at least i saw