Well it’s the end of February 2021 and I finally was able to get my Gigabyte RX 6800 XT Gaming OC Video Card the other day. It’s hard to believe just a few months ago I had a Founders Edition GTX 1080 TI with the blower style fan in my HTPC as it was much better for getting rid of the hot air generated by the GPU in a case like the Silverstone SST-GD08B.
I enjoy reading and watching videos of other PC builders and their trials and tribulations as they attempt to build a system, especially if it’s not a typical build and has some character. So here is a story of one such build.
I traded my 1080 TI to someone on the buy and sell looking for a blower style card and this gave me the incentive to start the upgrade in my HTPC. Since the sale of that card 2 months ago, I have had a Gigabyte 3070 Vision, sold that and made money to get an AMD Reference RX 6800, sold that to get a Founders Edition RTX 3070 and finally sold that when I heard my Gigabyte RX 6800 XT Gaming OC finally came in. After all was said and done, this card probably cost me $500 CND with an extended 2 year warranty with the money I made buying and selling the other cards to get to this one!
I also sold my Intel i7 7700K CPU that was originally paired with the 1080 TI for a screaming deal for an Intel i9 9900K and a much better Gigabyte Motherboard than the ASUS Z270 Prime I had in their before. I upgraded the RAM after selling my old RAM for 32 GB instead of the 16 GB I had originally. With the odd little upgrade here and there and with a newer and larger M.2 drive, I was ready to start my build.
The most challenging issue with a HTPC case such as the one I have is it’s size and the heat dissipation issues. I had to find a GPU that not only fit into the case which really made things a challenge as it only allowed 133mm or 5.25 inches of height clearance. The other challenge I had was trying to find an adequate cooler for my CPU as the i9 9900K can run might hot especially in a case like this one. After several measurements I decided on the Dark Rock TF cooler from B Quiet as it fit the size and TDP requirements for the CPU. After shoe horning it in the case like a V8 into a Mazda Miata engine bay, it just barely fit but made the temps much more bearable that what I had in there previously. Finally I was ready to put it all together with cabling being the last big challenge as there was so little room even to stuff the cables on a modular PSU into the chassis full of multiple hard drives and other components.
So after further ado, here are the benchmarks and temps:
Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 4K 60 Hz as that’s all my Visio can support.
These are the temps for both the GPU and CPU running with a closed case at 4K.
Next I ran the 4K Time Spy benchmark…. let’s just say this benchmark is a beast to all systems as there was definitely Jutter in some of the frames
So in conclusion, is this an ideal set up? No, not really! But it works pretty darn well considering and I was surprised at the temps not being as crazy as I thought they might be. Here are a few shots of what the system looks like and when it’s in it’s home, the AV Unit.
You can see the Dark Rock TF CPU cooler has only an inch or two to spare as it gets close to the top lid of the case.
The 2 X 120mm Corsair fans on the right side of the case are pushing in cool air from the outside adding more positive pressure to help the Dark Rock TF CPU cooler and also cool the VRM’s and back plate of the GPU. Not sure if putting them in a negative pressure situation pulling air out of the case would have been better?
The 750 Watt PSU has the recommended watts for a system with this compliment of CPU, GPU and various hard drives. I always go with a platinum power supply or better if I can to mitigate any potential power issues.
She’s pretty tight in there with only a single 80mm fan pulling air out the back of the case. There are however 2 X 120mm Corsair fans underneath the hard drives and optical drive pulling in air from the outside as well.
Here is just a brief rundown of the other bits and pieces that are apart of the entire AV system:
• Visio P65F1 4K HDR TV with 60hz
• Sony STR-DN1040 Receiver
• XBOX ONE S (With SSD installed)
• Sony BDP-55200 Blu-ray player
• Sony turntable
• Bose 6.1 Acoustimass speaker system
• HTPC with several terabytes of tv, music, movies and concerts
• Monster Power HDP-1800 (Powerline conditioner)
• Logitech Ultimate Remote and hub
• Logitech K400 Keyboard and Mouse
• Logitech MX 5000 Keyboard and Mouse for gaming
• Netgear X6S Router and Extender
• Samsung Galaxy S9+
This was the Radeon software I used at the time which was the 21.2.3 version.
My next article will compare my Gaming / Office PC which has an Intel i9 10900KF with a ASUS TUF 3080 GPU mounted to a ASUS Maximus XII MB with 32 GB of Corsair Dominator 3600mhz RAM.