Upsizing My 12 Core, 64GB Workstation PC (mATX To ATX With Full Steps)

I recently got fed up with being unable to fit small extra devices in my old micro ATX case, like my 10 Gigabit networking card. So I decided to upsize to ATX by purchasing a cheap mid-tower case (CiT Galaxy) and a quality B550 motherboard – the Gigabyte Aorus Elite AX V2.

This combination has meant that I can hopefully achieve a clean looking build that can fit any extra PCIe cards into it, while still being fairly budget conscious – the motherboard and case only cost me £120 or so ($160). I kept all other parts the same though – I bought over my five black Arctic P12 fans, my AMD Ryzen 5900X 12 core (24 thread) CPU, my Corsair 64GB DDR4 RAM, Noctua cooler and my two WD_BLACK NVMe drives.

This turned out to be a pretty fun build and I show every step (from removing the old parts, to installing them in the new PC)in this video.

If you prefer text over video, please read on for the guide/transcript version of this video.

Video Transcript And Guide

Hey everyone! In today’s video, I’m going to be upsizing my old Corsair Carbide 88R MicroATX case to a full ATX case. The reason for that, as I’ve covered in previous videos, is that ideally, I wanted 10 GB Network in my computer, but I just couldn’t make it fit due to my graphics card being a 2.2 slot GPU.

So the first thing I done for the build was put the motherboard in. I’ve got a Gigabyte Aorus Elite motherboard which has quite good power phases. It’s a fairly good AM4 motherboard. SO obviously I put the standoffs in and the first one went in fine, but I was really struggling with getting the second one in. Eventually I actually had to make the hole bigger, and then use pliers to actually get the standoff in – which I’ve never had to do in a build before, but this case was only £30 so it was more of a budget option. As you can see there I’ve used pliers for the other standoff as well, and then they are all in.

So all that remains is actually sliding the motherboard in and it was a bit of a tight fit because this is a smaller mid-tower ATX case but eventually I did get there. I could have potentially took the other fan off but I didn’t, I just slid it under. I then secured the motherboard with the standoff screws as normal.

This particular motherboard has got quite good I/O. It’s got built-in Wi-Fi, which I’m not going to use because of the 10 GB Ethernet card that I’m going to be using. It’s got USB 3.2 Gen 2, which will do in and out, so that’s really good.

The PSUcomes in the bottom here. It’s going to be quite a good build. As for the case, I’ve shown it in the past. It’s got one USB 3 up top, and then the rest are USB 2, which is a bit of a pity. But at the front, I don’t really use that many USB ports anyway, so a single USB 3 with a hub will be absolutely fine for me.

This is the CiT Galaxy case I’ve mentioned before. It supports up to ATX motherboards, but not E-ATX. Other than changing the motherboard and the case, everything else is going to stay the same. I’ve still got my 12-core Ryzen CPU, the 5900X. I’ve still got 64 gigs of RAM. I’m using the same Noctua cooler. Obviously, I’m going to change the thermal paste.

So now it’s time to actually power down my old computer, which is down here. What I have been doing since I’ve been talking is running Prime95 on the computer, which might seem a bit weird. But actually, getting the CPU a bit hot will hopefully make it a bit easier to actually get the CPU out with no issues with it being stuck to the motherboard or something like that.

I’ve never actually upgraded from… I’ve never actually upsized. I’ve never actually gone from like MicroATX to ATX, so this is going to be quite an interesting thing. In theory, it’s going to be easier than doing a new build, but we will soon find out, won’t we?

Build Start – Removing PSU

Let me get rid of the power supply unit because everything’s going to be a lot cleaner once I’ve actually moved that. Okay, so that’s the last power supply unit screw. I got this weird cable management solution which, thankfully, I’m not going to need anymore. I discussed it in another video, but basically, I used PVC trunking to actually hide all the cables. But thankfully, I’m not going to need that anymore.

Oh, that’s getting caught. Let’s remove the graphics card ones. Let’s take the graphics card out. I think it’ll actually be easier to do it this way around. So yes, run in. So that is the old graphics card. That is that, and that will allow me to remove some of the power supply cables a bit easier as well.

Let’s get rid of this trunking. PSU shrouds are better, but this is such an old case, it just didn’t have it. Done. So that is the old power supply unit. Unfortunately, it’s white. I don’t know why, when I originally bought it, I think this was like £5 cheaper in white than black, so I just bought it. But really, I’ve regretted that ever since because all my cables are now white, and I’ve got black builds. My new build is black as well, so it was a bit of a mistake to get this, but whatever. Hindsight is 20/20.

Remove Cooler, Move CPU

Okay, so power supply’s out. Next thing I’m going to do is actually remove the Noctua fan and hence the CPU. That’s going to be the next big thing, I think, ’cause that’s such a big bulky thing. So you got these horrible clips that I always dread. Finally… right, so that’s going to be that. Quite dust-free considering. I mean, there is dust on there, but it’s not too dusty.

Okay, so off and then… and check the other side. Okay, that is lifting off. Okay, so that’s good. The CPU didn’t stick to that. That is good. I’m… so I’m going to remove the thermal paste. So I don’t have any spray alcohol, but I do have isopropyl wipes, which are sort of the same thing. They don’t tend to leave residue in my experience, but we’ll soon find out.

Okay, so that’s the Noctua cooler, which is an absolute beast. It is a slightly weird shape because it’s designed for this particular MicroATX case, which is quite a small one and doesn’t have much CPU clearance. It’s going to look a bit odd in my new case, but I’m still going to keep this. It should fit fine. I haven’t checked, but it should fit fine. But I’m still going to keep it because the performance is pretty good.

So next, we got to remove the thermal paste from the CPU. Now the moment of truth: removing it from the CPU socket. It’s fine. It’ll be fine. Guess… yeah, it’s come out fine. So that’s good. So I’ve put that back down just so I can put the CPU straight into the new case without any issues. So let’s put that on the floor.

Okay, so I’ve wiped most of that residue off. I’m looking for the little triangle, which is there. Little triangle. So I’m assuming it’s going to go in… um, go in like that. Yes, yes, it’s fit. So let’s put that down. Okay, brilliant. So that’s in.

Move RAM & NVMe SSDs

Okay, so next I am removing the RAM from the old computer, and then I can put it into the new one. Okay, so these are the Corsair RAM sticks. They actually have RGBs on them. I’m not that bothered about RGB, but it’ll actually look nice in my new case ’cause it’s got the nice tempered side panel and it’s got an RGB strip up the front.

The reason I have RGBs on these is that it was cheaper. Same as my PSU was £5 cheaper, even though it’s white. As you can tell, I’m not too bothered about the color scheme and the look of a build, but I think this new build will actually look quite nice.

So I’m going to put these in, and it actually tells me on the motherboard which are the fast slots. I’ve got A2 and B2. Just going to pop those pins back… them forward… put down. Okay, excellent.

So the next thing I’m going to do is move my NVMe drives over, just because otherwise, if I put the CPU cooler on, it’s going to be a little bit harder to actually put them on. So I’m going to remove my NVMe drives from my first computer and move them over.

What’s nice about my new motherboard is it comes with two M.2 heatsinks, which is pretty cool. Previously, I had to actually buy a third-party heatsink. So that is the first heatsink, which is the WD Black one. I think the other one’s the same. They’re only half a terabyte, which isn’t massive, but I’ve got a separate 4TB NAS with technology, and then I got an 8TB home NAS. So I got enough separate storage. That’s kind of why I have this networking card so they can actually do everything over the network, and then I don’t need as much storage on my actual computer.

In terms of getting them in, it’s standard, just holding the NVMe drive and sliding it in then finding the little screw and securing it place. So that’s the first NVMe drive and then I’m doing the second one which is where my operating system is installed. So I slid it in, put the screw on.

Okay, so they’re in. So now I can actually remove the backing for the heatsinks, which looks quite nice. I really like that. That looks really nice and chunky and better than my old ones, at least. So which way does it go in? It goes in that way, doesn’t it? So that slides in. That’s there, and then I got the retention screw. Done. Yes. So I just go do the second one as well. Chuck that down there. Okay.

TIM & Reinstall Noctua Cooler

But next up comes the thermal paste and the Noctua cooler. That’s going to work… right?

No probably not, so I did spread it out a bit. Then I just swapped out the bracket for Noctua, for the actual CPU cooler and screwed them on as normal.

that’s in. Great. Next up will be the beast of the Noctua cooler, which is down here just randomly put on the floor. Symptoms of which direction I’m going to use… put it… it’s going to be that way. Now I can use my extra-long screwdriver to actually tighten it. And again, it’s tight without being too tight, which is always good.

So it looks a bit weird in this particular case. If I just show it, you can see that I would have had more clearance. I could have gone with a slightly different CPU cooler, but actually, I do quite like this one. So now I just got to get the gigantic fan back on it.

Mounting 2x Top Fans

So that’s my CPU fan actually plugged in. I’ve realized on doing this, they should have actually probably put the top Arctic fans back in from my old case into my new one, but I think I do have clearance to put them in. So I’m going to do that now, and I hope I don’t have to take out my CPU cooler ’cause that would be annoying.

So I actually use an Arctic fan hub in my old build. I just prefer it. I got more control over things, and it’s a really useful thing. It just means I can put all the fan cables in the back, and then I’ve just got that one fan running when I actually look at the computer. So it’s easier to actually manage it. Oh God, that wasn’t safe!

Right, so what I’m trying to do… that’s the actual hub. It’s quite a nice thing. You just get some SATA power in, and then you put your fans in there. It really makes things easier. So now I can actually get my top fans out. Who… why did I do that? I should have been holding the fan… right, it’s okay. It’s out now. It’s out.

So one of the screws is not coming out properly… ah, there we are. Okay, so that is my other fan. So put the screws down there. Okay. Now again, I’ll just put my old case back down there so I can hopefully get the fans into my new case in the top. I… the arrow is that way, so I need the logo facing down.

Okay, now in terms of my cables, I want them going that way. So I’m going to mount them in this direction, and I’ll just ignore the cables for now. Yes, they fit in. So in my old case, because it was a really small MicroATX case, I’d actually have had to have removed the Noctua cooler, but yay! I could actually fit these fans without doing that.

Is that it? No, it’s kinked. There we are. Brilliant. So I’ve actually got that through the other side. So now I can just do the other fan as well. And again, cables going to go that way, and actually, this time I’m going to thread it through before I do anything else. That might be best. Nice and easy. Yes. Should have probably done that first, but there we are.

Okay, so there we are. My 120 mil fan. So again, I’ve just done two screws at the moment. Obviously, put the other ones in too. There all are. So now I’ve got my two top fans, my RGB back one from the case, and my Noctua cooler. I’ve already plugged that in. Again, it’s nice I can actually reach by there and plug in the fan cable to the motherboard, which I couldn’t have done on my old case. There just wasn’t that clearance. So I’m really appreciating upsizing.

Last Bits From Old Case

I’ve clipped this on as well. It just comes with little clips, so you just clip them on and that’s really easy. So now let’s lay that flat and look at what should be next. So in my old case now, I’ve got two other fans they need to take off to move to the front, and then obviously I got all the power supply cables and that’s it. Because I’ve moved the CPU, I’ve moved the RAM, I’ve moved the M.2 slots and the CPU cooler. So I think that’s it. Yeah, that would be it.

Okay, so I’m just going to take everything out of this one, and then I can put in the new one. Right, so that’s the CPU. Where is it? Is that coming out? Yes. God, for the…. So that’s that. That’s that. I’ll just move that… I don’t need it. I’ll leave these plugged in ’cause I know I don’t need that. So that’s it for… fans. Let me get rid of that particular fan cable is… that’s okay. Got that out. So just put that over there.

Okay, I may as well do… since I’m in a mall, I may as well do the front panel fans as well. Okay, so let’s try not to get too much dust on the other one. So let’s remove these fans as well. Just leave that dangling for now and get the other one out as well. Okay, too many cables. That’s out as well. And then this one as well. Got it snagged. Okay, so that’s out.

So I’m going to put all of these screws in a safe place, which means dropping them all on the floor. So next we’ll just be freeing up all of the cables that I need to get access to. So not the front panel ones, but obviously the power supply unit cables. That one is stuck on the case. Let’s do that. Okay, so that’s that. That’s that. I’ve then got my big bulky motherboard one, which I just need to get and put there. And that looks… that looks like the rest of these are all to do with the case. So I leave them all connected as they were and flip things… oh, don’t even need to flip things over.

There we are. They are the cables I need, which means goodbye Corsair Carbide 88R case and my old Micro ATX motherboard from ASUS, the TUF Gaming B550M Plus. You served me well, but I outgrew you. So bye.

Checking New PC Powers On

Harsh but fair. So at this stage I wanted to make sure that my computer powered on which meant connecting up the case’s power switch cable to the header, and then doing the CPU and motherboard power cables. The CPU one was a bit of a faff because the CPU cooler was there, but eventually I got there. Then it’s the case of doing the motherboard one which is often easier because most case’s have cable routing holes like this one. So you just put it in, bend it quite a lot and then plug it in and make sure there’s no gaps. Then I plugged them into my power supply unit (as you can see), making sure everything is nice and tight, and then I switched it on on the wall (because we’re in the UK) and then checking it powers up – which is does, woohoo! That’s a really good sign. You can see the CPU cooler powering on, you can see the RAM LEDs, so that’s good.

Okay, so we know the computer boots up, which is a good first step. I didn’t bother putting a graphics card in and actually checking it went into the BIOS and everything else, but at least it spun up. I’ve seen the motherboard LEDs, the RAM LEDs, so that should be good enough for now.

Adding Front Fans

So I’m going to carry on doing the front fans. These fans, originally I was starting to put them on the outside, and then I realized I wouldn’t have actually been able to put the front of my case on because there’s one of those cases where you actually have to have the fans on the inside. I think what they’ve done… CiT Galaxy, this case… I think what CiT, the company, have done is they’ve reused some of the chassis. So I think probably there is a front panel on some of the other CiT cases which doesn’t have the RGB strip, and so you can have the fans on the outside, but not so much with this one.

So I’m just going to carry on. I put a couple of the screws in offline just because I wanted to check that the front cover would go on. But I’m just going to put the rest of the screws on. Okay, so that’s the first two. I’ve just added the screws in, and I’m going to put the front one in as well over here. Okay, so that’s done. So the three front fans.

And the next thing to do will be putting the graphics card and the networking card in, and also the power supply unit. And that should be done. I’ll probably put the power supply unit in first, just so I can start routing the cables and getting a better idea.

PSU Into New PC

Okay, so two screws are in, so I can actually stop holding it awkwardly. Would… argh!! Whoops! Okay, it wasn’t balanced properly. I don’t have a proper table at the moment, so… yeah, I’ve just got these three mix shift tables. So that was unfortunate. Anyway, as I was saying, the PSU was secure ’cause it didn’t slide off and damage anything luckily. I think my computer survived the fall as well ’cause I kind of caught it, but… think alright. Anyway, let’s carry on.

Third screw into the power unit. Yes, good. So that is all four screws in the power supply unit. And let’s have a look at what it looks like. So pick it up… too many cables already. So effectively, if I get all these out of the way, obviously you’ve just got your power supply unit there as normal. And then in the front, you’re just not going to see it as much. It does just look like that. So obviously you do see it a little bit. Obviously that’s kind of the point, but yeah, it’s going to be a lot more hidden and all the cables are going to be hidden. So it is much nicer to have a case finally with a PSU shroud. Been waiting ages to get one.

Connecting PSU Cables

So now it’s just a case of plugging everything in. I’m going to put the monster cable in first because this is big and bulky and it blocks everything else otherwise. I’ve learned that in the past. So yeah, monster cable first, also known as the 24-pin ATX one. So that’s in. Easy. And no gaps, no gaps.

So now we will do the CPU one, which I’m just going to put there for now. So top slot there. Okay, good. So that’s all there. So got a bunch of fan cables. I should have five. So let me get all the fan cables for now.

Okay, so let’s plug all these in. The nice thing with this fan hub is it’s full PWM support for all of the fans. I had an old fan hub before and only it accepted some four-pin fans and some three-pin fans. Those three-pin fans didn’t have the same level of control to them, but this is quite a nice fan hub from Arctic. So fan hub, all connected up. All that remains is giving it some SATA power and also connecting it up to the motherboard header. But for now, I’m just going to do the SATA power, and then I’m going to find the other cable to connect it to the motherboard. But I can’t remember where I put that, if I’m honest.

So standard SATA power in there. Okay, that’s in, which means that’s not too bad. I’ll have to find a way of hiding that a bit better. So that’s all there, which is good. I’m just going to cable manage it so it doesn’t look too much of a monstrosity, and I’m keeping all the cables together as well. So that comes around there. Going to do that. I don’t do it too tight. Two seconds, I’m just going to leave that there. That goes around there. Fine, fine, fine, fine. Great. Let’s cable manage those a little bit.

Okay, so that is sort of in place. It’s going to move around a little bit, but it’s better than nothing. And I can always put more zip cables there to manage it, but for now, that’s better than nothing. Got my big bulky motherboard cable as well. I’m just going to try and get that out of the way a little bit. Oh right, there we are. Brilliant.

So I’ve now moved my big motherboard cable to the side as well, and I’ve cable managed that a little bit. So that is cable managed a little bit now. There’s going to be other things I can do. For example, the big CPU… I can actually clip that to different parts of the case as well, but I can do that later. For now, I’m going to probably do the graphics card, get all that in, and then I can worry about the front panel connectors and everything else.

Reinstalling The GPU

So next up is the actual PCI cables. I went out and bought proper Corsair premium sleeved ones just ’cause they look a lot better. Otherwise, it’s a complete faff. So they are a lot nicer, but obviously it does mean you have all these individual wires as well. So I’ve just been cable tying things as I go along just to keep them together a bit more. But let’s plug them in. Oh, that was easier than I thought. Mr. Negative, I thought it was going to be hard, but it was fine. That was easy. Hey, so that goes in as well.

So that is going to go there, which means… which… which am I going to need to punch out? So that’s going to go there, which means I’m going to need to punch out one, two… these two. Let’s just punch that one out. So that needs to come up. That right? Done. Fine. Done. Thankfully that will do. Okay.

10Gb Network Card

Okay, so the next thing I’m going to install is the networking card. I was trying to look at the best slot to put it in. Now, logically, if I were to put it in the closest slot to the graphics card, that might not be ideal because all the hot air from the graphics card is going to be blown onto it. But that is the x2 slot, and that runs in apparently X2 mode, which actually isn’t ideal because ideally, I need X4 speeds on this. So that’s a bit of a pain.

But the other slot, the one that’s lower down, is the x12 slot that apparently only runs in X1 mode, which doesn’t sound correct to me. That sounds super slow because that would then mean this is running at Gen 2 X1 speeds, I think, which would seem way too slow. So I’m going to put it in the top slot and hope it’s not running at X2 speeds, because that could be slightly too slow for a networking card. But considering this is 10 GB, I’m going to have to put it in that top slot and just hope it won’t affect thermals too much.

Okay, so has that clicked in? Yes, I think that’s clicked. It seems like it’s okay. Great! Now I can put this back on. How’s it go again? It goes under there.

Corsair Individual PCIe Cables

So now we’ve actually got the PCI Express cables, and I’m trying to think of the best place to put them to not look too silly. This is where I regret not going for black ones. Maybe in the future, I’ll change these to black ones, but for now, I will just leave it. So it could come in from the top. Will that look a bit silly? I don’t know. Let’s have a look. Let’s try one of them from the top and let’s see.

So, would that look too silly? Let’s have a look. So you’re going to have that, and then the cables will just come straight round. I don’t think it looks too bad. Alternatively, I could pop it out under here or in one of the other holes, but I think this actually might be best. There’s not too much kinking in the cable either, and because they’re individual ones, you can actually get quite a big bend on them without worrying about affecting the cables or anything like that.

If you think I should do it differently, though, please let me know down in the comments because I don’t want to ruin the entire aesthetic of this build. So please do let me know, but for now, I’m going to do that. Yeah, and then the other pin just doesn’t do anything, right?

So these now will come all the way around here. Okay, so they’re out of the way.

Front Panel Connectors (Easy..!)

The next thing is the front connectors, and usually, I dread this particular part. But as I covered in a separate video, Gigabyte actually gives you the G connector. It’s this really useful pass-through device where it literally tells you exactly what is on it and what cables to put in it. Then you just plug it in, and all I’ve got left is the USB 3 and USB 2s on top and the HD audio, I guess.

Right, so I’m trying to organize all of the cables we have that we need to actually do something with. So we’ve got our HD audio and USB 2 that’s there, and USB 3. So they’re going to come through in a minute. I’m just going to put them out of the way for now. Then we have our dreaded front panel connector ones, but they’re not actually too bad in this case. And then I have ones for the fans.

So this one is the back RGB fan, and this one is the RGB strip. The way that works is you’ve got a… it’s a proprietary thing, it’s a bit annoying. And then discuss that in another video. We’ll actually review this case if you wanted to check that out in more detail. But you plug that in like that, and then I need to give the SATA power. So I’ve got my SATA… get them out of the way as well. So got my SATA over here. Does this reach? Yes, it does. Just going to chuck that down there, connect up the SATA there. Where’s the little end? There. So that will give me SATA power. Great!

So now I’ve got my front panel connectors here, and I’ve got my USB 3 and everything else. What’s a bit annoying is that this… I don’t have that much length of cable here. I’m just going to have to try and get as much as I can and probably pop it through there as well. But this is where the actual G connector comes in. It is a really useful thing because you can put everything in there, and then it’s just the G connector you need to actually plug in. So it does make things a bit easier.

So for that one, we are looking for power LED plus and minus. Let’s plug that in. So minus and plus. Let’s tip that together. Put that in here. That goes in there. Reset switch. Don’t have chassis intrusion. We don’t have… uh, power is going to be over there. So where’s the hard drive? HD is there. Let’s put the HD plus and minus. Goes in that way. So that’s good. So that’s the right way if I can actually get it in. Great!

Okay, so then the last thing we have is going to be the power switch, which is PW, which will go in that one. PW in. Yes, click. Brilliant! So now I think… I think it needs to go in here. So put in there. I’m going to put the other ones in there as well, but I can always move it if it’s meant to be going somewhere else, if it’s better to put it somewhere else. So we’ll put it there. Let’s flip it over and see where we’re at.

Okay, so we are looking for USB 3. I can already see that. USB 2, can see that. And HD audio. My… hopefully, my HD audio reaches. Let me do that one first, just because that’s the one that you can usually struggle with. ‘Cause it’s on… it’s always over here, and yet it’s coming from the front over here. But I think I’ve got enough room there. Okay, so I think that’s in. I think the F audio is in.

And at this stage, I’m actually really happy I did put my networking card in the middle x16 slot. Well, at least it looks like an x16 slot. It’s probably a lot less than that. Because if I put it in the other one, I actually wouldn’t be able to reach any of these cables. So I’m glad I’ve done that.

Next up, I have my USB 2. I’ll just put that there. So I feel like that’s in. I think it’s in. Front panel connectors… so I have got them coming in. As my hard drive is down there, so it goes in that way. So that is just going to connect in. Yes, bang in. Going to make sure the cables are in there nicely, which it looks like they are. And then I’ve just got my USB 3. For what that… I think that is it because I’ve connected all that. Yes, I need to cable manage it and I need to make sure that those aren’t going to clip against the fan. That’d be really annoying if it does do that. So I’m going to have to move them a bit more out of the way, but in general, I think that’s it.

Does It Boot Up..?

So what I’m going to do is just quickly plug this in over there and just see if it boots up. Yes! Yes! Yes, it’s alive! So got my RGB strip there, the front. Good. All running. Good amount of it. And then let’s have a look and see if this all boots up. Oh, come on! Yes, please! Yes! Device is ready. Woohoo!

“PIN is no longer available.” Uh-oh. “Only reset my PIN.” Blah, blah, blah. Well, I don’t have a choice ’cause I can’t log in ’cause that’s the only option you’ve given me. So… yes. Yes! Brilliant! Good, I’m in. That’s brilliant!

Windows 11 Is Alive!

What’s it saying? Would I like to download…? I’m going to regret this, but yes, I’m going to download those. Then let me just do a big basic sense check. Task Manager… Performance. So I’ve got my 12-core Ryzen CPU. I’ve got my RAM. What’s it running at? Uh… okay, the slow speed. I’ll fix that offline, but that’s easy enough. That’s just a motherboard change. Got my two drives. I got my Ethernet that’s running slowly, and I got my graphics cards. That’s brilliant!

X540-T2 Network Card Drivers

So what I need to do, other than restart my computer for that, is I’m also going to need to install the drivers for that. So I’ll do that now. No, you stupid, stupid thing! “No Intel network connections found on this computer.” I’ve installed this on Windows 10 a month ago, so how did I do that? I got it from Dell, I remember. Yes, this is a Dell card, and as a result, I downloaded it from Dell. X540-T adapter… I’m pretty certain this is what I did. Actually, uh, was it that one? I have no idea. On the Windows server? That doesn’t seem right. Who cares? Let’s run it. See what happens.

Yes, there’s a Dell card. I think that’s what it was. Going… wrong? Is that running? Yes, it is. Next. Accept. Intel… I don’t know. ProSet? Yeah, fine. That sounds fun. Advanced Network? Probably not. No, no, I don’t want SNMP. So… install. Let’s get Device Manager up and running there as well, ’cause ideally these… There we are! Yes! One of them’s moved out of “Other devices.” It’s now moved to “Network adapters.” There we are! Brilliant! So my 10 gig card is now there. Thank you, Dell! I’ve always said I love Dell.

So let’s have a look. So on Ethernet, there you can see this on that adapter, which is brilliant. And I’m hoping if I click into… Sure, Ethernet 10, 10 gig. That is literally what I had done this entire build for. It might seem ridiculous, but it’s literally… with my old build, I was stuck at 2 and 1/2 gig gigabit speeds via the motherboard, and hence I put the… I needed more space for the networking card. And now I have that. So now my home lab NAS and my computer can speak to each other on 10 GB speeds, and sometimes with video editing, I do actually need that.

Benchmark & Health Checks

So at this point, I want to check that the computer works as expected. And when running OBS and also video editing, which is quite heavy on the computer, CPU speeds weren’t too bad. They were in the 40s or 50s, and yeah, you can see my GPUs being actively used. My CPU doesn’t show much usage, but it is still being used. So I feel that these CPU temps aren’t too bad.

If I then look at HWiNFO, it always makes it look a bit worse ’cause you see results in the 60s, but even then that’s not too bad for this particular use case, which is heavy (video editing and OBS running).

Next up, I want to check my two drives work, and I got good, healthy, low temperatures. One of them is only 99% health just because that’s my C drive and it has lots of writes, but they are still healthy.

Then I’m running Cinebench. May need to keep an eye on the CPU temperatures. It’s also good to know what the score was. So as you can see, the temps were always below 80, which is actually pretty good ’cause this is quite a resource-intensive test. And eventually, the results came out, and they’re not a million miles away from a Threadripper CPU, which is actually pretty good in my opinion.

Final Look At The Build

And that is the build completed! I do need to do a bit more cable management in the back, but overall, that is now done, and I’m really happy about that. It was a lot easier to build in this case compared to my old Corsair Carbide 88R case. And admittedly, that is like, I don’t know, seven, eight years old at least. That didn’t have as many cable routing holes, it was a smaller case, it didn’t have a PSU shroud, and everything was a bit messy. And hence, I had to come up with some really hacky solutions to actually cable manage it.

This has been a lot better. I… I’m much happier having a PSU shroud, plus the fact that it’s mid-tower means I’ve just got a bit more clearance. So I can actually fit my hand between my CPU cooler and the fans, which might seem like a weird thing to say, but it’s actually nice to have that extra room. Everything just feels a bit airier, and yeah, cable managing… it’s not perfect. I could do more, and I will do more, but for now, that is that.

So all that remains for now is to put this on and remove… remove the plastic. And don’t smash it! Do not smash it! I should be removing the plastic before I put it on. You really… Oh, there we are! Look how smart that looks!

So I’m going to put… before I crack something, I’m just going to put one or two of these in, ’cause I really don’t want to drop this. That would be a really unfortunate way of finishing this build, wouldn’t it? So one in there, one in there, and we can get a better view of exactly what the case and the computer looks like. I think it looks pretty smart.

Tristan has been interested in computer hardware and software since he was 10 years old. He has built loads of computers over the years, along with installing, modifying and writing software (he’s a backend software developer ‘by trade’).Tristan also has an academic background in technology (in Math and Computer Science), so he enjoys drilling into the deeper aspects of technology.Tristan is also an avid PC gamer, with FFX and Rocket League being his favorite games.