Nice BIOS feature: Mouse speed. Core i9/RTX 4090 build

[FlyingPenguin]

First time I've ever seen this. It's a setting in BIOS to adjust the mouse speed. Mice are notoriously finicky in the BIOS menu: sometimes to fast, sometimes too slow. This mobo (Gigabyte Z960 UD AX) I'm working with has a mouse sensitivity setting in the BIOS. Very cool.

Building a Core i9 system with an RTX 4090 for my brother in-law. He's not a gamer, but he's into 8K video, and his old PC is just not up to 8K video editing.

The reason for the 4090 is that Adobe Premiere actually makes use of CUDA cores nowadays.

[FlyingPenguin]

Well if only to make sure the RTX 4090 was working properly, I had to bench it against my RTX 3080. It spanks my 3080... HARD.

BTW, nice card. I chose the MSI Gaming Trio RTX 4090. I chose it because it's not as tall as some other cards, and I'm limited to 165mm height clearance in this case. It's a Fractal Focus G, the same case I used on my workstation. We didn't have many options for a case because he needs a BluRay writer and very few cases come with optical drive bays anymore AND have a high airflow design.

[Executioner]

It's a lot of money for a video card - $2k ouch!

[FlyingPenguin]

$1650 for this one, but yeah. Tried to talk him into a 4080, but he was adamant. Then I did some benchmark research on Adobe Premier performance, and yeah a 4090 makes a big difference, and he can afford it.

My biggest concern was finding one that would fit in this case. Also concerned about the size of the 1000 watt PSU. It's a little longer than a normal PSU so things are going to be a little cramp if I leave the 3.5" HDD cage installed.

[FlyingPenguin]

Well the case came in, and I've got it in there. Tight fit, but thankfully I was right and the RTX 4090 is low enough so that the power cable is not bent at a severe angle (not to anyone interested in a 4090, this is one of the lowest profile ones. This case only has 165mm clearance for the card and the heat sink, which is pretty minimal for today's standards).

Been tweaking the fan curves, mainly to deal with the Core i9 12900 which does run hot under load, but I've got the fan curves setup perfect right now.

I am super impressed with the cooling on this 4090 video card. Under heavy load (Furmark stress test), and with the case fans running at around 60%, the card never goes over 80C. This is the MSI RTX 4090 Gaming Trio.

[Err]

Very nice clean installation. I have the MSI 3080 with the 3 fan setup. With a tweaked fan curve, I think the hottest I've seen it is 81 C. MSI must make sure their heatsinks are making full contact with the components.

I'm surprised the PSU didn't have a connector for the GPU without an adapter.

[FlyingPenguin]

Me too. I'm guessing it's an older model? I selected it because while longer than a standard PSU, it's shorter than most 1000 watt PSUs, and I didn't have much room between the PSU and the drive cage.

I gotta say, I love the flat ribbon style cables that came with this PSU. Easier to deal with. Going to look for that in the future.

[Pugsley]

Ya know what... I think video cards have gotten to big to be cards any more. They should make a new "slot" that piggy backs it to the MOBO or maybe make a ribbon cable and make the video card mount directly to back case wall or something.

[Losbot]

So what did that build cost, if you don't mind sharing?

[FlyingPenguin]

Some pricey components. He went with an 8TB Sabrent Gen 4 m.2 SSD which was $1100 all by itself, and a Seagate 20TB Exos HDD (video editing 8K, so working on the SSD, and then copying the completed jobs to the HDD). 64 GB of DDR4 RAM (Ram is cheap, so why not?). Biggest expense, of course, was the 4090 at around $1650.

Total price for the components was around $4800 with tax.

[FlyingPenguin]

Final photo of the interior with the exhaust fan installed, before he picked it up:

[Executioner]

Dam, that build is a monster. I see what you mean with the flat ribbon cables.

[FlyingPenguin]

Major components list, if anyone is interested:

- Intel Core i9-12900KF Desktop Processor 16 (8P+8E) Cores up to 5.2 GHz Unlocked LGA1700 600 Series Chipset 125W
- Seagate Exos X20 20TB SATA HDD SATA 6Gb/s 7200 RPM (ST20000NM007D)
- EVGA Supernova 1000 P3, 80 Plus Platinum 1000W, Fully Modular, Eco Mode with FDB Fan, Power Supply 220-P3-1000-X1
- Noctua NH-D15S chromax.Black, Premium Dual-Tower CPU Cooler with NF-A15 PWM 140mm Fan (Black)
- MSI Gaming GeForce RTX 4090 24GB GDRR6X 384-Bit HDMI/DP Nvlink Tri-Frozr 3 Ada Lovelace Architecture OC Graphics Card (RTX 4090 Gaming X Trio 24G)
- SABRENT 8TB Rocket 4 Plus NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 Internal SSD Extreme Performance Solid State Drive R/W 7100/6600MB/s (SB-RKT4P-8TB)
- Corsair Vengeance LPX 64GB (2x32GB) DDR4 3600(PC4-28800) C181.35V Desktop Memory - Black
- Fractal Design Focus G - Mid Tower Computer Case - ATX - High Airflow -
- GIGABYTE Z690 UD AX DDR4 (LGA 1700/ Intel Z690/ ATX/ DDR4/ Triple M.2/ PCIe 5.0/ USB 3.2 Gen2X2/ Type-C/WiFi 6/2.5GbE LAN/Motherboard)