pulls out Space Haven's OST cd, blows off the dust, inserts the CD and presses PLAY

To start, I really would like to say my thanks to both Megekko (hardware store) and DHL (professional delivery service) for both their quality and speed in provided service.

The Story

I set my order late last night and apparently after i pressed the 'pay' button this set in motion a well oiled machine that managed to deliver my order right when i came home early from work. The poor delivery guy, a well looking young man, dark skinned and well-mannered, handed over this small box which at least came in at 25 Kg. I offered him an apology which he shrugged in a way, well familiar to man who did a great job, and set myself inside with barely contained enthusiasm.

What came in the box?

* 1 unlocked Intel Core Ultra 9 series 2 285K CPU
* 1 MSI MEG Z890 ACE Motherboard
* 1 set Kingston DDR5 FURY Renegade Silver 2x24GB 8400 CUDIMM KF584CU40RSK2-48 memory modules
* 1 MSI MAG CORELIQUID I360 watercooler
* 2 Samsung 990 EVO PLUS M.2 drives (1TB and 2TB)
* 1 MSI SPATIUM M480 Pro 1TB M.2 SSD

This set me back around 2500 euros (yes please tell me how you would have beat me for that amount of money
To be fair, i was not planning on upgrading right now but a decisive victory and a Mom who needs to upgrade to a Windows 11 machine made enough votes to start an upgrade case, i mean, i could have bought some simple parts but, we all loose then.

Parts of my old machine that survived the 'culling'

A Gigabyte AORUS 3090Ti Waterforce
*1 140 mil Be Quiet Fan
and a Creative Labs Soundblaster AE-5 Plus

I won't bore you with any construction details. It was a long and tedious process that involved lots of 'grounding' and shooing away some dynamic static electric sources. One point of attention is that my midsized 'Be Quiet case' had only one solution for fitting both 360 AIO's. '3090' radiator mount on the top hoses facing back, 'Coreliquid' radiator mounted front, fans aimed outside, hoses down and this was a very tight fit!

Concerning air flow, i think i got it quite right now. Previously it was front back with the '3090' radiator mounted on top and one fan mounted on the bottom.
This time, mainly because i forgot to check the spin direction of the fans on the 'Coreliquid' I ended up with back front(top) flow which may serve me better, especially with the open meshed bottom of the 'Be Quiet' case.

The first time boot was wild, of course i first made a test boot, since i was afraid that the AIO CPU mount was too tight, but everything worked out fine, I actually immediately enabled the 'Neural Processing Unit' option on the motherboard and disabled the automatic driver installation process.

First Impressions

Man that thing is sick, fans spinning wild with everything I do! I even noticed 6.4 Ghz one time. I guess the mystery woman that resides in the cpu was stretching her wings. Luckily i came prepared. After the 'Windows' installation i enabled underclock protection and set a max frequency of 5 Ghz in XTUwhich lowered running costs from max TDP to a reasonable 85 Watts

also ..... XMP ....... got it in one time :p \o/

Expectations

While it is a hard pill to swallow, i still have a job, and other responsibilities, i'm hoping the wkend will provide for some more time to get into details, and maybe even play a game or 2. I'm curious to see where this will end.

Are their any doubs, actually only one. My AIO. Maybe i should have given a custom loop more thought or maybe i should have gone for a 280 cooler. Those larger fans might provide for more ease of use in the general appreciation of this device.

So what are your thoughts, i know it is not the fastest CPU out there, but i've always been an 'Intel' guy, and this baby was calling my name ever since its release ;)

organization, i'm actually expanding on the idea that gaming works better if you install all your games on their own drive

I also thought that this might create a better learning environment for my CPU, this is just pure speculation, nothing else ;-)

*dropped the all core boost to 4,6 Ghz on the P cores
thinking of creating a whole line of CPU configurations with different games/simulators in mind, of course first going to wait for intel, and their next batch of updates for these CPUs

*According to task manager, the neural processing unit is not used in any way by, at least, the games i checked or any commonality you can run into when operating windows 11

* the 3090Ti ... do i notice any difference ? of course not, pci 3.0 or 5.0 it is all the same though.... i could swear it runs colder on higher wattages... might be due the change of cooling ideology

* first blue screen
don't know why i thought i could go for an all core boost of 5,7 and at the same time increase chache speed with 0.2 ghz with everything else on stock but it did not work out in the end.... after the 1st boot i lost access to XTU, after the third boot i encountered the blue screen, somehow enabling MSI cpu game boost and the stage 1 overclocking profile brought everything back in good working order. The e-cores are now oc'd with 0.2 ghz

*leaning heavily towards a be quiet light base 900 case bottom top airflow design, 420 mm radiator support. Probably will fit the 420 cpu aio on top and the gpu 360 aio on the side , 4 140mil light fans on the bottom and 1 on the back drawing air in... curious to see how that will work

*waiting for the 'Be Quiet' customer service to reply to my sales inquiry, getting nervous. Fractal replied, why can't they reply?!
hoping they take my query serious
In the meantime my search for the best case set me on course of, of course, 'Lian Li', 'Dynamic Evo' and the 'Havn HS 420', boy what a nice case is the 'Havn'! a bit on the expensive side but damn, such a shame that the chassis is not a dynamic :p one, meaning you can't go top side down presenting the glass side on the right.

* The customer service from 'Be Quiet' is slowly starting up.....

Their response was : Yes, this is possible, though we like to know a little bit more about your 420 AIO BTW you know, those fckers, pun intended, shared today their news of releasing an 420 AIO end of februari.. how 'bout that?! we are a a bit concerned about RAM height

My response, 35 mm for the Artic Freezer III according to their page, however i made a slight change and want to build inverted, my guess is this will turn answer again in a full blown yes, but we'll see
According to copilot i would be able to mount my GPU vertically in that case so i also asked a question about that possibility

it would be nice i think, inverted motherboard, vertical mounted gpu , deep blue mood lighting from the invisible aio that's hanging on top, a total of 4 140 mil lightwings blowing cold air into the system

I also hope that it is an option that i can order a complete package directly from Be Quiet
Case, Sleeved Cables, baracket support for vertical mounting etc

*Anyways, also have a conversation going on with MSI.... i wanted their opinion on using their bord inverted ( what do i know? you know ) also wanted to know if there are preferences regarding ryzer cables

in their response they indicated to fasten the screws tightly but no response on the riser cable question.. so i asked again i n more detail .. let's see how that goes

*MSI customer service came back in full, though maybe with an imagined surprised underlining.....

"We have no preferred list regarding riser cables"

I imagine this to be similar for 'Aorus Gigabyte'

So, now do i know!

In the meantime with 'Be Quiet' I even managed to track down a nice offer for the HAVN HS 420

It's either that one or the Large OD11 EVo ..... it is a freaking large case but at least they offer left and right functionality... The HAVN on the other hand is like a wet dream for who i might decide to change my desk lay out

* Did you know that 'Distant Worlds 2' might be "The loudest game" i currently have installed. Had it running for about 6 hours yesterday, and the room temperature during that period must have increased with at least 6 points C. Ever since the upgrade i've been looking for ways to reduce the load on the CPU while enjoying 'DW2'. For those that are not aware. 'DW2' is a space empire simulator that comes with the following recommend system configuration

information gathered with copilot

[i]Minimum Requirements:

OS: Windows 7, 8, or 10 (64-bit)
Processor: 4+ Core CPU @ 2.5GHz
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVidia GTX 760-equivalent or better, 2+ GB VRAM
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 20 GB available space

Recommended Requirements:

OS: Windows 8, 10 (64-bit)
Processor: 8+ Core CPU @ 3GHz
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVidia GTX 1050-equivalent or better, 4+ GB VRAM
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 20 GB available space

When you enter game and want to pay in the biggest,2000 star, sandbox you are even informed that a minimum of 12 cores and 48 GB's of RAM is 'expected' (see attachment) Not a single word about CPU speed though. I always had a very quiet play through on my previous CPU 'The I9 10900k'. We had a good agreement going on between us, never ramping up the fans unnecessarily, no bad words on my side, life was all good. Okay, i did not add the second CPU power cable but really?! That is like the only difference between the 'core I9 10900k' my last friend, and the new bride 'the core ultra 285k'
First thing this baby does in 'DW2' is apparently go on a full calculator spree. To keep the bad words on my side in check i tried out numerous suggestions gathered by the superfluous Intel AI being wordwide.
TLDR
3 steps for bringing back DW2 in the safe zone of healthy living
1. reduce CPU load in the game menu to at least 30%
2. Disable INTEL Thermal boost
3. Reduce clockspeed to about 5 Ghz for all p-cores

actually ther'es a 4th point too
Point no4 actually brings us up to the second point of this topic 'CPU radiator' placement

* After long and careful consideration, i finally decided to go with the 'Be Quiet Lightbase (dark) 900 FX' case.
- There was a sale going on
- My PSU is also 'Be Quiet' branded
- Other brands did not offer similar flexibility either by not providing an option or creating too much pull on my wallet (like a full 50 to 100 euros higher end cost in Lian Li's case) I am Dutch you know!!!!

Also bought a riser cable for the case and some sleeved cables while i was at it totalling at around 400 euros extra, new '420 Arctic' radiator counted in

In the end i decided not to fall for the trick of 'lesser beings'

Thou art unworthy!!!!

* The boxes have arrived

Now the wait until Friday starts, at least i could take a day off
As it is I already have to many 'free hours'
better to make good use of 'm

* i'm having a bit of pre-fun atm...

you know what :" I literally never checked the dimensions... "

I just thought : " i need something to fit a 420 rad to play DW2 in a decent fashion :o "

The worst part is, this case is not even sold as a 'large' case.

In the meantime, it is at least twice as wide as my 'Be Quiet Silentbase 601'

and a bit higher...

LoL

* It was a nice build day, back and forts - wrong choices. managed to break the cable for something!.... had to drop the idea of the vertical gpu mount but admittedly the idea of the horizontal wind chamber is good enough for my mind.

The 'Be Quiet Lightbase' case turned out to be a sturdy opponent for this novice case enthusiast. Not in terms of lack of user appreciation. The whole system is approachable once you figured out their line of reasoning but more in terms of offering a limited approach to perfecting one's dream. And of course it is never nice to realise you have to undo what you spent building towards these past hours because you did not realize that this specific component would be impossible to mount without dismounting everything else.

It is sad the nice building experience is stained so much by the unwillingness of 'Be Quiet's' customer support department failing to inform that with my idea a vertical gpu mount is simply not possible.

That said, the ride's been a pleasant one so far. Gave her a spin in DW2 and of course Veilguard. Great cooling capabilities and a nice hum is all what i asked for.
Admittedly, when she goes, she's way louder than before,
and i ain't sure if that is a good thing or not!