From Start To Finish - Too many images to post up individually unfortunately.
Some notes:
- The best I could get with current cooling:
https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/31919921
- I had an ATX power supply in at first, this is not ideal and cable management was no fun. The SFX supply was perfect, it makes cable management a breeze as you can see at the end result of the build.
- I used a much smaller cooler than is necessary, but I do have a second intake fan pushing cold air into the case as well. You could easily fit an AIO in this case, or even a large air cooler with a full 120x25mm fan. Personally if I didn't have my new case on the way I'd go with the Corsair H60, and replace the radiator fan with a Noctua A-12.
- I did not used fully sleeved cables and probably should to make life easier, it would be $40 well spent.
- I had to swap out the Noctuas on the GPU vents to Scythe 120x15 (wait time on the chromax was way too long at time of ordering), the fans were simply too close and causing turbulence which was producing a terrible sound at times and I think the fans on the GPU may have a slight wobble which was causing them to make contact with the Noctua fan frame as well. I can't complain with GPU temps even using these slim fans and clocking at 2150, I rarely see GPU hitting more than 70-75C during a Heaven 4.0 test or sustained gaming. It generally will sit around 65-67 during gameplay, so I'm not upset with this at all considering the only exhaust produced is due to positive pressure in the case.
- Unfortunately my original mobo got delayed and I ended up with an ASUS Strix 550-i, I may swap to the Asrock but so far this board is holding up well. I'll have to do a comparison to their peripherals and other selling points but I don't think either one will affect my performance much.
- I did possibly get some GPUs out of a bad batch, after the third card I was able to update drivers and do some minor tweaking to get what I consider some very good performance without fiddling further with the cards limits. I'll be staying with the card for now - my early judgement may have been a bit too soon as I have had zero issues in the last few days. Seriously, even in games like Fault with horrific optimization on max settings I don't drop below 60 frames, however if I don't limit the frames in some games it does produce a coil whine that you'll hear if you don't have headphones on.
- Ryzen 5 3600 is a beast for me, so far I've boosted it to 4.4 and the only thing keeping me from going further is the cooling performance of the low profile cooler. I believe with a Corsair H60 you could probably push it a bit more. I might also see a better return on a more premium thermal paste or liquid metal with a better cooler since we are generating more heat, but really for gaming I'm already way past where I need to be and I've just gotten silly at this point as I have a horrible habit of min-max. During gaming I sit at around 68-75C, a bit warm for my tastes but nothing that's going to harm my CPU.
Overall I'm pretty happy with the build, but it just isn't as SFF as I was hoping to achieve so I've ordered a Sliger SM550 with the AIO cooler. I almost went with the Conswole but after doing some research, I found that the SM550 and even SM560 are perfectly capable of fitting in a backpack for ease of travel. When I put this all back together with the new cooler and case I'll probably produce a second log. I might even take that chance to try a different GPU and use this one to upgrade my rig for at home.
Between this forum and Optimum Tech I learned a lot on diving into this side of PC building. Honestly if you just spend a day watching reviews from Optimum Tech and some of the Gamers Nexus information you'll be set if you're more of a newbie like myself. That is of course coupled with doing your own research and reading/taking responses from this forum into consideration.