This is my very first build and I wanted it to be a showpiece kinda item on my desk. I was looking around for some ITX form-factor build as space on my desk is limited and I can't fit in an ATX case. I came across this vertical open-air case, Xtia Xproto and I thought it would be the right case for my desk as it also has an artistic look to it. I was initially concerned about sound and dust accumulation. But then I thought the build would look crazy and unique, so I decided to build on/in it.

The reason I gave the build a name as Titan BT-7274 is that I loved the AI Robot character in Titan Fall 2 game. And also the build looked to me like a small machine in a few angles, so decided it would be a nice nickname :)

Initially, I wanted the build to be pretty basic for the hardware and the configuration. So I started with the AMD 5600x which I thought would be a sweet spot for gaming.

For the motherboard, I went with Asus Strix X570-I Gaming. And again I know it's gonna be overkill for a 5600x processor if I am going to use it without overclocking it but thought it's better to go with a fully packed board. One thing to note about this motherboard is if it comes with a bios version lower than 2606 you would require an older gen AMD CPU to update the bios to or higher up than 2606 to make gen3 AMD CPUs work.

I started hunting for a graphics card, which is going to be a difficult task for most of us who are planning to build a pc or upgrade an existing one. I initially wanted to stick with Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti FE, but after waiting outside BestBuy during one of the drop days I was only able to grab a 3070 Ti FE, which is kinda an upgrade. And that made me go with Corsair SF750 PSU instead of the SF600.

I know for a 5600x CPU and with an open-air case AIO would be overkill, but then I thought I might overclock it someday and I did like the LCD on the NZXT Kraken z53. :P

For the RAM I bought a 16Gi Corsair Dominator 3600 16CL kit, but then I thought it would be better to have 32Gi for future-proofing. So returned the 16Gi kit and purchased a 32Gi Corsair Dominator 3600 CL18 kit, I know its latency cycles are bad but if I would have gone with the CL14 kit it was costing me way more than my budget so had to stick with CL18 and I am planning to tweak the timing myself to see if I can get it to CL16.

I like to have RGB elements in my build, so have bought a pair of Phanteks Digital RGB Strips. I am going to add them to the edges of the case. Haven't added them to the build yet.

One thing I found stressful when building the case was cable management. It was tough for me with the standard length corsair cables. Even though they were pretty flexible, cable management gave me a hard time. Especially with the PCIe cables which had two heads and those SATA cables with 3 heads. :(.

I would purchase custom cable sleeves that are short and are made specifically for this particular case in the future and replace the existing ones.

Let me know what you think !!!