I struggled to come up with a name for this build, but after seeing it in the sun; I figured it out.

This is the Monolith.

After custom watercooling for many years, I decided that a back to basics approach was needed. No custom tubing runs, no fittings, just plug and play simplicity. I'm really happy with how this one turned out.

I put the final touches on today, and took advantage of the sunny weather for a photo op.

I cleaned up the rats nest I was dealing with when using the included EK-Vardar RGB fans by swapping them out for Lian Li Unifan AL140s, and splurged on an RGB memory kit. I also added a splitter for my single A-RGB header so I could get the lighting to function on all of the components that offered it.

The cables are the stock ones Asus provided with exception to the custom SFF 90° cable that was kindly supplied by the CableMod Early Adopter Program. It is also worth noting that the 4090 requires 90° video out adapters since the clearance under the case isn't sufficient for standard DisplayPort/HDMI cables, hence the tail coming out of the back of the case.

The GPU has a mild overclock with +130MHz on the core, +500MHz on the memory, and a custom fan curve. GPU temps are in the 65-72C range in 95% of the titles I've played.

The only game that makes it sweat is Control with the "Director's Cut" mod that improves the RT, adds HDR, etc. That particular game with the mod installed pushes the 4090 to 500W+ easy. Caps out at 80C in that title alone.

CPU temps aren't interesting because they're basically a moot point. I have the CPU on a curve optimizer in the BIOS and an 80C limit. It boosts to 4.6GHz in all core workloads, and hits 5.05GHz in single core workloads.

It basically functions as advertised, but without hitting the thermal ceiling as the Ryzen 7000 series is designed to do.

Specs-

Case: SSUPD Meshroom S w/ custom feet from SFFParts on Etsy

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix B650E-I Gaming WiFi

Memory: G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo RGB [2×16GB, 6000MHz, C36]

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition

PSU: Asus ROG Loki 1000W SFX-L

Storage: 2× Samsung 980 Pro 2TB NVMe m.2 SSD

Cooling: EK-AIO 280mm A-RGB w/ Lian Li Unifan AL140 V2 fans, Noctua NF-A9x14 Chromax for GPU exhaust assist