After much deliberation, it is with a heavy heart that I have to cancel the project.

The current environment makes it impractical to go forward with the build. The 5950X is practically a rare unicorn, as are the 6800 cards. I cannot get my hands on them at a reasonable price. Then there's the fact that the next CPU will be using a whole new socket and RAM type. To hold on to the build in its current form is not feasible.

Then I discovered how badly I need optical drives. To wit, I just imported some very rare anime on DVDs from Japan, and realized that I otherwise have no way to rip them onto a hard drive to play them on my nVidia Shield Pro box.

So yeah, the project is on ice. For now. I promise that it will be revamped once the CPU and GPU market stabilizes, if that ever happens, given that Pres. Biden is going forward with Drumpf's policy of banning China from fabricating silicon, and how the crypto craze is still on going.

Instead, I will be reviving the Red Dead Revenger once more since it has the great Lancool case that supports optical drives. That one needs a full overhaul because the mobo is pretty much dead, the USB3 headers broke while I was working on cleaning it- came right out with the plug, military tough grade my ass Asus. I already secured a new mobo for it.

Never thought I’d be doing this, but the 3950x is going to the Rainbow Warrior. This build will be iced until both the 5950X and the RX 6900XT are released, in which then they will be fitted into this build.

The rational for this is that the 5950x has a mechanism that allowed the CPU to access the GPU memory directly via a DMA (or as AMD calls it, SMA- Smart Memory Access), meaning that it can read the textures from disk and write the textures straight into the GPU memory. In theory this improves performance exponentially and saves on system RAM as the CPU no longer needs to do a two-step to cache the textures to system RAM, then interrupt the GPU, and then write the data in chunks to the CPU memory- as far as the CPU is concerned, the GPU is part of a heterogeneous system architecture and the RAM on the GPU is just more system RAM. In reality, well, how many programs will support this remains to be seen, but judging from the numbers in benchmarks, many games already support it.

Well, this would be the last thing I'd be doing to the Pinkeye Revenger for the time being. As Big Navi is postphoned until the end of the year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we've arrived at a point where the project cannot progress any further, at least not without me foregoing Big Navi. I am still really intrigued by Big Navi and do still want a Big Navi card tho, so I'm more than willing to put this project on ice.

Still, there is one more build I've decided to do: I want an ingest server capable of 4K60. So, I have decided to put effort into the Rainbow Warrior project. I'm really leaning towards the high-end build because of Thunderbolt support.

Also, at this point, update will slow. I have two more episodes pertaining to this build planned, but one hinges on a package that's on a slow shipment from Germany and another will only take place once Big Navi is announced.

However I will only deal with this when I have to mess with the GPUs. Most likely after the Big Navi lineup is announced.

Might as well start with the fans...

Motherboard has switched again, this time to a Asrock X570 Phantom Gaming X. Originally wanted a Taichi, but then it was sold out. No one seemed to want the Phantom Gaming X tho (which for all intents and purposes appears to be a recolored Taichi, but costs RM300 more for some reason) so they're abundant in computer stores and I had no problem picking up one.

Now, here's where things get hairy. The idiotic placement of the USB-C connector. Namely, you need a short video card or you can't use it. Asrock released an adapter to fix the issue, but yeah, good luck getting it in Malaysia. Asrock Europe and Asrock America refuses to send me one, tells me to go talk to Asrock Asia.

Asrock Asia doesn't want to help. Got an automated answer asking me to talk to my dealer. Yeah, like that'll help. I got my aunt to talk to my dealers anyway, and they all agree to try to contact Asrock, although I don't know if they'd really follow through with it.

An alternative is to pull the GPU out using a PCIe extender cable. Except that for some idiotic reason PCIe 3.0 extenders are not compatible with PCIe 4.0 slots (you can force the slot to run at PCIe 3.0 mode, but what's the point in that?), that there's only one company making PCIe 4.0 extender cables, and they don't ship to Malaysia either.

Things are really going wrong with this build.

So the good news first: I found a fan controller that fits the bill, mostly. I give you, the Aquacomputer Quadro. Yeah, it’s expensive AF because I have to import this from Germany, but if it don’t stick, you can’t slap her. Also bought a lighted argb water tank bottom because I want to do something funky with it (the ARGB controller has a long story that I tire of telling). Only one question: anyone know how to build a rotation sensor windmill to measure airflow?

Also, the motherboard has switched from a Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master to an Asrock X570 Taichi.

The bad news: the Asrock X570 Taichi is out of stock in Malaysia and remains out of stock until next March.

That’s fine. The Borderlands titles are stupid games anyway and the developer is racist. Because if you’re going to let people in the US have a companion app that will net you guns that are a thousand times more powerful than can be found in-game but deny the rest of the world said app, there is no other thing I can call you.

Problem 1- distributor insists Core V71 TG is discontinued, urged me to take View 71 TG instead. Begrudgingly accepted because I need the build up before the end of January because I want Borderlands 3 and Outer Worlds.

Problem 2: View 71 has a stupid hard drive layout configuration. Either 4 3.5 inches on the front and 2 on the back (one panel needs to be removed to make the front drives accessible) or six laptop drives on the back. Thermaltake does not sell the drive bays separately when you need more of them. I don’t like the former placement. Sigh, back to copying the Guts & Glory build and having 6 laptop drives on the back. Unfortunately this means going even more over budget since I don’t have six identical laptop drives on hand.

Problem 3: no front panel. Goodbye plan to use SoundBlaster X-Fi Titanium Fatality edition and fan controller. Now I need a USB fan controller that takes 3-5 fans.

Change of plans. RAM and SSD going Corsair to reduce costs. To wit:

RAM is now 2 sets of Corsair Vengeance 3200MHz Ryzen-tested RAM (2 sticks a set, 4 sticks of 8GB each, totaling 32GB). Sadly, really only 2133MHz and not in the Aorus X570 Master RAM QVL.

SSD is now two Corsair Force MP600 PCIe4. Ironically these are not only cheaper but also performs better according to various online sites. Turns out that the motherboard has a condition where two SATA ports will be disabled if a third NVMe stick is installed. However, no limitations if the third NVMe stick is SATA. Hmmm...

Due to complexities, I'm moving the FireCuda down to TBD. Seagate hasn't launched the product line in Malaysia.

Set in stone:
- CPU will be an AMD Ryzen 9 3950X
- Motherboard will be a Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master
- Sound card will be the X-Fi Titanium currently housed in the Red Dead Revenger.
- 2X Gigabyte Aorus RGB RAM (2x8GB sticks per kit) 3200MHz.

TBD:
- HDDs will be 6 WD Blue 500GBs, four salvaged from the Red Dead Revenger (to be retired) and two more from stoage (meant to be used with Red Dead Revenger, but change of plans happened). Alternatively, 5x WD Blue 500GBs + 1x 120GB SATA 3 SSD cache drive.
- 3X PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs. Choice currently between Seagate FireCuda 520 500GB and Gigabyte Aorus NVMe Gen4 500GB.
- GPU (waiting for AMD's rumored high end Navi announcement that's supposed to happen at CES 2020).