AMD's 96-core beast with watercooling engraved into CPU joins car and industrial parts in a 2,000W direct die cooling setup
Powering this system was going to be a challenge. Thankfully, there are now a small handful of SFX power supplies available with a 1000-watt envelope, and I decided to go with a bit of an underdog: the Silverstone Extreme 1000Rz Platinum.
For storage, we’re using a Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus in the 1 TB flavor. Now, I’m aware that this is only a PCIe 4.SSD, and just 1 TB, a bit paltry in comparison to the rest of this system. However, the one PCIe 5.0 SSD I have on-site is currently installed in another PC. Besides, it’s not as if the Rocket 4 is a slouch in the slightest, and 1 TB is plenty for testing purposes here.
For memory, Greyscale uses a 48 GB (2x 24GB) DDR5-7200 memory kit from Team Group. I’ll detail the selection for cooling this system later when we get to building the actual cooling loop, but for now, let's build the system up ‘dry’ to make sure everything works before figuratively dunking it under water.
NCase is quite a special brand in that it’s not a large-scale commercial organization. Rather, the founders, once known as Necere and Wahaha360 on the [H]ardForum, were dissatisfied with the offerings available, and set out on a mission to build a better ITX case than they could buy on the market.
After many design iterations, Dan and AJ finally came out with the ‘first edition’ NCase M1 back in 2012, and I can say that I’m the proud owner of number 0149.
Production was outsourced to Lian Li, largely because Lian Li excelled in the manufacturing of high-quality aluminum PC cases, but also because Lian Li was actually willing to work with the just-founded NCase. Such a partnership is always a gamble, and building the tooling for a small production-volume case, especially when it isn’t your own product, isn’t particularly profitable.
However, the partnership worked out, and now, almost 14 years later, NCase has become a thriving small business complete with support, marketing, and PR staff, and crucially, they’ve sold a lot of cases.
Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-20/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Niels Broekhuijsen Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cooling/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cooling/showstopper-build-greyscale-custom-looped-itx-pc-pushes-the-form-factor-to-its-limits#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.