gaming on a budget ... get the most equipment for the dollar and build it yourself

 

I have been tuning this setup for a few years. 2 monitors are common now, and i prefer a large 2k gaming oled and a tiny oled on which to monitor equipment and see how downloads are doing. In this case, i chose the 10.1 inch 2660 by 1600 oled from wisecoco.

 

To avoid confusion, i am using the kids mouse and the tiny keyboard that [along with the 10.1 inch screen] is part of my cyberdeck project. And, the tiny input devices leave more room for the 75% keyboard and small gaming mouse from endgame gear that are used with the larger 27 inch oled from dell.

 

The large screen needs a heavy duty arm from Haunuo, which is around 40 dollars on amazon. The smaller screen was chosen in part because it has a standard 75 mm vesa mount, so it can be attached to the less expensive generic clamp on arm. Both arms can be moved easily, to tune in their best locations over time.

 

 

For sound, i connect the line out of my gaming system to this 25 dollar 4 ohm amplifier from Drok. I selected this one because it can accept power from either a 12 or 24 volt system, and because it has a dedicated subwoofer output. I use an ordinary home light switch to turn it on and off, as the volume does not have a click to shut it down. I found that a standard 3 mm screw will self tap into this size of heat sink, so, using a spacer, i attached an 80 mm noctua fan. I powered the fan from the same 13.5 volt dc wire that is powering the amp, after interposing 3 of the noctua low noise adapters before the power cord. Each one reduces the speed of the fan, and i found that 3 could silently cool the amplifier.

 

Of course, i built my own speakers using 4 ohm drivers from the company Dayton. I used their 4 inch full range drivers, a simple crossover, and their 3/4 inch dome tweeters for the left and right channels. I deployed  their classic 6 1/2 inch subwoofer for the low notes. These components seem to balance fairly well, with nice bright treble, horns and voices that are the right volume, and startling low bass when needed. I used 3/4 inch plywood for the boxes. The left and right boxes are un-ported, and very small. The sub box is a 10 inch cube, and has two 2 inch ports that go half way into the box.

 

My best case is the T1 from Formd, although this case shipped with a delicate  and too short gpu extension cable that has caused a lot of problems. I bought a b610 lightening mother board and an AMD 7600x processor for this build, and sadly, it was never able to send it's video signal through the cable. My older mother board is a flagship from gigabyte, bedecked with the 13th gen i5 processor. It has enough gpu signal to get through the infuriating cable.

 

 i have pulled the covers off, so that you can see the pny rtx 4070 that has been de-shrouded. If you tinker with gaming systems, you know that you can not increase the thickness of fans at your whim, but you can use a much larger diameter fan if there is ample room in the case. These 15 mm by 120 mm fans from noctua put about twice as much air on the card without making as much noise as the stock 90 mm fans. I use 14 inch zip ties a lot for tasks like holding these fans on. It is a lot easier than joining more than one zip tie.

 

For the top fans, I used the 30 by 120 mm fans from phanteks. For this use, they are set to the middle speed, for a maximum of 2000 rpm. The fans are propped up a bit using spacers, to make more room for cables under them, and to put them the correct distance from the top filter. It is important to put screens under the fans, so that they dont grind up the power cables. I have been gaming hard on this gpu since it released, and have not had to take it apart yet to change the heat transfer materials. In this set up, it games at around 60 degrees, and nearly in silence.

 

 

 

 The 13th gen i5 was a great processor if you got one without defects, which i did! It can use 140 watts for quite some time, so i configured the T1 case to allow for the 65 mm tall and 90 mm wide heat sink from Noctua. It is also possible to space the power supply out from the spine, leaving a nice central gap for heat to escape, and placing the psu fan at the correct distance from the side of the case to breath only cool outside air. It should be noted that i used the 750 watt sff power supply from corsair, so the fan rarely turns its fan on [even while gaming].

 

I used to download at night with this powerful gaming system, but that uses up too much battery power. You may notice a raspberry pi 5 driving the small screen. It uses less than 10% as much power as my gamer, and can be left on for days or weeks or months. I have downloaded files like the wikipedia database, which is over 100 gigs, over the course of many nights, using the wifi from my cell phone. You are probably seeing a pattern here. not a penny wasted that could be used for a better screen, more realistic sound, or more frames per second of gaming.

 

I play a bunch of games, with the most played being doom 2016 and doom eternal. But, i also like Cyberpunk, Ratchet and Clank ripped apart, Metal Hellsinger, Halo infinite, and many others. The older games like doom 2016 and metal hellsinger run flat out on this combination of cpu and gpu, but the newer games do not run at their max speed. it is best to use a bit of the frame gen and scaling for the new games, at least until the 'super' cards come out for the rtx 50 series. Even though i bought a 4070, and then a low profile 4060, i have not pulled the trigger on the 50 series yet. The 5070 is not a lot faster than the 4070, especially since i won the silicon lottery with my particular 4070. The PNY will run steadily at 3000 mhz, and with it's memory boosted about 800 hz. It about time, because i lost big with both of the 3000 series cards that i bought. They gobbled power and made plenty of heat, but generated few frames. 

 

lastly, i am sure that you were hoping to see the most beautiful cat on this [or any] planet.

 

 

 Yang the cat says, 'i like it on top of the computer where it is nice and warm'

Yang suggests that i make a youtube video, and see if it goes viral.