The Noctua fans match the wood front so well

"Does anyone need this?" No. But boy do I want it!

Thank you for highlighting the joke of pcie lanes. I wish more people would.

That CPU heatsink alignment..... I get you can only get them oriented certain ways, but that along with the massive radiator options would have me swapping to a top mount water setup. Luckily all my Noctua narrow ILM 2011-3 heatsinks have always aligned front to back for my tower builds. Thanks for getting the sockets oriented right SuperMicro.

That's a good looking case.

5:24 one of the most irritating things about consumer platforms is certainly the lack of pcie expandability. I have ranted about this SOOOO many times and will continue to beat the drum on this one until somebody listens. the "high end" consumer platforms give you just enough pcie to do either 16x/0x/4x (with the 4x shared by one of the m.2 slots) OR 8x/8x/4x (again with the 4x being shared by one of the 3 m.2 slots - and the m.2 connectivity only one of the m.2 slots goes directly to the cpu, one of them is shared with the 4x slot as previously stated, and one of them is shared with the chipset sharing bandwidth with all the usb4 and onboard networking and sound and all that other stuff that's easy to cause bottlenecks if you use lots of networking at the same time (particularly with 10g networking)... it's difficult to find 10g onboard networking (there are only a few boards that have it), it's hard to drop 10g or higher networking in a system because you either halve the lanes to your gpu or you share your high speed networking (and only 4 lanes of it) with your high speed storage potentially causing bottlenecks there too. there needs to be some kind of middle ground, an enthusiast level chipset design that gives us something like 40-50ish pcie lanes but uses the latest performant cores (i.e. gets released with the rest of the ryzen line when it comes out instead of a year later like threadripper), but uses a limited number of cores (maxing at 16 or 24 would be great for a mid-way platform. perhaps also giving us 4 memory channels so we can stop doing the 2 dimms per channel thing that seems to be plaguing modern imc's everywhere.) threadripper non-pro COULD have been this, but they made it wildly expensive, and uses what will be previous genreation cores in just a couple of months that are generally slower than their ryzen9 counterparts. threadripper pro is right where it should be as a top end workstation build with loads of cores, 8 memory channels, etc. and it's ok that it runs a year behind, but threadripper should be that intermediate mark (it's got the 64 pcie lanes which is gresat, it's got the 4 memory channels which is great, but the cores are too slow for lightly threaded workloads like multimedia production and game development, and most of us don't need more than 24 full fat zen5 cores at the time to be an enthusiast fast "low end" workstation / top end consumer product.

Congrats on the new workstation, Jeff! Yes, mooorrreeeee PCIE lane please. I love my OG North case to the point I may just put a shelf in my new rack for it instead of re-casing my PC that's inside it.

I love at the end every single time there is something interesting about your drinks. Cheers!

Looks great!! Would love to have a workstation of that caliber!!

I would definitely need a hard drink after purchasing that Threadripper. Lol. Can't wait to see what you're using it for!

Won't need anywhere near as many cores but I plan on building a TR just for the PCIE lanes probably next year. Was thinking about this exact case as soon as I saw it mentioned since it seems to fix the 'not big enough' issues of the original, but then again I already have a Torrent... End result looks awesome, can't wait for the follow up videos.

Beautiful system!! So jealous!!!!

that is one sexy build...Thank you for that build montage. Very classy.

Aesthetically incredibly pleasing, nice commentary on the case... Defiantly looking forward to the full review of the hardware. I would have liked to see at least one benchmark. Like a quick R23 multi thread or a sneak preview of the hardware review. But that's ok there is still a little meat in this appetizer.

Ooft, you're really getting the best toys sent to you now :)

NGL that's sick AF

I built a 7970x in Jan, with the same motherboard, went all black too :). Also with a 100g card, I tried to get a 4080 super FE, but they went out of stock instantly on release day. Tempted to go water loop too, so will be interesting to see what you do :)

128gb ram seems kind of low for this - it should have 1tb - that wouldn't even be overkill since with so many cores you could easily be running 20 vms - they all need memory - as it is now you are going to be constrained but eventually you will have an upgrade path - you are right about prices - really inflated now - eventually they will normalize when there is more competition. lack of drive soace make this a no go for most ws users - who doesn't have 4-8 or 14 hd? i would be inclined to lay it on its side to avoid gpu and cpu socket strain. the obsession for alcohol was more present in this video than any obsession over 10k ws unfortunately but for a 10k mchine that still has some compromises i would probably be drinking too - that is where we are with pc mkt

That system cost more than my car! But super envious!!

Isn't the change to the fan "hub" related to the fact that it's a simple hub that plugs directly into a fan header instead of requiring a sata power plug? Limiting it to 4 fans on 1 connector does seem to be a safe bet to not overload the fan connector. And also, no motherboard with less than 4 fan headers should be used with a case like this anyway.

That's a beast of a machines put in a damn sexy case. 👍

Very interesting video. And I fully agree, man how I wish there was more PCI expandability for consumer platforms. I just put together a (virtualized) "storage server" out of consumer hardware, using IT-mode SAS HBA and SAS expander, GPU passthrough, quad 2.5Gb NIC and NVMe and while I got it to work, it was a huge pain to find a working, stable config within the limits of the PCI lanes, chipset and motherboard Oh, just FYI if anyone is looking at that case, the Fractal Design Define 7 XL has 16 x 3.5" slots if you buy the trays for it, not 14 and it can fit even more than that. 16 with just default mounting spots and one or more additional with converter trays for the 120mm fan mounts. It also has 2 x 5.25" bays you could convert to 2 x 3.5" or 3 x 3.5" bays with something like an Icy Box 2 x 5.25" to 2 x 3.5" or 3 x 3.5" conversion enclosure. Giving you a theoretical absolute maximum of 20 x 3.5" or 21 x 3.5" spots if you stack it to the brim or 16 x 3.5" to 19 x 3.5" spots without converting any 120mm fan mounts. I know because I chose that case specifically for that reason and have 16 slots occupied with 3.5" HDD's

Is still a metal box with wooden decoration. The system in it is more than that more interesting for me. And even if there is no point in expressing my wishes here, as a normal consumer I would like to have more PCIe lanes for the small consumer CPUs of the 900 class (I9 gen x 900 or AMD R9 x 900/ 950) from Intel and AMD. An X8 or a full X16 slot would be a dream.

With the size of video cards today, this is such a comfortable size. I love front mounting my radiators but do like that this one will clear the mobo if I did top mount it. I like the idea of air cooled too because of the amount of fans. Plus, the case just looks classy.

I love my Factal North case, although I never had any issues fitting parts in, I was helping my buddy put his PC together and he got the Meshify 2 XL. The size difference is drastic and I see why someone would want a "North but bigger". :D

If you need a lot of PCIe and you don't want to spend so much, you can always go with threadripper pro 5000 series or 3000 series.

Great video

I have a variant of this case, the fractal design mash black. It is beginner friendly. Just love it

So you're blowing hot GPU air in to the Noctua cooler? Ok then.

I just looked up the prices... and coughed in poor. XD For real, it's a beautiful system and it came together very well.

Just doing the things - go algorithm, go

in your "PCIe lanes" rant (totally agree btw!) what do you think about Motherboards Manufacturers converting PCIe gen 4/5 lanes down to PCIe gen3 for the slower cards that don't really need gen4/5 speeds? (i.e. 2x gen5 lanes = 8x gen3 or 4x gen4 = 8x gen3)

I always wondered why tf would anyone need a threadripper... then i spent 10 days compiling 10,000 square kilometers of landscape from Gaea. On 7980x it would be like 20 hours according to calculations, still a lot to desire lol

@CraftComputing My dream pc as a computer technician. But at this price i can't afford it as the max i have in budget for next pc including 49" monitor is only $5000.00. Thanks for the vid!

The front of the case looks like an old school radiator. I like it alot

That CPU and Mobo combo in a HL15 would be a killer do all NAS build.

It is so annoying so few cases support x3 wide cards on last pcie slot. Such a mismatch with x3 wide pice cards.

Pcie lanes are exactly why I just built a dual v4 Xeon server for my rack. It’s cheap and has just enough pcie lanes for what I use it for.

I have a Z9PA-D8 with 2 2687w in a North. Runs fine with both on 120cm Noctua towers.

Even though I don't need it, geez I'd love to have that system. So much power and it looks great too. Echo your thoughts on consumer cpu's with limited PCIE lanes. Bring back the old days of crap tonnes of ISA & PCI slots. Us homelab enthusiasts require more than just a GPU in the system.

Am sure if you wanted more storage you could add a "ASUS HYPER M.2 X16 CARD" for a extra x4 MVME drives !!!

I'm dying to see some custom water loops on this case!!!!

Yay for noctua air cooled!

If I were you I'd look at the 64 core Threadripper the way I'm looking at an eventual upgrade to the R9-5950 in my B450 based system: Do I need it? No, the 3900XT I currently have is fine Is it the best upgrade? Nah, a 5800X3D is probably better. Do I still want it? HELL YES. Purely for the decadence factor of having roughly a Gen 1 Threadripper's worth of power in an AM4 socket.

Jeff.when no camera was on.... Unlimited power!!!!!!

Thanks for the build and video. At first I thought that you might put an amd pro workstation video card in it since it is for professional use. Do you plan to try any blender rendering related tests?

And, if you want even more PCI-E and 8 memory channels, you gotta go Threadripper Pro. The TR (non-pro) would at least benefit from the extra memory channels at 64 cores, but I expect that AMD knows that would lead to product stack overlaps. As for the mainstream PCI-E lanes vs TR...yeah. I can also see the profit analysis -- three product tiers (aside from servers), each with double the memory channels, PCI-E lanes. Not sure how I feel about that. If we are getting proportional savings by these being salvaged higher-end parts that couldn't pass testing and AMD is doing us a favor by making them cheaper, cool beans...but I'm just not sure. The mainstream desktop market seems to be held back just a little more than is reasonable.

Beware the Define 7XL is still not "roomy" for beyond E-ATX motherboards from Tyan or Supermicro (for those of us that need server hardware but in a tower shape). For some silly reason the power supply at the bottom, the cables won't be long enough without an extension or custom cables. Why not have the PSU at the top? Almost all MBs have the power connections at the top.

Great video as always. Tho next time, cut the music at the part where you remove the plastic peel for maximum... err, effect..

I've been pondering a 7960x build and the motherboard cost is the biggest thing holding me back.

That CPU cooler orientation would drive me nuts, even though the Noctua cooler looks more premium, I would've picked the Artic Freezer 4U(m) for this system.

I would really like to see the fitment for a SSE EEB (12x13 in.) like the WRX90E Sage or even the older WRX80E Sage.

it'd be nice if that was rack mountable, I think the average rack would visually benefit no end from some wood accents.

My issue with current motherboards isn’t the lack of PCIE lanes but rather how they are distributed. I wish my 5.0 x16 slot was two 4.0 x16 slots instead so I could do dual GPUs for GPU passthrough.

I like your taste in machines AMD all the waay I have a similar setup uploaded a youtube video with 7960x build

Leo at KitGuru found the XL North to be a bit on the small side when trying to do a simple water cooling loop.

Oh man, I would GNS3 so hard on that CPU 🥰

Looks great, my only complaint is the CPU tower..... it's not black matte as well..... it just irks my matching want across the board a little.

I agree with your PCIE position but I have to wonder: Why can I not find any diy motherboards with hardcoded 8/8+4 or 8/4/4 bifurcation? I've heard Bifurcation is expensive in boards today because the PCIE switch chips for gen5 are expensive, but what if it wasn't switched? Why can I not find a single mATX/ATX+ board on the market that splits out the 16 lanes? Sure, gamers want 16 lanes, but there are loads of cards on the market that done even come with 16 lanes now, there has to be a market for this. Are Intel and AMD requiring the 16 lane slot in the purchase contract?

While you were talking about your choice of 4080 or 3090 I was thinking "Why not both?", but then I saw how big the 4080 is... You'd still be able to put the 3090 in that end slot though, and PCIe risers are a thing, that could make the 4.0x4 and 5.0x8 slots useable... It would make sense given your intent for virtualization experimentation. I don't know if something's changed in the last year but I was under the impression that nvidia keep their GPU virtualization tech for the headless server GPU's, so if you hack the firmware to use the server driver you loose the video outputs... and you have to use an older hacked driver in the VM as well. Multiple GPU's isn't hard, I've successfully had 3 GPU's on a basic 11th-gen intel mATX motherboard (2xAMD dGPU + intel iGPU) for 2 VM's + host using PCI passthrough.

The 4 fan hub is passive. I bet it's a bit cheaper than the 7 fan hub. Just FD pinching pennies.

the fan hub issue, one could argue if theres 7 fan headers on the motherboard why would you need a fan hub, if you see what i mean, with a fan hub you cant individually adjust the fan speeds, but you can with motherboard headers. maybe the only provided 4 cause most decent motherboards have a minimum of 3 fan headers on the motherboard.

Fyi as long as u can afford itt you can fit 64 cores in the same sockeet as less cores

So many lines, what do you call it Modern Art? Bleh! On a serious note, the video sold me on it more than the thumbnail: The XL is an up-sized North. Though I do think Fractal missed an opportunity by not adding vertical GPU support. Also, good to see those Terra's from the last ad being put to good use.

Why don't manufacturers make baby shit brown components to match Noctua fans? They could totally change the market!

I really like fractal design (I personally have a NAS in a meshify2 xl and a workstation in a standard meshify2 and both are fantastic), and the build of the north xl seems similarly high quality, very well thought out, and i'd bet there's not a sharp edge on the whole lot, excellent documentation and support, etc. but I really don't like the wood look. I guess the north just isn't for me (and that's totally fine, it seems lots of other people really like it, I don't, and that's ok.).

I have 12 cores (well 6x2 12th gen intel) and 64 gigs of ram in two computers - i have no idea what to do with all of this power. Currently I run Fedora Workstation so it's efficient as crap!

I have this same case, but in black. The only other difference is uh... everything inside lol.

if you'd showed me couple of photos of that pc and didn't tell me. i'd thought that would be just a regular atx build

Maybe it only officially supports 4 drives, but man, *slaps roof of north XL* you can zip tie so many ssd's into this bad boi. I like my north, only real problem is the top panel lacking retention. I'm using a bit of gaffer tape inside of mine. Ghetto, but workable. The fan hub is a bit of an afterthought. I removed mine completely, wasn't necessary, or all that useful. It'd be cool to see your approach to workstation virtualization, especially linux RDP. Not much content out there about it, I recently got xrdp spun up and working, I know gnome now has it built in, and there's a bunch of "teamviewery" options as well. Also, why mount the cooler vertically as you did? Seems like it'd get better airflow if it were rotated 90 degrees... but perhaps it doesn't matter in such a big case? ps. You can sub rose's grenadine with pomegranate coffee syrup and a barspoon of luxardo cherry syrup. Really adds quite a bit of mojo, as the luxardo really has alot of that stonefruit depth to it.

AMD Threadripper 7960x 5,841ghz BIOS OC ASUS trx50 HEATKILLER IV ax1600i vs cpuz r15 r20 r23

Dat 12VHR bend...

4:34 not entirely true. You could run both your GPU and nic at 4.0 x8, which should be sufficient for both pcie cards, assuming you don't need more than one 100g link.

what a fucking monster.

I'm seriously contemplating buying the black version of this. I really like this case. But it's a lot of time to switch cases. And it's a little on the expensive side. What to do...

i wonder how fast it can build a linux distro

By 16 slots I am guessing you mean lanes?

I have heard of issues with nvidia cards on thread ripped interested in seeing if u have those issues

64 Cores ought to be enough for anybody!

2 x 180mm fan in the top.

Laughs in X99 🥳🥳

Wait, doesn't the Z690/Z790 have something like 40 PCIE lanes combined CPU + chipset ?

I was reallyyyyy hoping they were going to make this compatible with a top mounted 420…but alas, it was not meant to be.

love the hat, lol, pc is baller

Hello! I want to check the temperature when this Noctua cooler is running at full capacity. I have a computer with a similar specification to you However, the cooler is using NZXT ELITE 360. This water cooler is not satisfactory because the temperature goes up to 95 degrees. Let me check the temperature of your 7980X.

You need to run some language models on that thing. Would becool to see how well it runs CPU only. Llamacpp

Hey Jeff. Are you planning any update video on the state of cloud gaming in 2024? Gpu virtualization, passthroughs, etc. Especially the GPU virtualization since the passthroughs were already sort of covered in the proxmox 8.0 video.

Why air coolers, I see you use them allot. Is it because the noise is lower? I am asking because I am planning a new build, and is interested in going for an air cooler, but not sure?

When making grenadine, do you juice your own pomegranate seeds or just use pre-made pomegranate juice?

Any chance you remember where you bought that shirt?

Any Thoughts on 2 system in one case.....................

No benchmarks? 🤔

Nice build, but oh boy did the focus or lack thereof on the peel hurt my eyes....

As big as the Define 7 XL?

"My fastest PC build yet" with no benchmarks.

The EnthooPro 2 Server Edition is substantially larger and is actually cheaper

I just want a link to that tshirt lol

That's a ridiculous build. Nice.

Really missing the part where you use that beast to play something with 3429043290 fps

Doesn't really seem any better than my original define s with the full tg sidepanel upgrade, that has room for 4 filtered 140mm intakes and 4 140mm exhausts.. prettier but less sturdy I guess