New Alder Lake Build

Michael Collins

It's about 7 years since I did a desktop build, so given I have some time on my hands I figure I'd get some decent performance increases from the latest hardware.

1. What is your budget? €1,500 or so.

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? High performance scientific computing i.e. number crunching, some audio/4k video editing, and general internet/music. No gaming.

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? Not a fan of Windows 11 from what I've heard of it, so will try to keep my current Windows 10 Professional licence. I'm hoping I can somehow discontinue it on the old hardware and activate it again on the new hardware?

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? Have M.2s and HDDs, unless there's excellent value on a new M.2 NVMe drive, or a large 6 GB SATA drive, I'll make do with what I have.

5. Do you need a monitor? Nope.

5a. If yes, what size do you need. 

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? No.

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? Yes.

8. How can you pay? Credit Card.

9. When are you purchasing? Next few days.

So far I've put together the following:

1. Motherboard: MSI PRO Z690-A WIFI DDR4 EUR244

2. Processor: Intel Core i5-12600K EUR336

3. RAM: Crucial Ballistix 3200 MHz 32 GB (2 x 16GB) €100

4. Case: Have a decent Nanoxia Deep Silence 5.

5. Watercooling: EK Classic Kit D-RGB P360 EUR302

6. PSU: Have 400 Watt Seasonic Platinum Series Fanless Modula 80+ Platinum Netto

This comes to about €1,000 so far.

Is there any obvious incompatibilities in the above or do you have any suggestions? Might consider upgrading the PSU if necessary, but one of my main requirements is a quiet PC, so the fanless design here is useful for that.

Yep, no graphics card! The motherboard has 2 monitor outputs which is all I need. I won't be playing games, and I don't think the video editing would see much benefit from an external graphics card? I might add one later when the price is more reasonable for GPU computing, at which point I could upgrade the PSU too.

Any comments on the watercooling kit? Could upgrade to a better pump, e.g. a D5?

Cheers,

MC.

K.O.Kiki

Dunno why you're spending as much on the cooler as on the CPU.

For 650 euro you can get a 12900F or 12900K and cool it with an Arctic Liquid Freezer II 280/360 or Noctua NH-D15.

That said, depending on the type of number crunching/video editing workloads you definitely could benefit from a GPU of sorts.

RTX 3060 12Gb cards are falling back down to 500euro with good availability.

Michael Collins

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118830663#Comment_118830663

Cheers K.O.

I find it hard to convince myself that the 12900K is worth it. While I do intend to use it for number crunching, I'm happy to forgo the extra few %age points (and hence few minutes) the 12900K would get me. I was also tempted by the 12700K, but that's so close in performance to the 12600K that that's where I ended up. Basically, I think the 12600K is the best value.

I will think about the cooler. There are many advantages to an AIO watercooling system. Perhaps I should admit that really I just enjoy the process of putting a custom watercooling system together! Gets me into my flow state (pun intended).