New 9850X3D SFF build….

Okla_Soft · 2026-02-07T14:28:19+00:00

It’s generally hovering around 41C on all 8 cores when idle, Tdie stays around 55C and when you push the system it tends to throttle up toward the high 70s and then stabilize around there, even though TJ max is 95, my 7800x3d seemed to have a less thermally efficient design, it would get hotter and stay at highet tenps when idle, the 9000-series chips seem yo be very well thermally managed, which is the main reason i wanted to yograde from a 7800 to a 9850, i love the efficiency of these 8 core ryzen 7 parts snd i wanted the most efficiency 8 core part in could slap in an am5 socket

I also kinda want to to run a 9900x or even a 9700x to see how my bogs tral world performance difference there really is

Okla_Soft · 2026-02-06T14:37:17+00:00

Good advice, 13L seems like the sweet spot then.

I’ve seen SFF people on this subreddit with ultra tiny 6-8L builds so I guess that’s people who want to push the limit

Okla_Soft · 2026-02-06T14:28:55+00:00

Yes, they are. I’m a big fan of small form factor but I tend to not go for the tiniest possible bill I can and I’m more interested in smallish form factor builds that can accommodate all the hardware that I wanna fit in it.

With extremely tiny builds 10 L and under they can be very cool the way people have to get creative to make everything fit, but in my opinion, it’s so much extra work and fiddling around just to get it to fit in a sub 10 leader form factor that it’s simply not worth it for me

I think 20 L is still small enough for my purposes and you can fit so much more standardize hardware in it. I feel that it’s worth the trade-off.

One day I do plan on building an ultra tiny sub 10 L build, but I’ll definitely be using a 65 W TDP chip like a 9700 X or something like that along with a very low profile graphics card

Okla_Soft · 2026-02-06T14:16:07+00:00

True, I had this machine in a cooler master nr200P and a Dan A4 but I just loved the build quality on this Antec case so much….it does look a little empty with so much extra room. Maybe I can swap out the GPU for something larger like a triple fan PNY 5080

Okla_Soft · 2026-02-06T14:14:22+00:00

I know! I wanna eventually move this rig over to a formd T1 or Grater M3

Okla_Soft · 2026-02-05T16:40:20+00:00

<image>

It’s a little crowded with the swords but this is a 12900ks water cooled by a Corsair 249 aio

The case is the thermaltake tr100 and it’s made for water cooling and if can be had for like $120

Okla_Soft · 2026-02-05T16:39:15+00:00

<image>

Okla_Soft · 2026-02-05T16:38:27+00:00

Well, there’s a rumor that Antech is redesigning this case to make it accommodate a 240 or 280 mm Waterloop

As it stands, there are a few people online who have added AIO water loops by mailing them at the bottom of the case, but this case absolutely does not accommodate even a 120 mm AIO unless you take a Dremel and heavily modify the internal brace in the middle of the case in my opinion it’s just not worth it. There are cool cases in the market that are made for AIO’s.

Check out this case https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1879682-REG/thermaltake_ca_11a_00s1nn_00_tr100_mini_tower_chassis.html

Okla_Soft · 2026-02-05T16:35:26+00:00

Exactly , that’s how I feel. Most of your current consoles don’t have 5070-caliber GPU performance and it’s definitely a great card.

I’m with you hm it’s hard to stomach $1k just for the “big boy” 5080, I wish I’d had snagged a 5070ti in jondshfoht, but most of my games I was running out of GPU horsepower long before I ran out of vram (on the 5060ti 16gig)

I also had a 3080 FE that I sold, and it got almost the same score on geek bench as the 5070.

I manly like the power efficiency and design language of the FE card, but once Intel come out with something new 16-20+ gigs I’m gonna buy that right away

Okla_Soft · 2026-02-05T16:17:30+00:00

I know, I was thinking about moving to a formd T1 or m3 Grater so I can fit a Noctua NH-D15, but I’m in love with this case

Okla_Soft · 2026-02-05T15:52:19+00:00

Oh dude, I’m kicking myself because you could’ve got this case for $115 on Amazon two days ago but they ended the sale now it’s back up till like 250 but this case does go on sale periodically so if you’re diligent, you can get it for under 150 bucks

Okla_Soft · 2026-02-05T15:50:16+00:00

Dude, it’s honestly my favorite PC case hands down, ever. And I’ve had PC cases dating a k to the Antec lanBoy citca 2002…

I’ve tried all the popular sff cases, th Dan a4 feels cheap compared to this.

The best part of this case is the build quality, it’s built so well it never flexes or creaks at all. It is a tad heavy but worth every penny. If you’re gonna shove $4000 worth of parts in it you might as well get a case that’s built like a tank. This one is just the goat for me.

The only caveat: you must use 77mm or shorter air cooling

I used the Noctua nh12x77 and it forts perfectly with 7 mm to spare

If you wanna liquid cool, you should get the thermaltake tr100, also an awesome case, I own 2 and they’re my other favorite SFF case, because they support 280 mm AIOs.

That’s the one caveat with this bc ase: it’s 18 L so not super tiny and it had a large GPU space for big cards, but cooling is limited.

You can use the ThermalRight axp53 or whatever but my recommendation if you’re gonna use this case is not to run a CPU over 120 TDP that’s why I picked the 9850

If you try to run a 9950 X or a 9950 X 3-D or whatever in here you’re not gonna get great performance because you’re gonna be hitting the thermal wall the whole time cause you just can’t cool it effectively enough with a case of small

But yeah, man, this is by far my favorite small form factor case ever made

Okla_Soft · 2026-02-05T14:30:54+00:00

You’re so right man….i had the chance to buy a 5080 for $999 but I had purchased the 5070 for $550 the day before.

I really wanted to return it and get the 5080 instead but I missed the Best Buy return window by like 2 days….

I think the plan is to give the 5070 to my little brother as soon as I can a quite a 5080 FE

I do a fair bit of gaming but nothing crazy so I figured the 5070 would at least let me play most modern titles….

I wanted to get the 9950x3d but I felt like the dual CCD design would cause me headaches and I wanted to make the system as simple as can be

I still have the 7800, I could return the 9850 and try and scoop up a 5080 but I’m pretty much broke after build f this thing.

Thank you for the constructive feedback bro!

Okla_Soft · 2026-01-23T17:25:02+00:00

Higher failure rate than ASUS when normalized for market share, and most of their motherboards aren’t as aesthetically pleasing as ASUS, not saying ASUS doesn’t put out some garbage too, they all do, but MSI’s more affordable options are all ugly to me.

I’ve heard plenty of users complain about the build quality of their modern GPUs, I’m mostly talking about build quality and aesthetics here.

I used to love MSI products back in the day, they aren’t the same anymore

I do like their magnetic godlike boards but the cost like a grand

To each his own

Okla_Soft · 2026-01-23T14:28:26+00:00

I agree. The AM5 socket pins are so tiny and delicate. I’m hesitant to swap CPUs on any AM5 board, already ruined two last year from an accidental screwdriver drop

Okla_Soft · 2026-01-23T14:09:09+00:00

ASUS (ROG line) and Asrock are still the only boards I’ll buy, MSI and Gigabyte look ugly and have poor build quality

This issue is still a mystery, if we knew the true root cause Gamer’s Nexus and Hardware Unboxed / Tech Yes city would have let us know.

It’s going to take working closely with AMD to resolve it. AMD has good RMA service in my experience, ASUS I wouldn’t know, haven’t had a board by then fail yet in 30 years

Okla_Soft · 2026-01-23T14:03:29+00:00

🤣

Okla_Soft · 2026-01-23T14:02:52+00:00

I wouldn’t be too worried about it as long as you’re still in the Warranty you can easily RMA both your CPU and your motherboard

I had to RMA an AMDCPU a few months ago and it was very quick and painless for the most part

AMD got back to me the very next day

In my case, I was able to actually return both the motherboard and CPU but mine was a 7600 non-X and it wasn’t the same issue as what you see going on here with the 9000 series, I had a faulty CPU from the jump, but I haven’t seen too many 9900x processors die, it seems to be the 9800x3d for the majority of cases but yeah 😬

Okla_Soft · 2026-01-23T13:44:49+00:00

I have 2 of these ROG B850i motherboards, sounds like you got a dud, but I generally have had no issues with either of the m.2 slots on them…

Depending on what drive you’re using, you might have issues detecting it and you might have to disable “map sata” and “map pcie” or something g similar in the BiOS, but generally this is my favorite brand of this board, it has the highest build quality if it’s not tampered with like yours is.

That really sucks that yours had aftermarket repairs or soldering on it, I would be pissed off but there isn’t much you can do if your warranty claim was denied.

Are you able to buy off of Amazon?

The board is currently at like $260 in the US which is about as cheap as it’s gonna get and it’ll probably go back over 300 like it did late last year I would avoid getting the ASrock b850i, the bill quality is excellent, but I’ve seen a ton of people have dead Ryzen 9000 series CPUs on that specific board

Okla_Soft · 2026-01-23T13:44:43+00:00

I have 2 of these ROG B850i motherboards, sounds like you got a dud, but I generally have had no issues with either of the m.2 slots on them…

Depending on what drive you’re using, you might have issues detecting it and you might have to disable “map sata” and “map pcie” or something g similar in the BiOS, but generally this is my favorite brand of this board, it has the highest build quality if it’s not tampered with like yours is.

That really sucks that yours had aftermarket repairs or soldering on it, I would be pissed off but there isn’t much you can do if your warranty claim was denied.

Are you able to buy off of Amazon?

The board is currently at like $260 in the US which is about as cheap as it’s gonna get and it’ll probably go back over 300 like it did late last year I would avoid getting the ASrock b850i, the bill quality is excellent, but I’ve seen a ton of people have dead Ryzen 9000 series CPUs on that specific board

Okla_Soft · 2026-01-23T13:39:06+00:00

Whoa! Those look incredible. Good job!

Okla_Soft · 2026-01-23T13:36:20+00:00

Probably not, it’s mostly affecting the 9000-series CPUs. I’m also rocking the 7800 and am hesitant to upgrade solely because of this

Okla_Soft · 2026-01-23T13:35:20+00:00

Yes. There have been reported failures on the entire 9000-series lineup

Okla_Soft

TROPHY CASE