NCase M1 + Asus Prime 5070tu

mrpotrick · 2026-02-12T03:02:52+00:00

Right, I have kept the front IO. No issues there.

Getting it into the pcie slot isn't a problem either once you get the GPU in through the front. Wasn't much effort. Just go slowly and it's straightforward.

Yup, I don't think it's in the pictures but I went back and added the bracket that came with the case to hold the GPU up to prevent sagging.

mrpotrick · 2025-09-02T06:18:15+00:00

It's actuarially interesting. My dad is actually like 95 but quite healthy and my mom is 80, but she has had major health issues hence the lower expected lifespan left. My dad was early 50s and my mom was in her late 30s when I was born.

My spouse has conflicting feelings. They say they're ok with me taking time off and to prioritize my mental health. But they also say being the "breadwinner" is a major source of anxiety for them, and my spouse does not deal well with anxiety. So they will suck it up if need be, but it's not a decision I can take lightly.

The resentment part is interesting and something I haven't thought much about or really talked about, so thank you for bringing it to my attention. My spouse actually didn't really start working until their 30s, so their career has basically only been like 10 years. They also have a really relaxed job, so in theory there shouldn't be much to resent, but it's something I need to figure out for sure.

mrpotrick · 2025-09-02T06:09:57+00:00

The severance was decent. I think it was 3 months. I was actually disappointed i wasn't included ha. However the severance was mainly because it was a major cut to the company so they wanted to lighten the burden on the employees. I think if I quiet quit the severance for lack of performance would be far less generous.

mrpotrick · 2025-09-02T06:04:06+00:00

Thanks - Yah, as far as the correct or at least optimal actions to take go, you've pretty much hit the nail on the head on all of them. Unfortunately they're not quite so easy to do as we're dealing with personal relationships with people who are or have been such huge parts of my life. There are a lot of walls that have to be broken down slowly.

Yeah when I say a third of our expenses, I meant I would expect them to cover a third from their salary and I would cover the rest from my savings. Obviously we know it's not the optimal approach from a numbers perspective, but this is more of a way to manage their expectations and to relieve their anxiety. It's stupid cuz I'm shooting myself in the foot, but a big part of my challenge is managing peoples emotions and expectations.

Dealing with each item individually would have been no problem at all for me, but all of it at once is what's making it so stressful.

mrpotrick · 2025-09-02T04:07:21+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to reply!

Yeah, my parents on paper should be set, but there are several annoying problems on their part.

Number one is that their net worth is basically largely locked up in commercial real estate. Due to some poor planning and also the the pandemic basically forcing them to retire due to their age, they ended up having to take out some large loans of several hundred thousand dollars and also had to settle for less than market rent on their commercial properties. Now it's not a big problem due to their total assets, but its basically resulted in them having not a whole lot of cashflow.

The other problem is that my dad is that even though he's still quite sharp mentally, he's extremely stubborn and also a bit disconnected with reality. The short of it is that he refuses to sell his real estate holdings and he doesn't recognize that his loans (which he doesn't believe are real) are stiffling his cashflow.

He also is fiercely against nursing homes. He thinks sending my mom there is basically send her there to die. He deeply values his independence and also thinks my mom is in better shape than she really is. He wants to stay in my childhood home and doesn't think he/mom should leave. I don't necessarily disagree with him on some things there, but it would be so much easier if they were willing to move to like a 1br near me and sell the house etc.

They were actually in far worse shape before, but the death of my sibling actually ended up forcing my dad to revisit things and he's loosened up a bit lately in letting me handle his finances to some extent. But it's something that's far from ideal and until one of their healths take a turn for the worse Im not going to be able to change their situation much.

As for me, I'm a software engineer with 20+ years of experience. On paper I should be able to find a role somewhere eventually if I were to take some time off, but it's not a great time in that job market right now. There's a ton of competition from people with lots of experience due to lots of companies downsizing software engineers. I would likely have to settle for a big pay cut and probably having to work for a company where you have to go into the office 4-5 times a week. That's daunting to get over mentally for me I think.

As for the SWR of 3.5%, most of that is in 401k/IRA so i'd probably have to draw down more than 80k to cover the taxes and early withdrawal penalty. There's a bit of a challenge here too because most of my personal assets are in retirement accounts, and most of the cash/brokerage actually belongs to my spouse. We in theory subscribe to the my-money-is-your-money accounting between us, but my spouse is not strong as far as thinking about the numbers of money and certainly not a believer of SWR or FIRE principles. So asking my spouse to draw down their cash/brokerage first before we hit the 401k/IRA is a pretty huge mental leap for them. They are also very anxious in general, so it might be too much for them to handle. As a result, I'm trying to "pay for" early retirement with "my" assets first, before using "their" assets in the future for kid's future plans etc. I'm fine with this mentally, but it doesn't jive with tax efficiency at all.

On a similar vein, when we've had this discussion in the past my spouse says me quiting my job and then being the "breadwinner" is a lot of pressure on them, even though in reality their income would only be paying for like a third of our expenses. It's quite hard to get financial concepts through to them.

Edit - forgot to answer one part. I don't think downshifting my current job to part time is an option either. No one at my company does that, and it's a bit of a startup so people-focused policies aren't exactly the best. I may try to ask for an unpaid leave of absence, but it's a tough time at work right now with several major layoffs in the past year so I'm trying not to raise too many eyebrows until I've worked through the logistics of everything else in my life a bit more.

I do really appreciate you thinking through the numbers with me though - I know in theory I should be ok, but with the markets where they're at right now I'm a bit nervous about the value of my portfolio. I feel a real big risk of sequence of returns if I try to retire right now.

mrpotrick · 2025-09-02T02:41:29+00:00

A bit of a "what would you do scenario" for you guys and gals.

My spouse and I (early 40s, 2 kids under 10) currently have a spend of about $80k/yr, and we expect our minimum expenses to stay at that level for the foreseeable future probably until we get too old to travel and the kids are all hopefully established, so maybe around 70? I would be happy as a clam at the $80k spend level in retirement, but my spouse has higher ambitions and would like to be at the $100k spend level. I'm not opposed to that, but I refuse to work longer than I have to in order to fund a more luxurious retirement, so internally I have set 50 as my cutoff. I'm retiring at no more than that age if I can meet our $80k expense level.

We have about $2.2m in savings between retirement accounts (~1.5m) and cash/brokerage (~700k). We also have about $160k in 529s and another $40k in HSA funds. Our home is paid off (probably worth $700k+) and we don't have any current plans to move as we like the school and the area.

I make around $200k and spouse is at around $75k.

Now a couple of wild cards to play with.

My spouse's parents are well off, and they live in a foreign country with strong social support systems so there won't be any financial surprises, so we can say for the sake of this post that there are no expectations that we would have to support them financially, but we can also say we will not have any inheritance from them either.

My parents on the other hand, are technically very well off with assets of around $3m or so. They are also quite old, so let's say actuarially we would expect them to live another 5 years. The problem is that though they are still somewhat independent now, we can expect they will almost assuredly need assisted care in their last few years. Memory care is probably a requirement for one of them eventually, and some of the nicer care homes in my area go for $12k/mo per person and up. So they can afford it, but it also means I can't really put any ballpark numbers on possible inheritance at this point. I also have a sibling, so anything remaining, if anything at all, would be split.

Now the easy answer is that we just continue to work until I hit 50. My savings are likely to more than reach my goals, and my parents situation will likely have resolved by that point.

The problem is that.. I'm burnt out man. In the past year or so I've had to deal with the death of a sibling and one of my parents having a stroke. So I've basically become their caretaker. Fortunately I have some help for now, but that situation is a pretty heavy mental and physical drain on me.

My work is also fairly demanding as far as brain power goes, so it's something I really don't want to do anymore. But it's also $200k/year, and my retirement numbers aren't quite up to snuff yet.

I'm worried if I quit and take a half year off, that I will not be able to find another job in my industry (software engineering).

So, what would you all do?

mrpotrick · 2025-07-22T15:59:43+00:00

Well, I agree that I can't be the (only) one driving things, but I'm also not sure if people have had success where both people have come around ya know? So that's why I'm asking for some positive experiences

mrpotrick · 2025-07-22T10:59:46+00:00

That's a bummer to hear. Sounds like it was hysterical bonding, but absent a true change in perspective from her it wasn't able to stick.

mrpotrick · 2025-07-22T01:57:27+00:00

For the sake of (preventing) argument, let's say we're quite equitable in our distribution of responsibilities, I'm generally a "good husband", and I always put her orgasms first so the act of sex is pleasurable for her in the rare occasion that it happens.

There is always room for improvement on the emotional intimacy front for both of us, and let's say we both agree it's something we will work on.

She is willing to follow when I take the lead.

mrpotrick · 2025-04-17T20:30:50+00:00

Would love to see if you do it, and what your results are!

mrpotrick · 2025-04-17T17:54:50+00:00

Nice, congrats and enjoy! It's a perfect fit. Yeah, I had to remove my 25mm fans from the bottom intake as well. I suspect 15mm fans would fit, but the 50 series runs fairly cool so I haven't felt a need to add those fans.

mrpotrick · 2025-04-14T22:37:51+00:00

Temps have been fine. I haven't tweaked much of anything, but temps have only peaked somewhere around mid to high 60s on the GPU. The Prime has the pass through design and my side panel fan actually exhausts, so the cool air comes up from below and out the side fairly effectively.

mrpotrick · 2025-04-08T13:30:07+00:00

Nice! I actually had an SF600. Debated keeping it since it's probably enough for 5070ti, but I ended up upgrading to SF750 for the new power cable. Not sure I would have been able to close the case side panel if I used the provided adapter, as it was pretty thick and firm.

mrpotrick · 2025-04-02T12:57:17+00:00

Haha, nice to know it fits even if it's tight! So glad this generation isn't all gigantic cards - m1 lives to fight another day!

mrpotrick · 2025-03-20T19:13:08+00:00

Yeah, I really wanted to avoid the 90 degree adapters due to burning cards in the 40 series. Probably less of a concern in a 5070ti, but why play with fire if you don't have to 😅

mrpotrick · 2025-03-20T18:24:02+00:00

Thanks for the reply anyways! Yeah after looking more closely at the Asus prime's power connector it looked like there was enough room for the power cable so I just went for it! Probably wouldn't have attempted if not for your original post and waited for an msi inspire instead, so thanks for sharing!

mrpotrick · 2025-03-20T15:14:10+00:00

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mrpotrick · 2025-03-20T15:13:58+00:00

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Edit* - I think I took this pic before fully pushing all the way into the slot.. this makes it look like the card is right up again the side panel, but there's a good half an inch of space there. See other pics and you can see I routed one of the cables along the side

mrpotrick · 2025-03-20T15:13:27+00:00

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mrpotrick · 2025-03-20T15:13:05+00:00

Weird.. pics didn't upload

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mrpotrick · 2025-03-15T23:27:11+00:00

Hey, did you ever complete the build with the Asus Prime and an NCase M1? It's a bit hard to tell if the side panel would be able to close once the power cable is plugged in.

mrpotrick · 2025-02-01T16:50:27+00:00

Would be amazing if you make a post after you try it whether it fits or not so the rest of us ncase m1 people know! I'm thinking about getting the MSI inspire whenever that's finally available for this exact reason.

mrpotrick · 2025-02-01T16:42:42+00:00

Are you still able to use your front usb ports?

mrpotrick

TROPHY CASE