Seeking advice regarding Z490 build

unless you wish to look at other items. 

And let me be clear..  VCCIO/VCCSA will fluctuate from the BIOS preset so ignore those unless outlined

They say those drives are ok up to 70c but my personal deal with any solid state device is if is rolling over 60c it needs a little help. If it is not going any higher than 60 then I can see letting that go but check it after a card is installed and see where it sits.

I honestly think that is disgusting.

They could have knowing how much is leaning on the graphics card today easily made a 10-11GB, 14-16GB and then the 24GB card but instead they played it based on what folks knew in the past. 

I do have to say the price of the 24GB card in compare to the original Titan is far more in line but still..   I mean, they know what is coming and they know there will be the point where folks will need little extra Vram and then they will ring the cash register again on it. I am sure they will come out with another card after the initial 6-9 month grab that has more Vram specifically for that purpose.

I run Windows and the FS installs from the same NVMe on 2 partitions which allows me to back the entire drive up for a single recovery of the OS partition or the 2nd, or both.

I also have a old 2011 OCZ REVODRIVE3 X2 which was the predecessor to these NVMe drives on a PCIe slot which I modified with a little fan on the card heatsink and it still runs like a rocket today probably because I applied that little fan on the heatsink 9 years ago.

Everything else is mechanical SATA for backup and storage

I left 120GB for Windows over time and its 70GB used

That can be changed with partition software if needed later.

I thought you said in the thread responses that the large plate you pictured was the actual heatsink for the drives.. you cant take the heatsink off the drive. 

I only suggested removing it if it was simply a beauty plate for the motherboard and the real heatsink was underneath it.

NEVER FILL A SSD MORE THAN 85%     a good engineer always leaves room for f**kups

You will naturally lose some drive space in formatting however it is the Samsung software that sets the over provisioning area, nothing else. Look for: Over Provisioning option in the Samsung Magician software and let it do the work

It may have done that automatically when the software was installed..  that I cant tell you but the Over Provision area in the software will show you if that is the case with the GUI 

If I may interject. For what its worth, I working on the same hardware and I have a 2080ti above that spot.

I have 3 970 EVO's in there and they are all low to mid 30's. I have 2 x 120mm fans at an angle from the edge of the board to the top of the GPU. They are just balanced there right now. I'll make a bracket to hold them roughly in that position:

And are those drive temperatures from when running benchmarks in the Magician software using the magician temperature?  As you may have seen, I was taking the reading out of HWInfo and there the max temp was 63C and in Magician 48C.

Let's what Nick has to say about OCCT, but maybe we can still use it but monitor the core temps manually in HWINFO?

It's totally fine and appreciated if you share your findings and knowledge here.

I don't know where you got the idea that I was making voltage changes in windows. Wasn't me! I make all my changes in the bios.

I'm just about ready to start watt load testing. I gave it a dry run yesterday at optimized defaults and XPM -400Mhz +0.02 v. System when through 1 hour of OCCT:Linpack without braking a sweat. I think I saw a max temp of 69c and the watts maxed out at 160 or 170 or something in that range. I was going to take the grill off the top of the case and replace it with a piece of Plexiglass with a 200mm hole for the fan but I think I'll skip that because I'd want to do it right and it would take me a day that I don't have. But I don't doubt that the grill is impeding the air flow from that fan a lot. I'd guess its generation a back pressure that would reduce the CFPM of that fan by at least 1/2. I have to go shopping with the wife so it will have to wait for now!

So it may actually not be such a bad design. Like I said it will take getting one and observe the design in action.

Or if you are really cheap and lazy  you could buy something like this from home depot, cut and paint it, and use washers

Depends on how ridged it is I guess. If that's too flexible then something like this:

Did you try changing the dropdown at the top of the settings in OCCT to see if there was a difference in the list? Probably wont be but just confirm the cutoff for the CPU is set to 93c

All that means is your cooling system is able to dissipate more watts than mine and that's good.

MAYBE  it depends on what Intel screwed with here in the end.

You are not looking for clock here!!!  You are looking for the efficiency of the tower!!!

I am glad you are having fun.  

I stepped into this cow pile and I will wash my shoes and finish it but after this, seriously I'm done.

There is something else you guys and everyone reading this thread need to seriously understand and this goes back years when it comes to clocking a system for games and typical use.