I recently found myself in a position where I needed to a new computer for a specific use. I was teetering back and forth between purchasing an off-lease server or building something new.

Given the fact that I have been hearing such good things about the Ryzen Thread Ripper series and I had yet to actually get my hands on one, I decided to go that route.

I quickly set about ordering all of the parts I was going to need... case, processor, RAM, motherboard, power supply, and cooling fan. This isn't going to be a gaming machine, so I figured the on-board video would be fine. Also already had an M2 drive sitting around that I should be able to use with the motherboard.

By some stroke of bad luck the first piece that showed up was the processor. I was forced to simply sit and look at it for several days before the other pieces started to arrive. It did come in some pretty awesome packaging and you could tell they put a lot of effort into making it look as cool as possible. Well done to that individual for getting the packaging engineering degree that everyone in high school laughed at you about.

I went with the 1920x processor. It isn't the latest and the greatest, but the price was pretty reasonable and it still has 24 cores at its disposal.

Eventually, the other pieces started to arrive. With the motherboard in hand, I was able to install the processor. I always get a little nervous when I am putting a machine together. One slipped screwdriver or one errant spark of static electricity and you could really mess things up.

This was seriously the most intimidating processor I have ever installed though. First of all that awesome packaging, didn't come apart the way it was supposed to. You are supposed to be able to turn a piece on the back and the processor just slides out. That wasn't the case, I had to pry the sides apart to get the orange and black piece out you see a couple of pictures above.

Once that was done, the processor itself is just heavy. I am probably exaggerating, but I swear the thing weighs at least five pounds. The physical dimensions are large too, it is just a really physically imposing processor, not the neat little square guys I am familiar with from Intel.

Actually installing it was pretty intimidating as well. Luckily they sent along a beefy hand tool for removing the three Torx screws on the metal piece that holds the processor down. It fits tightly though, and my biggest fear was tightening it down too much that I cracked or broke the processor. Luckily neither of those things happened and I was ready to move on to another delivery item.

I have been pretty impressed with Corsair cases over the last couple of years. This is actually the second Corsair case I have purchased in the last twelve months.

The biggest problem I have with cases lately, is the fact that I never order them large enough. This one was no exception and I will explain more about that later. My current desktop I also ordered too small and because of that I had to separate the fans from the liquid cooling radiator. I then had to mount the two large fans on the outside of the case and the radiator directly below it on the inside. It ends up giving a kind of cool aesthetic, but it still drives me nuts that I ordered the wrong size case.

I got the motherboard installed in the case and noticed that things seemed a little tight. I thought maybe my mind was just playing tricks on me so I moved on to the next piece of equipment.

Like the Corsair cases, I have been pretty impressed with their power supplies as well. Since this was my first Thread Ripper install, I wasn't really sure what to expect power consumption wise, so I figured it would be smart to go with the 1000 watt power supply. Little did I know just how hot thing thing would get. I swear this power supply puts off more heat than the processor actually does. It is quite the beast!

With the power supply installed, I was ready to move on to the next part.

As I feared, just like my other computer, this cooler was huge! I tried to fit the radiator and fans at the top of the case, but it just wasn't working. Knowing I didn't need the hard drive bays because I was using an M2 drive, I removed that part of the case thinking I could mount the radiator along the front.

I was about ready to just lay the whole thing at an angle inside the case when I realized that the part that attaches to the processor wasn't going to fit. This cooler had been billed as being compatible with the socket size that the Thread Ripper processors use, but it clearly wasn't.

Resigning myself to the inevitable, I boxed the cooler back up and put it aside for a future project (I am sure I can use it with something). I then set about finding a cooler that was definitely going to be compatible with the TR4 socket used by Thread Ripper processors.

Knowing that a liquid cooled system probably wasn't going to fit in my case, I ended up settling on this:

It is a beefy piece of metal if I have ever seen one. It had really high reviews though and I figured it would be good enough to do the job.

The fan is actually inside the radiators where you can't see it.

While I was waiting for that to arrive, I started looking at the motherboard more closely to see where everything would connect. I got looking at the back panel and realized, crap! there is no on board video with this motherboard. Luckily I had an old GX760 graphics card sitting around so I installed that making me good to go for video output.

After the new cooling unit showed up, I unboxed it as you saw above and began to install it. Only to discover that it was also too big for the case. You can see in the picture above, I had to cut a chunk out of the top of the case so the cooling unit would have room to sit flat on the processor.

I went ahead and left the drive bay off the front of the machine and I think in the future I might buy a couple of fans to mount in there. As I said the power supply puts off a lot of heat and I want to keep the air moving inside the case as much as possible.

I forgot to mention I installed some of this RAM before I put the cooling unit on. You really have to because after that monster is on there is zero way to get to the RAM slots without removing it. The applications I am running are more dependent on CPU than RAM so I figured 16 GB would be enough to get me going.

The end result isn't pretty, but it gets the job done. I wasn't able to fully attach the side panel because the cooling unit sticks out so far. I was able to get the bottom thumb screw in and then the top bends out because of the radiator.

This is the second Aorus motherboard I have purchased and I am pretty happy with what I have seen from them. I recently found out the program I need this machine for isn't going to be rolled out until next Fall, so I am currently putting the machine through it's paces by using it to process some work units for BOID.

My biggest takeaway from this for the future... Even if you think the case is big enough, buy a bigger case!

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