The Decision to Choose 13700k Over 3900K for Gaming Builds

When it comes to building a gaming PC, one of the most critical decisions is choosing the right processor. If you're more worried about gaming than rendering or any other aspect of computer performance, then the 13700k is likely a better choice. This is because the 13700k offers 16 e-cores and eight performance cores, whereas the 3900k has only eight and eight Skylake cores. The extra four efficiency cores may not make a significant difference in gaming performance, but they can be beneficial if you're running lots of background tasks.

In terms of gaming, the 13700k is likely to provide better performance than the 3900k. This is because it has more cores and higher clock speeds, which allow it to handle demanding games with ease. Additionally, the 13700k offers improved multi-threading capabilities, which can be beneficial in games that utilize multiple threads.

On the other hand, the 3900k may be a better choice if you're looking for a more affordable option. It's likely to cost less than the 13700k, and it still offers excellent gaming performance. However, if budget is not a concern, then the 13700k is likely the better choice.

Choosing the Right Components for a Gaming Build

When building a gaming PC, there are several components to consider. The CPU, GPU, motherboard, and power supply are all critical choices that can make or break the performance of your system.

For the CPU, the 13700k is likely the best option. As mentioned earlier, it offers improved gaming performance and multi-threading capabilities. However, if budget is a concern, then the 3900k may be a better choice.

The GPU is another critical component to choose. A high-end GPU such as the 4080 or 6600 can provide excellent gaming performance. However, these GPUs are likely to cost more than a mid-range option like the 12 5000.

The motherboard should also be chosen carefully. A good motherboard will provide excellent connectivity options and offer features such as Wi-Fi and USB ports. The MSI Core Liquid S240 is a popular choice for its affordability and performance.

Power Supply: A Crucial Component to Choose Wisely

A good power supply is essential for any gaming PC build. It should be able to handle the power requirements of your components, including your GPU and CPU. However, even with a high-quality power supply, it's not always easy to determine its wattage rating.

In this case, we're using a Thermaltake Smart 700 power supply, which is labeled as 700 watts but actually only provides 630 watts on the 12-volt side. This may seem like a misleading label, but it's actually just a way of indicating that the power supply has limited capacity for certain components. In reality, the power supply will use around 130 watts for other components such as memory and storage.

The Power Supply: A Cheaper Option with Some Trade-Offs

In this case, we've chosen to use an inexpensive power supply to save costs on our build. While it's not ideal, this decision can be justified if budget is a concern. However, there are some trade-offs to consider when choosing a power supply.

For example, the Thermaltake Smart 700 may not offer the same level of quality or reliability as a more expensive option. Additionally, its limited capacity for certain components may cause issues in the future.

Cooling: A Critical Component for Gaming Builds

Finally, cooling is an essential component for any gaming PC build. A good cooling system will help to keep your components at safe temperatures, which can improve performance and prevent overheating.

In this case, we're using a Fractal Mesh 52 Mini liquid cooler, which offers excellent cooling performance at an affordable price. While it's not the most advanced cooling solution available, it gets the job done.

Building the PC: A Simple yet Challenging Process

Once you've chosen your components, building the PC can be a simple yet challenging process. The first step is to install the mounting hardware for the CPU, which involves popping out a plastic piece and screwing in the little screws that come with it.

Next, you need to carefully mount the motherboard onto the case, making sure that all of the screws are securely fastened. This can be a tricky process, especially if you're new to building PCs.

Finally, you'll need to connect all of the cables and install any additional components such as memory or storage. With caution and attention to detail, these tasks can be completed easily.

The Finished Build: A Balanced yet Reasonable System

In the end, our build is a balanced and reasonable system that offers excellent gaming performance. The 13700k provides improved multi-threading capabilities and better cooling, while the power supply and GPU provide adequate power and performance.

While there are some trade-offs to consider, such as limited capacity for certain components and a relatively affordable cooling solution, this build should be sufficient for most users. Additionally, it's a great example of how you can balance budget with performance in a gaming PC build.

Conclusion

In conclusion, choosing the right processor for a gaming PC build is crucial for achieving optimal performance. The 13700k offers improved gaming performance and multi-threading capabilities, making it an excellent choice. However, if budget is a concern, then the 3900k may be a better option.

When building a gaming PC, there are several components to consider, including the CPU, GPU, motherboard, and power supply. A good balance of these components will result in an excellent system that offers seamless performance.

Finally, cooling is an essential component for any gaming PC build, as it helps to prevent overheating and maintain optimal temperatures.

By following our guide, you can create a balanced yet reasonable gaming PC build that meets your needs and budget.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enup on offer today is the b760m still Legend Wi-Fi from ASRock two and a half gigabit Lan pretty decent rear i o decent built-in expandability PCI 5 storage uh it takes all the boxes but what can you actually build with this can you rock an I9 3900k or ks in this board what about an i7 would this be more appropriate for that it is Micro ATX we should do a build all right in the Box you get two safety cables rubber duck antennas I really wish these were higher end antennas it really it's tough when you're using Wi-Fi 6E if your main connection is Just Wireless when the antennas are behind the computer and the reason is because the computer's made up of metal and radio signals going through the metal case not really super good so having a movable Wi-Fi antenna on a little wire is dramatically better than this it's always complain about those got a steel Legend postcard from ASRock our still Legend installation manual and lots and lots and lots of m.2 screws as this board has of plurality of m.2 connectors actually let's talk about the block diagram for this motherboard first because there's something interesting going on here now when we talk about this board and the steel Legend series from ASRock ASRock is very careful to try to carve a niche out for themselves as okay you can buy this board and you can run a high-end CPU with it but it's not necessarily going to have all the bells and whistles of a higher end motherboard but it's also not going to be a significant cost so if you just want a platform for your 12th or 13th generation CPU yeah you can run Alder Lake CPUs in this motherboard no problem so if you see like the 12 700k on sale you can pick it up and it'll work great in this if you prefer not to overclock or even have the ability to overclock you can also get the non-k CPUs and I think that's really where this motherboard shines now for the 13th generation Intel has locked down the b-clock overclocking there weren't a lot of motherboards for Alder Lake that would let you do b-clock overclocking ASRock had planned to come out with a few boards that had b-clock overclocking so that you could use it with 12 to 13th gen CPUs but it doesn't work at all with 13th gen CPU so that Plucky little I5 12 400 that I love that you could do b-clock overclocking and just a couple of boards all that is pretty much done away with Intel doesn't want you to do that they don't want you to get anything for free that CPU was like 130 dollars at one point and that was the deal of the century there's not a deal on the market today that's as good of a deal as that I5 12 400 was a year ago why am I talking about that when we're talking about the steel Legend motherboards because the steel Legend motherboards usually these are the right balance to be able to sort of thread the needle on those kinds of situations if you put a 12 900k in here or a 13900k it's going to run hot you're going to be at the very edge of what this motherboard is capable of and I'm very hesitant to recommend that so I have three I9 13900k CPUs one of which was supplied by Intel that I do various testing on that sort of thing and I have one 3900 KS KS the integrated memory controller that CPUs Bend Intel's been been bending these 13th gen CPUs since day one they've planned 13 900 KS since day one and so they've been plucking the best CPUs out since the beginning and that shows in the 3900ks we're talking about overclockability under voltability all the other stuff like that for this platform for underclocking and 3900 KS it can work but it's still going to have worse vrm thermals and worse top one percent performance than you're really going to get I mean Intel is letting you run 320 Watts with a 1300 KS all of that background is just to tell you that the ideal CPU for this motherboard is probably the 13700k or the 13900 no K or the 13 700 okay the 13900 no K even though it doesn't have the K this motherboard will let it run with an extra 100 watts of power indefinitely it's the pl1 pl2 stuff that I've covered in other videos if you've never heard of that before basically it's the Intel turbo duration how long can this CPU turbo how long are we going to run at 5.7 to 5.9 gigahertz depending on your overclock with your kcpu it's a function of thermals how cool you can keep your CPU which is going to be the most top shelf cooling your motherboard how much power can your motherboard deliver and your CPU now this motherboard can turbo but not indefinitely and not at that highest 320 watt specification but 253 Watts 253 watts is also pushing it which is why the 13700k with its eight P cores and eight e-cores is a little easier from a vrm standpoint most of the time you don't need the extra wattage unless you're pushing you're also pushing the e-cores for gaming and things like that you're not really using the e-cores as part of the gaming you're only using those performance cores the pcores with your Intel CPU so for a 13 700k with overclocking with the best cooling you aren't really going to lose any performance and this motherboard is significantly less expensive than your z790 and your your your your other uh your your other sorts of motherboards and it is also true that most of the highest end overclocking features are reserved for that z790 chipset Intel and they're you know boxing and limiting and checking all the boxes and Ticking all the boxes and then when you find a way through like the 12 500 nope nope you're using a processor or you're using a component that way we don't intend nope I don't like that with this platform anyway our m.2 layout pretty awesome here we've got our m.2 here at the top which is connected directly to our CPU and we've got two at the bottom one of which includes a heatsink and the other one is just open and then we've got our m.2 Wi-Fi this version of the board does include built-in Wi-Fi 6E which is awesome and that is an Intel Wi-Fi solution our 2.5 gigabit Nic that is a real Tech Dragon 2.5 gigabit Nick and we've also got you know our analog audio out and some other stuff if you're thinking wait a minute this rear i o looks an awful lot like the Sonic the motherboard another you know if you're into Sonic the Hedgehog this is it should look familiar because it basically is and I think this is the same six layer PCB and the same configuration the same ddr5 6800 OC Max reported from ASRock I would certify this motherboard for 6200 6400 6000 is safe 626400 is pretty safe you probably could run 6 800 but my particular kits of memory and 6400 was a lot easier to get working was basically Plug and Play 6800 I think is pushing it with a six layer PCB and it didn't work exactly perfectly out of the box but 6200 and Beyond it's pretty good so I mean that the memory speed doesn't even really matter unless you're getting into like 40 80 40 90 territory or you're looking at this motherboard a year or two on on and there's something that's come out that's even faster than the 4090 and you're saying yes I don't want there to be a bottleneck then memory speeds May matter to you we've also got the dual 8-pin power connector up here at the top suggesting that you could deliver more than 400 watts to your CPU but really you only have to connect one of those I mean you should connect both of them for stability if your power supply has the connector but you really only need one we've also got type c for the front panel 10 gigabit very nice and our dual five gigabit 30 pin header for USB two USB 2.0 headers for any internal peripherals that you're going to run for SATA ports which I don't really see as a problem and ample 4 pin fan headers two at the top two at the bottom and one at the front for RGB we've got a single 50 50 header at the bottom and then we've got three digital headers just as we saw in our Sonic motherboard one at the bottom two at the front edge of the motherboard this motherboard also features the embedded DisplayPort connector which I've covered before you may have seen the build that I did in the Lee and Lee Dynamic 011 with a built-in LCD screen so if you want to do a case mod where you incorporate a built-in LCD display you can go out with a special ASRock cable from this to any embedded DisplayPort 30 pin connector you know display LCD screen it's going to provide Power and data over a single connector here for that display my display is 1080p but you can also run 1366 by 768 or 1280x720 because it's embedded DisplayPort full HD 60 hertz on that connector is no problem and the cable can be hidden out of the way behind your motherboard because it's literally on the rear of the motherboard an embedded DisplayPort connector that's going to run off the igpu so if you do set that or you set it up and you've got an add-in GPU and it's not working you will have to enable multi-monitor in the Bios I mentioned that in some other videos and somebody ran out and bought one of these and they said oh crap I can't get the display to work and it's like well you when you put in an ad in GPU it disables the GPU that's built into the CPU by default you will also need to enable the GPU that's built into the CPU you kind of want that anyway for quick sync these days that shouldn't shouldn't be the default I think it may not be the default to newer biases but you want to enable the explicitly make sure that the bio says that your integrated GPU is enabled and your added GPU can be the primary one and then you want to make sure that you get your Intel GPU drivers installed so otherwise when we're talking about the 12700k this motherboard is basically no compromises you're going to run into thermal limits from your CPU cooling solution before you run into Power delivery limits of this motherboard this motherboard is right on the edge ASRock has been pretty careful to try to give you the least modern board that you need for the best 13 900k so you could theoretically run a 3900k on this but I would recommend that only for gaming workloads and not the most extreme workloads or just forget about the 3900k and go for the 13700k the 13700k is a better choice if you're more worried about gaming than rendering or anything else anyway I mean you get 16 e-cores and eight performance cores with the 3900k versus 8 and 8 with the you know it seems like you're giving up eight efficiency cores eight Skylake cores which really only matters if you're running lots and lots and lots of background tasks it does not matter for gaming so I think a high-end gaming build from this it's kind of a no-brainer and you could actually even get a lesser expensive board if you are looking at that I5 which is pretty cool 12 cores or one of the other lesser expensive CPUs you could run the 12 500 in this as well but it's not going to give you b-clock overclocking or anything like that because it's a newer chipset Intel's really locked down they sort of freaked out over that whole b-clock overclocking because the 12 500 that 100 ish dollars was too good of a deal and they've made it basically impossible to get you got to look at Elsewhere for you know the deal of the century type builds but you know it is what it is now for this build I got the fractal mesh52 mini and our power supply thermaltake the smart 700 why because this is for someone else and these are cheap so this is a 700 watt power supply that's not actually a 700 watt power supply it's really only 630 Watts this is a technique here you got to look at the labels for these 630 watts and the 12 volt side and then 700 Watts total power supply it's not really misleading when it says that it's 700 Watts the same candle over 700 Watts but you're limited to 630 Watts on the 12 volt side so when you do the napkin math and say how many watts is my GPU at Peak and how many watts is my CPU at Peak those are 12 volt figures only the other stuff like your or m.2 you know that's not using 12 volts well that's not always true generally not 12 volts not get contribute to the 630 Watts part of the wattage it'll use from the the other 130 Watts or so but yeah I mean it's an inexpensive power supply it'll get the job done and we'll get the job done with two pcie connectors on a shared cable that's all you get no 4080 no 40 70. 6600 maybe 67.50 from AMD maybe but again 13 700k for the cooling it's our MSI core liquid s240 why and it's got a screen it's got some bling if you're doing a build like this Pro tip spend the money on a better power supply or GPU or literally anything else but hey this was on sale so it didn't really cost anything personally I think it's easier to install the mounting hardware for the CPU first basically we pop out our little piece of plastic and we screw in the little screws that it comes with and then we're good to go for that part of it and our motherboard's ready to mount there's a simple joy that comes from doing something with your hands like this so for this build we have to be careful a 240 millimeter cooler in the top with this motherboard because the memory sits so high your Corsair Dominator memory is not going to work it's too tall OEM memory works fine but I've got some just generic crucial memory in there that doesn't have a heat spreader or anything else plenty of clearance for that so gotta be careful with these bills and if this is your first time building and it's like oh I picked all these parts and I just changed one thing uh you gotta double check all your measurements now I could put the radiator in the front but then that's going to limit the width of my GPU as well which is not an ideal situation pretty good bundle overall pretty reasonable build quality and considering the costs costs sort of factor in heavily when you're considering complexity to build the trade-offs for what you're getting real Tech ALC 897 audio it might be nicer to have a little bit better audio for gaming the 897 is pretty long in the tooth at this point but it gets the job done I'm one of this level one has been a quick look at the steel Legend z760m Micro ATX Micro ATX is sort of the new ITX I like Micro ATX for builds I like that the pcie slot is located here so you can use this with a four slot GPU totally awesome you do have the single PCI expressed by one slot if you're rocking a dual slot GPU but you know it is what it is all right I'm signing out you find me in the level one forumsup on offer today is the b760m still Legend Wi-Fi from ASRock two and a half gigabit Lan pretty decent rear i o decent built-in expandability PCI 5 storage uh it takes all the boxes but what can you actually build with this can you rock an I9 3900k or ks in this board what about an i7 would this be more appropriate for that it is Micro ATX we should do a build all right in the Box you get two safety cables rubber duck antennas I really wish these were higher end antennas it really it's tough when you're using Wi-Fi 6E if your main connection is Just Wireless when the antennas are behind the computer and the reason is because the computer's made up of metal and radio signals going through the metal case not really super good so having a movable Wi-Fi antenna on a little wire is dramatically better than this it's always complain about those got a steel Legend postcard from ASRock our still Legend installation manual and lots and lots and lots of m.2 screws as this board has of plurality of m.2 connectors actually let's talk about the block diagram for this motherboard first because there's something interesting going on here now when we talk about this board and the steel Legend series from ASRock ASRock is very careful to try to carve a niche out for themselves as okay you can buy this board and you can run a high-end CPU with it but it's not necessarily going to have all the bells and whistles of a higher end motherboard but it's also not going to be a significant cost so if you just want a platform for your 12th or 13th generation CPU yeah you can run Alder Lake CPUs in this motherboard no problem so if you see like the 12 700k on sale you can pick it up and it'll work great in this if you prefer not to overclock or even have the ability to overclock you can also get the non-k CPUs and I think that's really where this motherboard shines now for the 13th generation Intel has locked down the b-clock overclocking there weren't a lot of motherboards for Alder Lake that would let you do b-clock overclocking ASRock had planned to come out with a few boards that had b-clock overclocking so that you could use it with 12 to 13th gen CPUs but it doesn't work at all with 13th gen CPU so that Plucky little I5 12 400 that I love that you could do b-clock overclocking and just a couple of boards all that is pretty much done away with Intel doesn't want you to do that they don't want you to get anything for free that CPU was like 130 dollars at one point and that was the deal of the century there's not a deal on the market today that's as good of a deal as that I5 12 400 was a year ago why am I talking about that when we're talking about the steel Legend motherboards because the steel Legend motherboards usually these are the right balance to be able to sort of thread the needle on those kinds of situations if you put a 12 900k in here or a 13900k it's going to run hot you're going to be at the very edge of what this motherboard is capable of and I'm very hesitant to recommend that so I have three I9 13900k CPUs one of which was supplied by Intel that I do various testing on that sort of thing and I have one 3900 KS KS the integrated memory controller that CPUs Bend Intel's been been bending these 13th gen CPUs since day one they've planned 13 900 KS since day one and so they've been plucking the best CPUs out since the beginning and that shows in the 3900ks we're talking about overclockability under voltability all the other stuff like that for this platform for underclocking and 3900 KS it can work but it's still going to have worse vrm thermals and worse top one percent performance than you're really going to get I mean Intel is letting you run 320 Watts with a 1300 KS all of that background is just to tell you that the ideal CPU for this motherboard is probably the 13700k or the 13900 no K or the 13 700 okay the 13900 no K even though it doesn't have the K this motherboard will let it run with an extra 100 watts of power indefinitely it's the pl1 pl2 stuff that I've covered in other videos if you've never heard of that before basically it's the Intel turbo duration how long can this CPU turbo how long are we going to run at 5.7 to 5.9 gigahertz depending on your overclock with your kcpu it's a function of thermals how cool you can keep your CPU which is going to be the most top shelf cooling your motherboard how much power can your motherboard deliver and your CPU now this motherboard can turbo but not indefinitely and not at that highest 320 watt specification but 253 Watts 253 watts is also pushing it which is why the 13700k with its eight P cores and eight e-cores is a little easier from a vrm standpoint most of the time you don't need the extra wattage unless you're pushing you're also pushing the e-cores for gaming and things like that you're not really using the e-cores as part of the gaming you're only using those performance cores the pcores with your Intel CPU so for a 13 700k with overclocking with the best cooling you aren't really going to lose any performance and this motherboard is significantly less expensive than your z790 and your your your your other uh your your other sorts of motherboards and it is also true that most of the highest end overclocking features are reserved for that z790 chipset Intel and they're you know boxing and limiting and checking all the boxes and Ticking all the boxes and then when you find a way through like the 12 500 nope nope you're using a processor or you're using a component that way we don't intend nope I don't like that with this platform anyway our m.2 layout pretty awesome here we've got our m.2 here at the top which is connected directly to our CPU and we've got two at the bottom one of which includes a heatsink and the other one is just open and then we've got our m.2 Wi-Fi this version of the board does include built-in Wi-Fi 6E which is awesome and that is an Intel Wi-Fi solution our 2.5 gigabit Nic that is a real Tech Dragon 2.5 gigabit Nick and we've also got you know our analog audio out and some other stuff if you're thinking wait a minute this rear i o looks an awful lot like the Sonic the motherboard another you know if you're into Sonic the Hedgehog this is it should look familiar because it basically is and I think this is the same six layer PCB and the same configuration the same ddr5 6800 OC Max reported from ASRock I would certify this motherboard for 6200 6400 6000 is safe 626400 is pretty safe you probably could run 6 800 but my particular kits of memory and 6400 was a lot easier to get working was basically Plug and Play 6800 I think is pushing it with a six layer PCB and it didn't work exactly perfectly out of the box but 6200 and Beyond it's pretty good so I mean that the memory speed doesn't even really matter unless you're getting into like 40 80 40 90 territory or you're looking at this motherboard a year or two on on and there's something that's come out that's even faster than the 4090 and you're saying yes I don't want there to be a bottleneck then memory speeds May matter to you we've also got the dual 8-pin power connector up here at the top suggesting that you could deliver more than 400 watts to your CPU but really you only have to connect one of those I mean you should connect both of them for stability if your power supply has the connector but you really only need one we've also got type c for the front panel 10 gigabit very nice and our dual five gigabit 30 pin header for USB two USB 2.0 headers for any internal peripherals that you're going to run for SATA ports which I don't really see as a problem and ample 4 pin fan headers two at the top two at the bottom and one at the front for RGB we've got a single 50 50 header at the bottom and then we've got three digital headers just as we saw in our Sonic motherboard one at the bottom two at the front edge of the motherboard this motherboard also features the embedded DisplayPort connector which I've covered before you may have seen the build that I did in the Lee and Lee Dynamic 011 with a built-in LCD screen so if you want to do a case mod where you incorporate a built-in LCD display you can go out with a special ASRock cable from this to any embedded DisplayPort 30 pin connector you know display LCD screen it's going to provide Power and data over a single connector here for that display my display is 1080p but you can also run 1366 by 768 or 1280x720 because it's embedded DisplayPort full HD 60 hertz on that connector is no problem and the cable can be hidden out of the way behind your motherboard because it's literally on the rear of the motherboard an embedded DisplayPort connector that's going to run off the igpu so if you do set that or you set it up and you've got an add-in GPU and it's not working you will have to enable multi-monitor in the Bios I mentioned that in some other videos and somebody ran out and bought one of these and they said oh crap I can't get the display to work and it's like well you when you put in an ad in GPU it disables the GPU that's built into the CPU by default you will also need to enable the GPU that's built into the CPU you kind of want that anyway for quick sync these days that shouldn't shouldn't be the default I think it may not be the default to newer biases but you want to enable the explicitly make sure that the bio says that your integrated GPU is enabled and your added GPU can be the primary one and then you want to make sure that you get your Intel GPU drivers installed so otherwise when we're talking about the 12700k this motherboard is basically no compromises you're going to run into thermal limits from your CPU cooling solution before you run into Power delivery limits of this motherboard this motherboard is right on the edge ASRock has been pretty careful to try to give you the least modern board that you need for the best 13 900k so you could theoretically run a 3900k on this but I would recommend that only for gaming workloads and not the most extreme workloads or just forget about the 3900k and go for the 13700k the 13700k is a better choice if you're more worried about gaming than rendering or anything else anyway I mean you get 16 e-cores and eight performance cores with the 3900k versus 8 and 8 with the you know it seems like you're giving up eight efficiency cores eight Skylake cores which really only matters if you're running lots and lots and lots of background tasks it does not matter for gaming so I think a high-end gaming build from this it's kind of a no-brainer and you could actually even get a lesser expensive board if you are looking at that I5 which is pretty cool 12 cores or one of the other lesser expensive CPUs you could run the 12 500 in this as well but it's not going to give you b-clock overclocking or anything like that because it's a newer chipset Intel's really locked down they sort of freaked out over that whole b-clock overclocking because the 12 500 that 100 ish dollars was too good of a deal and they've made it basically impossible to get you got to look at Elsewhere for you know the deal of the century type builds but you know it is what it is now for this build I got the fractal mesh52 mini and our power supply thermaltake the smart 700 why because this is for someone else and these are cheap so this is a 700 watt power supply that's not actually a 700 watt power supply it's really only 630 Watts this is a technique here you got to look at the labels for these 630 watts and the 12 volt side and then 700 Watts total power supply it's not really misleading when it says that it's 700 Watts the same candle over 700 Watts but you're limited to 630 Watts on the 12 volt side so when you do the napkin math and say how many watts is my GPU at Peak and how many watts is my CPU at Peak those are 12 volt figures only the other stuff like your or m.2 you know that's not using 12 volts well that's not always true generally not 12 volts not get contribute to the 630 Watts part of the wattage it'll use from the the other 130 Watts or so but yeah I mean it's an inexpensive power supply it'll get the job done and we'll get the job done with two pcie connectors on a shared cable that's all you get no 4080 no 40 70. 6600 maybe 67.50 from AMD maybe but again 13 700k for the cooling it's our MSI core liquid s240 why and it's got a screen it's got some bling if you're doing a build like this Pro tip spend the money on a better power supply or GPU or literally anything else but hey this was on sale so it didn't really cost anything personally I think it's easier to install the mounting hardware for the CPU first basically we pop out our little piece of plastic and we screw in the little screws that it comes with and then we're good to go for that part of it and our motherboard's ready to mount there's a simple joy that comes from doing something with your hands like this so for this build we have to be careful a 240 millimeter cooler in the top with this motherboard because the memory sits so high your Corsair Dominator memory is not going to work it's too tall OEM memory works fine but I've got some just generic crucial memory in there that doesn't have a heat spreader or anything else plenty of clearance for that so gotta be careful with these bills and if this is your first time building and it's like oh I picked all these parts and I just changed one thing uh you gotta double check all your measurements now I could put the radiator in the front but then that's going to limit the width of my GPU as well which is not an ideal situation pretty good bundle overall pretty reasonable build quality and considering the costs costs sort of factor in heavily when you're considering complexity to build the trade-offs for what you're getting real Tech ALC 897 audio it might be nicer to have a little bit better audio for gaming the 897 is pretty long in the tooth at this point but it gets the job done I'm one of this level one has been a quick look at the steel Legend z760m Micro ATX Micro ATX is sort of the new ITX I like Micro ATX for builds I like that the pcie slot is located here so you can use this with a four slot GPU totally awesome you do have the single PCI expressed by one slot if you're rocking a dual slot GPU but you know it is what it is all right I'm signing out you find me in the level one forums\n"