Building the Ultimate Gaming PC: A Liquid-Cooled RTX 4090

Today, we are building the ultimate gaming PC with a liquid-cooled NVIDIA RTX 4090 and AMD Ryzen 9 7950X. The only thing missing from this powerful setup is a dial-up modem, which adds to the excitement of launching this brand-new graphics card.

We are at Micro Center for the launch of the RTX 4090, and there's a huge line of people waiting to get their hands on this $1,600 graphics card. Some have been waiting in line for two days, while others arrived yesterday evening around 8:00 PM. Despite the long wait, everyone is eager to take home one of these high-end cards.

I spoke with one of our viewers who has built multiple systems over the years, including a build from nine years ago that was based on the RTX 3070. He told me that he's been following my videos and was excited to support me on this launch day. As we waited for the graphics cards to arrive, I asked him if he knew how much one of these RTX 4090 cards would cost.

He replied that $1,600 is indeed a steep price tag for a graphics card, but he's willing to upgrade from his old system to take advantage of the latest technology. When I showed him the MSI SUPRIM (or SUPRIM Supreme) card, he was impressed by its size and realized that it would be a fun challenge to install.

The first challenge we faced was finding a suitable case for this massive graphics card. Most traditional cases wouldn't fit an RTX 4090, so we needed something more specialized. Luckily, the Lancool III case has enough space for both the power cables and liquid cooling components to come out of the side.

As we began building the system, Austin, a fellow enthusiast, joined us in the room. He told me that he's been following my videos all the time and was excited to see what we'd be building today. We chatted briefly about the build process and how this launch day is like an actual learning experience for us.

With the MSI SUPRIM (or SUPRIM Supreme) card in hand, we started installing it into our case. It's clear that this is going to be a fun challenge, as we'll need to carefully plan every step of the build process to take full advantage of the RTX 4090's capabilities.

The fact that you can run games at 4K with ray tracing using just an RTX 4070 makes me realize what I'm missing out. And now, this takes it to a whole other level because it’s liquid-cooled.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- Today, we are buildingthe ultimate gaming PC.Liquid-cooled RTX 4090, AMD Ryzen 9 7950X.The only thing we'remissing is a dial-up modem.So I'm here today at Micro Centerfor the launch of that brand-new RTX 4090.And oh boy, are there area lot of people in line.Like a lot considering thisis a $1,600 graphics cardand up, depending on whichone you actually pick.So wait, what time did you guysactually get here this morning?- Yesterday at like, around 8:00 PM.- 8:00 PM, so you'vebeen here all night long.- Yeah- At 8:00 PM the day before.- Yeah, he's been here two days.- Oh, you got here two days ago!- Yeah.- Can I ask a question?You guys know this a $1,600graphics card, right? (laughs)- But yeah, dedication, man.- It's cheap!- It's cheap.Wait, who said it's cheap?Sorry, where, where, where?- I did my first buildoff your video nine years ago.- Oh, bro!- Did it all for 660. Look at me now.- Let's go!- Upgraded.- Nine years lateryou got a slightly better graphics card.- Yeah.- Just slightly.- You were there for the RTX 3070 as well.- You were here for RTX 3070 too!- Yeah, yeah.- Wait, soyou're buying the 4090,and you're just here to support?- Yeah.- Yeah!- Oh my God!- Really nice.- What a great friend.This is all for a $1,600 graphics card.You can always get it at Micro Center.Okay, so we got a few cards hereand by a few I mean... (laughs)Hopefully I think everyone in lineis gonna be able to getwhat they're looking for.Can I find a graphicscard to start out with?-Thanks, always a pleasure.- Yes.- Okay! So this is the MSI...Is it SUPRIM or SUPRIM? Supreme, SUPRIM?Of course every 4090is incredibly high-end,right, when you look at the performance.But this is liquid-cooled,which means that I'm gonna have a fun timetrying to fit this in the case. (laughs)So let's start with this, then.This is like, biggerthan like an Xbox box.How do I even?- Xbox box?- No one help me, okay? I can do this.(energetic electronic music)Ta-da, easily the largest graphics cardI have ever touched with human hands.So the real challenge withthis build is going to bein properly taking advantage of this 4090.By default, the 4090without even touching itis gonna give us a ton of performance,but it won't give usthe maximum performanceif we don't pair it withessentially as much CPU horsepoweras we can throw at it.I mean, I don't think there'sgonna be much debate here.I think we gotta gostraight for a Ryzen 9.- Thank you, good sir.- So this is a good start.For board, I feel likelet's go with the X670E ACE.- The one in the-- The one in the case thatwe definitely just plantedfive seconds ago for the video.No, I mean, I'm sorry. Sorry.One of the things to considerwhen you're building with these cards,especially with something like a 4090,is not only the power but also the case.A lot of the traditionalcases that I would usesimply will not fit a 4090.- I like the look of that.- Actually, a LANCOOLIII would work, wouldn't it?We also need space for both the powerand the actual liquidcooling to come out the sidebecause the whole card is gonna come out.Oh did you just get the? (laughs)- It was here.- (laughs) I appreciatethe support, my friend.We're almost there.The last major thing we'regoing to need for this build-- Hey, it's Austin!- Is going to be...Yo, what's good, man?- I'm Daniel.I see your videos all the time.- Oh!- I think you hang outhere all the time, yeah.- That's awesome. Well,you're in one right now.- Oh, hey! (laughs)(Austin laughs)So this build might notseem as polished as normal,but the thing is, this islaunch day for the RTX 4090.There are a lot of things thatwe have never experienced.We've never built with this card before.Even Ryzen 7000 is pretty new.- It's still, yeah.- There's a lot of things to consider.So this is actually like alegitimate learning processfor us and hopefully weget it right 'cause...- If we don't, we're screwed.- So this is gonna be fun.Not only are we building themost powerful gaming computerI've ever built, this is gonna be oneof the most powerfulcomputers that money could buybecause with this 4090with a Ryzen 9 7950X,I don't know how youcan get more performanceout of a gaming computer.Like, I really don't.Let's go ahead and takea look inside this 4090I mean, the fact thatyou can run games at 4K120 frames per second withray tracing is gnarly.But then this takes itto a whole other levelbecause it's liquid-cooled.Look at this box. Itcomes with a mouse pad?- What?- It's an actual dual slot card.- Oh my God!- A normal, quote unquote "normal" 4090is entirely air-cooled,which means that thecard is going to be huge.But this is a true dualslot card because, well,it has some help when itcomes to the radiator.So you might wanna get usedto looking at this connectorbecause this is the new standard.However, not everyone's power supplyis up to the PCI 5.0 spec,which is where this adapter comes in.So on one side you cansee that it is 16 pins.On the other side you mightwanna plug in an eight pinor two eight pins or three eight pinsor four eight pins into one connector!- Next year we're justgonna have to hook our PCsup to a nuclear reactor,just power it directly- Flux capacitor maybe.- Flux capacitor.- Straight on the back of the system.I would recommend to lookfor a power supply which is ATX 3.0.Let's take look at someof our other components.Wow, that's a heavy board, man. Whoa!- Oh my, oh my God!(laughs) Why?- We've done one videoon a Ryzen 7000 so farwhere we used a Ryzen 7 7700X,which was very powerful.But this is basically double.So this, my friends is the Ryzen 9 7950X.16 cores and a boost clock,I think 5.7 gigahertz right out the box.- Oh my god.What are we doing here?- We're gamers. We don'tcompromise, we just...- Live in excess.- Yeah, this is like theMetallica of gaming PCs.- I still don't know. Idon't know who that is.- Give me one title of a Metallica song.Nope, nope! Get yourhands off the keyboard!Hands off the keyboard!(crew laughing)The other thing is, ifyou haven't built a PCwith the brand-new Ryzen7000 Series processorsis that yes, you will needto get an AM5 motherboard,but one of the nice things is,is that we have completelychanged the type of socket.So now we've got pins on the actual socketinstead of the CPU.You can see it's got that nice little lineso it's very easy to kinda line them up.While it's still a new socket,it maintains compatibilitywith AM4 coolers.So anything like our Galahadshould just bolt straight onto your brand new AM5 chip.Let's load up some RAM.Look, I'm gonna be real.I'm enjoying this part of the build'cause this is the easypart and not the partwhere I have to actually figure outhow this is all gonnaget stuffed into the case'cause this is gonna be tight.Let's throw in our SSD, in fact.That's funny, eventhough it's been out for,oh man, it's probablyalmost two years now,I still think the Samsung 980PRO is my favorite SSD still.The performance, the reliability.Ooh!That's a beefy heat sink.So the actual mounting mechanism here,not only do you have thelittle plastic retention,which is nice so you can justkind of slide it right around,but on top of that you'vegot this little ballso essentially it kindof pops into place here.So literally completelytoolless installationbetween popping the SSD in aswell as pulling the cover on.It all just pops together.(device clicks in)Oh, wow. Look at that.This is actually my first timeworking with the LIAN LI LANCOOL III.A lot of our components areblack, silver, and white.What are you doing?I heard tape and Iimmediately grabbed the camera'cause I knew something bad was going on.- Look, you mismatchedthe color scheme on our-- I mismatched what?- So this is a black radiator.We're making it white.- I hate that this is actuallynot like a horrible ideaand it's just a bad idea.- You know, I have donethis way too many timesto the point where youhave not even noticed.- Okay, wellspeaking of spilled...- Spilled?- Speaking ofbeing a skilled crafts...- (snickers) Yeah?(crew laughing)- Speaking of being a skilled craftsman,we have ripped out a wholelot of stuff from the case.So we've pretty much removedevery like two-and-a-half-inchand three-and-a-half-inchsort of drive Bay.Anything we can do to notonly sort of free ourselves upwith some extra coolingbut also to give ourselves some extra roomfor some cable management.I've flipped that rear fan.We've got the three fansall set up as intake.We've got the power supply onthe bottom, but importantlythe power supply isactually facing downwardso it is entirely focusedon pushing that hot airout of the power supply.Well, my friends, that actually went,I will say, prettysmoothly all considering.What did this take us?An hour and a half, maybe two hours total?So why don't we just see ifthis actually posts, shall we?Plug it in, make surethe power supply is on.Do we have any RGB action?- Nope.- Okay, well, here goes nothing.- Whoa!- That's a lotta RGB!RAM's coming up. Graphicscard's coming up.Hey!- Hey!♪ Hey, oh, hey, oh ♪♪ It's time to make avideo about this PC ♪- I don't wanna brag, but Ithink this worked first try.So you've probably seen thewealth of AI-generated artthat has flooded the internet this yearthanks to various differentservices such as DALL-E.You've got Stable Diffusion,you've got Midjourney.Sorry, DALL-E 2. I apologize.Typically what you haveto do with these thingsis pay for tokens online or subscriptionor right through Discord.But using somethingcalled Stable Diffusion,we can actually do ourown AI art generationon a computer, and let me tellyou what that loves to have.The maximum amount of bandwidthand GPU horsepower youcan possibly throw at it.- So I'm gonna do just the,this is like the basicdefault prompt they have.A photograph of anastronaut riding a horse.- Okay.- So this is gonna be my baseline.If this is as powerful as I think it is,this should be like 20 seconds tops.- Oh wow, that's fast.Oh my God, look how fast that is.- Bam!- Whoa!- 16.611 seconds for that.- Again, on a 3070 Ti laptop,that image by itselfwas 45 seconds, maybe.- So this is another one I've tried,but we're also gonna crank this up.Four of these at the same time,double the resolution, make image.- Now power draw wise, we are at 456 wattsso this thing is pulling some power.Dude, the detail on this, likethe resolution is massive.I'm not sure why he has ahole on the side of his head.- But we'll fix that in a second.- I think the secondone looks to me a lot better.Oh yeah, as it's cleaningup and getting the detail.- This one's just like,I'm tired of this. (censored)(crew member laughing)- So why is his tail off?(crew members laughing)- All right, so what I wanna tryis RTX 4090 graphics card.Oh, okay, hey, hey,that's a graphics card.- Yeah.- Graphics card.Graphics card. Look, it's working!I mean, that's not RTX.That's definitely a little AMD look.- I will refine the selection.Green graphics card, computer, metal.- My dude,that's quite the prompt.- This lookslike an NVIDIA commercial.- Oh this is kind of sick.- It does liketo do that weird thingwhere it like, it just,instead of renderingout an entire image, it'lljust crop like to the side.- It's artsy, right?- Yeah.- It's artsy.- So after spending timewith Stable Diffusionand kind of seeing the power of this 4090,I think it's worth takinga look at some other demos.This is the classroom demo in Blender,which is rendering a1536 by 8640 pixel image.Now, I will say that I don'ttypically do a lot of stuffin Blender, but lookingat the level of detailwith this system, I mean, look at this.Look at how in-depth. Like, that's crazy.All rendered in 13 minutes on the 4090.So we are running "Cyberpunk2077" at 4K ultra settings,no DLSS, and we've got theray tracing set to psycho.Oh, wow.- Whoa. (laughs)- We figured it out!- Man!- 4K psycho, that's the only thingthat can bring this thing down!Why don't we actually try toturn it from psycho to ultra.Turn a little DLSS on and see.There we go, 68 FPS.This is actually like aweird problem to have.Before, if you're building a gaming PC,you can always push it higher,especially as soon asray tracing was invented.But now we've got the capability,if you've got a verylarge amount of money,to build a system which can crushalmost every single thingyou could throw at it,which almost begs the question,is this excess excessive?I think it is. You don'tneed this much performance.If you want it, our kindsponsors at Micro Centerwould be happy to sell youall the high-end PC componentsthat you could ever want.But I think for mere mortals,we don't need this power.