Proximus

After a year and a half in the making, I finally finished this PC build. Admittedly, it is a tad bit overkill, but I wanted to give myself some wiggle room for future upgrades. My previous PC build, Perseverance, fit my need and frankly, didn't need an upgrade. However, after a room setup makeover and getting my hands on an Xbox Series X and noticing the console's fans were extremely quiet, I began planning my next PC build with a focus on performance, looks, and silence.

Introducing: Proximus!

To begin, let's see what he consists of:

Proximus is packed with black 120mm and 140mm Noctua fans in the black Corsair 5000D Airflow case, replacing the Cooler Master fans and TD500 Mesh case of the previous build. As is, the case operates nearly as quiet as the Xbox Series X, leaving the GPU the only loudest part of the system (more on that later).

At the heart of the system, Proximus is equipped with an Intel Core i7 12700K. He will be the first of my systems to experience Intel's hyperthreading technology. It will be replacing the Core i7 9700K and will be the reason why I will be running Windows 11 Pro.

Pairing the CPU will be Gigabyte's Aorus Z690 Elite AX DDR4 motherboard. Strictly speaking, at the time of writing this, DDR5 is still in its infancy. As I already have 64 GB of CL16 Crucial Ballistix RGB RAM running at 3200 MHZ (4x16), I decided that Proximus will still benefit from DDR4's more mature and established technology. When he needs an upgrade in the near future, replacing the motherboard with DDR5 support and using DDR5 RAM will be the first thing I do.

For CPU cooling, the Noctua NH-D15 CPU cooler is more than enough to tame Intel's Core i7 12700K whilst staying silent and stylish. The 1000 watt EVGA PSU powers Proximus and is chosen with future upgrades in mind. To add more personality, he wears white Cablemod cables with 90 degree fittings to give the overall aesthetic a more minimalistic look.

To pair the 12700K, Proximus is equipped with the RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition to power nearly all of my workloads. When upgrading Perseverance's RTX 2070 Super to the 3070 Ti, the 9700K became a slight bottleneck, hence the need (and desire) to upgrade to Intel 12th gen. I am fortunate enough to have bought this GPU at MSRP (~$599.99) at my local Best Buy. Despite working there for the past 3 months (at the time of writing), employees cannot buy hot commodity items until they are off their shift. During that fateful morning I was called in to do some morning training for 2 hours. I managed to complete most of my tasks ahead of schedule and didn't even realize people were waiting outside for GPUs. I didn't even know that we had GPUs in stock either! It was when one of my coworkers told me that we had exactly 17 GPUs in stock. Since I was almost done with my training and I was about to clock off, the timing couldn't have been more perfect. In the end, I was the last customer that was allowed into the store and snagged the last GPU that was available.

Anyway, back to Proximus!

Since Noctua doesn't make RGB fans, you would think Proximus wouldn't stand out. Not in this case (pun not intended lol)! Using Phanteks' excellent Halos Lux RGB fan frames and neon smooth lighting RGB strips, he is able to glow and not be too obnoxious thanks to the dark tinted tempered glass. Add in the RGB GPU sag bracket along with SignalRGB, he is able to be configured in cool and creative ways.