New Home Machine

This is a new home machine to replace my venerable but arthritic 3rd Gen i7. The old machine was a Shuttle SZ77r5 with 32 GB of RAM and an i7-3770k with an EVGA NVidia 1650 (the only part that has survived into the new build). The new machine is quite an upgrade, with an i7-14700 and 64 GB of RAM, Two WD black 850x SSDs running NVMe (2TB and 4TB), all housed in a Phanteks Evo Shift XT case, cooled with a Cooler Master 240 Atmos ARGB AIO.

The new Case is an even tighter fit than the old Shuttle case, though longer and taller. The case has a nice solid feel though it's not great for travel. I'm happy that it comes with a front USBC and USB3.1 port. Unfortunately the integrated color selector and mode switches running off the integrated infinity panel, don't talk to the ASRock RGB controller and are just overridden by it, so no front panel button control for lighting unless I dump the MB integration. Securing the Micro-ITX board required tweezers and patience to line up everything, particularly on the bottom, and some of the CPU and Fan headers end up right at the bottom of the case since the MB ends up almost upside down, making it a challenge to connect them after mounting the board. I'm fairly happy with the cable routing otherwise, though I do wish the bottom of the Phanteks chassis (it sits inside the Aluminum outer case) did come apart for easier access, but it is unfortunately riveted to the chassis elements instead of screwed in. It would also be a nice place to mount a fan at the bottom of the case, and it would provide welcome access to the 'top' of the MB for all the FAN headers and mounting screws. But I'm satisfied overall.

I do plan to upgrade the graphics card (Christmas maybe), but this is much more of a general purpose DEV/IT Admin/Home PC and I don't game much so it's not that pressing to me. Right now I use it to support a number of Virtualbox VMs and for personal development work.