The Dragon: Command & Control Center - 2019 Build

The Dragon was a build in the works for about 6 months to accumulate the necessary parts and aesthetics without destroying my poor, poor wallet all in one go. Its purpose was primarily for gaming though it is also used for software development (personal and work related), cyber security (pentesting, malware analysis, cracking, etc), and entertainment (streaming and media server). When gaming, I aim for multiplayer usually Overwatch or PUBG though I spend a portion of time in single player games such as Fallout, Just Cause, Witcher and Civilization VI. I tend to contribute to a few open source projects in my free time and also do work in web development so it doubles as a fantastic development and testing environment, especially with the amount of tasks I can spin up thanks to the Ryzen 3700X.

My only two slight disappointments with the build, which I plan on changing in the future are that I didn't upgrade to a 2080 Ti (preferably the Gigabyte AORUS XTREME, cause its such a beautiful card), and that I didn't dump out even more money for a 3900X, which I likely will not be upgrading since it'd be overkill on my wallet for little extra visible benefit. Personally, I found this build to be an absolute pleasure to put together despite my sometimes questionable use of cable ties and not having more than 2 hands! Thanks to the use of a Corsair Commander Pro I managed to keep my fan and RGB cables neat and clean, but I admit that as far as cable management goes, its not my proudest work on the backside. C'est la vie ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It provides all the performance you'd expect from the parts and I so far have not had any issues with any of the software or games I have run on it. It eats through gaming, streaming shows, and running multiple development servers simultaneously like a dream, but the unfortunate trade-off is that my beefy Zotac 1080Ti AMP Extreme spits out more heat than an average fireplace. Since I'm aiming for an upgrade in the future, this may rectify itself nicely since I know the airflow in the case keeps fresh enough thanks to 9 fans. All in all, my favorite build to date.

- jkmalan