Bengal Rig V4 Update.
SL600M Bengal Rig Introduction
SL600M Bengal Rig Introduction
If you’re a regular reader of these hallowed halls, and at this point I certainly hope you are, you might be aware of my Bengal Rig. It’s named partly because of my love of the Cincinnati Bengals, and partly because my favourite colour is orange. The first version of it was a water-cooled GTX 295 built into a Cooler Master 840 ATCS. Yes, it was an absolute monster of a system for the time. Although it does make me laugh that when that card was launched we bemoaned the cost. £500 for a graphics card was madness. Tempora mutantur.
The next version of the Bengal rig was built within an NZXT Switch and covered in custom Cincinnati Bengal vinyl. It has the insane GTX 1080 Ti and an Intel Core i7-8086K. Maximum speed. You all know that the RTX series was a massive upgrade for Nvidia. I still maintain that the GTX 1080 Ti has probably the most longevity of any GPU. It’s only the current 4000 range that have finally taken it behind the woodshed, even as a value proposition.
All of which brings us squarely up to date with the third iteration of the Bengal Rig. It was built during the hellscape that was pandemic lockdowns. What really stepped it up was the incredible work Tom put into painting a Cooler Master SL600M in the exact right shade of orange. It had a Ryzen 7 5800X – eight cores of glory – on the Crosshair Dark Hero. As I’m very much the hardcore gamer of the OC3D team – when I’m not writing I’m playing or sleeping – the inclusion of the Palit Game Rock RTX 3080 saw my socks blown off. In fact here it was, about five minutes before it underwent major surgery.
New Build Specifications (Review links included) :
Case : Cooler Master SL600M
Motherboard : Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master X
CPU : Intel Core i7-13700K
GPU : Palit RTX 4090 Game Rock OC
Memory : XPG Lancer Blade RGB DDR5 6000MHz 32GB
PSU : Cooler Master V1300 SFX Platinum
CPU Cooler : EK Nucleus CR360 Lux
Now you might have a preference for one hardware item or another. As someone who spends basically every waking moment sat here, my needs are complex. It has to be powerful. The amount of photos or spreadsheets I edit and things I have running at the same time would take a lifetime on wheezy systems. You know as well as I that reviews need to be timely. The Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master X not only boasts enough power phases to bring a monster to life (that’s Fronkensteen), but support 14th Gen processors for any future upgrades, and has enough USB ports and M.2 slots to handle my insatiable appetite and needs.
The Intel Core i7-13700K balances enough horsepower for work things, but also quick enough to game without killing the power bill. The Palit RTX 4090 will kill it enough as is. With blisteringly quick XPG Lancer Blade memory – 32GB worth no less – it’ll be a big step up from the old rig. Clearly the Cooler Master SL600M, with this custom paint scheme, deserved to stay around a bit longer. It might not have been designed for such beefy hardware, but we can solve that.
Custom Palit RTX 4090 Game Rock
The kind people at Palit appreciate how much of a thrashing their RTX 3080 got in the V3 Bengal rig and, unbeknownst to me, left it with Tom to upgrade my system. He, as anyone who follows TTL will know, is spectacular at building custom systems.
As Tom was the person who painted my case, he had the exact shade of orange still around. He took the Palit RTX 4090 Game Rock apart and sprayed it a shade that matched the Cooler Master SL600M case. Isn’t it beautiful. Too few items of hardware are in bold colours. Okay this is a custom colour on a custom build, but it looks epic.
A matching backplate too. C’mon, you know you’re jealous. Why haven’t you got an orange system? Or just a system that isn’t black or white? Hopefully this will inspire you to go the extra mile. However, as you can see from the photos here, there is a slight issue. The SL600M is a nice case, but not designed as an open one. The bar at the front hides the power supply and is used for drives too. With an M.2 in my rig, I don’t need drive holes. Maybe there is a way to move the power supply so we can remove this bar? You won’t fit a RTX 4090 in this case without doing so.
Of course it’s not just a new graphics card. With so much of my days spent editing media the CPU is going to move up to the Intel Core i7-13700K. With 32GB of XPG Lancer Blade DDR5 doubling my RAM that will speed things along too. Plus the CUDA cores on the Ada Lovelace GPU letting Vegas render in moments. But that’s for later. Right now this case needs some surgery to fit it all in.
Time for a mod-log.
