for anyone interested, the components i used:
- fractal ridge case (this is a stock photo, but it looks awesome in my living room too), bought used, ~90€
- asrock z590m/itx motherboard, i5-11500, 32gb ram, noctua l12-s1 bought used, ~330€ for the whole set, shoutout to frank, awesome dude on german ebay
- bought a gigabyte 7900 gre, i put that into my main desk setup for testing, then i somehow squeezed a giant xfx 6700 xt that normally sits in my main rig into the ridge. on paper it's not even compatible lol, still works fine. 6700 costs around 200€ now, got the 7900 gre around 400€
- 512gb samsung ssd i had laying around, current price must be around 50€ i guess?
- lian li sp850 power supply i had, was ~70-80€ a few years ago...?
the thing runs bazzite. i wanted to try an nvidia card for better ray tracing performance but linux compatibility is much better with radeon drivers. it's connected to a 4k 60hz absolutely non gaming sony tv in my living room
since the ssd is on the small side, i could only install a limited number of games. i tried some controller compatible games like stray, forza horizon 4-5, wreckfest 1-2, hogwarts legacy, syberia - the world before, hollow knight, the last campfire, and all run nice in 4k even with the 6700xt. i had to switch on fsr and set graphics quality to medium for the hogwarts legacy though, that's a bit too demanding for the 6700xt. wreckfest 2 didn't run that well before the current update either, but it's a pre-release game anyway, i expect it to be optimized before final release
i was a bit reluctant to use this case because it only fits 70mm tall coolers, but to my surprise, the whole rig runs very cool and silent. cpu thermals are the bigger surprise; i set power limits to 65w regular and 90w peak for the cpu, it stays below 60 celsius in 99% of the cases, never went over 80 c. the gpu has a monster cooler and ventilation is great with the 2 big ass fans at the top of the case. i set the two silent fans at 30% constant and they keep the 6700xt below 60c too. gpu fans rarely spin up. i almost can't believe how lucky i got
i never had a console, i'm not a big gamer, but i get why people like to play in their living rooms. so comfy. also separates work and gaming a bit better. i haven't played a game on my pc since i set this little machine up
btw bazzite is an excellent, well thought out piece of software. you can set up everything, even my epic library is usable, you can easily integrate it to steam, so not only steam games run perfectly. there are working solutions and tweaks for everything, even for rgb (i don't use it at all), fan curves, custom steam ui tweaks, whatever
i tried to game under linux like 20-something years ago and it was a pain in the ass. now it's a breeze
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