It should scale up and down nicely with load.

On my 13th gen i5 the CPU fans are running at low speeds most of the time and are barely audible and case fans are at idle. The case is a LANCOOL II MESH by Lian Li. Temps and airflow are great. I assume you'd have a watercooling system for such a power-hungry CPU though.

@Rich Parry I highly recommend the Fractal Design 7 XL case. Built like a tank, almost everything can be removed if need be for fewer bruised knuckles, and super quiet. For the power supply, I went with a Corsair RM1000X last year. Tested it with 11900k (aio LC) plus 3 gpus at once (6900xt (aio LC), a770, and a380) and it didn't break a sweat. This year I'd probably opt for an AXI 1200 or 1500 to leave open the possibility of higher power-draw Nvidia gpus down the road.

Be Quiet cases are nice, but what is sacrificed for "quiet" is internal temps of the computer. Me? Airflow is important, but so is price. I'm willing to give up a little more time in building (like routing cables, etc) to save a few dollars. I built my computer several years ago in a Phanteks P400A case, and stuffed in there a bunch of drives. Using an air cooler at the moment to cool the CPU in the signature below. Even during rendering or game play, the noise from the case is to me, nominal.

Here is a review of cases for 2022 by Gamers Nexus.

I agree with @Howard-Vigorita on his recommendations, I have a Fractal Design Define 7 (PCGH edition); it is super quiet, I went for the Define 7 as my PC must fit into reproduction antique English bureau cabinet space which is super deep but restricted in height.

As for power supply I have a Corsair HX1500i which is totally over-dimensioned, but hear me out - I wanted a Corsair HX1200i unit but those were not available in my country, probably even discontinued. Having an overpowered PS has a few benefits:

1. it is future safe for whatever power demand CPU and GPU will ask (and the trend is ever more rising)
2. it is quiet - as the PS fan (certain models) only start spinning from a certain load (which you probably never reach if you overdimension!)
3. it can absorb better short peaks of power bursts, so your system is more stable
4. they last longer as they are not stretched to their limits

The only drawback: they cost more.

@bitman Do you do the positive pressure thing?

Any negative? maybe the fans die faster but surely they're designed for the task if you buy good quality

I have run my 13900K with both water and air cooling and both work fine. 175W is a good number for air, perhaps 225W with good water cooling. Where WC trumps air in my opinion is if you set power at 200W max with WC it's quieter.

I wouldn't be concerned with 13900K power draw. Just set it at 175W in BIOS, give up maybe 5% performance (real world) and get work done (quickly).

Plus, and I've mentioned this before. Vegas doesn't load up a lot of cores and doesn't even saturate individual cores. This means you'll see the 13900K running flat out at 5.5GHz often in Vegas but only drawing 175W or less. So the high clocks are useful but power draw isn't crazy much of the time. Artificial benchmarks (Cinebench, Prime, etc...) or something like Handbrake using x265 (better MT than x264) will cause the 13900K to draw as much power as you can feed it though.

something like Handbrake using x265 (better MT than x264) will cause the 13900K to draw as much power as you can feed it though.

@Hulk do you know if that is true for 13 series?

The reason I ask is because X265 is well known for using AVX512, which in turn is well known for burning up CPU's, but that was removed in the 12 series,

FWIW I've been running render benchmarks using "sample project" and the new VP 20 ad on the i5-13600K and with Mainconcept it loads up all 14 cores and hits 200W when overclocked to 5.3GHz and closer to 170W when run stock at 5.1GHz. It still has thermal margin with my air cooler so there is no thermal throttling. 200W is about the limit though.

something like Handbrake using x265 (better MT than x264) will cause the 13900K to draw as much power as you can feed it though.

@Hulk do you know if that is true for 13 series?

The reason I ask is because X265 is well known for using AVX512, which in turn is well known for burning up CPU's, but that was removed in the 12 series,

I have noticed that x265 in Handbrake is better multithread (MT) optimized than x264. AVX512 is not enabled by default in Handbrake, it must be enabled with a command on the comments page. So yes, Handbrake x265 will utilize more cores better than x264 regardless the CPU from my experience.

Regarding AVX512 and Alder/Raptor Lake. AVX512 structures are still present in both Alder Lake and Raptor Lake (12th and 13th generation, respectively). Motherboard support was removed for 790 series Intel motherboards. With my Z690 motherboard I can still disable the E cores and then enable AVX512 in the BIOS and then run Handbrake with AVX512. I've tried it and it works. P's only with AVX512 is faster than P's only without AVX512. But 8P+16E without AVX512 is faster than 8P+0E with AVX512 at least for x265. Interestingly I have not tested this with x264 in Handbrake, where the additional cores may not be as valuable as the addition of the AVX512 instructions.

Sorry for the long-winded answer.

Mark

With my Z690 motherboard I can still disable the E cores and then enable AVX512 in the BIOS and then run Handbrake with AVX512. I've tried it and it works.

@Hulk you are lucky - you must have one of the early 12/13th gen processors? Intel now fuses off AVX-512 support entirely inside newer revisions, no motherboard and BIOS trickery can overcome that...

@bitman Do you do the positive pressure thing?

Any negative? maybe the fans die faster but surely they're designed for the task if you buy good quality

@Former user

- Yes the case is based on positive pressure. 2 Intake fans front, one exit fan. The PS also has a fan (but that one usually does not spin), the CPU is air-cooled, Noctua NH-D15s. and I almost forgot, the GPU has 3 fans as well. Everything runs silent. Even more silent than my previous build and case. I never had a fan break down (yet). Large and good quality fans and forcing them to spin slow seem to run forever.

With my Z690 motherboard I can still disable the E cores and then enable AVX512 in the BIOS and then run Handbrake with AVX512. I've tried it and it works.

@Hulk you are lucky - you must have one of the early 12/13th gen processors? Intel now fuses off AVX-512 support entirely inside newer revisions, no motherboard and BIOS trickery can overcome that...

I didn't know that. Yes I must have an early one.