Build 161 – Beast of Valhalla: Photography Workstation

Beast of Valhalla is a photography workstation, designed around a 16-core i9-12900K processor and an RTX 3060 12GB video card.

Description

Beast of Valhalla is a photography workstation, designed around a 16-core i9-12900K processor and an RTX 3060 12GB video card.

General System Design

This build is designed around a 16-core i9-12900K processor and an RTX 3060 12GB video card.

Software Workload/Customer Need

This customer needed a new dedicated workstation to replace their aging machine for their photography business. This system is designed specifically for Lightroom, Photoshop, and MS Office.

This build influenced Inspector Gadget.

System Spec

Processor (CPU): Intel i9-12900K

CPU Cooler: Fractal Design Celsius S36

Motherboard: Asus ROG STRIX Z690-A GAMING WIFI D4

Memory: Kingston Fury Beast 2x32GB DDR4-3200

Storage (SSD): Kingston KC3000 512GB

Storage (SSD): Kingston KC3000 1TB

Storage (HDD): Western Digital Black 4TB

Video Card (GPU): EVGA RTX 3060 12GB XC GAMING

Power Supply (PSU): Enermax Revolution DF 850W 80+ Gold

Case: Corsair 4000D Airflow Black

Fans: 6x Noctua NF-F12 PWM Black

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Design Rationale

  • The i9-12900K gave the customer a great amount of single-core performance for editing, and multicore performance for heavily-threaded tasks.
  • To ensure the CPU runs at full speed, liquid cooling with a 360mm AIO is recommended.
  • The customer wanted a stable motherboard with a good amount of desktop functionality.
  • The customer wanted at least 64GB of RAM, and didn’t want last-gen tech. 128GB is an easy upgrade.
  • The customer was mostly fine with our default storage setup, only adding a 4TB HDD for long-term storage.
  • As the customer wasn’t doing much work that was GPU-bound, an RTX 3060 was recommended.
  • The overall design of the build meant that a 850W power supply was recommended.
  • We used our default mid-tower case to fit the motherboard
  • We used our high-performing fans to ensure proper airflow and static pressure.

Customer Review

“Chris and Top Flight are great to work with. He listens to your needs, and comes up with a PC solution that fits and hits your budget. I can highly recommend Chris and Top Flight Computers.”

Christer, Raleigh NC

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Beast of Valhalla is a photography workstation, designed around a 16-core i9-12900K processor and an RTX 3060 12GB video card.
Apache Storm is a photography workstation, designed around a 6-core i7-8700 processor and a GTX 1050Ti 4GB video card.

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