Build 98 – The Petite Albert: General Workstation

The Petite Albert is a general workstation, designed around an 8-core Ryzen 7 3700X processor and a GTX 1650 Super 4GB video card.

Description

The Petite Albert is a general workstation, designed around an 8-core Ryzen 7 3700X processor and a GTX 1650 Super 4GB video card.

General System Design

This build is designed around an 8-core Ryzen 7 3700X processor and a GTX 1650 Super 4GB video card.

Software Workload/Customer Need

This customer wanted a small-form-factor workstation based off the NFC Skyreach Mini chassis, hoping to have something more mobile than a tower, but more powerful than a laptop. This workstation would be used for business analytics, data visualization, business intelligence, and gaming.

This system is designed in particular for MS Excel, Tableau, Power BI, MySQL Workbench, and Civilization (in order of importance to the client).

This build was influenced by Spire.

System Spec

Processor (CPU): AMD Ryzen 7 3700X

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L9A-AM4 Black

Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix X570-I Gaming

Memory: Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z 2x8GB DDR4-3200

Storage (SSD): HP EX950 1TB NVME

Video Card (GPU): MSI GTX 1650 SUPER 4GB AERO ITX OC

Power Supply (PSU): HDPLEX 400W HiFi DC-ATX

Case: NFC Skyreach 4 MINI

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Design Rationale

  • The Ryzen 7 3700X gave the customer a great amount of single-core performance for gaming and general work, and multicore performance for heavily-threaded tasks.
  • To ensure the CPU runs at full speed, air cooling with a single-tower cooler is recommended. The case used in this build is extremely small, limiting us to low-profile coolers.
  • The customer wanted a stable motherboard with a good amount of desktop functionality.
  • The customer wanted at least 16GB of RAM, 32GB was an easy upgrade.
  • The customer was fine with a single 1TB NVME drive.
  • We recommended the GTX 1650 Super for gaming performance. The video card selection was heavily controlled by the case and power supply, we didn’t have much say here.
  • We used a specialized external power supply for this build. The power supply could be mounted internally, but that would eliminate the ability to have a video card.
  • The customer requested a special case for this build.
  • We weren’t able to fit any aftermarket fans in this build. Airflow and thermals are best when the case is upright.

Customer Review

“I was in the need for a new home PC which would manage casual and class usage. Preferred to avoid a laptop, though I’d hated to completely sacrifice all mobility.

After poking through the various cases, I settled on the clever Skyreach 4 MINI from NFC. It hit a sweet spot on size and potential HW. Reached out to Chris and his team at Top Flight Computers and things moved well from the get-go. Clear discussion on parts and the various options. The time period on parsing parts and ordering landed in the wonderful holiday of a pandemic 2020, but TF kept on top of it and communicated progress regularly.

Enjoyed the build out video and the accompanying commentary from professional builders. Thanks, Y’all!”

Bob, Wake Forest NC

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