SleekForge Project
In Collaboration with.
And in cooperation with
Sleek and Forged in Modern Cauldrons
- AMD 7800x3D Processor
- MSI B650i EDGE WIFI
- 32GB Corsair Vengeance DDR5 6000mhz
- Asus 4070Ti ProArt Graphics Card
- Asus Loki 850w PSU
- Streacom DA6 XL Chassis
- Cooling provided by Bitspower
- Cooling provided by Mayhems Solutions
Streacom VU1 Dynamic Analogue Dials
Kicking off with Streacom’s VU1 Dials, when you take statistic displays and dial it to 20 going above and beyond what anyone could ever imagine. Developed in collaboration with Saša Karanović the displays are a modern take on retro display technology utilising E-Ink. Featuring RGB but not in the normal sense of being “Gamer” but for practical reasons to illuminate the display since E-Ink technology does not emit any light. Powered by USB type C and able to daisy chain multiple displays together to allow for a full plethora of statics to be displayed. The open source and server app allows for a multitude of potential functions all community driven.
These dials are small, 55mm cubes built from extruded aluminium and finished in Streacom’s signature sandblasted and anodised finish. With such a small footprint they can be installed in most cases or used purely as a desk display for showing for example, CPU and GPU temp/loads.
The message on the Hub dial is a nice touch Streacom, a beautiful introduction to a beautiful masterpiece of a product.
Streacom DA6 XL - Tubular and sleek design
The case has landed, huge thanks to Streacom for supporting us and we can only thank them back by building something awesome for them. So here goes!
The DA6 XL while being built with a mix of Stainless steel and aluminium, is surprisingly light weight whilst also allowing you to cram a huge amount of hardware into the frame. We’re pairing this with a ProArt series 4070ti graphics card which will fit in here beautifully. The chrome of the tubing will break up the deep blacks from all the components and for once.. we’re not using any RGB here (Don’t count the VU1’s, that’s for backlighting ha!). One of the best features of this frame, is the uncompromised level of flexibility. You can adjust the mounting points to anywhere you want along the tubular frame allowing unlimited access to what your imagination can create.
We’re super excited to see what combination of components we can install in here and will be once again working with Bitspower for some custom cooling on the CPU side. It would be rude to watercool the GPU and ruin the aesthetics of the cooler so we’ve decided to keep it stock this time.
Asus ProArt
RTX 4070ti
The Graphics card has landed and we’re onto testing this one! Performance is surprisingly good but as to be expected from a card that shares alot of similarities with the 80 class video card.
Build quality is incredible with it’s all metal construction, mixed with the carbon black and gold accents, this card really shines and oozes class. Going by other reviews, it doesn’t share much from its Strix cousin and seems to have less power phases too. This doesn’t seem to have changed much in terms of performance though. Our quick benchmark with 3DMarks new Steel Nomad run gave us a score of 5034 points paired with a 12600KF while our 4090 rig scored 9197 points paired with a 12700K.
My only gripe with this card and many of Asus’s products is the amount of plastic peels they use. I can understand they want to protect the shiny new hardware but it’s a little excessive and extremely bad for the environment.
Our unboxing video is now live!
30/05/2024 important
announcement coming
Kingston Technology
Collaboration
Full Steam Ahead! Ramping things up and to push the limits of what we can do! We’ve pushed hard and put ourselves out there and we’re happy to announce that we’re collaborating with Kingston Technology this year on this build project. They’ve kindly sent over a memory kit for the build from their Fury Line up. Featuring 64gb of DDR5 memory at 6400mhz CL32. This brilliant memory kit uses SK Hynix modules so we’re expecting some pretty good overclockability too. Results coming soon when the build is complete.
DA6 XL Air Build?
Curiosity got to me while we waited for Bitspower’s watercooling components to arrive. I haven’t done an air cooled build in a very very long time so stringing one together was actually quite refreshing. We went with Thermalrights Silver Soul 110 in black to fit into the chassis without protruding out from it. This also gave us clearance for Streacoms VU1 Dials (our review here). Maybe it’s my perfect measuring skills (not really) or just pure coincidence that it would fit this way without colliding, but either way it was brilliant how it ended up. We also went with Alphacool’s Apex Stealth Metal Fans in matte black. We loved these fans so much that we decided to run with them again for this build. They make great radiator fans in our opinion while their metal frame provides alot of vibration absorbing properties giving them a very quiet operation. Although we did well with cable management here, i think a set of custom cables would finish this off nicely, the debate would be which colour should we go with?
Aircooled DA6 XL Build Video.
