Where We Are Right Now: The OG gamer

This second machine is our primary desktop monster. It handles high-end gaming, online streaming, video upscale processing, and dedicated game hosting. And just like the media server, it runs 24/7.

It didn't always look like this, though. This computer used to be a jack-of-all-trades, single-handedly managing our Plex server, with on-the-fly transcoding, running our couch gaming/movie nights and being the daily drive for everything else. But trying to render video or host a game while someone else is trying to stream a 4K movie in the living room is a recipe for a bottleneck.

By splitting the workload and moving those media tasks onto our repurposed Mini-ITX rig, we completely liberated this machine.

The Shell: The Cube Form Factor

For this build, we went with a Micro-ATX form factor housed inside the Thermaltake Core V21.

If you’ve never built in a Core V21, it is an absolute joy for hardware enthusiasts. It’s a unique, cube-shaped chassis where literally every single panel—top, bottom, front, and sides—is completely removable. It essentially transforms into an open-air test bench, giving us total freedom to route cables and optimise airflow exactly how we want.

The Brains: Finding the Sweet Spot

At the core of the Z-series motherboard sits an Intel Core i7-9700K.

Because we paired it with a Z-chipset board, we had the freedom to really push the silicon. We originally had the chip past the 5.0GHz milestone just to see what it could do. However, the jump in power draw, and heat generation didn't justify the nudge in real-world performance.

Instead, we backed it down and locked in an overclock of 4.9GHz which we’ve found to be our sweet spot.

To keep those eight overclocked cores chilled around the clock, we installed the Arctic Freezer II 240 AIO liquid CPU cooler.

The GPU: The Unofficial Hybrid Frankenstein

Now for the centerpiece of the build: the graphics card. We are running an EVGA RTX 3080 Ti FTW3.

Anyone who knows hardware knows that EVGA made some of the absolute best-built, most resilient cards on the market before they exited the GPU business. We swapped the original air cooler out for an official EVGA AIO liquid cooling bracket, effectively turning it into an unofficial 3080 Ti Hybrid.

Because this card works hard for its living, maintenance is key. And the 30 series cards at the time they came out were going through an overheat fiasco. Since purchasing it, we have completely stripped it down repasted and padded it twice.

Power & Pressure-Optimised Airflow

A machine running a 4.9GHz CPU overclock and a power-hungry 3080 Ti needs a strong power foundation. We have our own tried and tested 750W EVGA power supply to handle things effortlessly.

Finally, inside the Core V21 cube, airflow is a precise science. We have a total of nine Arctic fans circulating air through the chassis. Using a deliberate mix of Arctic’s Pressure (P-series) and Flow (F-series) fans.

The Perfect Separation of Powers: Moving our Plex and HTPC duties off this machine and onto a dedicated shelf-hardware build was the best operational decision we could have made.

That wraps up the current state of our two core computer rigs!

Where We Are Right Now: The Media Vault

The foundation of this build is the Fractal Design Node 304. If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s a brilliant little Mini-ITX case with a clean front panel.

To keep things compact, we paired it with a spare Mini-ITX motherboard we had stored on the shelf. Now, this is a non-Z chipset board but it actually works out just fine for us.

The Brains: Repurposing with Purpose

Sitting in the motherboard socket is an Intel Core i5-9600K.

Now, hardware purists might look at that K-series chip on a non-Z motherboard and ask, "Why use an overclockable CPU if your motherboard chipset won't let you tweak it?"

The answer goes right back to our philosophy of smart recycling. This chip already has performance headroom for server tasks, and it doesn't benefit from being overclocked in this scenario anyway. Its integrated graphics engine is fully capable of handling on-the-fly Plex hardware transcoding when friends stream from outside the house.

To make sure this machine can run 24/7 without sounding like a jet engine in the living room, we installed a fanless be quiet! CPU heatsink. Because there are no moving parts on the cooler, the CPU operates in complete, blissful silence.

Powering the system is a fantastic but admittedly old 650W EVGA power supply—a brand that will pop us regularly as a favourite of ours.

The Storage Matrix: 130 Terabytes and Counting

This is where things get genuinely ridiculous. To host nearly 50,000 music tracks, 1,500+ films, and close to 18,000 TV episodes, we needed a storage array with some serious room.

Inside the case sits a 2TB SSD handling primary music operations for everyday reading, alongside a dedicated 500GB internal SSD acting as a high-speed scratchpad for miscellaneous read/write tasks (keeping this off the main storage drives).

Connected directly to the Mini-ITX rig are two 6-bay TerraMaster Direct Attached Storage (DAS) units. Inside these units sits our pride and joy: eight Toshiba MG08 series 16TB enterprise hard drives.

Multimedia & Game Nights

To round out the HTPC side of things, we threw in a dedicated Creative 5.1 sound card to feed audio out to the sound system. Along with two Xbox controllers ready for local cooperative game nights—but we’ll save the details of our HTPC couch gaming for a dedicated blog post!

Up Next...

That is where the 24/7 media vault stands today: compact, silent, and holding a literal mountain of data.

But a media server is only half of it. In our next log, we’re going to look at the primary desktop rig.