February 23rd 2025

Small-form factor 9800x3d and DDR5 RAM upgrade

My Small-Form Factor Dan A4-H20 build with a 4090 has been running great, but for whatever reason it felt like it was time for an upgrade. Since I don’t think I’ll be buying a 5090 anytime soon (the Founders Edition would be the only choice at this size and they are in short supply) it seemed like a new CPU was the next logical step.

new asus b850-i
A standard PC building environment

I was running a slightly-dated AMD 5800x3d, so the latest of the AMD Ryzen lineup seemed like the obvious choice. Unfortunately since they’ve updated to use the new AM5 socket compared to my AM4 motherboard that meant a new motherboard and RAM upgrade were in order as well. In the end I ended up with an AMD 9800x3d, ASUS ROG STRIX B850-I motherboard, and G.SKILL Flare X5 96GB (2 x 48GB and an increase over my previous 64GB total) DDR5 6000mhz RAM.

I also went through the process of taking a heat gun to my NVME SSD and de-sheathed it to use the built-in heat sinks on the new motherboard. Honestly that was probably the most stressful part of the whole process as it was really stuck on there.

The whole process probably took an hour and I’m happy to say the operation was a success; This case is surprisingly easy to work in despite its small size. The remainder of the day was spent fiddling with the Windows install (Microsoft can never make things easy).

I leave you with some pictures of the process and a final spec list:

closeup of the asus b850-i motherboardbefore the operationold parts with psu removedreaching hard to reach screws with my flexible screwdrivermotherboard removed can see backside of gpunvme ssd de-sheathednvme ssd installedpre-attached faceplate is a nice touchnew motherboard in placerunning cabling through the bottom panelall assembled

Parts list

CPU

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D 4.7 GHz 8-Core Processor

CPU Cooler

EK EK-AIO Basic 240 77 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler

Motherboard

Asus ROG STRIX B850-I GAMING WIFI Mini ITX AM5 Motherboard

Memory

G.Skill Flare X5 96 GB (2 x 48 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory

Storage

Western Digital WD_BLACK SN850P for PS5 4 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME SSD

Video Card

NVIDIA Founders Edition GeForce RTX 4090 24 GB

Case

DAN Cases A4-H20 A4 Mini ITX Desktop Case

Power Supply

Corsair SF1000L 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular SFX

Case Fans

Phanteks PH-F120T30 67 CFM 120 mm Fans 3-Pack

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