Building The TSSDR Z590 Core i9-11900K Test Bench – Unparalleled Performance Increase through Small Steps Back

INTEL CORE I9-11900K CPU

The Intel Core i9-11900K CPU was a bit of a surprise as it is the newer generation but only has 8-cores, vice the 10-core architecture of the previous Core i9-10900K CPU. It has a base speed of 3.5GHz with 16MB of L3 cache and can be set to 5.3GHz with ease, as shown in this CPU’Z result below.. It is a LGA 1200 chip based on the Intel 500 chipset, and with Intel Turbo Max Technology 3.0 support.

Checking Amazon, we see pricing of $835, which is well above MSRP, the reason of course is that it is a newly released product in high demand.

Both PassMark and AIDA64 provided some really good results with respect to benchmark performance as we can see here:

CORSAIR iCUE H150i ELITE CAPELLIX 360MM LIQUID CPU COOLER

To start, the only CPU coolers we rely on are Corsair Liquid CPUs and, if you look around our website, we have had them all. It would be very hard to find one of our Test benches with anything else; the reason is of course they are completely silent, do the job and they are very reliable.

The iCUE H150i Capellix comes with a 360mm radiator and we needed that because this system will transition over to the Intel 11th gen chip soon enough, and they run just a bit warmer. The 360 was a given, although a bit overboard for this immediate build. It comes with three 120mm Corsair ML RGB magnetic levitation fans that are completely silent with speeds between 400 and 2400RPM, along with the Corsair iCUE Commander Core Smart RGB Lighting and Fan Controller.

We aren’t aware if you have noticed but there are thirteen fans in this system, nine of which are controlled through iCUE. The pump head of the unit is RGB and lit by 33 ultra-bright CAPELLIX RGB LEDs and there are two different face plates for the pump head that show this CPU cooler off very well. Better yet, fans only spin when necessary. When the system is cool they will come to a stop as they are not needed.
Checking Amazon, we see the Corsair H150i Capellix Liquid CPU cooler priced at $223.

CORSAIR LL 120 RGB 3 FAN PACK WITH LIGHTING NODE PRO

So we went a bit overboard. As if three fans to the front, three at the top with the CPU Cooler, three fans in the graphics card and one fan in the PSU wasn’t enough. We went ahead and added three more for better airflow and aesthetics simply because the Corsair 5000x is equipped for exactly that.

The Corsair white LL120 3 pack are shown against the back wall in this picture and these fans have 48 individually addressable RGB LEDS that are controlled with the included Corsair Lighting Node Pro which enables iCUE to control both fan speed and LEDs. Have we mentioned that the iCUE software also has several pre-programmed LED effects ready to show off all of your iCUE gear?

In our case, we can see that, even with thirteen fans, we are still short one on the back wall. Our end game is to have air pushed in from the front and back and then pulled up and back through the cooler fans on top and these three LL120s on the back wall. Checking Amazon, we can only find availability of the black 3 pack of the LL120s at this fan and there price is $97.