---
title: 'Buy This Man’s PC or He’ll Crush Me'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=eIqa3XQIbvk'
video_id: 'eIqa3XQIbvk'
date: 2026-06-20
duration_sec: 0
---

# Buy This Man’s PC or He’ll Crush Me

> Source: [Buy This Man’s PC or He’ll Crush Me](https://youtube.com/watch?v=eIqa3XQIbvk)

## Summary

Building a DIY PC allows for custom specs and fine-tuning, but the internet is full of bad advice. This video introduces Splave, a legendary overclocker, and his new 'Splave Pro' system, which uses hand-selected parts and expert tuning for maximum performance. The video then explores the tuning philosophy, component choices, and real-world performance gains of this optimized machine.

### Key Points

- **Splave Pro System Overview** [01:03] — The Splave Pro uses hand-selected CPUs and GPUs, custom thermal paste, and super fast RAM, with every aspect tightly tuned for maximum performance.
- **CPU Choice: 9950X3D** [03:53] — The 9950X3D is chosen over the 9850X3D because it has better binned core zeros and overclocks better when using game mode to shut off the other CCD.
- **Motherboard DIMM Slot Trade-offs** [06:25] — Four DIMM slots can cause signal reflection and longer trace paths, which can reduce memory performance compared to two DIMM slots.
- **Warranty Policy** [07:51] — Splave PC offers a no-questions-asked replacement warranty for all components, even with overclocking.
- **Custom Thermal Paste (T1000)** [08:47] — The custom thermal paste, T1000, contains liquid metal embedded in silicon for safer application and provides 5-10°C lower load temperatures on GPUs.
- **Memory Training for Stability** [10:17] — The system disables memory context restore to force a fresh memory train on every boot, which improves stability.
- **Gaming Profile Settings** [11:03] — The gaming profile uses a fixed core clock of 5.5 GHz and disables non-X3D cores and SMT for smoother gaming.
- **Memory Timing: Refresh Interval** [12:51] — The refresh interval (tREFI) is the most important secondary timing, and maxing it out can provide a 1-2% performance gain.
- **Disabling AVX 512** [13:55] — AVX 512 is disabled in the gaming profile to prevent thermal issues when the CPU is running at high voltage and frequency.
- **CPU Binning Success Rate** [14:31] — About one in four or five CPUs are not good enough for the Pro system, highlighting the binning process.
- **Daily Driver Profile: PBO and Power Limit** [15:23] — The daily driver profile uses PBO with a 275-watt power limit, providing a 10% increase in Cinebench scores.
- **GPU Overclocking: Fixed Boost** [17:37] — Splave uses a fixed boost clock for the GPU instead of a VF curve, enabled by superior cooling.
- **Benchmark: CS:GO Performance** [19:38] — In CPU-bound games like CS:GO, the tuned system showed over 200 FPS more than a stock system, with better 1% lows.
- **Benchmark: Cyberpunk 2077 Performance and Cooling** [21:18] — In Cyberpunk 2077, the tuned system showed a 7-12% performance improvement and ran 8-12°C cooler on both CPU and GPU.

## Transcript

The best thing about building a DIY PC
is that you can spec it any way you want
to get the most for your dollar. Then,
when you're done, you can fine-tune that
thing to your heart's content to squeeze
even more out of it. The bad news is
that configuring and optimizing a system
can be tough when there is so much wrong
information out there on the internet.
Now, you can avoid some of that by just
buying a pre-built PC. Any Tom, Dick, or
Michael Dell can do that for you, but
that's not going to help you with the
tuning, will it?
Well, that is where Splave comes in.
He's
really big. And he's also one of the
most legendary overclockers of all time.
He's number one on the global masters
list on Hardware Bot, has held over 800
overclocking world records, and just a
few years ago he launched Splave PC, a
system integrator that uses his
expertise to make the fastest gaming
hardware even [music] faster. And today,
they're announcing something next-level.
It's a microfiber cloth in front of my
damn unveiling. One second.
It's
the Splave Pro. This thing comes with
hand-selected CPUs and GPUs for maximum
performance, custom thermal paste for
enhanced cooling, and super fast RAM.
Then, every aspect of the machine is
tightly tuned. The result? Yes. That is
CS: GO running at over 900 frames per
second.
Crazy. We're going to take you guys
through this system, show you what sets
it apart, and because Splave is so
generous with his knowledge, we're going
to show you how you can make similar
optimizations on your own hardware at
home. For example, watch this. By
changing this simple setting, you can
get about [music] going quite a good
deal to one of the
>> Hey, you're that man. Can I have a
picture?
>> Of course.
>> I I to ask, how did you get all those
business apps onto one easy to use
platform?
>> So, you want to know Odoo's secret
sauce.
>> Right out of the gate, obviously, the
system is gorgeous. You're using the Air
5400, which has this really unique
approach to airflow with kind of ducting
that really gets your fresh air exactly
where it needs to go, and then keeps the
hot air from being recycled. Like this
front radiator is freaking awesome. It
just
throws all the heat out the right side,
rather than crapping it out over the
rest of the system. But,
the Air 5400 is a Corsair product, and
for that matter, so are a lot of the
things in here. What sets this system
apart?
>> Basically, the tune.
And we take all of the best parts from
all the different companies and jam them
all together,
and then make it better with our tuning.
>> Right. So, with this specific build,
there was a particular inspiration for
it, right? Like there was one person who
needed it.
>> Yeah, we had a pro gamer ask us,
he only cares about gaming. I want my
fans at 100% all the time.
>> Yeah, I noticed that.
>> And I'm like, who else is going to want
that?
>> Yeah.
>> Maybe another pro gamer.
Not me, but
>> Right.
>> But, um I'm not making every computer
for myself. So, we're all about the
customer service, and we can tune it to
whatever anyone wants.
>> Right. So, you guys built this one, and
then basically, from my understanding,
you pretty much had a line up out the
door of people saying, "Oh, no, I want I
want that one just like that guy has."
>> Correct.
>> So, you kind of went,
>> All right, hope we can sell it that way
then.
>> In matters of taste, the customer is
always right, right? Tell us then about
your part selection. What makes
everything in here the absolute best?
Like there's one that I got to kind of
challenge you on, right? You've got a
9950X 3D in here.
>> Right.
>> No X3D II, no 9800. What made that the
right choice?
>> It's a gaming PC, that the right choice?
>> have it be a daily PC. So our our Pro
Gamers don't need to buy two computers.
It's bad marketing for myself but the
9950x3d we found to be better binned
also on the core zeros.
We use the game mode to shut the other
CCD off and we're we've been finding
that the overclocking has been better on
those than say a 9850x3d.
>> If that sounded like double D good what
Allen is saying was that while [music]
there are processors out there that
might be you know more marketed towards
Gamers or might even be faster out of
the box the 9950x3d
in particular has the best balance of
out of the box experience and also the
ability to tweak it even higher. We
don't care so much that the other eight
cores do not have AMD's 3D V-Cache
because when we're gaming we're going to
turn them off. And for the cores that do
have AMD's [music] 3D V-Cache they find
that that chip tends to get the very
best ones. As for the rest of this
hardware it's mostly pretty obvious. I
mean who wouldn't take an ROG 59 di
astral if they could get their hands on
it.
>> [music]
>> But there are some that I do still have
more questions about. I mean back in the
day when the Northbridge the memory
controller used to be built into the
motherboard you would see like a 5%
performance swing from one board to the
next. Nowadays now that it's pretty much
all built into the CPU how do you choose
a motherboard for like a
to the nines tuned machine? [music]
>> For me it's easy because the ROG
motherboards
are all just so biased towards
overclocking and the extreme
overclocking scene and I use the same
ones on LN2 so I'm super comfortable
with with air cooling because LN2 is
easy then.
>> You're saying that you're not large
enough there's actually two of you.
There's Allen two.
>> Yes.
>> [laughter]
>> That's not what you said. He was
referring to liquid nitrogen. I know
that. I just thought it was funny.
Like, can you imagine two of two of this
machine?
>> With that said, I do know that in the
past, ASUS and the other big guys have
marketed different boards for extreme
overclocking versus like daily driver
overclocking. In your experience, is
[music] there anything that prevents an
XOC board from just being used with an
AIO liquid cooler like this? [music]
>> On LN2, I would maybe prefer an Apex for
the two DIMM slots only. The four on the
Hero gives us the option to expand if
someone needs more for for their tasks.
>> But, what's the downside of having four?
Do you want to explain that?
>> Having four DIMM slots can be a
disadvantage because there can be some
reflection between the the channels. And
also, the traces are physically longer
just for path from CPU to the back of
the motherboard.
>> Right, okay. So, the shorter we can keep
those and the fewer things we can have
on each trace.
>> Yeah.
>> On the subject of memory, it's pretty
expensive right now. Has that been a
major impediment? Like, have you have
you had to to cheap out on memory?
>> For now, we're just raising prices like
everyone else. Unfortunately, I don't
really want to go the route of putting
something worse in there or whatever I
can find.
>> I mean, given your branding is uh
>> the last thing you'd want to do is
compromise on maximum performance.
>> That's it.
>> Fair enough. So, what are you using?
>> We're using 2 by 32 GB in the system for
64. But, we are going to give the option
to cut it back to 32, 16 by 2, if
someone is more price conscious.
>> That makes sense. And 6,000 is still the
sweet spot just with as tight latencies
as you can get.
>> Yeah, correct.
>> I mean, you're not going to be running
at the factory speeds anyway, though,
right?
>> No.
Of course not.
>> [laughter]
>> What kind of challenges does that create
for support? Because, unless I'm
disclosing something I'm not, not all of
your customers are gamers or even
end-users. You even work with some
government entities.
>> Correct.
>> So, like how do you provide a warranty
on, "Hey, by the way, I
cranked this up to 12."?
>> Warranty-wise, we we we do a
no-questions-asked replacement for
everything.
>> Right.
>> It's part of our high-end experience.
>> And if I had to guess, I would say that
probably the guys who partner with you,
like G.Skill, just for the privilege of
partnering with Slave PC, they probably
just take the damn stick back, don't
they?
>> Uh yeah, basically.
>> [laughter]
>> So, the Costco model.
>> In most cases.
>> Now, I could see you flexing that kind
of muscle on G.Skill, but with a brand
like ASUS, my understanding is you crack
open these cards personally,
>> Mhm.
>> take off the cooler, you put your own
custom thermal compound on them, then
you seal them back up. Are they covering
you against that?
>> No, not currently.
>> You got to build that into your margin,
basically.
>> Sure, yeah. [clears throat] Um
and then they use PTM.
>> Okay, I mean, that's pretty good stuff,
available on LTT store.
>> So, we scrape that off.
>> Okay, ouch.
>> And then uh we have our own paste coming
out soon, but we use it currently.
>> Yeah, what's it called?
>> Uh T1000, after Terminator.
>> Because?
>> There's some liquid metal in it.
>> But not all liquid metal.
>> Correct.
>> So, what makes it safer than a typical
liquid metal, which can have problems
with long-term deployments?
>> The liquid metal is embedded in the
silicon. Uh there's little balls of the
gallium.
>> Right.
>> And it's the application is just like
thermal paste. There's no
faffing around like liquid metal.
>> What kind of a result improvement can
you expect?
>> We see, depending on the card and how
the PTM was applied, uh
5 to 10° load.
>> My last question then is with a system
that's so tuned,
AIO versus custom water cooling, really.
>> Yeah.
>> Why that choice?
>> We offer a warranty,
and I'm we we just don't really want
people to have to worry about algae and
cleaning a loop, filling a loop, even
shipping a loop. If we're having trouble
with thermals, it's way easier to have
them send it to us to put a new AIO or
if they're one of your smart viewers,
they can probably figure it out
themselves, and we allow that.
>> The cold, hard truth is that as much as
I love custom water cooling, if you are
the kind of person who can't build a
custom water cooling loop, you shouldn't
be buying a custom water cooling loop
because you are not going to be able to
handle the maintenance. While we sit and
wait for the computer to boot, which is
taking quite a while because it's
retraining the memory, let's talk about
a choice that I don't fully understand,
which is that you've configured the
system to retrain the memory all the
freaking time. Is slower booting a
feature?
>> We use the run time reduction, we leave
that disabled and the memory context
restore disabled. Those are what make it
take a long time to train,
but when it does train,
your system is more stable.
>> And that's something that you need to
redo frequently, even if you're not
changing any settings?
>> Correct. It just it's It's just more
stable if it's always on a fresh train.
>> Talk us through what you got set here.
I'm sure Obviously, we're running Expo.
>> Running Expo.
>> But then we're also not cuz you've
turned the frequency up a little bit,
you're playing around with the F clock.
Walk us through it.
>> This system we're launching with a
gaming profile and then a daily like
work
not fun profile. So, the gaming profile,
obviously we have Expo enabled, but
we're also going to enhance those
timings further.
>> Sure.
>> For gaming, I prefer to keep it fixed
core clock and gaming mode enabled so we
can ramp up the frequency. I have it at
55, and I find that the fixed frequency
helps with the 1% lows
>> Mhm.
>> and just the the overall smoothness of
the gaming because it's not trying to
guess where it's power limit's going to
be and changing frequency.
>> That's a really important detail because
while it's tempting to look at a graph
of average FPS and just choose whichever
one's at the top. I think we all know
that the times when we really feel the
speed of our hardware are in a heavy
firefight or when there's a whole bunch
of visual effects on screen and you've
got that that stutter or that dip. By
focusing on that, you might actually,
which is ironic, harm your benchmark
results,
but you deliver a more usable daily
driving experience. And then game mode
is just disabling eight of your cores.
>> All right. The non-X3D ones on this X3D
and non-X3D chip.
>> And the SMT.
>> Oh, we're doing away with hyper, excuse
me,
simultaneous multi-threading as well.
>> The primary timings,
like your TCL,
uh they don't matter as much. It's all
these juicy secondaries and tertiary
timings in the bottom. And this has just
been learned over time, trial and error,
what works best. You can't just set one
on all of them. There's a harmony
between them that you have to
It's a song.
>> [laughter]
>> The memory also we keep it synced, if
you clock them and clock one to one
for latency.
>> Cuz it's nice if you can like run at
higher frequencies on your memory, but
if you're running at a higher frequency
and it's costing you performance, are
you really winning? So, tell us a little
bit more about some of these
sub-timings.
>> Probably your most important one is the
refresh interval.
>> Sure.
>> And
nine times out of 10 you can just max
that out as high as it'll go and you'll
be fine.
>> And that gives you what benefit?
>> The benefit like in a benchmark or in
gaming just from this, I would say is
maybe like 2% 1% 1.5.
>> Really?
>> So, that's a huge one. And there's lots
of great uh resources like overclock.net
and and other websites that have entire
dedicated pages of just
>> [music]
>> people who love memory tuning.
and often times you can figure out if
you have a similar kit with the same
ICs. Often times you can just copy and
paste and enjoy the extra performance
that they found.
>> Is there anything else in the gaming
profile that you'd say is is worth kind
of [music] showing?
>> You turn like the all the global
C-states,
any of the fancy AI stuff would get shut
off.
>> Yeah, okay.
>> Virtualization, even AVX 512 we shut
off.
>> And why do we disable AVX 512?
>> Essentially if you get into a scenario
where your CPU is at 55
and you're running higher voltage,
you're not going to have a thermal issue
if it runs AVX 512. Cuz it'll just run
AVX 256.
>> Right, it'll fall back.
>> Yeah.
>> That's obviously something [music] that
you've fine-tuned. Is this something
where system by system you're going in
and finding the sweet [music] spot for
voltage, chip by chip? But these aren't
just like any random chips and then you
put as much voltage as it takes.
>> No.
>> So, how many chips do you typically go
through to get one for a slave pro?
>> I'd say one in four or five
are are not good enough.
>> Oh, okay. So, most of them are good
enough.
>> Most of them are good enough.
>> We are changing a lot of settings going
from our gaming profile to our daily
driver profile.
>> [music]
>> We rely on a lot of PBO, which is the
built-in kind of
assisted AMD overclocking
>> Yeah.
>> features.
And basically
that's another kind of thing you can
play with. You can let the motherboard
handle it all.
>> Sure.
>> Or you can use your own custom settings.
We use custom settings because our
cooler is really strong, the Corsair
[music] cooler. So, we're just limiting
our wattage to 275 watts.
>> Right.
I'll even have a limit at that point.
That's a lot of wattage for
a modern CPU.
>> You're getting uh
I think it was a 10% increase in R23 and
R24.
>> Right. So, that's Cinebench, just kind
of a a heavy creator-oriented
multi-threaded workload.
>> And it won't constantly be running as
fast as it can to hit 95 C and throttle
back like stock would be.
>> Right. Which again, whether you're
gaming or whether you're doing anything
else,
>> [music]
>> is not ideal for the consistency of the
overall experience, nor is it ideal for
stability.
>> [music]
>> Can you talk us through like some of the
changes that you have made here? You You
told us like the the power limit, right?
[music] But, some of this other stuff
looks like it's been adjusted. Your
precision boost overdrive scalar, have
you changed that?
>> Uh yes, we have that on 4x.
Uh which it it'll it increases the
maximum boost voltage used.
>> Okay.
>> Which we can also do because of our good
cooling. We have the
boost clock plus 200, and I believe
that's the maximum that you can set.
>> Right.
>> And mostly our goal for the
daily is
stability with speed.
>> Right.
>> Whereas our gaming is pure gaming.
>> Speed.
>> Nothing else matters.
>> But, also stability.
>> Yeah.
>> What's our max CPU frequency that we
might see in our daily driver mode?
>> Daily driver mode, I believe ramps up to
5.4
on
uh light load, and then 5.2 on Prime95
and like R15.
>> So, we're getting up to another 300 MHz
when we're gaming if we flip over
[music] to our gaming mode. Why don't we
do gaming mode? Now that we're on
Windows, everything we've looked at so
far is CPU, but everybody knows that for
modern graphically intensive games, the
CPU is just
it's such a small part of the story. So,
why don't you talk through some of what
you're doing on this Astral [music]
5090?
>> Because we have the Astral 5090 and the
cooling is so good, we pretty much set
it to a fixed clock of
what is too loud or or too much for you
to handle out of three wise?
>> Um
>> Okay.
>> A lot of people wanted at 100 that we've
had.
>> Yeah.
>> Uh but I don't and I can't handle that.
So, I put it at your favorite number.
>> Nice.
>> And
because of our cooling
I don't like to use curve.
I like to set a fixed boost.
>> Oh, really?
>> Right.
>> Okay, that's [music] I I gain some of
the conventional wisdom these days. Want
to walk us through that?
>> People use the VF tuner. They're wanting
to undervolt.
>> Or they're worried about temperature
where we aren't.
>> We're not?
>> Memory clock
the Astros all have really great memory.
So, we're we've been safe at this number
on 99% of the cards.
Which is a plus 7,000
overclock. So, you can imagine if you
didn't have any any overclock, it would
be worse.
>> Now, Nvidia doesn't let us play around
with power limits anymore.
>> Correct.
>> Is there anything that you do on these
systems or are we just kind of stuck
within their constraints?
>> Just by keeping it cool, we're keeping
the power a little lower to get that
extra performance. [music]
>> Right, okay.
>> That but that's that's it. There's no
BIOS or anything that we're using.
>> To give you an idea of what all of the
optimizations that Alan has done to his
systems add up to, we built a system
with near identical specs, even using
the same airflow optimized case and the
same cooling, but without any of his
special binning [music] or his
optimizations. We just picked whatever
hardware met the spec and happened to be
compatible, and then we enabled Expo
memory overclocking in the BIOS.
>> [music]
>> And
we're going to send it. We're going to
run these two side by side. We're firing
up in Forza Horizon 6. We're going to
start benchmark mode, extreme plus ray
tracing, 4K, no holds barred. 3 2 1.
Okay, so what does that work out to?
That's about 3%? Well, your CPU
simulation time is obliterating mine.
So, all we're really learning in here is
that Nvidia does not allow really a lot
of tuning on their GPUs. And that we are
heavily GPU bound in this game.
>> Sure.
>> That's what we learned from this game.
Let's move on to something a little bit
more CPU bound. Holy bananas.
We're looking at like an extra 200 plus
FPS here. That is flipping crazy. Okay,
let's go let's go somewhere else. Let's
go
Yeah, let's head over to bomb site A.
So, I'm at like 230 lows, 600 average.
You're at Oh, wait. Oh, you're all over
the place, too. Yeah, we're we're both a
little bit all over the place. Okay, I'm
holding still. Okay, I'm at like 230 250
for lows. Very similar, actually. Both
of them are all flipping over the place.
>> See, the GPU time
for both of us is pretty
37 and
>> Yeah, our GPUs are doing like nothing
right now. And this is pretty close, but
I would say I don't think I ever saw it
dip below 200 for you, though. Holy
crap. You're cracking a thousand and I'm
at like 700 600 here. Even with all the
bots there and even with all the models
there, he's still getting more FPS than
me. Especially noticeable in the 1%
lows. I'm at like
250 270 280. You're at like 290 300.
Yeah, in a more CPU bound title, very
clear that the optimization is giving
you more FPS. Now, is the difference
between 250 and 300 FPS likely to make
you a better Counter-Strike player if
you suck? No. But, if you're really
good, is it going to give you every last
edge? Yeah.
Okay, should we try one more game?
>> Sure.
>> Once again in Cyberpunk, it's easier to
run the benchmark than it is to find the
exact same place on the map. So, 3 2 1,
I'm getting way more FPS than you in
this menu. [music] Got him.
>> You win. I'm going to go.
>> Okay.
So, we're looking at
around like 7% performance improvement,
but what about our 1%? Average is 1% and
maximum, it's just
a little bit faster. We've already run
this a couple of times and we're looking
at anywhere from about 7% improvement
for Slave's machine up to about 12%
improvement in the most extreme
difference that we got between them.
But, I don't actually think the
performance delta is even the biggest
part of the story. I think it's the
cooling. So, you can see right behind
me, just like we saw before, our CPU is
running way cooler on his machine in the
neighborhood of around 8 or 9° right
now. And the GPU, too, is running at
about, man, it's like 12° cooler. Now,
like Alan said, a lot of this you guys
can do for yourselves using guides that
we'll have linked below and information
that he has freely shared. It's just a
question of whether you feel like it.
And I guess that's where you come in is
if you don't feel like it, this man
build a Yeah.
>> He feels like it a lot.
Thanks, Alan, for coming out and showing
us how you build a supremely tuned
system. And to the rest of you guys out
there,
uh buy one of these computers or he's
threatened to crush me.
Oh, wow, you really embraced that faster
than I thought. Now, it's time for me to
crush this segway to our sponsor.
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>> If you guys enjoyed this video, why not
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