Tetra R - SteamOS Console
I need to tune temps still but I wanted to share my build experience. Dude, this is was much easier than I assumed and I barely had any complications.
850i Aorus Pro mobo
9800x3d
Sapphire Nitro+ 9070xt
32gig ddr5
SF850 psu, thinking I might need to spring for the sf1000
Any tips or tricks, recommendations or comments are very much welcomed. I ordered this case 3/26 and it arrived yesterday 5/8. I’m very impressed with the packaging, the quality of all the parts, and the beauty of this case.
5-9-26 @ 1455 CST - Edit:
Tuning the 9800X3D and 9070 XT in the THORZONE TETRA R
Getting the thermals dialed in for a 9800X3D and a Sapphire 9070 XT inside a 10-12 liter sandwich layout took some specific tweaking, especially when relying on the ID-Cooling IS-67-XT to keep things cool. Here is the breakdown of the tuning process for this SteamOS build:
Foundation and BIOS Setup Started by flashing the Gigabyte B850I to the latest BIOS and enabling AMD EXPO for the 32GB G.Skill DDR5 kit. To ensure seamless communication through the TETRA R riser cable, I manually forced the PCIe slot to Gen 5. I also enabled Above 4G Decoding and Re-Size BAR to give the 9800X3D full access to the 9070 XT VRAM.
Undervolting and Power Limits To give the IS-67-XT a fighting chance, I bypassed the standard motherboard tweaking pages and went straight into the core AMD Overclocking menu. I applied a Negative 20 All-Core Curve Optimizer via PBO and clamped the Package Power Tracking (PPT) to a strict 65W limit. This physically prevents the board from feeding unnecessary power to the chip.
The Thermal Wall and Physical Fix I booted into SteamOS and fired up OCCT Small AVX2 to validate the undervolt. Within three minutes, the CPU spiked past 90C. The software limit was working perfectly—the sensor showed it strictly holding at 60W—but the physics were failing. Having the Tetra R resting horizontally on a hardwood desk was completely suffocating the IS-67-XT downdraft fan, creating a vacuum and trapping the exhausted heat right against the wood.
I was using the stand's and the clearance was minimal so I decided I need to stand it vertically.... I was really hoping I could do a horizontal case.... but we need to review the motherboard to face the GPU fans and thats a complete case design change.
I pivoted and stood the case up vertically. This allowed both the CPU cooler and the GPU to pull unrestricted, fresh ambient air from opposite sides of the room. I was really hoping I could do a horizontal case.... but you'd have to reverse the direction of the motherboard to face the GPU fans and thats a complete case design change.
Final Results Ran the exact same OCCT AVX2 synthetic stress test in the vertical orientation. The system stabilized beautifully, heat-soaking and plateauing right at 75-76C after 10 minutes while never breaking past 62 watts. The system is now optimized enough to do some gaming and stress it there with a performance overlay.