[Intuition]

I acquired a ASRock X299E-ITX/AC LGA2066 mobo.

Since I have been using a dual Xeon setup for 12 years... Only needing to upgrade RAM and GPU I have been out of the loop for a little while and wanted to brush up on new tech terminology so that I buy the correct items for my new computer.

I am going with an i9 of course. At least a 14 core but hopefully 16 or 18.

Here are my build questions.

RAM

I see ram kits for so DIMM 3800 seem to max out at 32gb being 8GB a stick. Are there 64GB variants that are 16gb a stick?

OS drives vs content drives and raid options

M.2 SDD Drives vs standard SDD drives.

I seem to read that having an M.2 drive is better for the OS and installed software and that the standard SDD drives that hook into the sata are then used for content.

This would be ideal as I use 3d animation software mostly like Maya, houdini, Zbrush, etc. Currently my fast drive is my os drive and the rest are still spinny drives. In the new computer I want only SSD but want to use each type of drive to its best capability.

Hopefully I'd like to do a dual or even triple boot with win10 and CentOS Linux and maybe if possible try to keep a win7 for cases of legacy need.

Since the x299E has 3 m.2 drive slots I imagine I would try to make each separate m.2 drive a different OS. Maybe the default boot a win10 but then the second centOS linux and 3rd win7.

The SSD standard drives plugged in sata would be content drives. I usually have an M drive for music pro tools projects and a V drive for all video/vfx contents like renders, edits, etc.

So the issue here is that I see raid as an option. Something I can enable?
What I want to be able to know is what SSD drive brand/types am I looking for and does this option apply to both standard SSD and M.2 or just one or the other? Doing 3d animation you want the fastest input/output for things like simulations or for compositing layers and finally of course encoding video.

CPU cooling

I want to do a liquid cool machine. I had one before and later went with fans because it was less hassle. Only problem is that I now want the silence of liquid cooling as well as the ability to cool the i9 processor. Not because I want to OClock it but rather just keep it quiet and cool. The fan noise on my dual xeon has always been a sore spot. Not as loud as a vacuum or anything but just always there making sure that when I am away from it my ears ring letting me know they've been around those fans vibrating all day.

Anyways. I was looking at the fact that ASrock seems to make a plate specifically for this board. I was also looking at the NZXT because it looks like it has good coverage and would fit. Then I found that the NZXT pumps fail after 9 months to a year. What cpu cooling options and pumps are recommended for this mobo as optimal. I am worried since many have mentioned CPU warping. Which is troublesome since i9s are very expensive.

I have an NZXT Manta case I bought when they first came out that I will likely use for this build. Maybe I could use the NZXT cpu cooler but a 3rd party pump with the radiator that would fit?

I have more questions but lets start here with these.

[Raion]

My suggestion is to keep your board in JBOD mode and use either ZFS, or another option to enable software RAID. Hardware RAID doesn't work as efficiently at low-disk densities. How I'm doing my next build is using KVM, two video cards, and two monitors, linked with synergy to have Windows and Solaris running at the same time on the same box. That's my recommendation if you know how to setup Linux KVM. If you don't, then hardware RAID isn't gonna work easily either since Windows needs NTFS, and Linux... well it doesn't use NTFS.

[shrek]

M.2 is just a connector. You want to get a board and SSD that support NVMe. Otherwise it's pretty much a normal SSD in a different form factor. I've seen people skip over this info and end up disappointed in the speeds they get. NVMe is good for the OS and frequently used applications and files. And don't forget to put a heat sink on the NVMe SSD. They get pretty hot. Normal SSDs or even HDDs are fine for everything else.

I would also recommend taking a look at some of the recent AMD CPUs. Many of them are on par with or better than what Intel is currently offering and they're usually cheaper.

[Intuition]

Good to know about NVMe. I'll look into that for my purchase.

I am already committed to intel as I have the Manta Case and Mobo already and the processor will likely be the i9 16 core to match the mobo as I found a good priced one.

So it really is now down to making sure I have the right m.2 and SSD drives for optimal data rates, the best ram match for the mobo speed, and the GPU which is going to be an RTX 2080 ti since I am primarily rendering with Redshift for the coming projects. Finally the fan vs liquid cooling is another issue. The case comes setup for liquid cooling easy as it has three spots for different radiators.

I am not a big fan of overclocking but I am a fan of keeping things quiet as well as keeping hardware lasting a long time. The i9s gets decently hot so I'll try to keep it and the gpu cooled for overnight render jobs.

Definitely looking into KVM for CentOs.