Gaming PCs Thread...time for a sticky / running thread?
Discussion
HRL said:
MissChief said:
Heh ended up with a 5950x, Gigabyte 3080 Vision and 32GB of 3200Mhz Crucial Ballistic RGB all on a MSI X570 Tomahawk MAX.
I have three more Uni fans on the way then I need to transfer a SATA SSD and 2Tb mechanical drive over then we'll be good to go!
Very tidy looking. Still waiting on my 5950X to turn up but I’ve only been waiting a month. I have three more Uni fans on the way then I need to transfer a SATA SSD and 2Tb mechanical drive over then we'll be good to go!
No RGB in either of my PC’s either but each to their own. Can’t see mine when it’s connected up anyway.
Finally up and running with my new build, I didn't get the loop finished before Christmas so I put it on hold for a while as I've been swamped and honestly just lost a bit of enthusiasm..
Picked up where I left off though, have it filled with distilled water for now while testing, just got Windows installed, drivers and basic software installed etc.
Will be plugging my 3080 in tomorrow but EK have shipped the waterblock anyway so it'll have to come out soon to have that fitted, and the loop modified for the GPU block..
So far so good though, no leaks, just cable management to do at the back, format and install my old SSDs, flush and fill with proper coolant etc. It's been stressful to be honest but it's getting there.
Picked up where I left off though, have it filled with distilled water for now while testing, just got Windows installed, drivers and basic software installed etc.
Will be plugging my 3080 in tomorrow but EK have shipped the waterblock anyway so it'll have to come out soon to have that fitted, and the loop modified for the GPU block..
So far so good though, no leaks, just cable management to do at the back, format and install my old SSDs, flush and fill with proper coolant etc. It's been stressful to be honest but it's getting there.
Guvernator said:
I've always fancied doing a water cooled build but that just looks like a huge faff. Not sure I'd want to be pulling my brand new £500+ GPU apart tbh.
It's a bit daunting, but at least with the EVGA cards, they're okay with you doing so, in terms of keeping the warranty, unless you specifically break something during installation..Really it's no different to building other bits of a custom PC.. Getting all the old thermal crap off took a while though as they used a paste rather than sticky pads..
smithyithy said:
GPU waterblock arrived today so currently disassembling the 3080...
Guvernator said:
I've always fancied doing a water cooled build but that just looks like a huge faff. Not sure I'd want to be pulling my brand new £500+ GPU apart tbh.
smithyithy you could setup a sideline selling modded cards 
Water pump died on my loop early Saturday morning, I was awoken by a loud grinding from the next room. After much faff I replaced it only to be met with no flow, tearing down the loop becomes really tiresome the 4th or 5th time.. anyway took the blocks off to clean them and found this:
Completely blocking any flow. I have no idea what it is/was, all the radiators have been cleaned and running for years, whatever it was it was quite hard but dissolved to a mushy goo in isopropyl. I can only think it started to form when I put the 3080 in back in October. XSPC EC6 coolant - biodegradable, environmentally friendly. Have since switched back to the carcinogenic stuff that causes birth defects. It’s been up 24/7 since October mining/gaming, but didn’t expect build up this quick.
I really did have an “oh god why am I bothering” moment after I put the GPU back in the loop, tested and realised there was another blockage resulting in another drain and tear down. Quick disconnects in the future I think.
Guesses as to the green gunk welcome. I think it’s plasticiser. Not sure it why would leech now, the majority of the tubing is 3-4 years old, only new bit is for the 3080.
Completely blocking any flow. I have no idea what it is/was, all the radiators have been cleaned and running for years, whatever it was it was quite hard but dissolved to a mushy goo in isopropyl. I can only think it started to form when I put the 3080 in back in October. XSPC EC6 coolant - biodegradable, environmentally friendly. Have since switched back to the carcinogenic stuff that causes birth defects. It’s been up 24/7 since October mining/gaming, but didn’t expect build up this quick.
I really did have an “oh god why am I bothering” moment after I put the GPU back in the loop, tested and realised there was another blockage resulting in another drain and tear down. Quick disconnects in the future I think.
Guesses as to the green gunk welcome. I think it’s plasticiser. Not sure it why would leech now, the majority of the tubing is 3-4 years old, only new bit is for the 3080.
I decided against a water cooled rig, so picked up this monster instead with 140mm fans 
We used to mess about with peltier coolers and Vapochills back in the day and Coolermaster make an all-in-one unit called
the MasterLiquid ML360 Sub-Zero which does much the same, but good luck finding one!
We used to mess about with peltier coolers and Vapochills back in the day and Coolermaster make an all-in-one unit called
the MasterLiquid ML360 Sub-Zero which does much the same, but good luck finding one!
Got asked about my system in the Takeaway thread so thought I'd do a slightly more meaningful summary here.
First stab at watercooling, built over about 2 months and finished in October. Core platform is pretty old now but with a modern GPU it still makes a pretty good showing if itself at 1440p.
> Intel i7 6900K (Broadwell-E) processor, overclocked to 4.4GHz all core at 1.315v; subsequent to some of the photos below I removed it and lapped the IHS which has been quite successful in reducing the temperature delta between cores (at one point I was seeing 20°C from my hottest core to my coolest)
> EVGA RTX2080 XC, overclocked to 2065MHz core/7650MHz memory, which I'm fairly sure is about the stable limit my particular sample will hit.
> 32GB GSkill Trident Z RGB; the sticks are 3600 CL16 but I run them at 3000 CL14 as that's the most my processor will tolerate without barfing.
> MSI X99A MPower motherboard
> Samsung 970 Evo 500gb NVMe as a boot drive, and a pair of 1TB 850 Evo SATA drives for other storage
> Corsair AX750 PSU I've had in daily use since about 2013
> Lian Li PC-O11 Dynamic XL case
Water cooling consists of:
> HardwareLabs GTS360 (top) and GTX360 (bottom) radiators with Noctua NF-P12 redux fans
> Watercool Heatkiller IV GPU and CPU blocks (CPU is nickel/acrylic and GPU nickel/acrylic/acetal)
> XSPC D5 SATA pump with cables sleeved into the pump housing
> Custom distribution plate, reservoir and pump mount
> EK-ZMT tubing
> Barrow fittings
Quite a lot of custom work went into it, most notably the distro plate which is based on the EKWB one but modified to fit a D5. I did a lot of the work in Fusion myself but the rest was picked up by a guy in Indonesia who did the CNC milling too. Highly recommended. In addition it's also had:
> Fans disassembled and the frames painted matte black; "officially" Noctua say that the Redux series cannot be split apart without irreversibly damaging them but this is b
ks
> A custom motherboard shroud from a company whose name escapes me
> SLS 3D printed motherboard IO cover and GPU support bracket
> Custom cables from Shakmods, except they were actually made for the later AX series PSUs so I had to redo everything but the 24-pin myself
> A couple of custom cables covers, I've still got two more I need to do but haven't bothered yet
Might go X299 with a 10920X or 10980XE and a 3000 series card in the future, but not sure I'll build it in the O11 again. It's a great case but they're very common and I really want to do something a bit more niche as a casemod. Maybe an In Win of some description with the motherboard tray removed and replaced with a full size distro plate.
Anyway, build pictures.
First stab at watercooling, built over about 2 months and finished in October. Core platform is pretty old now but with a modern GPU it still makes a pretty good showing if itself at 1440p.
> Intel i7 6900K (Broadwell-E) processor, overclocked to 4.4GHz all core at 1.315v; subsequent to some of the photos below I removed it and lapped the IHS which has been quite successful in reducing the temperature delta between cores (at one point I was seeing 20°C from my hottest core to my coolest)
> EVGA RTX2080 XC, overclocked to 2065MHz core/7650MHz memory, which I'm fairly sure is about the stable limit my particular sample will hit.
> 32GB GSkill Trident Z RGB; the sticks are 3600 CL16 but I run them at 3000 CL14 as that's the most my processor will tolerate without barfing.
> MSI X99A MPower motherboard
> Samsung 970 Evo 500gb NVMe as a boot drive, and a pair of 1TB 850 Evo SATA drives for other storage
> Corsair AX750 PSU I've had in daily use since about 2013
> Lian Li PC-O11 Dynamic XL case
Water cooling consists of:
> HardwareLabs GTS360 (top) and GTX360 (bottom) radiators with Noctua NF-P12 redux fans
> Watercool Heatkiller IV GPU and CPU blocks (CPU is nickel/acrylic and GPU nickel/acrylic/acetal)
> XSPC D5 SATA pump with cables sleeved into the pump housing
> Custom distribution plate, reservoir and pump mount
> EK-ZMT tubing
> Barrow fittings
Quite a lot of custom work went into it, most notably the distro plate which is based on the EKWB one but modified to fit a D5. I did a lot of the work in Fusion myself but the rest was picked up by a guy in Indonesia who did the CNC milling too. Highly recommended. In addition it's also had:
> Fans disassembled and the frames painted matte black; "officially" Noctua say that the Redux series cannot be split apart without irreversibly damaging them but this is b
ks> A custom motherboard shroud from a company whose name escapes me
> SLS 3D printed motherboard IO cover and GPU support bracket
> Custom cables from Shakmods, except they were actually made for the later AX series PSUs so I had to redo everything but the 24-pin myself
> A couple of custom cables covers, I've still got two more I need to do but haven't bothered yet
Might go X299 with a 10920X or 10980XE and a 3000 series card in the future, but not sure I'll build it in the O11 again. It's a great case but they're very common and I really want to do something a bit more niche as a casemod. Maybe an In Win of some description with the motherboard tray removed and replaced with a full size distro plate.
Anyway, build pictures.
Lovely build that is mate, custom work looks spot-on too!
I know what you mean about the O11 case too, 90% of the builds on the watercooling subreddit are O11D/XL
I can see why though and it's why I chose it for my first build, it's such a practical case to use, especially when EK make distro plates specifically for it.
I've got almost everything running on mine now, so nearly finished lol, just need to plumb in the GPU block...
I've used the pre-bent 90° acrylic tubes by Alphacool for my build which has managed to avoid any custom bending so far, as once you've cut either end to length, the 90° angle sends the tube directly from the component to the distro plate..
However the inlet / outlet ports on the GPU block sit quite a bit further forward than the distro ports, so they will require bending..
I've got 2 of the 90° tubes left from the bulk I bought (from Germany) saved for the GPU, but I think one of them is too short.. So along with a heat gun, silicone tubing and a pipe-bending jig, I've ordered a couple of straight 16mm tubes so I can just do all the bends myself - should be easier (or not)...
The EK Vector block is a nice bit of kit though, paired with the Nickel backplate. I probably wouldn't have bothered with the backplate if I was vertical mounting the GPU, but having tried it with EK's bracket kit, it clashes with the bottom rad pipes, so horizontally mounted it'll remain (EK vertical GPU kit is available if anyone's interested?)...
I know what you mean about the O11 case too, 90% of the builds on the watercooling subreddit are O11D/XL
I can see why though and it's why I chose it for my first build, it's such a practical case to use, especially when EK make distro plates specifically for it.I've got almost everything running on mine now, so nearly finished lol, just need to plumb in the GPU block...
I've used the pre-bent 90° acrylic tubes by Alphacool for my build which has managed to avoid any custom bending so far, as once you've cut either end to length, the 90° angle sends the tube directly from the component to the distro plate..
However the inlet / outlet ports on the GPU block sit quite a bit further forward than the distro ports, so they will require bending..
I've got 2 of the 90° tubes left from the bulk I bought (from Germany) saved for the GPU, but I think one of them is too short.. So along with a heat gun, silicone tubing and a pipe-bending jig, I've ordered a couple of straight 16mm tubes so I can just do all the bends myself - should be easier (or not)...
The EK Vector block is a nice bit of kit though, paired with the Nickel backplate. I probably wouldn't have bothered with the backplate if I was vertical mounting the GPU, but having tried it with EK's bracket kit, it clashes with the bottom rad pipes, so horizontally mounted it'll remain (EK vertical GPU kit is available if anyone's interested?)...
HM-2 said:
I never much liked the earlier EK transparent blocks but for some reason they seem to work so well on the 3000 series. Think it's the cut-outs in the PCB that break it up a bit.
Could you not sort port alignment with fittings?
Yeah it's a nice block overall. I pre-ordered this one and the one from Alphacool before Xmas - as EK shipped first I just cancelled the AC one. There as a bit of a delay on releasing FTW blocks due to having a unique PCB layout or something..Could you not sort port alignment with fittings?
I'm not sure about fittings, I do have a couple of 90° fittings that I had to use to bridge the GPU ports on the distro so I could test the rest of the loop...
I'm not sure what fittings I could use though, not sure what actual angle the tubes will need to be bent at I mean.. I can't explain it very well but it's like the X, Y and Z axis of this pipe run are all off.. I'll see if I can mock them up tomorrow and get a couple photos. I managed 75% of the loop without any bending so that's pretty good going haha
Finally get to post the finished build, it's been stressful
I had everything basically running but had to wait for the GPU block to ship, then when fitted, realised I couldn't do straight runs with the tubes I had, so had to order a couple spares and a heat gun to do the 'S bends'.
Anyway, just finished cable management, cleaned any dust / fingerprints and put the case etc back together. Everything fine so far.
Still need to tweak some settings in Windows, optimise the fan curves etc, then run some benchmarks. But at the moment, with the fans at ~650rpm and pump at ~2500rpm (all basically silent from 2-3 feet), idle temps are CPU: 29°C core average, GPU: 26°C.
I had everything basically running but had to wait for the GPU block to ship, then when fitted, realised I couldn't do straight runs with the tubes I had, so had to order a couple spares and a heat gun to do the 'S bends'.
Anyway, just finished cable management, cleaned any dust / fingerprints and put the case etc back together. Everything fine so far.
Still need to tweak some settings in Windows, optimise the fan curves etc, then run some benchmarks. But at the moment, with the fans at ~650rpm and pump at ~2500rpm (all basically silent from 2-3 feet), idle temps are CPU: 29°C core average, GPU: 26°C.
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