Chocolate Box

[JR23]

Can i ask is that chrome tubing bendable?
and did you cut it too?

I didn't try to bend it all, it's way too expensive to experiment with and it wouldn't of really helped anywhere on this build. I would imagine with the correct equipment you could bend it however you risk damaging the plating. I've seen modders to bend copper tube and then have it plated afterwards and presumably that's the most cost effective way to do it with the best results as copper tube is much cheaper than this stuff and quite available.

I did cut it as you can see in Post #72, I have access to a lathe hence choose to chamfer and face the ends to length but if with a hacksaw, vice and a file you could achieve acceptable results. I just did it because I could not because it's necessary.

JR

 

[JR23]

Thank you i was looking at there black chrome version, i guess brass is soft as copper? I have seen the bending machine they use with copper tube quite straight forward, Where could you go to get it plated after? or is this something you can do yourself?

Also the 13mm primochill fittings would work or is it just Alphacool?
Awesome build just beautiful

Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc, so it has quite similar properties. They can both be very soft when annealed, I would imagine that the tubing is produced with that in mind rather than strength. There are plenty of companies who will plate stuff, finding somewhere that will take small orders is probably the tricky part. I guess looking for somewhere that plates classic car or motorcycle parts might not be a bad idea. I wish I could be more helpful on the matter but it's not something I have done.

Any rigid tubing fitting for the correct OD will work.

JR

 

[JR23]

Alright guys, quite a few people on the internetz have been asking for some performance figures of Chocolate Box. Similarly a lot of people found my thermal solution rather interesting so I thought it was appropriate that I put together a little project review.



There were a few decisions that caused some controversy, most repetitively I got 'why didn't you watercool the CPU' but also others like why not have more radiator area, a lower TDP card or an exhaust fan. And the simple answer all along has been aesthetics and the constraints of the case, I also wanted to be a bit extreme with it, just to push the design envelope. But at the same time I was pretty confident all along that it would perform.


SSD's - Atto



I decided that I would run a 120GB OS drive and 240GB Game drive although was tempted to RAID0 two 120's. Atto shows Performance between the two sizes as being extremely similar which I was quite surprised by. Both fell short of the advertised 555/510 but came very close.


SSD's - CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3



CrystalDisk was slightly less optimistic as usual however showed significantly better read speeds for the larger drive which I had expected to observe in Atto.


BootRacer 4.7



Average Windows boot time - 5.33 secs
Average overall boot time - 20.91 secs

To demonstrate some real world benefits of the SSD's I ran BootRacer several times averaging the results. With the motherboards insanely fast POST, improvements made in W8.1 and insane speeds of the SSD's this rig is amazingly fast off the mark often making it to the desktop before the screen has turned on.


Overclocking

As the CPU has a locked multiplier I honestly didn't consider it really worth tinkering with, even in my bigger rigs I generally keep the CPU at stock clocks for daily use. I had considered it may be worth undervolting it at stock clocks however the motherboard manages to be extremely lean rarely letting it touch 1.00v



The graphics card on the other hand was a different story! With afterburner installed getting some extra poke out of this chap was easy, the first thing I did was let it have 150% power limit as the SFX Silverstone seems to dish it out just fine. I prefer to overclock using Unigine Heaven as I find it easiest to recognise instabilities and artefacts. I worked up the Memory Clock in 50MHz intervals and to my surprise made it as far as Afterburner would let me go yielding 1625MHz or an effective 6500MHz, quite an increase from 5000MHz. The core and voltage I brought up together after that until I hit 1200MHz and that was limited by thermals more so than stability leading me neatly into my next topic.


Temperatures

Now I know I just said that the GPU OC was temp limited however before jumping to any assumptions let me elaborate on that. For all of the testing the ambient temperature was left pretty warm at 22°C, the case was entirely assembled with the window in place and both fans were set to a static 1000RPM. That's because I wanted this to be a worst case scenario, with a little bump in fan speed I can open up plenty more headroom but consider this a balanced set up appropriate for daily use.



As can be seen above the CPU reached a peak temp of 57°C during OCCT loading, it's highly unlikely this rig will ever see 100% CPU load so i'm really pleased with this. I think it easily justifies my aesthetic decision to run the L12. Infact this rig has already attended two LAN's and been subjected to 8 hours of gaming with no CPU fan installed!

The GPU side of things is even better presenting monumental gains over the reference cooler. Load temps have dropped from 95°C to 55°C which is incredible considering how much quieter it is. This has opened up enough headroom for some serious overclocks which I never really expected, with a fan speed of 1000RPM I managed to get 1200/1625MHz with a peak core temp of 67°C.


Accoustics

Unfortunately I don't have any of the required equipment to give any evidence here however I will state my subjective impressions. With the pair of iPPC's at 1000RPM they are hardly noticeable, similarly the PSU does an excellent job considering it's size and during my entire session loading and unloading it this evening I really coudn't pick it out even when pushing overclocks pretty hard. The main disappointment comes from the pump and it's really the lesser of many evils. A DDC was the only option for where it had to fit and de-coupling it fully isn't an option as it's rigidly linked to the radiator and hence all of the case, acrylic isn't the best material at mitigating this problem and consequently it is quite audible in a quiet room. A PWM DDC would have made a good substitute however with limited space and headers/PSU connectors it would have had complications that couldn't be resolved so neatly. On the basis that this is an aesthetic build which will nearly always be used in a noisy room while wearing headphones, it's not a big problem and I don't plan to change anything.


3DMark Fire Strike



Graphics Score - 11848
Physics Score - 6053
Score - 9039

Graphics Score OC - 13871 +17.1%
Physics Score OC - 6086 +0.5%
Score OC - 10063 +11.3%


Unigine Valley - ExtremeHD



FPS - 52.7
Score - 2205

FPS OC - 69.8 +32.5%
Score OC - 2922 +32.5%


Unigine Heaven - 1080p maximum settings



FPS - 54.8
Score - 1381

FPS OC - 63.5 +15.9%
Score OC - 1601 +15.9%


Mafia II - 1440p maximum settings



FPS - 91.5
FPS OC - 107.8 +17.8%


Hitman Absolution - 1440p maximum settings



FPS - 38.18
FPS OC - 43.35 +13.5%


Grid Autosport - 1440p maximum settings (8xMSAA)



FPS - 68.60
FPS OC - 74.35 +10.0%


Concluding thoughts

So as everything has panned out I really like the look of the L12 and the blocked card together, the juxtaposition of air and water cooling certainly works on an aesthetic level. I'm also now satisfied that it works on effectively on a thermal level providing more than sufficient cooling performance while remaining within the restrictions of the case. No drastic changes were made to accommodate the hardware and it has sufficient power delivery and cooling to keep the 290X happy. There is ample performance available for 1440p gaming and that's a milestone above where I was originally aiming.



JR

 

[JR23]

Long time no update on this one

As with most projects I thought it was all neatly finished, I was very happy with the aesthetics of the build and for the most part the way it performed. One thing that always disappointed me was the pump noise from the 1T-Plus DDC. So over the past few months I collected a little nest of parts to add and when OCUK said they would like it on their stand at i55 now seemed like the right time to pop them all in.

The main change was of course the pump, changing from a DDC wasn't an option as the reservoir and top fitted so neatly into the case. I opted for an EK-DDC 3.2 PWM, integrating voltage control would have been difficult given the available space however simply plugging it in was a logistical challenge!

Previously the DDC had been plugged directly into the PSU with the sensor wire removed, obviously the sensor and PWM wire needed to stay this time and go into the one available PWM header on the motherboard. Previously that is where I had plugged in the LED strip. With no further connectors on the PSU or the motherboard displacing the LED strip somewhere else wasn't going to work.

So in the end this is what was created! A Silverstone peripheral to DDC to PWM fan header to LED strip adapter extension Black being ground, brown +12v and grey sleeve carrying both the sensor and PWM wire for the pump. The LED was also swapped out for a clean white Darkside strip.

I also swapped in an i5-4690k from my S2.0 build which has now been decomissioned, some extra clock speed will be welcomed in the benchmarks.

Admittedly that did seem like enough upgrades for now, so I swapped in 2 8GB HyperX Fury sticks. Just to be sure I had enough memory for work, and GTA and stuff... I mean Senescentis wasn't using them anyways.

So that's everything for now.

After refilling the loop it immediately seemed much quieter, I couldn't hear it at work over Parvums CNC running in the background so it's definitely better than before. Annoyingly I broke one of the Noctua's when taking it apart so have yet to give it a thorough test but i'm sure it will be ready for insomnia!

JR

 

[JR23]

Despite it's earlier magnificence the reference 290X in Chocolate Box has been showing some troubling signs of age in recent weeks and so it's now time to roll in a new younger model to take over. I really didn't want to change the build too much as i'm quite attached to it, particularly as a LAN rig. Hence i'll be using a card with the same PCB and EK 290X rev2.0 acetal nickel block.

As i'm quite busy writing updates and doing work I won't be narrating this one blow by blow and I did already show the block getting mounted earlier in this thread so here is some Radeon eye candy...

I can't wait to see how this new card performs, while i'm not expecting any colossal improvements perhaps the added VRAM will permit some even more Ultra Grass in GTA V. That's all for now but i'm sure I will find something else to do when rebuilding the rig, perhaps some changes to the fittings to get them looking a little more consistent.

JR

 

[JR23]

looking forward to updated rig photos but I assume visually nothing is changing

Not hugely I don't want to change how it fits together at all but hopefully a few additions will get it looking a little sharper. I'll be changing to skylake and getting the new Z170 Stinger and a 6700k. All new bitspower enhance style fittings and slightly thinner tubing. I'll probably add a window to the back side too so everything is on show. Quite excited for the little rebuilding session actually.

JR

 

[JR23]

I'm starting to get excited for the rebuild now i've had some hands on time with the motherboard, as I acquired an i7-6700k I have switched to the newer Z170 Stinger and my god it's beautiful, one of the finest Z170 motherboards I have ever witnessed.

Had a quick test fit of the Noctua L12 and thankfully it nestles in just as neatly as before, hopefully later in the week I will collect some DDR4 and fresh Bitspower fittings and get Chocolate Box back in the scene.

JR

 

[JR23]

I've had an extremely busy few weeks of work and lets just say I wasn't sure I wanted to see any PC's for several days! However I couldn't stand to see my X1.0 sit dismantled in a cardboard box any longer, so it was time to get a little progress in and continue with the rebuild!

With the move from Haswell to Skylake it not only meant that I needed a new board but of course some DDR4 to go with it.

While this may appear to be Vengeance LPX, it really isn't, just yeah

So to remove one element of confusion and to add another I decided to remove the 'stock' LPX not LPX spreaders and fit watercooling kit spreaders just like the old DDR3 that came out.

So thats the last of the main hardware upgrades taken care of!

Next I will be addressing the tiny aesthetic details. Chocolate Box had always been a huge mix of watercooling parts with an EK pump and block, XSPC radiator, Alphacool tubing and the occasional Bitspower fitting. Purely because at the time that was the most effective solution performance wise and aesthetically. However to alleviate the huge mixture of fittings I will be switching them all to Bitspower along with the relatively recent 12mm OD chrome tubing.

Today i've just been working on the back of the case and as before using a lathe to accurately face the pipework to length. Not exactly a requirement but just because I can.

The one new tube fitted perfectly into place!

I also swapped in Bitspower pass through, rotary and extender fittings to keep things extra clean and consistent. I went for 'enhance' style compression fittings as although I prefer push-in style for rigid tubing these just looked incredibly slender and discrete. Each length of tubing stems from a rotary hence it made sense to just use the one fitting rather than conventional rotary and C47.

So the back side of the loop is looking on point once more, I just need to pick up two more 90° enhance rotaries and then I will progress with the front half.

JR

 

[JR23]

Over the weekend I cut the four remaining tubes for Chocolate Box using the lathe just as before.

I'm using Bitspower enhance style fittings which incorporate a traditional compression ring into almost any imaginable fitting, in this case a 90° rotary.

There are also 90° links with a compression ring on both sides allowing relatively slender and simple bends without attempting to form the pipe.

So a quick test fit was in order to ensure my measurements were accurate, everything came together neatly.

When it's possible I like to keep a consistent knurling pattern and diameter throughout the build hence I found some matching stop plugs.

I'm really happy with the results and the consistency now all of the tubing and fittings are Silver Shining. It's actually much lighter than the previous 10/13mm components and the rotaries are much tighter too so hopefully it will sit just as true in the build when coolant is added

Next up I just need to give everything a clean off and then reassemble, very excited to see how it looks and performs with all the little changes now.

JR

 

[JR23]

With the tubing completed in the previous update, there really was not much left to do besides add the cables and fit the CPU cooler but after many months of service the L12 deserved a thorough cleaning.

So I decided to give him a shower!

...and of course the IP67 F12 wanted to be involved too.

Left to dry out in the afternoon sun, I wanted to be sure the fan would not throw out some water when it was powered on in the build.

While the original vibration mounts were still in perfect order I had 120 or so original brown parts left over from LIGHTNING, hence I just picked out some fresh new ones.

Just like new again.

Always the tricky part of this build is connecting the CPU fan, but it can be done with some patience.

Second round of final pics to come very soon

JR

 

[JR23]

Each little detail has manifested into the latest revision of Chocolate Box and while none of these changes were radical together they make quite a difference. So for the second and i'm sure not the last time here are the 'final' photographs!

Case - Custom Parvum X1.0
CPU - Intel i7-6700k
Motherboard - EVGA Z170 Stinger
RAM - Corsair Vengeance LPX 2x8GB 4000C12
GPU - XFX R9-390X DD Black Edition
SSD - HyperX 3K 120GB
SSD - HyperX 3K 240GB
PSU - Silverstone SX600-G

Fans - Noctua IndustrialPPC NF-F12 ip67 2000PWM x2
CPU Cooler - Noctua NH-L12
GPU Block - EK FC290X Nickel/Acetal w. Backplate
Radiator - XSPC AX120
Pump - EK-DDC 3.2 PWM
Pump/Res - EK DDC X-RES 100
Fittings - Bitspower Enhance Silver Shining
Tubing - Bitspower 10/12mm Silver Shining

I suspect another installment of photographs will come, these just stood out from the 250 or more that I took this afternoon. Thanks for checking it out, catch you all soon!

JR

 

[JR23]

Tell me about it, I'm using silver fittings with chrome EK.

Each time I see your builds JR I always get really jealous as they look so clean and perfect. Are you a magician or do you have multiple attempts to get the perfect look?

Great build

Not really multiple attempts, just a lot of planning and then ensuring each detail is perfect. If something could be better then of course I will do it again. Then when it comes to the final assembly everything just pieces together exactly right, if it doesn't then I am disappointed. At the end it should just come down to putting things together, not making them fit together. Perhaps also I am far more ruthless than most with what parts I will use and I also don't like anything to appear modified.

JR

 

[JR23]

Joe, it's just occurred to me that you're using the Silverstone SX600 and made your own cables. How did you find the 24-pin ATX with its weird crossed-over layout? I've been reading a great thread by WiSK on Overclock.net about this issue with the ST45SF-G V2 that I have, and it seems all Silverstone PSU have the same pin out.

By the looks of it the awkward twist isn't an issue for you since you have quite a lot of hiding room, but was wondering how you found things and any pointers you may have.

Cheers.

Silverstone's pinout is the best in the entire industry for sleeving with absolutely no split wires and no reverse engineering required to figure out what's happening. I will say also that Superflower OEM units like the EVGA, 8 Pack and Titanium Leadex's are good, nowhere near as godly, but acceptable. I wouldn't even contemplate sleeving any other PSU.

Of course they do have to cross over to achieve the 1:1 but it is at least a full flip, much easier than crossing some and not others and splitting some etc to make the 14 +10 most OEM's use. Even if you have to achieve a bend every cable needs to be equally longer than the previous, rather than randomly if 4>12 and 17>11 and 9>23. So creating the perfect sweeping cable is a much easier task almost like extensions.

There is one unique pointer to consider, particularly with the 24-pin and that is if the flip is taking place end for end OR inside to outside, depending which way around the connector is on your motherboard relative to the PSU location. This will mean either every wire needs to be exactly the same length or they each need to be dramatically different. One way the inner and outer sets swap end for end with a twist (like in this build) and the other way the inside needs to pass to the outside (like the stock cables). The shorter you need to make the cables the more this is exaggerated.

This is a set i'm currently working on, the inside wires (pins 13-24) range from 185-250mm and the outside wires (pin 1-12) range from 235-330mm. I got these lengths just by putting the 4 most extreme wires in position, but consider the longer ones will have to flow around the mass of cables in the middle which is not yet present. Take the two extremes, divide the difference by 12 and add that to each wire! If your doing all one colour it's a fast process, for a pattern it's not hard, just be systematic and then when you finally come to assemble all the sleeved wires into the connectors it will immediately start to take the perfect shape.

Spoiler

Other than that, general sleeving advice applies, get the right sleeve, right wire, right tools and right suppliez and with patience you'll get the desired result. I'm sure you know that stuff but actually i'm just going to emphasize how important wire is! Gauge, insulation diameter, insulation material and insulation color will all have a profound effect on how the sleeve interacts with the wire and how they look together. Personally I prefer MDPC-X over PVC insulated 16AWG, 3.1mm OD wire, black to darken, white to brighten and the respective colour to saturate. But you know, people get great results from paracord, or silicone insulation. There is no right answer just different styles.

The cables in Chocolate Box were made by James of Pexon PC's with Teleios, they are exquisite! I have no issues with the finished result of teleios and it's nice to work with however the consistency and colour choice of MDPC-X is on another level.

JR

 

[JR23]

I've always ignored the missing/split pins and just made it exactly 1:1 and it's worked with no issues at least 8 times now. Check the pinout and whats actually being crossed over but I think it's a legacy unused pin or something related to just having the 20-pin. Don't quote my reasoning but I know on all the Strider's I have it's completely ignored. If it works on Lightning it's probably legit.

You don't have to hide the twist, it's a beautiful thing when you nail it. I much prefer cables with flow and elegance than those restrained by perpendicular combs. I'm sure it will be awesome, inwin 90X's need some more re structural love!

JR

 

[JR23]

Once again Chocolate Box returns, this time for a massive upgrade! Even at this early stage it's obvious what will be going down and i'm very very excited about it. After the previous platform upgrade to Z170 there was certainly no shortage of CPU speed or efficiency and now it's time to apply the same ethos over to the GPU side of things with just a hint more brutish ignorance.

Momentarily I had planned to swap in a 980Ti K|NGP|N which would have been a significant undertaking of swapping PSU's, many cables and lots of little tweaks to make it all fit. But then while contemplating how to orchestrate that elaborate transplant a Titan X Pascal was bestowed upon me. So now I must go forth and do what I have to do!

The super vigilant among you, or just everyone, may have noticed that was slightly too many TXP's to fit on an ITX board. Well you were correct, and no I won't be using 4 this time, sorry. However I will be using the best one of this set, because 'a' TXP clearly wouldn't have been good enough for a build with one of the best 61280K's and DDR4 kits in the wild.

So to determine a clear victor and a worthy companion for the current hardware a huge amount of overclocking and benchmarking took place. Here are some of the highlights...

Now you may have expected that one card in the pack shone through, clocked higher, scored like no other and those 5 screenshots were all from one of the finest examples of a TXP to ever exist. Well I must admit, I did too, but that wasn't the case at all.

Card - Core - Mem - FS eff - FS - Heaven - Valley
TXP1 - 220 - 600 - 31877 - 32074 - 4145 - 6679
TXP2 - 220 - 700 - 31836 - 32214 - 4170 - 6707
TXP3 - 220 - 700 - 31791 - 31621 - 4117 - 6809
TXP4 - 250 - 700 - 31739 - 32279 - 4124 - 6838

On all four cards I tested the highest achievable core and memory offsets with the stock cooler, once I established they could all easily achieve +200mhz core and +500mhz memory I ran Firestrike Standard graphics with the same settings on each card to determine the relative efficiency. The same thing as an ASIC value attempts to represent, the deviation was quite significant and it gave me a great insight into what I could expect from them without investing hours and hours into watching Firestrike. The two most efficient cards were able to achieve the highest Unigine Heaven scores while the higher leakage cards fared better at Valley. Firestrike made things very interesting as it took advantage of the very high clocks TXP4 was able to achieve while at the same time the more balanced blend of efficiency and clocks TXP2 offered also did well, unlike earlier in Valley.

With all that information picking the optimal card wasn't a simple decision as they all performed reasonably well under different conditions. In the end it came down in favor of TXP2 as it had great efficiency and was still able to achieve relatively high clocks, visible in its strong performance across all 3 benchmarks. The shear speed and leakage of TXP4 were very alluring and i'd be excited to see what it could do at lower temperatures, however with only a single 120mm radiator efficiency seemed like a more suitable asset. Plus I did a little SLI testing and TXP2 was by far the most cooperative as a primary card.

So enough of the boring reading, many sexy pictures!

All the credentials are now ready for action, I just need a little watercooling gear to suit the new card, few cables, few tubes and I will be ready to hit LAN's with some next level Farm Simulator settings. No seriously, only a few weeks until i60 and there is lots of farming to be done!!!

JR​

 

[JR23]

Can this tubing be bent with a pipe bender,fantastic idea on chamfering the ends on a lathe.top work as always dude

It's really thick walled compared with all tubing i've known to be formed cold, I don't think the plating would survive and you'd be left with a big mess. You can get pre-formed sections from alphacool but they are really short and pointless. Far easier to use copper, form it and then have it plated after.

JR

 

[JR23]

With the air cooled testing concluded (I thought) the card was stripped down ready to send nudes get blocked.

But wait...

...whats dis. Well while reading 1080Ti reviews I got a bit wrapped up in an uncorking guide and noted quite an elegant power mod, rather than shorting the shunt resistors with liquid metal 3x 10Ohm 0805 resistors were added to the capacitors on the power monitoring circuitry. I don't really like the idea of liquid metal long term, it's a bit liquid to be hanging out oddly ontop of resistors, but this seemed viable so onto RS to order some.

Must admit, I was very surprised how small 0805 was when they first arrived, so quickly nipped out to a friend to solder them on. Not that I didn't trust myself, but it was easier for him as I didn't say how much it was worth until afterwards. They can be seen above labeled C252, C253 and C257, notably hand soldered and weird at that being on top of another component, nonetheless well attached both physically and electrically, we checked.

Glad to say it worked really good, they don't influence the amount of power supplied to the core, instead they offset the cards monitoring so it never reaches '100%' power target and starts to throttle. With a substantial overclock it now runs at ~75% power target, on air that translated to a ~1.5% performance gain, hopefully it will start to help out more when the temperature throttle conditions are also removed.

And on that very subject, a delivery from Slovenia!

I think a lot less me writing stuff and more you looking at stuff is called for at this precise moment.

Just the way it should be, a brutally obvious sandwich of nickel, copper and acetal. More tomorrow.

JR​

 

[JR23]

Right, intense speed is required on this update because it's 3am, LAN is tomorrow and I spent waaaaaay too long picking through hundreds of shots! I finished the build last Sunday, ran some benchmarks... got very close to topping a few leaderboards and then got very obsessed with that instead of updates or photos. Then FURIA died, which was about to make comeback with a new riser, pump and fans but now I need a new motherboard and CPU... so back to it.

Some of you might have caught my mini update about the case and all of the little changes, but i'll keep that to the end before its revealed. First thing was to fit the freshly adjusted cables into the midwall, very literally.

And then neatly tuck them all into the motherboard.

It all went back together just as before with the modded EK X-RES hanging out on the triple M-M snake.

Getting very speedy at building up Parvums these days. Also EK SF3D spreaders on the memory with shortened black M3 dome head screws to complete them a little.

Right, time for benchmarks! I was able to get the 6700k stable at 5.0ghz for 3d runs on the NH-L12, 4.9ghz for physics, both with 4000mhz C18 memory and 4.8ghz cache. The Titan ran even better than ever with its new block too sitting in the 2114-2139mhz range for every test.

The freshly released Unigine Superposition, 1080p Extreme and 4k optimized presets.

And of course some Firestrike, physics suffered a tiny bit compared with my bench tests using the EK S240 kit however keeping the Titan under 40°C easily made up for it overall.

Well now I know you know it's finished I can't just leave it at that. So some teasery glimpses before LAN!

Right, sleeps, gon.

JR​

 

[JR23]

I saw you mention on Facebook at FURIA died. That X99 build was sweet as a nut

Chocolate Box looks immense as always, well-earned sleep!

Yep, sadly the motherboard and CPU need to be replaced. I'd just received a beautiful new riser cable from li-heat and was testing that out in preparation for new fans and pump, casually updating drivers and it just died while sitting idle. But the fans, 24v 3000RPM A14's are amazing, running from 250-1750 RPM from 4.6-12V or 650-1750 RPM from 30-100% PWM, pump is a low RPM open vein DDC from an EK Predator which together should help to the idle noise right down. The current 12V A14's are fine on load but the board fan control isn't advanced enough to get them properly slow. It shall return, just need to locate a board.

@JR23 , How was the DDC for being hard mounted to the Rad?

Thinking of doing likewise in mine bar having a res on top, have no room in build and needs to be filled via GPU. all soft tubing in mine, just worried about vibrations.

Build looks stunning

The DDC I first had was horrific an 18W variant that just sat at 4500RPM vibrating like crazy but I switched to an EKWB 3.2 spec PWM DDC and the Stinger lets me run that at a static 2500RPM which is great. But then that's also the pump I used on my ASRock and it didn't do good at all. Finding the right low RPM solution for little builds with no room for fancy controllers is tough, I wish there was just a super slow spec 12V DDC that was reliable and consistent. The EK SPC might be suitable, i've used that recently with a few ASUS boards.

JR

 

[JR23]

Phase III is drawing to a close after an astounding performance at LAN, surely one of the most demanding environments for a gaming PC, so I think this configuration will stick for a while now. I will have to turn my attention back to some larger rigs so I can run the same settings at home. The fact this tiny pupper runs circles around my triple 780 X79 rig simply won't do.

I hope my LAN recovery time was well spent editing the remaining pics, not including all 400 or so was the hardest part and there's still more i'd love to shoot. Perhaps after the next LAN there will be more, so for now!

Intel i7-6700k
EVGA Z170 Stinger
Corsair 8 Pack 2x8GB 4000C12
Nvidia Titan X Pascal
HyperX 3K 120GB
HyperX 3K 240GB
Silverstone SX600-G
Custom Parvum X1.0

Noctua NH-L12
Noctua iPPC NF-F12 2000 x2
EK-FC Titan X Pascal - Acetal+Nickel
EK-FC Titan X Pascal - Black
EK-SF3D EVO Adapters - Black
EK-DDC 3.2 PWM
EK DDC X-RES 100
XSPC AX120 - Black
Bitspower Enhance 10/12 - Silver
Bitspower brass 10/12 - Silver

Chocolate Box, Lightning and FTW are now awaiting rapid deployment to LSUCS LAN only tomorrow!

JR​