How to spank my annual bonus......

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Hi All,

Come April I'll get my annual bonus. I'm looking to replace my gaming laptop with a watercooled X99 build in the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv Micro-ATX Case.

I'm new to watercooling, but this is what I have come up with so far.....

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte X99M Gaming 5 - Intel Core i7 5820K Six Core CPU & Motherboard Bundle ***£20 Saving*** £459.94
1 x BenQ GW2765HT 27" Widescreen LED Gaming Flicker FREE Monitor - Black £319.99
2 x OcUK Tech Labs H2O Custom GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent "Infinity Black Edition" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - Thermosphere Edition £270.00 (£540.00)
- 2 x EK Water Blocks EK-Thermosphere - Nickel £55.99
1 x GeIL EVO Potenza 16GB (4x4GB) DDR4 PC4-21300C15 2666MHz Quad Channel Kit - Red (GPR416GB2666C15QC) £199.99
1 x Phanteks Enthoo Evolv Micro-ATX Case - Gun Metal £99.95
1 x Seasonic G series 750w '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £94.99
1 x Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter (CT256MX100SSD1) £84.98
1 x OcUK Tech Labs - V8 Watercooling Kit 240 £26.42
- 1 x XSPC X2O 750 Dual Bayres/Pump (Black) V4 £59.98
- 1 x MagiCool Copper Radiator II PRO - 240 mm £32.99
- 1 x Mayhems Ultra Pure H2O Watercooling Fluid 1L £4.99
- 1 x Primochill Primoflex Advanced Tubing 16/11 - Clear £5.99
- 1 x EK Water Blocks EK-Supremacy EVO £49.99
Total : £2,125.25 (includes shipping : £27.55).




Ideally I'd like the build under 2 grand but understand this may not be possible. I need a decent monitor and would like a 2560x1440. I don't need OS, kb, etc.....

Suggestions and advice please.

Cheers.
 
"How to spank my annual bonus"

lol - nice title ;)

Also, that bay pump/res isn't compatible with that case as it doesn't have enough bay slots. You'll need a separate pump/res!
 
Stop spanking your annual bonus!!! :D:D:D

Interested to know I've picked up the rampage V I'm cooling the cpu, Mobo and ram and for the time being a single gpu would this case be suitable ? My 900d is to big!
Can the mid plate be drilled through and what sort of rads config can u have ?
 
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Ok, in reality you're not really going to see much difference between x99 and z97 unless you're benching. My recommendation would be to save the difference and get better components, like 2x980s.

I've come up with the below:

YOUR BASKET
2 x OcUK GeForce GTX 980 "Reference Design" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £469.99 (£939.98)
1 x MSI Z97M Gaming - Devil's Canyon i7 4790K CPU & Micro ATX Motherboard Bundle **£12 Saving** £367.98
1 x Acer Predator XB270HA 27" G-Sync 144Hz Gaming Widescreen LED Monitor - Black/Red £359.99
1 x SuperFlower Leadex GOLD 850W Fully Modular "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £99.95
1 x Corsair Hydro H100i High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (CW-9060009-WW) £89.99
1 x Phanteks Enthoo Evolv Micro ATX Case - Black £89.99
2 x Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter (CT256MX100SSD1) £84.98 (£169.96)
2 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLRED38G2400HC11CDC01) £44.99 (£89.98)
Total : £2,230.74 (includes shipping : £19.10).



I've not gone with watercooling as I think you could get a better system on air first and then invest in the custom loop.

You've got 2 better cards here, the 970's are shouldn't be considered in your budget and gone with the Z97.

AMD Option (295x2)

YOUR BASKET
1 x XFX AMD Radeon R9 295 X2 8192MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £569.99
1 x MSI Z97M Gaming - Devil's Canyon i7 4790K CPU & Micro ATX Motherboard Bundle **£12 Saving** £367.98
1 x Acer Predator XB270HA 27" G-Sync 144Hz Gaming Widescreen LED Monitor - Black/Red £359.99
1 x SuperFlower Leadex GOLD 850W Fully Modular "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £99.95
1 x Corsair Hydro H100i High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (CW-9060009-WW) £89.99
1 x Phanteks Enthoo Evolv Micro ATX Case - Black £89.99
2 x Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter (CT256MX100SSD1) £84.98 (£169.96)
2 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLRED38G2400HC11CDC01) £44.99 (£89.98)
Total : £1,861.94 (includes shipping : £20.10).



The 295x2 is more than capable and will keep you going for some considerable time. You may also want to consider that within the next 6 ish weeks, AMD are announcing their new line up of cards.
 
If this is your first time water cooling I would recommend getting a bigger case. While you can watercool in Micro ATX cases (I’m running a full loop in a Corsair Carbide 200r) space is a big issue, there’s never enough room for a rad in top so it means putting in the front and losing your hard drive bays. This is pain in back side if you plan on having a HDD for mass storage which resulted in me having to put my 3.52 drive loose between the PSU and the front rad. I bring this point up as I noticed the system in your basket isn’t blessed with tons of storage so I was curious as to how you would manage your storage needs with just one 256Gb SSD (you could always fit a 2.5 HDD on the back of the motherboard tray alongside your SSD and use Intel smart technology to allocate some SSD space to act as cache for it).

As snips86x has pointed out you can’t use that res/pump combo unit in that case, this means using either a single bay res/pump which from what I’ve seen aren’t all that great or using a tube and separate pump. I would personally go with separate tube and pump but pair it with a slimier rad if you plan on mounting the res/pump to the back of radiator otherwise the whole unit might interfere with your choice of graphics cards. A tube reservoir makes bleeding a lot easier and in a micro ATX getting rid of air bubbles doesn’t take long at all (compared to my previous full ATX case) which is a bonus.

As for the rest of your hardware choices I presume you know X99 isn’t exactly the gamers choice, a 4970k would be better suited but since you have the money and the budget I would probably go X99 as well (for future proofing). For SLI and X99 I would recommend a bigger PSU given that your system screams of overclocking and tuning. Also the 970’s are great cards and frustrating at the same time (read up on the ram issues on the 970 if you haven’t already).
 

lol, yeah I know - I forgot to swap out the monitor lol
 


:cool:

This is a very good setup. Tbh custom watercooling is more a novelty then realistic long term solution IMO these AIO units are while not as quite as good as custom they do give you most of the benefits that water brings.

Cutom systems need maintenance and replacing hardware can be a real pain in back not to mention messy. I’ve upgraded all my hardware once and I don’t want to do it again with a full water loop, next time I’ll get something similar to the above with AIO units instead.
 
Last edited:
Hi All,

Come April I'll get my annual bonus. I'm looking to replace my gaming laptop with a watercooled X99 build in the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv Micro-ATX Case.

I'm new to watercooling, but this is what I have come up with so far.....

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte X99M Gaming 5 - Intel Core i7 5820K Six Core CPU & Motherboard Bundle ***£20 Saving*** £459.94
1 x BenQ GW2765HT 27" Widescreen LED Gaming Flicker FREE Monitor - Black £319.99
2 x OcUK Tech Labs H2O Custom GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent "Infinity Black Edition" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - Thermosphere Edition £270.00 (£540.00)
- 2 x EK Water Blocks EK-Thermosphere - Nickel £55.99
1 x GeIL EVO Potenza 16GB (4x4GB) DDR4 PC4-21300C15 2666MHz Quad Channel Kit - Red (GPR416GB2666C15QC) £199.99
1 x Phanteks Enthoo Evolv Micro-ATX Case - Gun Metal £99.95
1 x Seasonic G series 750w '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £94.99
1 x Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter (CT256MX100SSD1) £84.98
1 x OcUK Tech Labs - V8 Watercooling Kit 240 £26.42
- 1 x XSPC X2O 750 Dual Bayres/Pump (Black) V4 £59.98
- 1 x MagiCool Copper Radiator II PRO - 240 mm £32.99
- 1 x Mayhems Ultra Pure H2O Watercooling Fluid 1L £4.99
- 1 x Primochill Primoflex Advanced Tubing 16/11 - Clear £5.99
- 1 x EK Water Blocks EK-Supremacy EVO £49.99
Total : £2,125.25 (includes shipping : £27.55).




Ideally I'd like the build under 2 grand but understand this may not be possible. I need a decent monitor and would like a 2560x1440. I don't need OS, kb, etc.....

Suggestions and advice please.

Cheers.

Wow that does look really cool however i would definitely get if possible a 4k monitor but i think that's gone be a beast for sure.
 

However again a good monitor cant be argued with however the set-up would be awesome and with that free sync monitor it should be butter smoth
 
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