AMD Only - NZXT AIO - Overclocked Build

[Seventi7]

Hello

This thread is a combination of the last 2 weeks of effort into a single thread...

So this is my 4th overclocked build so far ... over many many years.

My first PC build was 286 when I was at school, which I later upgraded to a 386 with a friend.
- 386 was a complete rebuild really as needed a new mobo and new colour screen

I built my second one in my first year of University on a Pentium (later upgraded to Pentium 2) layout with a Voodoo 2 card. (My first Graphics card.)

In my mid 20's, I built one with Pentium 4 Prescott and GeForce FX 5600 XT Nvidia Graphics card.
This was done as a small form factor using a cube style case and ASUS components where possible.
I also put 2 hardisks in with Raid 0, to speed up the read / write time.

As I have gotten older, most of my machines have become laptops, macbooks , surface pros etc.

During lock down I have suddenly gotten a urge to build a desktop again

Anyway I decided it was time to do another build, but I really wanted to explore AMD this time round.
Also on the shopping list was to do water cooling, however I wanted to keep it simple so AIO cooling.

After much research I decided on the Graphics card 5700 XT, as i am fairly familiar with Radeon.
Many of my laptops have had Radeons in the past and I have always enjoyed these.
Don't get me wrong ... NVidia are fantastic cards, but I wanted to stay all AMD this time.

The best priced card I found was the MSI 5700 XT Mech, which has overheating issues. Which as not a problem for me as I would be water cooling it with a G12

After much research I settle on the x570 Pro, because it supported the new PCIe 4.
This allowed me to get a Corsair MP600, which has a staggering 4,950MB/s read speed.
This has negated the need for RAID at this point.

Having chosen the Corsair Hardisk, I decided to pick up some Corsair vengeance memory at 3600.
Reason being the the mother board runs the memory channels at 1800 and at dual channel.
So no need to unlock and should work nicely with an AMD chip.

Okay lastly, which CPU to get ... I was really hard pressed between the ryzen 5 and the ryzen 7.
As I would be overclocking everything, the uplift in speed from 5 to 7, just did not seem worth the extra £100, so I thought I would stick to the 5 and leave myself room to upgrade later.

Lastly, Power, Case and Cooling.
Power was easy ... Corsair 750 Watt would be plenty.
I really like the look and the reviews on the NZXT Krackens, plus with a graphics card adapter I could connect one of these up to my 5700 XT ... how cool is that
Having made up my mind on the cooling, I decided to go with a NZXT case as well.

Okay thinking over time to buy ... Parts in list below:
(Prices seem to have changed since I placed my orders.)

Graphics:
MSI Radeon 5700 XT (£360)
NZXT Graphics Cooling X63, G12 (£140)

Mobo, Chip & RAM:
MSI x570 Pro (£160)
Corsair 16GB 3600 (£80)
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (£160)
NZXT X42 CPU Cooler (£90)

Case, Power, HDD
NZXT Midi Case (£80)
Corsair 750W (£90)
Corsair MP600 (£150)

Total Cost ... £1310 + Delivery charges.

 

[Seventi7]

Hi All

All the parts have arrived ... It has taken longer than expected due to C19 ... about 2 weeks, but they are all here.

 

[Seventi7]

Okay lets test these out ... on my make shift workbench

Will be running some overclocking tests on the CPU, Memory, Graphics Card and SSD

Overclocking on the workbench to check out the components ...

My results to follow shortly

 

[Seventi7]

Okay first set of tests and I am pretty impressed so far

So I have just enabled OC Genie in the BIOS (Ramps up all 6 cores on CPU to to 4200Mhz) and XAMP ramps up Memmory to 1800Mhz x2 (3600Mhz) @18 20 20
I have installed MSI After Burner and Ramped up Core Clock on Graphics Card to 2150Mhz and Graphics Memory up to 1900Mhz

At this overclock I am beating a 3700x on single core , but some way behind on Multi core due to 8 cores vs 6 Cores ...

On the Furmark scoring I am as close as dammit to a 1080ti in score:
P1080 9556 GeForce GTX 1080 Ti/PCIe/SSE2 2020-05-11
and slightly over some people on the 2070
P1080 9009 GeForce RTX 2070/PCIe/SSE2 2020-05-11

Either way this is some pretty serious results for minimal tuning.
Although every thing is running hot ... in the stress tests ... GPU hits 62c + and CPU 70c +
Don't think my machine could sustain this type of thing...
Without water cooling Coming NZXT

 

[Seventi7]

Okay time for the water cooling build on the Graphics Card.

Firstly on the 5700XT Graphics card, the G12 and the X63 ...
I was really worried that these would not all fit together, but they actually do fit together really easily.
Just remove the 4 screws on the back of the card and the cooler pop's off, no problem.
Once the cooler is off, just clean all the old thermal paste off the GPU.

Then find the appropriate standoff and screw these onto the board.
(This bit can be a bit fiddly, make sure you have a magnetic screw driver to line up the screws.)
Next put the fan on to the metal NZXT bracket and attach the water cooling block.
Now line it all up and attach the thumb screws ... this bit is the trickiest, because the block comes with paste on it.
So you don't want to try it twice as the paste will go everywhere.

Now remove the double fan bracket out of the case and attach the fans and radiator onto it.
I have mine blowing the air out of the case

Lastly wrestle the whole lot back into the case!

Okay done ... Installed!

So based on this, my new idle temps on the GPU are +-32C, with Liquid at +-27C
After playing Black Mesa on Maxed out settings for a couple of hours the GPU temps go up to +- 50C and 60C and the liquid goes up to +- 35C
On a stress test the GPU still hits 60C, but stays there now.

So not a bad result on GPU cooling.

Next we need to try get the water cooling in on the CPU.

Fitting the X42 onto the X570 in the 510 NZXT Case.
This was far more difficult on the small 510 NZXT case. If I was doing this again I would recommend you go for the larger 7 Series case.
This means you could get the larger x63 fan set instead of the smaller x42 and also it would fit !!!!
So on the case description it states that the top fan slot fits a 140mm fan.
However once it is behind a radiator it jams into the motherboard...

So i had to remove the radiators on the motherboard.
Should not be a problem as no heating goes into the case both coolers expel air.
However it still does not fit properly, So I have the fans and the rad off center.
This impedes about 10% of the radiator on the top.
Also the water pipes run directly in front of the rear fan, which impedes flow.

By the time I had this all back in the case I was truly terrified to switch on the power.
However it all booted perfectly fine! Shew!

Also some testing of the temperatures shows.
CPU idles at +-31C with liquid at +-27C.
On stressing the CPU (@4.2) it goes up to +-63C and then just sits there.
After playing games it does not stress the CPU as much as the graphics card...
It tends to jump around between 40 and 60C and the liquid goes up to about +-35C.

So very similar to the graphics card, even though it only has 140mm fan. (with a 10% handicap ... arrrg)
While the Graphics card is at 280mm fan capacity.

Lastly what about the case and the and the temp inside?
On a all day idle the temps are:
System 33C, Mos 42C, Chipset 39C, PCI 29C, M2.1 29C
During game play for hour or two, I spin up the fans so the temps are not vastly different.
So the internals hits about 35C across System, PCIE and M2.1 and Chipset and MOS go up to about 50C.
Not bad in my opinion as they stay solid at this point.

Final Pics of the complete build coming next.

 

[Seventi7]

Okay some beauty parade shots and parting thoughts on Performance Tuning, Fans and MSI Software.

Firstly what she looks like all lit up ...

Without Cover on and when idle, no stress on CPU / GPU gives Cyan colour

With Glass Cover on and when running a stress test - CPU and GPU at 60C give Red colour.

So what is she capable of now that I have had some time to tune her correctly?
She can run at 4.4Ghz stable, but high temps of 70c to 80c with the fans on about 75%.
On core clock speeds of 3.6, the CPU and GPU fans don't come at all. Just passive radiator cooling
The memory can clock up to 4Ghz, but with very loose timings. (20,23,23)
I prefer to run it at 3.6Ghz at (16,19,19) as this keeps memory in sync with the board
I seem to get better FPS on this as well.

I have not been able to get the Graphics card to run any faster than my first test.
MSI After Burner Core Clock 2150Mhz and Graphics Memory up to 1900Mhz.
Core Voltage at 1200 and Power limit at +12%

MSI Dragon Center Software seems really flaky, it is best to do all your tuning directly in the BIOS.
The BIOS is super cool, it has diagnostic LED on the board which shows overclock failures.
It will attempt to boot and if it crashes it reverts back to default and gives you a warning.
When overclocking the memory if you have a flatout crash and CPU failure, there are 2 pins which you can short. (Make sure the power is unplug at the socket )
This clears the bios and resets it back to default.

Afterburner is solid, however in tests the Core Clock actually bounces around between 1600 and 2000.
Not sure if there is a way to get it to stick?

All in all I am super happy with my new rig ... Now to save up for a better IPS monitor?

Cheers all and thanks for reading.

 

[Seventi7]

Thanks, I have purchased some white braided cables and LED Cable braids to finish the look off.

 

[Seventi7]

The Cam software works okay with 2 aio, you can label the fans and the lights differently ...

I have found that setting LED colour change in temperature or change to sound on both AIO tends to crash one of them ...

Because I cannot see the GPU one, I don't use that setting on it.