Build Log: Lian Li PC-O6SX

[BornEvil]

I like black fittings and have them in my build....but in yours, I think I prefer the silver. Mainly because I think it goes better with your full nickel CPU block.
I ought, therefore, to be argueing the reverse case for your GPU block...but actually I think the silver goes with the acrylic and contrasts against the delrin terminal and the black PCI-E power socket.

Soft tube is certainly more forgiving...flexible even!

If you wanted to make that less of an awkward angle, you could use a non-rotatable 90° fitting such as this Bitspower fitting. Barrow do a cheaper version if that's an issue. The lack of rotatable bit should get your connectors more or less in line and you can make sure it points in the right direction by rotating the pass-through in its hole and then retightening it.

Yeah, I like black fittings too, I am regretting splashing out on a Full nickel block, originally wanted the plexi-nickel.

Already thought of that regarding non-rotary fittings . need to buy some anyways, as the pass-though(s) on the back is longer than I thought, cutting very close to side panel if i used taller fittings.

I don't really like the big golden logo on BP, same reason i'm contemplating swamping out the EK-AF/ACF. I'm obviously stuck with EK if i want nickel.

The barrows seems ok for the price. Black barrows is starting to grow on me.

 

[BornEvil]

It was open box, seemed perfectly new to me. £215 made it much less scary drilling it.

It is more stable with the stand but fine without, ruins the look with the stand/feet. I'm going to wall mount it when done, possibly bury it into a plasterboard wall, but i'll think about that later.

 

[BornEvil]

My seasonic is semi passive, I have never seen the fan spin up during any load. There is about 7mm gap before it touches the glass. It's obviously not ideal but it's not much worse than standard ATX cases with the PSU facing the floor. I'm not that concerned about that.

Regarding dust, I'm using the top triple 120 rad fans (Noctua) as intake for 100% positive pressure, and those are filtered.

In theory, i will have one dead spot at where the res/pump is if the PSU spins up, hence I relocated the PSU lower. but the res/pump will block most air flow anyways, if I'm lucky, air gets directed towards the vented holes at the front.

This is all theory as it is not finished yet. if temps completely suck, then as a last resort, I'll drill a hole Directly under the GPU to mount a 120mm fan as exhaust.

 

[BornEvil]

Thanks, I have put a bit of thought into it.

There is not much update as I kind of stalled waiting for watercooling fittings to be in stock:

EK-AF Passthrough nickel x2
Barrow non-rotary 90 elbow x4
Barrow 40mm extender x1

I have thought out the rear tubework, and will post plans later.

 

[BornEvil]

After waiting 2 weeks for some fittings to arrive from China, the loop is now complete

Swaped out chrome for black fittings:

GPU gets installed as an asembly, pretty easy to do, also swapped out blank end caps:

Much more consistant:


PWM fan splitter wiring, flat and out of the way:


This is how the radiator is fed without tubing:

[1] 90 elbow => 45 elbow => 40mm extension => 90 elbow
[2] 90 elbow => 90 elbow

Rear pipeworks, (PSU cables not in yet)

There is a mix and match of black and nickel fittings, this is so I can switch the black fittings on the front with the nickel fittings on the rear if I get bored.


Also swapped out the C13 PSU plug for a right angle one, with a removable wall socket so i can thread it though plaster board walls.


And another shot of the front:


Leak tested with plain DI water.


I don't like that the opaque coolants refracts the 24 pin PSU cable, so I once again have to abuse free shipping with OcUK

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Mayhems Pastel - Ice White Coolant 1L= £14.99
• 1 x Mayhems Dye Red 15ml= £5.48
• 1 x Mayhems Dye Emerald Green 15ml= £5.48

Total: £25.95
(includes shipping: £0.00)
​

​

Going for grey pastel (maybe with a blue hue) to match the motherboard heat sinks

 

[BornEvil]

Absolutely tremendous job on this mate. Its fantastic.

I'm currently ploughing my way through a dremel inspired hack a thon on an old lian li v351b to add a custom loop into it and ive seen this and thought

"Jeez I got to get one of those cases"

TOP JOB

If i'm honest, anyone that is moderately competent with a drill/dremel is capable of replicating my mod. Its just simply few holes here and there. Heck I even used soft tube.

I just let the originally designed case do the work

I used a lot of 'unnecessary' elbow fittings. Back in the early days of water cooling, it would be frowned upon cos it hinders flow, but with hard tube being mainstream now, the community is more forgiving now.

 

[BornEvil]

Thanks guys.

PSU is back in temporarily:




It's now up and running, fully bleed on plain DI water:



Initial Temperature results
Max cooling = Full speed pump and fans = 4800rpm pump/1500rpm fans x3
Silent cooling = 40% cycle pump (constant) and silent profile fan = 1500rpm/400-700rpm <=insanely quiet

i7 6700K @4.7Ghz 1.4v
(not a particularly great chip)
Maxcooling = 60 peak package, 79 on highest core temp
Silent cooling = 64 peak package, 83 on highest core temp

Those are peak temps in CPU Aida64/RealBench/OCCT etc, usually hover around 45 in games.

GTX1070 @2126Mhz core, 4300Mhz RAM, no voltage increase
(+250, +300, core power throttles down to 2100 occasionally, but generally locks to 2126)
Maxcooling = 43
Silent cooling = 55

Heaven 1080P, 103.5 FPS, 2607 Score

 

[BornEvil]

Playing with mayhems dye and Drain Procedure

My coolant and dyes have arrived.



I never intended to use clear red coolant, but since I will be draining it for Pastel anyway, may as well get a photo opportunity:

20 drops of red on de-ionised water


Clear red is not doing it for me at all, the GPU fluid appears much more opaque relative to the reservoir. Looks a complete mess.

So after 30 mins, I drained the loop 5 times ready for pastel dyeing.

Drain Procedure:

This is a small note to myself, reminding me how to drain the system.

[1] fit 90 degree fitting to valve and release fluid



(The ball valve is set to open position in normal use, and I rely on an end cap to seal the loop. This is because the side panel will not fit with the ball valve in closed position.)

[2] Fit a straight fitting/tube to the gpu inlet, and blow into it.



It works, but I now have red teeth.

White Pastel, no dye

This is much better:



White is much better looking than I thought it would look. Gives good contrast to the back fittings.

I'll let it bleed out air, and will start dying it grey later. Used about half the bottle of pastel white, so think I have enough to drain and refill if I don't dig grey.

 

[BornEvil]

Can you loosen the screw that holds the lever onto the valve, turn the lever 90 degrees and the do the screw back up? It would mean you could put the lid on with the valve closed but it would look open

That I did not know, thanks! Was just about ready to dremmel one side of the lever!

Awesome, Would have to retrain my brain to think which is open and which is close

 

[BornEvil]

Light grey fluid
~20 drops of emerald green and 2 drops of red

now dyed fluid to light grey:




Decent match the the silver in braided cables. But having second thoughts on grey.

Dark grey fluid
120+ (!) drops of emerald green and ~10 drops of red



It's much darker in person compared to pictures. Pretty much the darkest I can get it, adding more green (and red) does not do much and I've nearly finished the 15ml bottle of dye.

Still un-decided on coolant colour, I think clear looks classier but pastel looks better on soft tube.

 

[BornEvil]

I'd probably go with the dark - and not just because it doesn't require flushing it all and buying more of everything!

I'm not sure the grey would work as a clear fluid - although I could well be wrong.

I can just drain little out then dilute it with white pastel to get it back to light grey.

I think the dark colour looks great in the reservoir and tubes but the light looks better in the GPU

I now think dark grey is a keeper, just put the tampered glass side panel back on, and all greys on the case gets blended in! looks lovely in person if I don't say so my self

The fluid looks very close to the dark grey of the chipset heatsink and SATA ports.

In case any one is wondering why I'm dyeing fluid grey, (other than matching the motherboard), I wanted to match my Signature Plastics keycaps (G20 dark grey) and I plan to buy IKEA Alex drawers in grey to build my desk, and I already have a grey/mesh chair.

Overall a decent Black, Grey and Nickel theme, with little bits of red as accent colours.

 

[BornEvil]

Well, my intention was to get some sort of grey, as that was the general theme colour of the motherboard.

The VRM heat sinks are metallic and very hard to match with pastel, maybe with aurora but not going to use that.

In the end, I just went the darkest I can get it, and it won't go any further. It just so happens when the tinted glass panel went back on, it becomes exactly what i wanted, a very very dark grey.

Also darkened everything else, giving a spectrum of grey. Even the nickel blocks become same shade as the chrome bits (i/o ports, battery).

I'm not much of a photographer, and not really sure how to take pictures that highlight this under tampered glass, I just tried to explain it in words and is kind of boring I know

Will give it a try once I get the case lighting in.

 

[BornEvil]

I've taken some low light pictures:







(Again, sorry for bad pictures. I used my iPhone's flash as a down light)

The Hue+ has arrived, will get another update soon.

In other news, I got given these by the lovely people that did my cables:



At some point will replace the red accents with yellow, probably trim some vinyl stickers to cover up the red lettering on the motherboard bits too.

 

[BornEvil]

I'm not so sure, I get the sense bending is more and more becoming seen as the way to go aesthetically, and if you ain't bending you're just pretending!!

That's what I meant

There used to be elitists that care about nothing except maximum cooling, I.e. shortest tube runs possible and no tight bends etc. Now you get people that would extend the tube just to fill a gap in a case. I'm more the latter, just saying.

Heh, I'm guilty of pretending for this build , I don't see the point of going back to hard tube on this build, as it will look nearly exactly the same.

When the soft tubing inevitably clouds up, I'll consider switching to glass and clear coolant. Also still have my chrome/brass pipes to play with.

 

[BornEvil]

Check out this abomination:


All my hard work undone LOL


The NZXT Hue+, is quite a cool little gadget. I use it to customise exactly which part of the case to light up and each LED's dimness, like spotlights.

For comparisons:

White, all on, full brightness VS 'Custom Spotlight mode'


In spotlight mode, all LEDs are dimmed except the one above the 45 degree fittings which I wanted to highlight.



I need to do something about the top LED strip, maybe slice up the aluminium stand to make a shroud to hide it. The rest of the LED strips are well hidden and can't be seen when off.

Cable management and drain valve:

This is the best I can do TBH, there is a lot of space but Lian Li did not give any help in the cable management department. They sort of let the user be creative about it. Panel closes fine and no cables can be seen from the other side, so I am happy to leave as is.

More frontal pictures:
(Added a few more doses of dye, no longer has green hue under low light on camera)



Dark room pictures (glass on):

 

[BornEvil]

Is it wrong that I kind of like the rainbow lighting?!

it's a cool party trick, but no way I'm leaving it on like that in normal use.

Have the lights automatically turn off when ever GPU temps reach 40c (when gaming). Would be better based on GPU utilisations though. Really nice piece of kit, expensive but nothing is like it on the market atm.

 

[BornEvil]

Very nice, not sure about the colour of the liquid though. I would have went with red or green or even yellow. But that is subjective I suppose

Thanks m8,

I understand that grey fluid is not to everyone's taste, but it does match well with the motherboard. I wanted a more neutral colour as anything bright would be too dominating as the GPU block is in full view.

Definitely not going for red though! it's been way overdone, my last loop was red and black themed.

Green would be nice, but for version 2, I would likely go yellow as I already have replacement individual braided wires for the PSU cables.

 

[BornEvil]

Won't be selling it just yet , especially the watercooling bits, my last radiator and D5 lasted 7 years through multiple builds

Not bored of staring at the case just yet either

 

[BornEvil]

The case is very basic, it relies on what's inside to expose in order to look good. I will be wall mounting it when I move very soon and i'm treating it more like a display cabinet more than a PC case.

Therefore will try and keep it for a few more platform upgrades (normally yearly). Just hoping mATX will be better supported in the future, unlike the X99 platform.

 

[BornEvil]

Keep a eye on the grey mate I had some problems with mine. Felt like it took so much dye to get it that colour that it started dropping out the coolant and sticking to my tubing.

I really want to give it another go but was a massive pain to clean out and would rather avoid going through it again.

Cheers m8, luckily for me, I'm using cheap soft tubing, and not intricate hard bends like yours. will take me 20 mins to replace.

BTW, was rooting for your build on Booted, watched it live and voted while working on my build late night. Really thought you should have won!

edit: you mean that the dye sinks though the PETG tubing?!?! or leak to the outside of the tubing?