Build Project "Nameless"

irtuk · 9 Feb 2016 at 14:48

Build Project "Lionhead"

I have a blue office. A lovely blue recently decorated in my new house.

I have a red themed PC, watercooled in a corsair carbide case. Red LED's, very, very red. It clashes, badly.

More importantly the build has recently dropped out of the top 10% based on 3dmark benchmarks hitting a paltry 13899 in FireStrike. Time for a new build and the theme will be pale blue.

To get this I am going for a mainly white build and then approach the lighting with LEDs so I can match the PC lighting to the LED's I have on the back of the monitor

Here's the shopping list, currently making it's way around the South East in the back of a DPD van wrapped in lovely OCUK packaging and doubtless containing a couple of bags of sweets.

LN2 Tested 8Pack Speed Binned Intel Core i7 4930K Hyperthreaded Hex Core Processor - OEM
Asus X99 Deluxe/USB3.1 Intel X99 (Socket 2011) DDR4 ATX Motherboard
Avexir Blitz Original Silver 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C15 3000MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit - White L
Corsair Carbide 540 High Airflow ATX Cube Case - Arctic White (CC-9011048-WW)
Super Flower Leadex GOLD 1000W Fully Modular "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - White
Super Flower Braided Cable Kit - White
EK Water Blocks EK-HDC Fitting 16mm G1/4 - White
EK Water Blocks EK-XRES 140 Revo D5 PWM (incl. pump)
EK Water Blocks EK-HD PETG Tube 1216mm 500mm (2pcs) ( swapped for acrylic as I read the PETG did not like glycol in the coolant )
2 x Asus GeForce GTX 980 DirectCU II OC Strix 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Cards

I have a couple of other components directly from manufacturers but lets not talk too much about them.

I am currently assembling a workbench on which to do the build as the wife says the kitchen table is required for eating. I hope to be getting some footage up on my youtube channel once all the components are in and the build area is ready. This will be my first hardline tubing build and it's fair to say I am kinda worried!

Watch this space and I will get some images up as soon as the kit arrives.

LePhuronn · 9 Feb 2016 at 15:41

OcUK are selling CPUs that have been speed binned under LN2? Wow, paying a premium for a chip that's been wrecked!

Check your spec though dude. That CPU is IvyBridge-E and your motherboard is for Haswell-E. Won't work. You either need X79 motherboard or a Haswell-E CPU.

irtuk · 11 Feb 2016 at 11:17

Thanks for that mate, the valuable feedback on the parts has saved me a massive amount of grief!

So I have swapped the CPU for a haswell E 4960x

Any other problems on the parts list?

LePhuronn · 11 Feb 2016 at 11:50

5960X

But yeah that'll be OK now (nice chip).

The only other thing I'd say is you need more RAM. X99 is a quad-channel platform and you're only running 2 sticks, unless you have 2 sets of the Avexir kit. In benchmarks you will see a big hit in memory bandwidth only using dual channel, but in the real world I honestly don't know what performance hit you'd see.

But if you can drop £800+ on a CPU then I think you can afford to get the proper amount of RAM

Also, your hardline tube listing has confused me a little - you said you swapped the tube from PETG to acrylic because of glycol, but you still list EK PETG tubing. Is that just a typo?

To be honest though - and I admit this is a noob opinion because I've not built a custom water lop yet - I wouldn't mess around with fancy coolants anyway because of the glycol risk. Get yourself some distilled water, smash a biocide or kill coil in it and be done. If you want a colour then add a dye later on. But then I'm not sure how many premixes even use glycol any more - EK's EVO mixes don't.

You will need a load of distilled water for flushing purposes though even if you end up using a premix.

irtuk · 12 Feb 2016 at 13:37

I have 32GB of the RAM, 4 x 8, didn't come up on the list as "x4"

The PETG to Acrylic swap was after I saved this component list, so yeah, typo.

Just finished modelling the case in Sketchup this morning.

LePhuronn · 12 Feb 2016 at 14:30

Love a bit of Sketchup, nice model.

I should really learn it for my build, but to be honest by the time I've done that and modeled I'd already have everything measured and drawn in Photoshop.

Plus I know what it'll look like in my head and I want it to be a surprise for others

irtuk · 12 Feb 2016 at 17:49

To be honest its more something to do whilst I am waiting on everything to arrive.

Quick crosslink to the water cooling forum here as it turns out with the EKWB X99 full cover block you need to very gently punch some holes in this insulation foam stuff in the board.

irtuk · 23 Feb 2016 at 17:02

So I have a new name for my build project. It will be, from this day forth, Project Lionhead as the build will be "Black and White"

And some gear has arrived:

-Ed.

irtuk · 23 Feb 2016 at 23:02

So here is a summary of the last couple of days work:

2 x 980 GTX blocks and backplates installed:

Case boxed out inside with matte white acrylic:

( wonkiness due to nothing being bolted in yet... )

And this rawlplug based solution for the bottom of the case to cleanly seal off the HDD bays at the bottom of the Corsair 540 Air

Snookums · 24 Feb 2016 at 02:37

What size rads you using?

If its a 360 in the front it won't fit with your acrylic sheet down there unless you cut it a little. I'm looking at mine now and it sits just below the level of the drive racks. Just a lil heads up

irtuk · 24 Feb 2016 at 10:32

The radiators are on the outside of the house and linked with quick release fittings, so the plan is that the inbound/outbound run through holes to be drilled in the circular gap where the original fan was fitted.

harryface · 24 Feb 2016 at 15:08

Did you mod all the white on this? Or can you get the external black/white from corsair

LePhuronn · 24 Feb 2016 at 16:07

harryface said:
Did you mod all the white on this? Or can you get the external black/white from corsair

The 540 comes in white/black I believe.

irtuk · 24 Feb 2016 at 22:42

Yeah its available in black and white at this very local link

Quick update for today, I have thrown out the rawlplugs in favour of smart little aluminium legs:

They didn't work ( could not get the damn things level and the back left one was a mare. Also they didn't quite fit the screws snugly so they were going to rattle...)

Next solution, some aluminium..

That works really well. Here's the interior with the panels bolted in place. Also shows the white plastic stand-offs to bring the rear panel flush with the bottom.

And finally the reservoir mounts. I want the res perfectly in line with the cable ducts so the hardline tube can run straight up and in without having to do any kinking about. I am figuring this will save me a lot of pain down the line.

The mounts are the same aluminium with brackets dremmelled to place the res 30mm into the case from the front plate. I will be mounting it using the fan holes in the case and using the case metal to add strength.

I have also started layering acrylic gel medium onto a laser printed tattoo which, my artistic friends assure me, will, through some magic process, turn into a transparent acrylic transfer of the image:

So that is destined for the floor of the machine just above the now hidden pluggable drive bay.

-Ed.

Working tomorrow. Wedding Saturday. Meh.

-Ed

savagesam117 · 24 Feb 2016 at 22:50

it's all looking rather pretty! Looking forward to seeing it done!

Can I ask, why have you dropped £800+ on the 5960X yet only gone for 980's in SLI? Surely to complete the package SLI 980Ti's, hydro coppers or something would go down a treat?

irtuk · 24 Feb 2016 at 23:02

Ummm yeah. the CPU was a bit of a **** up. Originally I went with a LN2 speed binned 4930k that I thought was really good value, then LePhuronn pointed out it would not work, value or no. ( still really grateful for that! to get the thing mounted and then discover that would have sucked... )

When I informed the wife of the **** up to her eternal credit she said "get whatever is best dear" so... there you go. Bought it separately.

As for the cards, I didn't think there was that much in it, trying to save a couple of hundred quid when I was originally speccing it up.

In hindsight you are probably right, the cost of this thing is escalating rapidly. The benches are new, nice gear from Clarke, umm, I bought a Dremel, I think I am on first name terms at B&Q / Screwfix / Homebase etc. So yeah, maybe later. Just want to get it built now and see what it benches to. My AMD rig benched pretty well so once I get the cold winter air cooling the thing through the external rads, should be good.

Would it be wrong to put a little snowman in the bottom of the case? with an Anna doll from Frozen?

-Ed

oh btw the Dremel is the best toy ever!

OJ46 · 25 Feb 2016 at 09:47

Seriously good work so far, looks smooth as inside

irtuk · 25 Feb 2016 at 11:04

Yeah I found that the best way to remove a smudge from matte white acrylic is to gently sand it off so, yeah its very smooth and getting thinner.

irtuk · 26 Feb 2016 at 09:50

Daily Update

First snags hit last night with the res mount...

here is the constructed mount from cut and painted aluminium:

Here are the screws to attach the res:

Wait there are no damn screws there? where are the screws?

Turns out I cannot locate the screws so we go to the big bowl of spare screws:

Four matching machine screws seem to fit the bill so we have the res / pump combo fixed to the mounting:

and here we have the mounting in place. tricky job, tight space. screwed in tightly with screws that have had O-rings fitted to try and reduce and absorb any vibrations.

A blanking plate is needed there so I cut and spray one with the intention to cheat and fix it with Velcro.

Pleased to see that the res fill port is nicely positioned

So I move on to the motherboard block fitting

no real drama there and the block is on. yes I used too much thermal paste, always do

I put the motherboard and components in loosely just for fitting and assessing the next steps:

And here is the problem, the IN port of the res is nicely aligned with the cable duct so that in line will only need a single 90 degree bend in it, on this side of the case at least, however the OUT port is not perfectly aligned with the IN port on the motherboard / CPU block and it's off by about 10mm which is, I think, going to be a nasty bend to make.

So, looking at the build this morning I am thinking that I need a more elegant solution to line that res up. The aluminium mount is a bit clunky and its in sort of the wrong place, this came about due to me using the pre-drilled fan holes in the case for support, and the size of the L shaped aluminium, oh yeah and not checking this in advance, that didn't help either.

Off to work now, sort of, but will check in later. Anyone got suggestions? I have a few ideas myself but I am not sure they will work.

-Ed.

irtuk · 26 Feb 2016 at 09:57

Oh yeah one other thing. Can anyone recommend a good cleaner for the loop?

The current machine is red and using mayhems red dye. I am thinking that if I fill the loop with mayhems white pastel without thoroughly, completely and obsessively cleaning the existing radiators I will get a new hybrid "Mayhems pinky white pastel"

There are actually 2 x 360mm radiators outside and I am debating whether to split them, put one in the existing machine to be handed down to the wife and use one rad, or whether to get a new one.

mmmm