Chocolate Box
- Thread starter JR23
- Start date
the attention to detail with the all-Bitspower fittings just gives that extra bit of gloss. All Shining Silver fittings with chrome pipe really helps to unify all of the same-function elements.
Now excuse me while I return to sulking over nickel fittings on chrome adapters on top of a stainless steel plate. Good thing it's going to be hidden, the 3 subtly different colours are setting my teeth on edge
Now excuse me while I return to sulking over nickel fittings on chrome adapters on top of a stainless steel plate. Good thing it's going to be hidden, the 3 subtly different colours are setting my teeth on edge
Soldato
- Joined
- 29 Dec 2014
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- The "North"
Tell me about it, I'm using silver fittings with chrome EK.the attention to detail with the all-Bitspower fittings just gives that extra bit of gloss. All Shining Silver fittings with chrome pipe really helps to unify all of the same-function elements.
Now excuse me while I return to sulking over nickel fittings on chrome adapters on top of a stainless steel plate. Good thing it's going to be hidden, the 3 subtly different colours are setting my teeth on edge
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
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
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.
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.
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
Cheers dude.
Not sure if it applies to the SX600 then, but the ST45SF-G has a slightly weird item on the ATX power whereby pin 13 on the motherboard side is split to pin 13 and pin 20 on the PSU side, which also leaves pin 20 on the motherboard side empty. There's also a double wire on pin 4 but I don't know where that goes.
Other than that it's a case of pin 1 to pin 1, pin 2 to pin 2, etc which has the effect of a horizontal crossover for all the wires. Ideally I'm looking at a couple inches unsleeved to get all this splitting and crossing over out of the way tightly bound with a cable comb and then sleeving a perfectly straight cable set into the motherboard without any twists.
If I get it right I can hide the unsleeved ugly twisty bit behind a PSU cover plate so you'd never know. Long way away yet, but we'll see what happens.
Not sure if it applies to the SX600 then, but the ST45SF-G has a slightly weird item on the ATX power whereby pin 13 on the motherboard side is split to pin 13 and pin 20 on the PSU side, which also leaves pin 20 on the motherboard side empty. There's also a double wire on pin 4 but I don't know where that goes.
Other than that it's a case of pin 1 to pin 1, pin 2 to pin 2, etc which has the effect of a horizontal crossover for all the wires. Ideally I'm looking at a couple inches unsleeved to get all this splitting and crossing over out of the way tightly bound with a cable comb and then sleeving a perfectly straight cable set into the motherboard without any twists.
If I get it right I can hide the unsleeved ugly twisty bit behind a PSU cover plate so you'd never know. Long way away yet, but we'll see what happens.
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
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
In this case the pin 13/20 split apparently is a sense wire to help with some Vdroop so I'm inclined to leave it in. No idea what pin 4 is about.
And yes, the big thing for Asteria II is reworking about 75% of the internals of the 901 yet still giving the illusion of being stock. Now if only I could get the laser cutting sorted out...
And yes, the big thing for Asteria II is reworking about 75% of the internals of the 901 yet still giving the illusion of being stock. Now if only I could get the laser cutting sorted out...
Associate
- Joined
- 25 Sep 2012
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- 2,436
- Location
- Scotland
Gorgeous build!
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
After the adjustments made to the heatsink yesterday it meant that the vertical pipe in the back of the case was just a little too short. As I have more time on my hands now than when I cut the first lot of tubing I thought I would document the process.
Firstly I wrapped a single layer of electrical tape around the end of the tubing where the cut would be and another slightly further back. This allowed me to securely hold the part in the lathe without marking the plating.
The old pipe was measured and the new one marked accordingly to be 3mm longer. Last time around I measured the acrylic tube which was used to mock the loop purely because I had some left from a previous project and it was far cheaper than wasting the Alphacool tubing.
To avoid damaging the off cut it was sawn off while in the lathe, it was much easier to hold in the chuck rather than a vice.
The end of the pipe was then faced to the required length, while perfectly concentric this obviously left the edges very sharp.
As the pipe must be fitted through two o-rings in the fitting I chamfered the outside so it will slide in nicely.
...and similarly cleaned up the inside edge.
After giving it a good scrub on the inside to be sure there were no contaminants or fine pieces of brass left behind the last part is finished.
It fitted perfectly into place and i'm very relieved to have the loop completely finished.
Now that's all together I will start work on the floor.
JR
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
Thanks for the reply.as you said in your replies,best to use copper then get it plated.thats the route I'll go down.
Thank you
Keep up the fantastic work