down sizing i7 860

once again stuff arrives when my lunch break is about to end .

quick shots and a video .

will bench and then change thermal paste with a round of cable management - check the Strix fan controller Vs the Mobo's and get the DSLR out :)




 
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Still need to get around to sorting out some cable management but had a Samsung 960 Pro 512GB arrive today.
Used ASUS clone software to move from the PM 961 to it, very simple really :D

PM961 will be used in two upcoming builds , but wanted to have a see how they both stack up

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £905.67
(includes shipping: £8.70)

​

yep, i know the EVO is a better priced product then the PRO , but no chance in hell i was paying any of those prices from any drives :D

Top left is PM961 and bottom is the 960 PRO



Latest samsung Drivers installed from the PRO, but forgot to check the Firmware. I might also copy from the PRO back over to the PM961 on a partitioned drive just to see if it will work with the Force 960 drivers on there as it doesn't work doing it from stand alone. Seen forums were uses have had the 960 first and installed the PM/SM afterwards and have better speeds then others that have't had the driver updates.

Will note the 4k speeds did flag up a bit, might have to try best of 3 and Firmware update
 
Ordered once of these yesterday :D Glad to see an option to allow the lovely backplate.
Also saw in the manual, 1.5mm thermal pads are used throughout so some Grizzly Minus Pad 8 made it into the bucket too! hopefully enough to do the contact between the back of the PCB and backplate.


My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £138.65
(includes shipping: £8.70)

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Alphacool 150 Eisbecher Reservoir also been ordered. Hoping with just enough space , should mount to the 120 fan space above the ram slots. EKWB SE will also get an inline temp sensor to hook up to the board to monitor water temp as it leaves the radiator cooled. Hoping anything under 31c will be good, as both i5 7600k @4.9Ghz on 1.264v & Strix 1070 OC will be on the single 240.
Have a few of the cheap plastic quick connects from alphacool , will be used so GPU can be taken out, unfortunately will have to stick with the 11/8mm tubing due to this . Bit of an experiment this, could have easily done without the res but figured would look good with the RGB ram stick with clear water in the loop.

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Cenedd said:
Looks nice. Why has nobody built an upside down graphics card?! It'd show off the shiny block (and lighting) nicely in normal builds (non-inverted). Sure, it would probably take out a PCI-E slot above the card.....but it wouldn't then take out a slot below the card and if you're building a fairly minimal PC that's not a problem.
At least Phanteks have left the acrylic edge exposed so you can see the edge light.
Click to expand...

haha, i remember my first SLi system was when it was first released and with the Gigabyte card that had heatpipes and the main heatsink at the back fo the card with a fan. so you could actually see them thing cool :D

I've got a build coming up with Raijinteks Thetis which would show off the card, will be watercooling a Gigabyte 1080 Turbo card but the cost of £120 verse an alphacool £64 block led me to go the boring route. would have looked good as the Board is the Ultra Gaming z270 but need to keep costs down

if there wasnt fans in the bottom, a mirror would have been a nice touch . Speaking of bottom fans, owners of UMX4s have all come to the conclusion no matter what fans you have installed at the bottom, you'll get high tunneling sounds if the fans push a certain amount of air regardless of static pressure. Result is due to the grill design at the bottom and causes some really choppy flow. Should be able to run the Silent wings at 900rpm like the rear one but sitting at 700rpm as any more and sound gets amplified tenfold . think i', gonna have to have a little hack at it. Changing filter/mesh at the bottom has no effect
 
Cenedd said:
I have a similar thing with the grill on my overkill rad. It can only fit 20mm fans (25mm at a push) - which I think is a bit of a design flaw. If you put fans in at any sort of speed it makes the most horrible wailing noise. Thought the fans were really bad at first - they were as it turned out, but it wasn't the fans making the worst of the noise!
Click to expand...

Spoke with Jonsbo, hopefully issue with the case only accepting 27mm max rads will be corrected in the future. Very easy to do :D
Will have to pass on feed back about the bottom grill causing the sound.

Seems this person Build will be on Hold for a bit, Magnus and Yernz Build to do in a very short time frame, both air and water
 
Did receive this yesterday due to current one getting coil whine with the Z270 and none with the old P55 :(



Build quality is good, looks are tenfold over the old Corsair


Nice rubber gasket at the front, keynote!! there's longer screws for it in the box!




Such a shame the unit wasn't 100% modular, specially with its price tag....




Out with the old - oh tape is to hold silent loop/eisbaer backplate when mounting! such a poor design!


Size difference! must admit the AX is awesome for its size!


In with the new- just need to remove all the old cables and install the new ones =/


Oh, and a shot of how close using an EKWB SE 240 is on the UMX4


for those that dont know, max rad thickness you can have is 27mm with 25mm fans. and the SE will only fit in Pull due to the unit hitting the PSU bracket
 
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Cenedd said:
That does seem an odd decision to not make the ATX modular too. Obviously for 99.99% of uses you must have the ATX connected but it still opens up the options for after market custom cable lengths or sleeved wiring. I really don't understand why they don't just use the same socket on the PSU as is on the motherboard and have straight-forward one-to-one wiring. Would make it so much easier for sleeving etc.

Incidentally I'd avoid following the pic links to photo bucket at the moment as it tried to infect my phone with malware. Probably a dodgy advert/banner but it'd be nice if they made sure such things were clean before they inflict them upon you. :rolleyes:
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:( im hoping no one clicks on them and just views them... mmmm

still left a bad taste buying another 750w Platinum PSU. hoping to sell it on the Bay, just got to test the Unit on another build for coil whine
 
whilst im waiting for OCUK to get stock in of Phanteks Strix waterblock....

Modular experiment



need to rotate the Eisbaer 90 clockwise , will straighten up the cables a bit and loop the red CPU to blue Rad tube over the one above it .

loop goes CPU to 240 to GPU to 120 and back :) will get a log to follow.
 
Check snaps before comes changes come into play

wCeK3uZ.jpg

Phanteks Strix block has been shipped today, expect it to be mated to the board Tuesday and wet on wednesday

Temp sensor will be added to check water temp to see if fluid hits 32c or below. any higher and will add a 120 to the rear

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then will pull the trigger on EKs mono block :D since the Glass Panel is black ***forgot to say recieved a glass panel! just the front ***.
Strip lighting is nice but struggles to light up the whole case, so having components light up rather then the case as a whole looks miles better- Trident sticks being prime example
 
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OJ46 said:
Those Phanteks blocks look stunning and it'll pair very nicely with that EK CPU block :)

Wish I'd have known Phanteks were going to do an MSI 1080 version though as I would have waited!
Click to expand...

can you MM your current block ? or hit the bay ?

Few other cases i've built with RGB requests do light up light an xmas tree and hate it! but the glass is so darkened, all you see is the glow of the Lights but the rest of the case internals are still blacked out :D
only describe its effect as .....

images


really hating my new phone's picture quality... think I might have to try a 3rd party software, 16MP looking like 5!

Hoping I can get some solid camera shots of the block its self then installed Tuesday :)

will be taking out the Silent loop Wednesday, quick cut in the outlet tube to drain and hook up to the card. once installed. flip the case upside down and fill via one the GPU blocks bottom ports :)
 
OJ46 said:
Could possibly return it but the problem is I've mounted the reservoir & cut pass-through holes in the floor to line up perfectly with the EK block now... D'OH!

IMG_20170314_144719.jpg

Thought my Nexus 6 was bad enough for image quality but never would have guessed that was 16MP mate, hopefully it's a decent lens and it's just crap software letting it down :)

Look forward to seeing this build progress :)
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hopefully, chinese phone- elephone S7 and thanks :)

sent you a PM about your light housing. creates such an amazing effect !

wondering if the chances of the Phanteks block matching EKs position holes would be.....
 
Thought id get some decent pictures up before the Phanteks Strix block goes into the loop with the Silent Loop AIO, which wont last long as EKs mono block will be going in. Temp sensor will be fitted during the temp set up, hoping water sits around 32c max, if not i'll add another 240 at the bottom
















Recently got myself a Hoya Pro-1 Digtal Filter in hope is makes capturing tempered glass and RGB cases more easier. Currently still plaing around but with the glass/see through panel off its better not to use the filter and it makes the RGB a bit flat







And with the filter and darkened glass panel on



Strix Mobo block should light up the dark spot in the middle just nicely with the Phantek block adding a nice strobe effect across the hard- least I hope the LED in it can mimic the rainbow effect of the IO/Ram.
Might also have to look into a frosted cover/diffuser for the bottom LED strip

Key im also finding out is getting as dark as you can get the room ( ok i took the shot at 11am today and was sunny as hell) and positioning off center and above works nicely

without filter



with



also a note to self, set the AURA to set colour instead of waiting for it to cycle through haha

also second note, to take photos of an open case with light, again much better detailed image and lighting

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got a different approach to adding a radiator to the bottom (which is a massive pain and the HDD removal requires me removing half the frame! instead of screwing from the top into the plate they did it the other way around then wrapped the U frame around afterwards!)

BP-140RADH-BK--1024X768-3.jpg

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/bitspower-120-radiator-holder-wc-337-bp.html

mount on top of the 2x 120 Silent Wing 3s. would avoid using an RGB fans though as would just be to much. leaves me the option to run the the GPU on a separate lop or tie in with CPU
 
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I Present, Phanteks Glacier STRIX





























































one bad point, the finish on the contact side is poor... GPU raise you can clearly see the machining. Intels stock cooler has a smoother finish!
To lazy to polish the Die and Ram contact area but with the rest of the product and box looking above par, was really shocking to see!



BUTT CRACK^^^ feels real good too :(
 
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OJ46 said:
Saw another build with the same comments re not polishing the contact areas. Not great considering the price but still, that is one beautiful looking block!
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wouldn't of minded if it wasnt on the contact areas or even just to the ram section but on the Die area.... will fire off an email to Phanteks and caseking to see if this is just due to first batch

have a feeling like Alphacool and EK designed in the UK but produced in China without close QC and its just been coated without fine milling . Remind me of my first EK block when they first started to mass produce....

********
yep, you can actually feel the butt crack on the die contact area.... ffs!

shame as well, 3 LED strips have been milled out but only 2 are filled with all 3rd party blocks but FE edition has 3 ....
 
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OJ46 said:
Damn, that really isn't good. Wouldn't be quite so bad if they were aiming for the budget end of the market but when competing at the premium end that's awful.

Like you say maybe this is just a first batch issue and it'll be fixed ASAP, hopefully with replacements sent to the people who purchased an early one.
Click to expand...

sent an email to both, maybe OCUK would be able to check Ti blocks coming in. Im sure people might be put off slapping a half done job on a £600+ card .
No idea if Phanteks will read the email but hopefully get a reply.

will be Thursday earliest I can get the card plumbed in, see how the temps do and the contact with Grizzly paste is
 
thought i'd post a quick snap of the Phanteks Strix block on the card.
got digital snaps but will be end of week before uploading



should be a tight fit, but hoping to cut the outlet hose (closest to camera) and attached outlet to the inlet of the GPU, which is on the left side. The use a 45 to connect the hose going to the rad. going to be tight but is a stop gap till I can get EKWBs strix block in .

will just fill by turning upside down and filling up by one of the bottom GPU ports :)

In theory the Eisbaer can handle its self, a 360 rad and GPX block which is very restrictive. Silent/eiswolf is based on same design with a little less head pressure. will be a good experiment and have a water sensor going to the outlet of the Radiator to see how the water temps are
 
Case is lovely , small and thin, the air scoop does add a bit of height but build quality is up there with Li Lian, Silverstone and InWin !

Few snags, top can only house a 27mm rad at max ! Lot of people use deepcool AIOs to fit in. could have easily been made to house 30mm and plus which is a same.

Removing the HDD is a pain ! Inside of screwing in the rack once the case was assembled they did it from the underneath on the base plate then wrapped the frame around. Have to take base plate out to remove .
Also the holes for fans at the bottom are tapped to M3 thread, again bit of a pain if you wanted to use a different threaded rad.

Glass is nicely darkened , more then most which I like as it makes RGB glow and stand out rather then making your build look like Vegas :)

If you want even smaller, only using a single card, and liked inverted design, go for Raijintek thetis. Did a build with that and great quality again ! Bit more limited in size with PSU though but shows off water blocks just nicely
 
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