Family and heat-friendly mATX build

covenantuk

covenantuk

covenantuk

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Joined
23 Apr 2012
Posts
2,168
Location
Edinburgh
It's been 4-5 years since my last build (Ivy Bridge) and I have a pretty specific set of requirements for this one:

  1. Wife and family friendly. With a new son in the house the times of me having my own "man-cave" are almost over so downsizing from my Silverstone Raven is a must as is an overall appearance that won't intrude too much in the living area.
  2. As good as I can for a reasonable cost to give some element of future proofing. I'm unlikely to have this much spare cash in the future
  3. Tolerant of high temperatures. We may move to Spain in the next few years, so something that only "just" cools acceptably in UK weather won't do
My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £1,695.60
(includes shipping: £11.70)​



Design decisions

Case:
I was going to go for the Parvum Veer, but I'm not keen on the front logo and I think a steel chassis will stand up to shipping abroad better.
Plenty of room for addiitonal cooling fans and scope to water cool the GPU in future.

CPU:
Already delidded means it should run substantially cooler. I can always run at lower speed should the Spanish weather prove too much.

PSU:
The new LeadexII are rated for continuous operation at 30C and can also run fanless in ECO mode


Will post a few Photos as we go along. Any comments on parts selection welcome :)
 
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Have you seen those cases in person? They are quite larger than what I expected. Certainly a good case its just you mentioned not wanting to intrude too much on the living room.
 
Kit has arrived. You might notice there's a few extra bits - hopefully this will be a bit nicer than "throw it all in a box"

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looking good, might want to through some Grizzly at the G1, doesn't really lower idle speeds but with all Gigabyte and other twin/triple fan designs seen load temps drop by 5c . Nothing spectacular but with boost 3.0, every little helps

also, have you got an spare cooler liquid to top the Silent loop up with ? Alphacools China factory still has some issues with their factory workers not topping up the fluid as much as it could be , very un-German
 
I'll look at the G1. If the cooler looks easy enough to remove I might give it a go later - if temps are ok unsure if I want to potantially void warranty.

Not opened the Silent Loop yet, any idea what coolant they recommend? I'll take a look, but it'll be pricey to just buy one bottle and get it delivered once they add postage - I've got distilled water available so if it only needs a small top up that will probably be ok.
 
The little man playing up tonight so didn't get much done. started with eLoops and the SilentLoop kit

bxbjn5h.jpg
bxbjn5h


The slots in the case were to big for the fan bolts and the only washers I had were chrome, but fortunately the eLoops come with threaded thumbscrews so I wound them on and used them as washers to secure the rad top and bottom. Using the eLoops rubber washers here also to avoid any vibrations

bwJaTa6.jpg

Same goes for the exhaust fan, used the thumbscrews to secure bottom also - the rad fan holes are threaded so I had enough spare to do this.

5TdfqOy.jpg
 
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Going to reverse those exhaust fan bolts tonight, picky I know, but it'll look slightly tidier from inside the case if the screwheads are inside and I won't need the "washers". I must have been tired last night!

I did check the SilentLoop for coolant and it seems topped right up, so all good for a couple of years. I'm really impressed with the build quality of the SilentLoop.

Also found out the SilentLoop fans are 4pin PWM and the eLoops are 3pin. Anyone know if the power splitter/combiner will still work to power both from a single header? I'll lose some control I suppose but the eLoops I bought are the quietest OCUK sell at 16.7db. Pretty sure noise will be acceptable even at full speed. I was put off by reviews of the PWM version of the eLoops being a lot noisier.

I started assembling the Mobo/CPU/RAM at the end of the night so tonight should see them go in the case. First time I've used the new CPU mounting system so I hope I got it right!
 
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Motherboard assembled and cabled up

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Not too bad, might do a little ocd tidying when it's complete

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G1 in and cabled. Got to be honest I'd have preferred a PSU cable kit rather than the extensions but white out of stock for the superflower and orange not available. In any evnet it;s pretty easy to hide the excess cabling in the 3.5 HDD cage on the other side

0NZvY02.jpg

At this point I was stumped for about 30min as it wouldn't post, got stuck on a RAM error. Reseated it and unplugged all the motherboard cables, just reattaching the PW switch leads and it eventually sparked up. Odd.

Anyway, eventually....

Up and running

pqeODIg.jpg
 
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Going to do a little stress testing to make sure all the hardware is stable before progressing. I also need to place an order for RGB lighting for the case.
 
I checked before install in that orientation but I could probably squeeze the rad in the other way around. I was initially nervous about the GPU interfering.

What do you do you think? ~Worth reorienting?. I may need to RMA the CPU anyway so it won;t be too much extra work.
 
covenantuk said:
I checked before install in that orientation but I could probably squeeze the rad in the other way around. I was initially nervous about the GPU interfering.

What do you do you think? ~Worth reorienting?. I may need to RMA the CPU anyway so it won;t be too much extra work.
Click to expand...

Have rad other way would hopefully trap any air in the loop at the top and not get sucked back in :)
Bit not always the neatest
 
Well, the loop seems to be running fine - stress tested with Prime and Heaven running at 4.9ghz XMP and no noises with stable temps maxing out at 77C.

iuQAfpb.jpg

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HRog9hF.jpg
 
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