Graphics Welder
- Thread starter Mysterae_
- Start date
Great build!
This is my first visit so I mostly looked at the pictures.
Thank you for your first visit
. This build log has over 150 images so far and more to come!Look at the pictures is all I do as well
I think that's what most people do to be honest. Very few stop to leave a comment which is a shame as it provides encouragement and makes the builder all warm and fuzzy inside, well most of the time
.Absolutely serious! Im based in South Yorkshire so if you're close enough can definitely arrange something
Thanks again but I'm in the giddy heights of the Highlands and I don't think this rig will travel well
.Thanks. You can definitely put the radiator and fans in the loft, in fact I've seen a few builds where the radiator pack has been plumbed in the garage. I was tempted to put the radiator pack in the garage but it gets very cold in the winter and hot in the summer due to it's flat roof. I just decided to keep it in the same room where I can keep and eye (and ear) on it.
Thank you for your first visit
I think that's what most people do to be honest. Very few stop to leave a comment which is a shame as it provides encouragement and makes the builder all warm and fuzzy inside, well most of the time
Thanks again but I'm in the giddy heights of the Highlands and I don't think this rig will travel well
Thanks. You can definitely put the radiator and fans in the loft, in fact I've seen a few builds where the radiator pack has been plumbed in the garage. I was tempted to put the radiator pack in the garage but it gets very cold in the winter and hot in the summer due to it's flat roof. I just decided to keep it in the same room where I can keep and eye (and ear) on it.
Ahhh yeah abit far lol, wouldn't want to risk it either. Amazing job once again, you absolutely smashed this build.
The AP184i-PRO fans finally arrived and wired them up to a 4-way fan splitter.
Caged up to protect fingers and cat's noses.
The fan blades are a bit different from the AP181's. As these are PWM the control of them is great as they can go as slow as 10% before stalling and they move an impressive amount of air at low speeds.
Well, maybe....
Here's the problem we have, on one side a USB cable with a USB header connector and on the other side a cable with a header and Aqua Computer D5 Next connector.
I suppose you could just use pins or something to simply connect them together but I wanted something a bit more permanent and resilient. It looks okay....ish.
Finally altogether and fettling time.
The display on the front is running AIDA64 control panel with a custom skin I made for this build, a bit more on this in a later post. It might be a bit difficult to see in the image above but temperatures are very much reduced as you'd expect.
Time to fire up a game and see some temperatures in that lovely screen up front.
Running the game Pacific Drive at 3840x1600 with everything maxed and the 4090 gets 83FPS at a core temp of 45C, power draw of 352W and core frequency of 2805MHz. The 13700K runs at an average of 51C with a power draw of 90W, P cores at 5400MHz and E cores at 4100MHz. All good!
But wait. I see a problem.
I'm not talking about the dust on the acrylic side panels (static huh!) but have a look at the Utilisation section for the CPU, in particular the memory bar gauges. It says 9.4GB used and 22.4GB free which adds up to 32GB but I have 64GB installed.
Windows only sees 32GB, the BIOS only sees 32GB and using Corsair iCUE to control the lighting only sees one module. Adjusting the lighting of the DIMMs only makes one eh, dim.
So the DIMM closest to the CPU may be lit but it's not working. After powering off and swapping the DIMMs around the exact same fault is present which indicates that both memory modules are fine, there's something up with the motherboard. I know for a fact that both slots worked before fitting the waterblock:
I remember reading that an improper CPU cooler mount (too tight) can cause memory module faults just like I have here. I therefore had two options - run with one memory module or ....
Take it all apart again and fix it. The pressure tester came in handy here, using it to push air and coolant out the tubing and blocks.
The CPU block has been repasted and remounted, this time not so tight. The memory slots all look perfectly clean with no debris.
The difficult thing is that I won't know if it's been successful until it's all connected and water flowing again. If it's not good, take it all apart again and remount....
Thanks for looking at the pictures!
Caged up to protect fingers and cat's noses.
The fan blades are a bit different from the AP181's. As these are PWM the control of them is great as they can go as slow as 10% before stalling and they move an impressive amount of air at low speeds.
Well, maybe....
Here's the problem we have, on one side a USB cable with a USB header connector and on the other side a cable with a header and Aqua Computer D5 Next connector.
I suppose you could just use pins or something to simply connect them together but I wanted something a bit more permanent and resilient. It looks okay....ish.
Finally altogether and fettling time
.The display on the front is running AIDA64 control panel with a custom skin I made for this build, a bit more on this in a later post. It might be a bit difficult to see in the image above but temperatures are very much reduced as you'd expect.
Time to fire up a game and see some temperatures in that lovely screen up front
.Running the game Pacific Drive at 3840x1600 with everything maxed and the 4090 gets 83FPS at a core temp of 45C, power draw of 352W and core frequency of 2805MHz. The 13700K runs at an average of 51C with a power draw of 90W, P cores at 5400MHz and E cores at 4100MHz. All good!
But wait. I see a problem.
I'm not talking about the dust on the acrylic side panels (static huh!) but have a look at the Utilisation section for the CPU, in particular the memory bar gauges. It says 9.4GB used and 22.4GB free which adds up to 32GB but I have 64GB installed.
Windows only sees 32GB, the BIOS only sees 32GB and using Corsair iCUE to control the lighting only sees one module. Adjusting the lighting of the DIMMs only makes one eh, dim.
So the DIMM closest to the CPU may be lit but it's not working. After powering off and swapping the DIMMs around the exact same fault is present which indicates that both memory modules are fine, there's something up with the motherboard. I know for a fact that both slots worked before fitting the waterblock:
I remember reading that an improper CPU cooler mount (too tight) can cause memory module faults just like I have here. I therefore had two options - run with one memory module or ....
Take it all apart again and fix it. The pressure tester came in handy here, using it to push air and coolant out the tubing and blocks.
The CPU block has been repasted and remounted, this time not so tight. The memory slots all look perfectly clean with no debris.
The difficult thing is that I won't know if it's been successful until it's all connected and water flowing again. If it's not good, take it all apart again and remount....
Thanks for looking at the pictures!
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Thanks for posting loads of pics for us to look at
(Not that I know what Im looking at half the time....)
(Not that I know what Im looking at half the time....)
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@Mysterae_ looks amazing! Was looking forward to seeing it with the screen
Was it just the brightness of the RAM you were worried about? - the view from the other side looks awesome!
Was it just the brightness of the RAM you were worried about? - the view from the other side looks awesome!
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Regarding checking whether the RAM is detected, could you not just power it up dry? - might run a bit hot but I would have thought the block has enough thermal mass to get as far as BIOS to see if they're detected quickly
@Mysterae_ looks amazing! Was looking forward to seeing it with the screen
Was it just the brightness of the RAM you were worried about? - the view from the other side looks awesome!
Thanks! I might have just lived with it if it were just the RGB that was faulty but it would have affected it's resell value down the line.
Thanks. I'll post shortly my findings with the RAM situation. Not even tried the cable, so busy with this and other things.
Thaat stats screen looks insane, you could watch a movie on it
You could, and even play a game on it but would be a bit weird in that orientation! You'll see something soon that makes an awesome use of the screen instead of showing stats all the time.
I thought about that and it might have been what I resorted to should it fail again.
And fail again it did!
After getting everything back again, refilling with water and testing it, as I mentioned in my previous post one of the memory modules was not detected again.
However, stripping the rig down to find the fault was a waste of time. It turns out that one of the RAM sticks has failed, I don't know how I missed that when originally faulting the system or maybe the symptoms were different. I should have tested each one individually and in each slot, then I would have found it. Perhaps I jumped to the conclusion that it was the CPU waterblock and or the contact frame mounting pressure that was to blame because I had heard that was a known problem and the RAM was working previously before.
I used Corsair iCUE to turn the only RAM module that it could detect to green and tried it in both DIMM slots and it worked fine.
The module that's RGB could not be changed was tried in both slots and the motherboard just hung with it's RAM fault light being lit.
Getting to this stage was a bit of a joyride with this MSI Z790i EDGE Wifi motherboard with it's 'quirks and features'. You see, once you clear the CMOS (with the power lead removed) the motherboard won't boot, the PSU just clicks continuously with the motherboard doing nowt. I could be my particular hardware (Thermaltake Toughpower SFX 1000W and SteelSeries APEX Pro keyboard, I'm looking at you). The PSU has two types of clicks, a hard click and a soft click is how I can best describe it. To get it to boot, I remove the power lead, turn on the computer to drain it of power, listen for the hard click and then upon the soft click put the power lead back in - then the motherboard boots. What a palaver! I'm sure it's one particular setting that messes everything up and makes it almost impossible to get a clean boot to the BIOS.
That setting is in Settings\Advanced\Power Management Setup\USB Standby Power at S4/S5. The BIOS sets this as Disabled by default and in my case it must be set to Enabled for the motherboard to boot properly.
With that out of the way, I tried everything to get the motherboard to recognise the suspect memory module:
- updated the motherboard's bios to the latest version
- checked the contacts of the RAM and the memory slots
- set it to non-XMP settings
- disabled and enable any RAM training options in the BIOS
- tried both DIMM slots, with and without it's sibling
Nada.
It's dead Jim.
I don't have any spare DDR5 RAM modules so depending on how the RMA of these goes the rig may be out of action for a bit as the working memory stick will have to be returned with the faulty one.
However, stripping the rig down to find the fault was a waste of time. It turns out that one of the RAM sticks has failed, I don't know how I missed that when originally faulting the system or maybe the symptoms were different. I should have tested each one individually and in each slot, then I would have found it. Perhaps I jumped to the conclusion that it was the CPU waterblock and or the contact frame mounting pressure that was to blame because I had heard that was a known problem and the RAM was working previously before.
I used Corsair iCUE to turn the only RAM module that it could detect to green and tried it in both DIMM slots and it worked fine.
The module that's RGB could not be changed was tried in both slots and the motherboard just hung with it's RAM fault light being lit.
Getting to this stage was a bit of a joyride with this MSI Z790i EDGE Wifi motherboard with it's 'quirks and features'. You see, once you clear the CMOS (with the power lead removed) the motherboard won't boot, the PSU just clicks continuously with the motherboard doing nowt. I could be my particular hardware (Thermaltake Toughpower SFX 1000W and SteelSeries APEX Pro keyboard, I'm looking at you). The PSU has two types of clicks, a hard click and a soft click is how I can best describe it. To get it to boot, I remove the power lead, turn on the computer to drain it of power, listen for the hard click and then upon the soft click put the power lead back in - then the motherboard boots. What a palaver! I'm sure it's one particular setting that messes everything up and makes it almost impossible to get a clean boot to the BIOS.
That setting is in Settings\Advanced\Power Management Setup\USB Standby Power at S4/S5. The BIOS sets this as Disabled by default and in my case it must be set to Enabled for the motherboard to boot properly.
With that out of the way, I tried everything to get the motherboard to recognise the suspect memory module:
- updated the motherboard's bios to the latest version
- checked the contacts of the RAM and the memory slots
- set it to non-XMP settings
- disabled and enable any RAM training options in the BIOS
- tried both DIMM slots, with and without it's sibling
Nada.
It's dead Jim.
I don't have any spare DDR5 RAM modules so depending on how the RMA of these goes the rig may be out of action for a bit as the working memory stick will have to be returned with the faulty one.
Thanks. I don't know if you've seen it already but you have two options when it comes to putting a screen on the front:
- The OEM route as Phanteks now do a replacement add-on front module display and is available here at Overclocks:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/phanteks-evolv-shift-xt-hi-res-display-black-acc-phk-01392.html
The front module display from Phanteks didn't exist when I started this project so I went with the DIY option:
- Get a separate screen and with a bit of modification to the screen to reposition the HDMI and USB connectors and taking the metal discs from the case's top front panel to attach them to the screen which provides the mounting method to the case. It's all been shown previously in this tread
. Route the HDMI and USB cables out the back:
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I absolutely love how well this has turned out!
It's been a while since the last update, been using the system putting it through it's paces.
Once the faulty DDR5 memory module was replaced the next issue I had was thermal paste "pump-out" which saw GPU temperatures way too high for a watercooled system.
There's a thread in the Watercooling subforum if you are interested. It required a full disassembly and rebuild which isn't that bad.
Here's what I suspect thermal paste "pump-out" looks like on a GPU die:
The recommendation is to use Honeywell PTM7950 thermal interface material instead of MX-6, so if temperatures increase again I'll be sure to use that instead. I didn't know this at time of reassembly so used MX-6 again, doh!
I'm working on getting some final vanity shots of the completed system but in the meantime here's a short clip of the loop filling, gurgling the air out of the loop. I think this was at 70% pump speed.
Once the faulty DDR5 memory module was replaced the next issue I had was thermal paste "pump-out" which saw GPU temperatures way too high for a watercooled system.
There's a thread in the Watercooling subforum if you are interested. It required a full disassembly and rebuild which isn't that bad.
Here's what I suspect thermal paste "pump-out" looks like on a GPU die:
The recommendation is to use Honeywell PTM7950 thermal interface material instead of MX-6, so if temperatures increase again I'll be sure to use that instead. I didn't know this at time of reassembly so used MX-6 again, doh!
I'm working on getting some final vanity shots of the completed system but in the meantime here's a short clip of the loop filling, gurgling the air out of the loop. I think this was at 70% pump speed.
It hasn't been all that bad, or has time faded (as well as broken) my memory
.With the exception of the bad memory module I've not had any bad components, the thermal paste pump-out was unforeseen and unfortunate. Time and distraction were my biggest problems!