JayGee's Dark Base Pro 900 Water Cooled Build
- Thread starter JayGee
- Start date
ain't that the fun of it though?
thanks would be a great help
i've been tempted to drop the front bay drive myself in planning... but i'm a photographer, so having a CF card reader at the front rather than an extra USB cable across my desk for a reader is a little thing that means a lot to me
if i have to sacrifice and just suffer with a 240mm rad at the front and a 360mm at the top, i think i will lol
i've been tempted to drop the front bay drive myself in planning... but i'm a photographer, so having a CF card reader at the front rather than an extra USB cable across my desk for a reader is a little thing that means a lot to me
if i have to sacrifice and just suffer with a 240mm rad at the front and a 360mm at the top, i think i will lol
I'd love to see pictures of your build and hear of anything that that you've learnt about the case as a result of building in it.
not sure if this link will work but hey ho...
https://www.photobox.co.uk/my/album?album_id=5209483487
https://www.photobox.co.uk/my/album?album_id=5209483487
https://www.photobox.co.uk/my/album?album_id=5209483487
https://www.photobox.co.uk/my/album?album_id=5209483487
I reckon your doing the right thing there buying the bits at different stages as it gives you more time to think about your build and plan if you need to change, that's how I've done it rather then buying everything in one go.
it's more just a financing choice on my part really lol
my current PC is a kaby lake generation build... it serves me pretty well, but i built it up this may expecting to have a good year or twos worth of life on the newer Z270 chip... only for summer to come along and Intel to announce their coffee lake requires a new motherboard and screw me over completely
So kinda annoyed there... decided to just jump ship entirely to Threadripper... build up the system slowly, over the next few months, really put some effort into it... then just dump my current build entirely lol
gives me a nice timeframe to sort out white radiators, fans, PSU shroud, RAM, a good CPU block... figure everything out as i go along and not rush myself to get it built
my current PC is a kaby lake generation build... it serves me pretty well, but i built it up this may expecting to have a good year or twos worth of life on the newer Z270 chip... only for summer to come along and Intel to announce their coffee lake requires a new motherboard and screw me over completely
So kinda annoyed there... decided to just jump ship entirely to Threadripper... build up the system slowly, over the next few months, really put some effort into it... then just dump my current build entirely lol
gives me a nice timeframe to sort out white radiators, fans, PSU shroud, RAM, a good CPU block... figure everything out as i go along and not rush myself to get it built
Soldato
- Joined
- 1 Dec 2015
- Posts
- 18,514
@Methos
This will give you faster read and write times of any bay drive one
Specially if your using the best SD cards out there !
SanDisk Extreme Pro SD UHS-II Type C Card Reader/Writer
"The SanDisk had read and write speeds of 256 MB/s and 193.6 MB/s in our SD card tests"
https://www.engadget.com/2017/06/09/the-best-sd-card-readers/
Tripp Lite USB-C Gen 1 Multi-Drive Smart-Card Flash-Memory Media Reader/Writer
Specially if your using the best SD cards out there !
SanDisk Extreme Pro SD UHS-II Type C Card Reader/Writer
"The SanDisk had read and write speeds of 256 MB/s and 193.6 MB/s in our SD card tests"
https://www.engadget.com/2017/06/09/the-best-sd-card-readers/
Tripp Lite USB-C Gen 1 Multi-Drive Smart-Card Flash-Memory Media Reader/Writer
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I think that's intended for @Methos - no need for a card reader in my build.
Soldato
- Joined
- 1 Dec 2015
- Posts
- 18,514
cheers, my bad- will amend and spoiler it up
A couple of updates:
1/ I managed to hook someone at Asus UK (via https://www.facebook.com/ASUSROGUK/) to try and get more clarity on the topic of recent PCB layout changes to the Asus Rog Strix GTS 1080 ti boards and potential incompatibility with third party water blocks - I've shared the serial numbers of my cards and they're going to pass those to "HQ" to see if they can determine which rev of the PCB is used. I know the Asus customer support isn't always great but the person I spent some time with (via FB/Messenger) today was really understanding of my situation and is clearly trying to help.
2/ After a bit of a nail biting delay the case rocked up today (should have been before New Year)... and I couldn't resist getting the box open and tearing the case down to check how comfortably the two GTS420's might fit - pictures below.
Some observations on the tear down:
a. It exudes quality, nice solid well made feel to it.
b. Tearing it down is not exactly intuative, some of which I think is related to how solid it is. For example you'd think that you should just be able to snap off the top and the front cover (as you can on some other cases), but I had to get inside to push the retaining clips free, and there's more of those than you might expect. Taking out the front bay to replace it with the fan bracket pretty much requires dismantling the whole case (kind of fine because you won't do that very often).
c. I liked that most (not all) of the screws were retained in some way to help prevent losing them or mixing them up with different ones.
d. I love the fans, compared to the Noctuas in my current gaming rig, they look quite elegent, but the main thing I like about them is that the screw holes have rubber inserts so you're not "tapping" into the solid case when you screw them into position - presumably this also serves to mitigate vibration.
Anyway, here are some pictures, mostly aimed at showing the space available when the case is stripped down (as I'd struggled to find anything like that when I was looking at this case as an option)....
It survived the journey unscathed, and it's as smexy as I hoped
Stripped down and the vital statistics on the front panel recess - perfect fit for the silent wings 3 140mm fans, but not an option for a 420 rad as the recess is too narrow
A couple of pictures to show the kind of space to work with (looks tight but doable) when fitting a Nemesis GTS420 on the inside front and inside top.
All in all I'm pretty chuffed with how things are looking right now.
I'll be leaving the case stripped down for a while now so if anyone needs any measurements/pictures or details please do ping me and I'll try and help as time allows (I suspect that I won't have too much time this coming weekend).
1/ I managed to hook someone at Asus UK (via https://www.facebook.com/ASUSROGUK/) to try and get more clarity on the topic of recent PCB layout changes to the Asus Rog Strix GTS 1080 ti boards and potential incompatibility with third party water blocks - I've shared the serial numbers of my cards and they're going to pass those to "HQ" to see if they can determine which rev of the PCB is used. I know the Asus customer support isn't always great but the person I spent some time with (via FB/Messenger) today was really understanding of my situation and is clearly trying to help.
2/ After a bit of a nail biting delay the case rocked up today (should have been before New Year)... and I couldn't resist getting the box open and tearing the case down to check how comfortably the two GTS420's might fit - pictures below.
Some observations on the tear down:
a. It exudes quality, nice solid well made feel to it.
b. Tearing it down is not exactly intuative, some of which I think is related to how solid it is. For example you'd think that you should just be able to snap off the top and the front cover (as you can on some other cases), but I had to get inside to push the retaining clips free, and there's more of those than you might expect. Taking out the front bay to replace it with the fan bracket pretty much requires dismantling the whole case (kind of fine because you won't do that very often).
c. I liked that most (not all) of the screws were retained in some way to help prevent losing them or mixing them up with different ones.
d. I love the fans, compared to the Noctuas in my current gaming rig, they look quite elegent, but the main thing I like about them is that the screw holes have rubber inserts so you're not "tapping" into the solid case when you screw them into position - presumably this also serves to mitigate vibration.
Anyway, here are some pictures, mostly aimed at showing the space available when the case is stripped down (as I'd struggled to find anything like that when I was looking at this case as an option)....
It survived the journey unscathed, and it's as smexy as I hoped
Stripped down and the vital statistics on the front panel recess - perfect fit for the silent wings 3 140mm fans, but not an option for a 420 rad as the recess is too narrow
A couple of pictures to show the kind of space to work with (looks tight but doable) when fitting a Nemesis GTS420 on the inside front and inside top.
All in all I'm pretty chuffed with how things are looking right now.
I'll be leaving the case stripped down for a while now so if anyone needs any measurements/pictures or details please do ping me and I'll try and help as time allows (I suspect that I won't have too much time this coming weekend).
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ohhh looks lovely
can't wait to see your build grow with it
if you like the fans, do you want 3 (or however many it comes with?) more? annoyingly the white case comes with the same black Be Quiet fans... which will be torn straight out of my system and replaced with white ones lol, so they're going spare if you want em
can't wait to see your build grow with it
if you like the fans, do you want 3 (or however many it comes with?) more? annoyingly the white case comes with the same black Be Quiet fans... which will be torn straight out of my system and replaced with white ones lol, so they're going spare if you want em
Cheers. I don’t think I need any extra fans, as I’ve already ordered and received enough, however if I figure out that I need to go push-pull on either rad I’ll hit you up then.ohhh looks lovely
can't wait to see your build grow with it
if you like the fans, do you want 3 (or however many it comes with?) more? annoyingly the white case comes with the same black Be Quiet fans... which will be torn straight out of my system and replaced with white ones lol, so they're going spare if you want em
A little bit of time presented itself this afternoon... so the Dremmel and files came out to remove the drive bay horizontal supports all of which had lips which protruded into the case preventing, or at least complicating, flush fitting a panel there instead of the bays.
I know I want a panel fitted there but I'm not 100% sure yet whether I'll be mounting the reservoir to it or the SSDs - I'll figure that out when the reservoir and pumps turn up.
In other news, I've been pestering various companies trying to get more clarity on the issue with Asus changing the PCB in their Rog Strix GTX 1080 ti cards which has broken compatibility with at least EK water blocks. I'd asked EK if they had any plans to respin their water block to fit with the new design, and this is what I got back:
I know I want a panel fitted there but I'm not 100% sure yet whether I'll be mounting the reservoir to it or the SSDs - I'll figure that out when the reservoir and pumps turn up.
In other news, I've been pestering various companies trying to get more clarity on the issue with Asus changing the PCB in their Rog Strix GTX 1080 ti cards which has broken compatibility with at least EK water blocks. I'd asked EK if they had any plans to respin their water block to fit with the new design, and this is what I got back:
I'm still awaiting to see if I can get specific details on the PCB rev that I have in my cards - but if the range of serial numbers is accurate then I should be golden, as on double checking it appears I have cards which are beyond the upper range of serial numbers that were affected, i.e. cards which have been built since Asus reverted back to the older PCB.