Mini Me !

[ALXAndy]

Hey boys. Not been around for a while. The state of the industry has pushed me into other hobbies tbh. I noticed a couple of weeks ago that hardware was becoming more available and CPUs etc were cheaper again.

As you will all remember I built Mike Tyson last. OK so you don't remember, that's cool Mike Tyson.



Long story short it has a 3950x and a 2080Ti Kingpin in. It's very fast.

It replaced this PC.



Which has a 1920x in it I picked up dirt cheap, a X399 Aorus and now has a 2080ti Aorus Xtreme in. It was supposed to come to my mother's house where I spend time gaming etc. However, it's so heavy there is no way to move it without damaging it. So, I am stuck using this.



I say stuck but basically it too is a 1920x with 16gb RAM and a 2070 Super. However, pretty much the only game I ever play now is PUBG and I like my res and settings high and thus on the 2070S rig it feels different. Not as responsive etc. I'm not sure what to put it down to. Either the GPU or the lack of IPC on the TR. The TR in the rig above is running stock, as one of the rads broke and there wasn't enough cooling density to keep it overclocked. However let's face it, a gen 1 Ryzen is going to get spanked by a 3950x no matter what you do. Is it the CPU? probably. Is it the GPU? well, I know from simple equations that the 2070s ain't no 2080Ti. So it's probably both.

So the idea for mini me. Well, the rig here is massive. The room here is tiny. I am getting sick of it tbh. I want to cull some electronics, pack away the water cooling gear and just have a small rig that doesn't eat space. However, there are two requirements. 1, get it as close as I can in performance to the one at home so I don't need to spend hours retraining my brain for the performance drop and 2, make it smaller. Much smaller.

The problem here is logistics. I don't have the thermal pads to be able to remove the Aorus from the Alienware and just like, use it. So I have ordered two sheets of pads both in 0.5mm and 1mm. I got them here on OCUK.

So step one will be to convert the Aorus Xtreme back to air.



I am 99% sure those are the correct thicknesses (0.5 and 1mm) I say that because this is the page from EK where they show you how to fit a block and which pads to use.



I also found a video where a guy strips one and...



Now what I do know is that Gigabyte correctly designed the cold plate to make full contact, and did not put a 8mm pad on that just runs into the fins. You can see there that they look pretty thin. If they are 1.5? I can double up some 0.5 and 1 to make it correct thickness.

OK. So for RAM? I am going to yoink 16gb of those Dom plats. This will not render that Alienware unusable. Which is good. I don't want to just pull gear out of it and leave it there like a soldier who lost both of his legs in Iraq.

OK, so we have a decent GPU and we have RAM. The rig here with the 2070s is being stripped down. At which point I will dry off the WC gear and pack it away, probably sell the board and CPU, sell the RAM and sell the 2070s or just keep that as a spare. IDK. What I do want out of the rig is the hard drives (2tb 2.5 Firecuda, 1tb SATA SSD and a 256 Force NVME). I may also yoink one of the 1tb SSD from the Alienware as that thing has about 7 SSDs in. Again it won't stop it working.

So, let's talk about new hardware. Well, firstly I bought these the other day. I was going to put them in the Alienware, as currently everything in there is Bitspower apart from the fans. Those are BQ.





That was mathematical I bought four. However, the new case I ordered takes 4 fans, so they will be used in the new build.

So sticking to what I know. The past three boards I have used have all been AMD based Gigabyte Aorus and man, Gigabyte really upped their game. So I found this for £100.



Which I am more than happy with. It's gorgeous to look at and supports what I wanted. For the CPU I chose a 3600.



As with a slight manual push this should match the gaming capacity of the 3950x. Either way it is two gens newer than any other CPU I have (apart from the 3950x) and thus will be much better for gaming.

The Aorus PSU I have makes a ticking sound. Works perfectly, but yeah, makes a ticking sound. That isn't why I am changing it though. I am changing it because it has caps on the power cables. Which are annoying and ugly. I got round this by using extensions, however in a ITX case there isn't going to be room for that.



OK so it is time to finally reveal the case. I chose the Jonsbo V10. I absolutely adore pretty much anything Jonsbo makes, as they really stick it to companies making plastic rubbish for the same prices.



Now as ITX cases go she is kinda large. However, what she does allow is two 120s in the bottom and two 120s in the top. Which means wind tunnel. I also didn't pop for the cheaper window glass version I opted for the more muted yet vented alu panels.

All I need to do now is buy an AIO today. 120 or 240, I think either would be fine with the 3600.

 

[ALXAndy]

TBH dude I was cheap

I think 240 for a 3600 is overkill. TBH? a 120 would have probably done the trick. However, I found this for £52 so I got it.



TBH in any case the fans would have gone in the bin any way.

That should be all of it now lol.

 

[ALXAndy]

Stuff started arriving yesterday.





Installed Win 10 on there and did some tests. All good. Case came this morning.







Set to work.



The rad tray.







OK few changes. Having seen it when the board and PSU went in I decided not to use the Bitspower fans. Mostly because I knew that hiding those two huge hubs (RGB and PWM) would be a serious pain in the ass. So, I fitted two of these to the top.



The same as "Big Me" has. In the bottom I used the two Cooler Master fans.

I fitted the pads to the GPU last night.



But the memory pads were too thick. The card idled lovely, but as soon as you put load on it the fans went to 100% so I shut it down and took it apart again. Did get a quick vid before that though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3MHyeJ3OKo

 

[ALXAndy]

It looks really solid. Update from today's peeing around.

I found out all about the joys of sex earlier. Sorry, wrong book.. I meant the joys of ITX.

The board only has two headers. This is OK for four fans. What about the pump? the pump is not PWM, so needs its own header. That means I need to connect four fans to the other header, which can't be done safely. Splitters only split up to 3 fans before you need power.

I thought I had a hub in the Phanteks. Well, I do, but it's not PWM and I am *****d if I am trying to fit a fan controller etc etc in there. It's too small. So I got a powered PWM splitter that receives a signal from the board and the PWM. The power is all taken care of by the SATA power connector on it.



Then I started getting annoyed. I really didn't want to have to find a home for something like that. I figured it out in the end. Extend all four fans into the front top corner, then send a SATA power cable up there* and fit the lot in that area at the front/top and basically 3M tape it to the inside of the front panel.



In this gap.



Which ought to work perfectly.

*. Oh yes, the joys of ITX. This was the first time I uttered a swear word. Of course that fan hub needs power. That means fitting an entire daisy chain of SATA power connectors into the modular PSU. Problem is there is no room to hide them down the side of the PSU.

So, I grabbed that silver Alchemy Molex to SATA, plugged in the only molex run, cut off all of them apart from the first one, connected that to the PSU and then ran the silver extension up to where the fan hub will live.

Which was a massive pain in the willy . Especially trying to get all four extended fans up in the same space without removing the PSU which would be almost impossible now.

Oh and ignore all of those cables hanging out (SATA, 24 pin etc etc) there is no point in tidying it until the drives have gone in. Which can't happen until after tomorrow night, as it's our game night and if I remove them I won't have any games to play

 

[ALXAndy]

Had lots of headaches with this. Thought it was a duff vertical ribbon, but turns out my test GPU (a GT 640) just didn't like it. Then I had tons of stability issues, so I cleared CMOS, set the XMP again and it's been wonderful since.



That is the "untidy" side. Not much I could do about it. I want to try and get a filter on the PSU before I button it all up as well.



This is the pretty side.



Should be all finished soon. Was a bit of a pain in the balls I had to fit two 2.5" SATA drives, but there wasn't much of a choice given the board has one NVME. I need storage. Performance wise? wow. I am absolutely thrilled. The 3600 boosts to 4.2ghz and the GPU is super quick. I also treated myself to a whole new bunch of peripherals, given I have used the same old tat here at my mother's for about 6 years. I have the Huntsman Elite at home, and it's easily the best keyboard I have ever had. It really restored my faith in Razer. I don't have as much room here, so I got this on sale for £78.



It's the Huntsman TE. Same switches, just smaller. I got a Viper Mini too. Was on sale.



And a Goliathus XXL RGB for £27.



Was stoked with that. BTW it seems I missed a post out here. The pads came from OCUK.



And they are excellent. GPU temps immediately dropped 12c idle, and it no longer goes nuts when you put it under load.



Like I said, I did suspect the riser was dead. It seems perfect, but I had already decided to order this as a backup any way.



No PCIE4 here, so I don't have to sell my spleen. Room is undergoing major refurb atm. Once it's all done I will get some final pics.

 

[ALXAndy]

Thanks dude.

I spoke with customer service. The guy made a very valid point. Maybe that ribbon does not like "unpowered" GPUs. IE, ones that pull all of their power through the ribbon. That could well explain it.

 

[ALXAndy]

All done. Had a few teething issues.

I will admit this is the first rig I have had on air in about 7 years or more. So I was quite spoiled with the 7v "set it and forget it" nature of water cooling. As such I made a few rookie errors. Firstly I went in and enabled "max performance mode" in Win 10. Bad idea. All fans immediately ramped to full speed, CPU was guzzling voltage and temps were pretty insane. I also had a GPU issue too. Firstly the PC temps. I think this was because it was running the AIO pump all out, and thus it was hurting the performance. I would imagine in such a tiny loop it's best to slow it down and let the rad work better. The fix for that was going into the BIOS and setting it all to normal mode. The fans now do as they should. Silent at idle, ramp up when under load. I knew this rig would be noisy, I didn't care. Every time it makes noise I am wearing a headset, so I don't hear it.

Second issue was the GPU. The VRAM was reaching 98c. At which point I was treated to multi coloured orbs (not space invaders, I'd have soiled myself if I saw those !) and was crashing. Now I had already set a fan curve in the Gigabyte app. However, it appears it's crap and the fans were not spinning up past 20%. I then tried Precision X, but everything was greyed out. Seen this before too, usually involves a reinstall of Windows. However, as a last gasp I tried AB and it worked. Set the fan curve quite aggressively, lowered the temp and power limits and now the card boosts correctly. It was boosting to over 2100mhz before which on air isn't possible. So now it boosts 1700-1900 odd and doesn't go over 76c. More importantly the VRAM caps out at 85c, all issues gone. Like I said, it has been many years since I had to mess with any of this stuff !..

The room it's in is undergoing a makeover. Chair and curtains are going, space is now important instead of being surrounded with crap. This is how it currently looks.







Very happy with it would be an understatement. New chair, curtains etc coming soon. I threw my wrist pad for the KB in the wash, but now all of the yellow peripherals have been replaced? yeah, not sure I want to use it. So, I ordered this on OCUK.



Should cap it off nicely.

 

[ALXAndy]

Hey man. The Phanteks hub came with the case. It was just a basic 3 pin affair. I was hoping to get off free, but the 4 pin one I got was only £7 delivered. It works really well too, almost too well.....

So yeah, I tried to get off cheap. I hoped (in vain) that the Cooler Master fans that came stock with the AIO would do a good job of getting air into the case. Being that they are 2500 RPM and almost free to spin I hoped they would do the job without things going bad. When I finally dialled in the fans etc I could literally hear turbulence. Like, whooshes of air every few seconds. This could have been for a few reasons. Mostly I would guess it was because the fans I used on the rad are 1200 RPM SP fans. And very good too. However, for them to hit 1200 RPM the CMs hit 2500. And at that point? they were just making loads of noise and the temps were actually worse.

I piddled around a bit with settings, and noticed they were better when running slower. However, because of GPU and CPU temps in the case they were spinning up and becoming obnoxious. So I decided to do a bit of digging, and I found out they are actually pretty terrible. 26 CFM at 2500 RPM. Crap, then. That said it wasn't unexpected. I mean, the whole cooler cost me £46.

So, I decided to slightly bite the bullet and get the best budget fans I could find.



Noctua industrial, the up to date variant. 1700 RPM with 73 CFM. They were like, £12 each. Something like that any way. I also decided to splash on the rubber corner things and they were another £8 or so. Well worth it though.



The only other thing I have had to do is limit the GPU temp to 76C. Not for the core, but because the VRAM tends to run about 7c warmer, and once it hits 86c I start getting coloured orbs. Not space invaders, coloured orbs. If I keep going the memory will eventually hit 96c and crash. And the funny part is? it's all mostly for nothing. For some reason the card tends to want to boost itself to destruction. If I set the temp limit to 86c (which is bone stock) it's trying to push to 2100mhz. Which is just not happening on air at all. And it will try and stay there too, whilst it cooks its own VRAM. It doesn't seem to care about the memory temps at all.

With it wound down to 76c and undervolted? it's still hitting 1900mhz. Most of the time it hovers mid 1700s, but that is more than enough chops to run PUBG on ultra settings at 1440p. It just kinda annoys me that everything is telling the GPU to do that. The drivers, its bios, hell even bloody Windows man. Like, I set the power options to performance and it just starts boosting its **** off again.

Gigabyte, Nvidia etc. Who do I blame? all of them. They need to stop trying to make these cards something they are not, and accept their real performance. Not boost balls just to get better reviews. I am pretty sure if I hit the stock button with Afterburner and left it to its own devices it would surely die.

Surely GPU makers and driver authors could make a card aware of its surroundings? like, temps etc. Realise that some cases don't have brilliant air flow etc and make the card do what it has to do to last and survive? nah, all about making it look good for reviews and F you when it cooks itself and dies out of warranty. I am just glad I knew how to stop it killing itself.

Any way, so yeah, those two fans really made it almost perfect. I still need the GPU fans to be very aggressive, but I couldn't care about that I just don't want it dying. I wear headphones every time I game any way, so it really doesn't matter.

 

[ALXAndy]

i cant remember who it was i watched but they said on a similar tiny case that the perforated side panels actually hindered performance as too much of the air was escaping before it cooled all the components.

yea the phanteks hub i bought was like less than a 10er. ive used it for years now.

that looks awesome, i just love seeing such awesomeness packed into such a tiny case.

The temps are great now I have set it up properly with decent intake fans. Obviously this big hot spell hasn't helped. I've still been gaming four hours a night though, I must be a massochist. It's been reaching 76c (my limit) and clocks have been just under 1600mhz. However last night it was hitting 69c and boosting to mid 1700s. So the case is performing well now.

Alan - cheers dude. Yeah, mucho PITA. It is OK just building it once, but having to take it apart twice after the fact and swap things that went in at the beginning was a pain.

 

[ALXAndy]

Hey man. Bottom are on intake, top on exhaust. Heat rises, so cool air in the bottom pushing up is always better.

 

[ALXAndy]

Mini me was a fail

When I bought the 2080Ti Aorus for cheap it came with a caveat. That caveat was Unreal engine hates it. The VRAM on it runs hot when using UE. It doesn't happen on any other game or engine, but in UE the VRAM can only take about 80c before I start getting orbs. Like spots of colour, not space invaders. Push it to 90c? the game crashes.

Now this wouldn't be an issue at all if it wasn't for the fact that over the past year and three months I have put about a thousand hours into PUBG. It is all we play now. I have two rigs, and I split my time between them. However, every time I was on this rig I had to run the fans at 100% on a hope and a prayer. This was mainly being caused by the fact that the wall the GPU sits against (inner centre) is solid. Meaning all of the heat that comes out of the back of the GPU was soaking right back in and causing issues. I had to under volt, under clock and run the fans at 100%. That said this was all done on a budget, hence the janky PSU and cooler. Which I learned likes to leak a lot around the pump housing which made me very nervous.

So, after a holiday wrecked by Covid (came down second day, had to isolate in a caravan for a week) I had some spare cash. Hence, Mini Me V2.







Which worked ! sorta kinda. I can now game with the fans on 60%, which is inaudible with my headphones on. However, the VRAM still crashes every now and then. I don't want to run this bloody card at 100% fan speed for the rest of its life, and so I have decided to do something about that. This is where I got to with V2.







And I was very happy with it. However, I can't fit the front glass as it sits right on the GPU, and there are several other small annoyances. Mostly the GPU in PUBG. Now going back to when I bought the GPU it was blocked.



And I played PUBG on it several times at 2100mhz (a pipe dream on the air cooler, it's crap) and never had any problems. I would imagine this is because the VRAM was cucumbered under that enormous block. As such I have decided to put it back on water. This decision took me quite a while, because I didn't want to strip out the Alienware. However, not only does it look awfully sorry for itself* but it's also enormous, and once everything goes in you can't lift it without damaging it, given it's all 1mm alu. It's so heavy it always suffers damage. I could strip it all back down and repaint the shell (which is the issue, I will get to that) but I know how much work is involved in that and like I said it's too big and heavy any way.

* When I originally painted it it looked fantastic. However, I didn't realise what a pain in the penis it would be to work in, and due to getting it right I had the hardware in and out several times which trashed the paint. Meaning it looks awful.

OK, so I finally made the executive decision to strip it down. Not get rid, because one day I may be up for the 3 month task of sorting it out, but to at least remove the hundreds upon hundreds of pounds of water cooling gear. However, again there was a caveat. The rig was a Threadripper, and the block I bought on sale here at OCUK only fits Threadripper.



Which kinda ****** me off, because several other manufacturers made theirs backward compatible with AM4, kinda like this Bykski one.



I know I am already down for paying out for a compact pump and res, what I do not want to do is spend £90 on a CPU block. So, I took it apart.



Removing the silver mid plate that also mounts it.



Then I did some Sunday arvo CAD.



And mapped out where the new bolt holes would need to go.



And as you can see, plenty of meat on there. I had two ideas of how to mount this. Firstly I could drill the four holes, screw it back onto the block and then drill through those out through the top. That would look a bit messy though. The water channels are well clear, so it would work (hence how Bykski did it) but I wanted it tider. As such I am going to drill the four holes, put in four M4 counter sunk bolts out through the bottom, then screw the block top back on. Meaning they will be invisible. In order to mount it I need to slightly drill out the AM4 back plate holes, then send the bolts through the back of the board and spring/bolt mount it there. Whilst I am at it I will fill in the unused holes that will be left from TR4 and then paint it satin black. Thankfully the case has an enormous cutout so I can get away with this.



Another reason I decided to strip down the Alienware was because 90% of it will fit this Antec. The Antec takes two 240 rads, I have two 240 rads... And about £300 in fittings FFS.



Those Bitspower fans are brand new, DRGB. I got them here on OCUK. I was going to rebuild the Alienware again, but yeah too hooj. I won't be using the pump/cooler/top because it's too big and IMO would look stupid. Like I said, got plans for that. I will be using the rest. I still have about half of the 10m run of black hose I bought too.



Which is cool.

And.

I am going to paint the case panels. Won't go into too much detail just yet, but I have decided. For the past three years since my last major mod I have been perfecting show paint finishes with acrylic graffiti paints. And, I've gotten really good at it.





That one is blackberry with red flake. I call it murder purple. This one is Nautilus blue with blue flake.





It's a crap ton of work, but it kills powder coat stone dead due to the horrid orange peel you get with that which is not really fixable. This is another I did in Jam orange with gold flake.



So yeah, expect something pretty frikkin wild.

 

[ALXAndy]

I apologise if some of you found that TL;DR. I didn't want to start a new thread because I do this as a hobby and not for any glory or attention. So this one was fine. Any way, it's pretty much the same build it's just changed clothes

I have a block. I don't, however, like it. It was a little crudely made (surprising for Barrow tbh, maybe a little rushed?) and shows off far too much of the ugly end PCB. I am trying to make this all Bitspower. So, I did what any sane, rational man would do. Ordered a block directly from Bitspower, in a currency I had no clue about

Obviously this needs to be a specialty block. The 2080Ti Aorus Xtreme is far from stock.



I also pulled off the heat pads on the Barrow. Which in hindsight was really bloody stupid. I have thermal pads, but I don't remember the sizes. Any way, this was on sale on BP for £88.



It's their premium range. Usually well north of £200. What I did not envisage was the £40 3 day Fedex lmao. Little rush of blood to the head. It cost me £138. That said, it is a specialty block and it is huge and it is their premium range. So, even if I get stung another £50 in fees I still think it was worth doing, given it's the face of the whole rig.

Am currently sizing up res options ETC ETC. However, I think I have an idea. So, stay tuned for that.....

 

[ALXAndy]

Now codenamed "Julie's Pants". Long Live Julie !

 

[ALXAndy]

Update. Could a moderator please change the title name to "Julie's Pants" please? Let me explain. The title character in PUBG is called Julie. This is her here.



If you land with a bot and kill it the bot is usually wearing Julie's Pants. Not what you would think, and they have shrunk a bit in that pic, but they look like this.



Well the joke goes like this. One of my team mate's wife is actually called Julie. So, whenever that player gets a bot he puts them on and says "Hey look guys, I am wearing Julie's pants!". It's never gotten old, and still makes us laugh. I thought that would be fitting... Talking of fitting.....

I have this flow meter.



It's not as big as it looks. However, I was going to take it apart and remove the blade and shaft and use it as a tiny res come fill port for the loop. Like, straight into the pump. It would have been fine, if a bit of a PITA to fill the loop and then have to keep an eye on due to its low volume. What I would have liked is an actual hex tank, but these were notoriously expensive when you could get them (about £150) and it seems Bitspower gave most of them to modders who used like, five. Which IMO looked kinda daft but ho hum, they were the days before distro panels.

Any way, I was poking on Ebay earlier and figured I would just type in Bitspower and see what happened. Bingo.



Made a cheeky offer which was accepted. So, now I can use both, with the flow meter performing regular duties.

 

[ALXAndy]

Found this here on the classified. Chuffed, at least now the back of the rear rad won't be nekked.

 

[ALXAndy]

Quick update. I finally got over to the PC today. I pulled the AIO off to make sure the block would seat. The area of concern was here.



It seems to fit. Just. I may have to grind it back a bit. That's not as horrible as it sounds.. We will see once I drill the holes and do a test fit. Good thing is when it's in it will look like a big old monoblock. Talking of holes.



I've ordered 8 of those. Really don't want to use odds and sods.

----------------------------------------

Stop plugs came today.



And after much deliberation I chose the colour and FX scheme. It has been ordered also.



------------------------------------------------------------

Right, last of the shopping has been done.





These are to couple the res to the pump top and flow meter to the res.



These will most certainly need to be on the GPU.



Got a in line filter too.



Two more fans. Might push pull the rear, we'll see. Spares are always good any way, and they are good value.



And I bought this EK conversion kit for £1.50. It's literally for nothing more than making sure my holes are dead perfect. So in other words, it's sacrificial.

 

[ALXAndy]

The Sunday Funday Conundrum.

These are the bolts that come with EK's pump cooler.



I'm not a huge fan of how they work. Past the threads in the bottom there are allen holes. You do the bolts up into the cooler and top, which pulls it together to seal. Unfortunately due to the design these allen holes are very shallow, meaning they round when you fit it. Once you are done that you screw rubber dampeners into the threads, then M4 bolts into those through your mounting plate. Unfortunately after just three years the rubber was rotten, and was turning everything it touched black. Even more unfortunate because they rounded when going in I was unable to remove them without using a larger allen. Which stripped the threads, and the rubber parts got stuck.

So they all had to come out with pliers. You can see it here.



So those were done. Had a dig around in the bolt box and found some pretty long M4 bolts, which thankfully were a thread match. So it went -

Bolt through pump mount. Metal washer, plastic spacer, metal washer, pump, pump top.

 

[ALXAndy]

Nope not started any of that stuff yet

 

[ALXAndy]

Finally. Delayed twice, but finally arrived. That said, I paid 0 import duty, so am absolutely stoked.



I also got freebies ! firstly a lovely message and three face masks.



A really sexy case badge, and I know exactly where this is going.



Because I scraped the Antec A logo from the glass the other day. That was scary let me tell you. Then I got this.



I'm not sure what is is yet lol. It's some sort of fan. Maybe for your fets? IDK.



And the main event.





Which didn't disappoint. It's friggin huge and weighs a ton lol.



I called Ma. Apparently there were two packages delivered this morning. Hoping that is the res and rad cover.

 

[ALXAndy]

Right, been doing a lot of thinking. When I looked at the sheer amount of wiring this will require, because I remember it only too well from the Alienware, I really wanted to remove the drives completely. However, this came with issues. The B450i ITX board I have only has one NVME slot. I could have spent loads of money on a 2-3TB NVME SSD, but the thought of eggs and baskets (especially after the loss of the Firecuda recently) made me think twice.

I knew this decision would cost me. And it has. However, I bought the board from the same company who I got the Razer monitor from recently for £110 under RRP.



This wasn't the cheapest solution. However, I then bought two NVME for about the disparity, which is the best solution.



I didn't want the fastest, or the best, just storage. That means I can use a 1tb SSD in the case I bought to recover the files from the dead Firecuda, which should be more than enough.
Plus I can then eliminate two SATA power cable runs from the PSU and the three SATA DATA cables I was going to have to use also. And I get a better board etc.