New Watercooled build. Lian Li O11 Mini

Thanks for your input Lucky. My electrical engineering is basic at the best so I would have to be careful. What I do know is I am a quantum leap more comofortable with simple electrical engineering than the far more complex electronic engineering involved with a mobo or even a pump.

I am almost certain the pump is faulty with its PWM power delivery, it had no hum when molex power was delivered to it, so I am quite sure I could return it as faulty,this is the first thing I will be checking and I hope no hum with molex power when I run it this way.

I like low tech solutions. Low tech solutions work and I know I can fix them if they go wrong. Will look into PWM controller board and see if bypassing the mobo PWM fixes the hum, plenty of room to hide a small PCB in this case.

Question - is a fan header/pump header/AIO header 12v or 5v? I know looking on Asus website will be a waste of time.


I do have to drain the loop and tear it down at some point so I just want to know what I need to do before I start. I also want to have everything I need in place before I strip it down. Took over 2 months to build the darn thing , do not want it to take as long to fix an issue and be without the pc for that time.
 
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Sorry Lucky I did not mean for you to go into such depth, I was just being flippant with my remarks.

I have A level Physics and Maths. I also did an Engineering degree in which I did the first year of an electrical engineering degree. I understand V=IR , resistance and impedance and if needed I can work out the impedance of an electrical circuit using unreal numbers. It has been 30 years since I used most of these skills so if needed I would go for the simplest method that I know would work using the simplest core principles, simplicity is key when trying to fix a small issue.

You have given me more thoughts though. I can look into the bios to see if I can alter settings there, maybe change in fan header settings will fix the issue.

I do not trust Asus to have any bios settings correct after they did not allow windows to be installed onto GPT formatted SSD
 
I know the pump is not plugged into the correct header and I have changed the settings in BIOS and it makes no difference if they set to PWM or DDC, still a squeal. I will have to drain the loop at some point. The electronic squeal does not now go away when powered by molex and it did not make this sound when I was leak testing so I suspect it is faulty. I tried to record the noise but it is too high pitched to be picked up by my phone properly.

I could spend days or weeks trying to fix it to no avail so I will just order a new pump/distro plate and when I drain the loop i will change it and rebuild with everything plugged in correctly. Been trying to work out what pumps are compatable to replace this one but I cant find any that do not come with the distro plate attached.
 
Have ordered 4.2 pump and heatsink, will arrive in week or so. Will drain , strip and rebuild over a weekend and make sure I get everything plugged in correctly this time.
 
Ty str, I am very happy with how it looks.

I tried all combos for the speeds and it just seems to have the hum no matter what. I have ordered a 4.2 pump from EK and it should arrive early next week. I will drain , strip and rebuild next weekend and hopefully it should be fully completed. I need to drain the loop and rebuild anyway so if I am going to all that effort I am certainly going to change what I think is a faulty piece of kit.
 


DHL delivered the new pump very quickly from Swe so I drained, replaced pump with new one and took out gpu to attach cables correctly. Took about 3 hours so I am getting quicker.

Pump is much improved and no electronic squeal from it. It drained the small reservoir so much quicker so the flow rate on the 4.2 looks to be much greater than the 3.1. Can do office work with pump turned off so just fan noise and even at 100% it is not too bad.

There is still a capacitor hum but it is very light, I must be very sensitive to that frequency of sound. Could not get the Phanteks gpu block to light up, the cable looks to be plugged in correctly but doesnt seem to work. Something else to look into. The Corsair cpu block is low quality plastic but I really like how it casts light down onto the mobo.
 
Your build looks great as well.

Took me 2 months to build my pc so not something to go into lightly. The EK air pressure tool is great, once you know the loop is airtight you can liquid fill with a high degree of confidence. I had no leaks thankfully.
 
I thought the watercooling would cost about £500 but was closer to £1000 by the end.

I started as a WC noob and now I am a bit less of a noob. I thought it would be easier than it was, you just have to work your way through the issues and keep ordering more parts to help.

An AIO works very well and is a quantum leap easier than a custom loop. Think very carefully before going this route and do not make decisions when drunk like I did.
 
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It is not compulsory to mess up as many things as I did. I jumped in without thinking to clearly and didn't properly take on board some of the advice I was given.

You can make a loop and not spend what I did but the distro plates are not cheap so there will be money spent. AIO is easy so always an option.
 
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