New Watercooled build. Lian Li O11 Mini

It has been a long day and I slowly stripped the pc apart piece by piece attempting to be able to boot and the riser cables were not the problem at all. When Ghostbusting you do not cross the streams and when building a PC you do not bend the freaking pins but this idiot managed to do just that. At first I was sure I had made a £500 mistake but after a cup of tea I got a magnifying glass with light I used to use to paint Warhammer figures and a sewing kit with tiny needles. With my weapons of choice at hand I carefully straightened the 4/5 pins that were bent. I did not think it would work but thought it was worth a go because I had nothing to lose at that point. With care and luck it worked and when I reseated the cpu the system booted just fine so I moved on to rebuild the entire system piece by piece. Paranoia was rife and I was checking I could boot each time I added something new , especially after the cpu block was fitted and I am never taking it off unless there is dire need.

After 7 hours I finally have everything in place and the EK fluid looks great. Leak testing overnight and will instal windows tomorrow and then begins the lighting nightmare with asus , corsair, lian li and phanteks all involved. I think the Phanteks gpu block is a proprietry connector so not sure what I will do but that is a problem for another day.

Riser cables were not an issue. Was set to Auto in bios as standard and I could boot with either the pcie 3 or 4 I had so I just left it as it was.

https://ibb.co/YRmHwkB

I am really happy with how it looks and thats before it is lit. My familly are not so easily impressed , it got a good from my son to a "why is it a horrid blue" from my daughter.
 
PC is up and running and posting from it now.




I am very happy with how it looks but it is making an annoying high pitched squeal that I am trying to fix.

Things to do.

1- Fix annoying squeal. I think it is the chipset fan so need to work out how to turn this down. Edit - Is not chipset fan, i stopped that with finger and no change. If I unplug the pump it stops but not if I turn pump to 0 rpm.

2- Do 3 pin rgb devices work from the 4 pin connectors on the mobo? I cannot reach the 3 pin without draining loop and taking gpu off so would prefer not to do that. Can I just use a 4 pin to 3 pin adapter?

3- Hunt down and slap all Asus software engineers and whoever designed their website. If you want a piece of Asus software then the easiest way to find it is to type what you want into YT and watch the vid, looking for something on the website is a waste of time.

4- Play some games.

5- Maybe do some testing for temps etc.



Thank you for everyines contribution. Any future builds will be air cooler in a closed case so I cannot see it. Never doing this again.
 
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you cannot use a 4-pin to 3-pin adaptor. 4-pin is 12v, 3-pin is 5v so you will blow all your RGB.

High-pitched squeal could it be coil whine?
 
If I unplug the pump the whine stops so I am pretty certain that's the source. I will try and record it later.

It's not a problem in games but it is when doing office work when you want silence.
 
Your machine looks mega!

It’s an awesome feeling when all that planning, buying and building comes together to produce a result like that.
 
Tx dude, we have been on a parallell journey and been challenging but fun.

Had a few days to think about my coil whine issue and that is good because I have alternate things to try out. Firstly going power pump via molex and see if whine continues. Second, try different headers. Thirdly if needed , try header from different pc. If it is the PWM controlling of the pump that is causing the whine then research how to control the pump via molex, guess an old fashioned variable resistor in series could work.

I have to drain the loop and bare minimum remove the gpu so I can plug in the RGB header correctly. If I am going to do that I want to know what options I have with the pump/distro plate so that I only have to do it once.
 
Haz123 said:
Thirdly if needed , try header from different pc. If it is the PWM controlling of the pump that is causing the whine then research how to control the pump via molex, guess an old fashioned variable resistor in series could work.
Click to expand...
If you choose to do this, make sure you do the maths following Ohm's law correctly. A potentiometer/variable resistor needs to be rated for enough power that will be dropped across it. Pumps draw more current than fans. You could have switchable resistors for 2 or 3 speeds instead. Either way, there's a small chance the pump will misbehave if it's current limited, but I don't think it should be an issue.

Another option though would be to get a small PWM controller board that can regulate 12V down. Should only be a few quid on the bay.
 
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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3-pin and 4-pin headers have a 12V supply on pin 2 :) Some motherboards will allow regulation of this DC voltage (check for an option something like "PWM or DC speed control").

Re power/current - hopefully this is simple enough to use:

Voltage V volts
Resistance R ohms
Current I amps/amperes
Power P watts

Let's presume you have a pump that uses 12 watts for convenience of maths.

P = I x V, so 12W = I x 12V. Current I is 1 amp.


V ÷ I = R, so 12 ÷ 1 = 12. Pump resistance is 12 ohms.

Now let's say you want to run the pump at 9V.

V ÷ I = R, so 9 ÷ I = 12. Rearrange and you should find current I is 0.75 amps.

So current is the same in series - your inline resistor will see 0.75 amps too, while dropping 3 Volts.

P = I x V, so 0.75 x 3 = 2.25 Watts.

You would need a resistor rated at more than 2.25W in the above case. You should be able to replace the 12W rating with your pump's power rating to do the same calculations.

I probably haven't explained that very well! :P
 
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
 
@Haz123, Have you got the DDC PWM plugged into the W_PUMP header on the Prime X570? That header provides 3A and it's 1A for the fan/AIO_PUMP headers. Also if using a PUMP header, it needs to be configured in the BIOS because it defaults to full speed.
 
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.
 
Your build looks amazing, hope you get it sorted with the new kit.

Did you try PWM 25% or less in the BIOS? For the D5 pump I had, it did not squeal at first even at 100% PWM but somehow it happened suddenly. I fixed it by capping it's speed to 35% at load temps.
 
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.
 
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