Operation Fresh Toast H440 Watercooled

In the entire 2 years of PC building, I have only built in white cases. A whole 2 cases - impressive, I know.

Just simply prefer them as I find them to look a lot more modern than the industry standard of back this, black that, black everything.

And a rofls inspired gif. Never dance alone Rufus.
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OK so huge update time.

I received the CPU, Mobo and RAM. I also bought a voyager go for my phone/tablet and a temp probe for my loop.

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However the guy had lapped the 3570K. Or he did something. May have gotten bored with an angle grinder. Or combine harvester.

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Big image so you can inspect the damage
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New motherboard is quite sharp.

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So I have been having problems with CPU temps and stability. I tried the 3570K and new RAM and it was unstable at stock so I assumed it was the operating system.
The temps were still a problem. The 2550K would be around 70C at stock under load and 3570K got to 75C+. Measuring water temps showed that they didn't change so I assumed it was the block not transfering heat into the loop.
I mounted and remounted. Checked and rechecked. Yet the temps would not drop. I issued an RMA to the retailer of the CPU block.
Bored I installed windows 8.1 on a partition on my SSD and put my 2550K back in to see if the chip is still fine. And for whatever reason the temps are now absolutely fine. The chip also overclocks as well as it used to so is now running at 4.5GHz and 1.4v (experimenting with the voltage at the moment).

Back to the 3570K. Temps are still awful. Made a whole thread trying to get to the bottom of the problem. It's either the awful TIM that ivy bridge suffers or the angle grinding lapping.
So I am going to try the 3570K under my old D14 to rule the loop completely out of the temp problems.

Now I am experimenting with fans orientation in my system to keep temps as low as possible.

I am also going to test whether plugging a 6 pin PCIe into the Mobo will help with my very nearly stable overclocks.
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Lastly the GPU backplate can be used as a shelf!
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So I have been struggling to keep temps down whilst remaining quiet. I didn't want to have to ramp up fans whilst gaming cause there is no easy way to do that on my mobo + I can still hear them through my open headphones.

Read this review which highly rates Arctic Cooling F12s. I had one and tried in on a rad and definitely could feel more air through the rad at the same noise level as the rest of the system. So...

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I didn't take any actual pictures of the fans as I wanted to quickly get them in for testing. And the results show that 4 for less than one high end fan these things are pretty damn good. Definitely got a good few degrees lower in the temp department and now have quite a lot of highish value noctuas to sell.
 
Get some of these http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18623130

I know the colour isn't the best but if you want lower temps these look good.

News broke on how good these were after I bought the F12s so buying them now would be a waste of money. Either they are better than these F12s and I have wasted money on then or they aren't worth the cost and I would have to pay to send them back. They are also twice the price and blue doesn't match the build, not to mention I am sceptical on how good they are. I will wait for now and I can consider the build complete after the next update.
 
Love the toaster!

By the way, how is your fluid 40c? That's hot.

30C was my ambient at that time and pictures were taken between rounds of BF3 load so it was the hottest it is going to get.

that 3570k doesn't look to have been lapped very well. looks more like they've used 50 grit sandpaper :( its strange to see another 2550K in an mpower board. mine is sitting right next to me now at 5ghz on 1.4v on air cooling. your case is much newer and cleaner looking than mine though. yours is all shiny and white, mine is more stealth and black.

The 3570k is pretty awful. But it is being sent back.

My 2550K requires a big jump in voltage for 4.7ghz, though I do not know what most of the voltage controls do for helping stability.
 
Dunno if this counts as necroing or whether that is even against the rules but I have been doing a few things here and there with my build.

First and foremost if you have an H440 and want more airflow, remove the mesh strips (even if it is just the non visible ones) as this will measurably reduce the temperatures of your components. They are held in by cross head screws so can be removed and replaced at will.

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I have also removed the foam from my front panel as an experiment to see if that improves anything. Long story short - no.

Short story long, it was an utter pain to get off and I managed to dig a wallpaper scraper into my wrist.

I also got in contact with NZXT about replacing my broken USB port (my fault) and the dim LED on the NZXT logo (their fault). They were more than happy to sort everything out and sent it to me free from the US. Unfortunately they sent me a front panel instead of front panel connectors so that is now in transit.

Finally some random pictures of my build as it is now with the F12s installed as intake and NF-P14r as exhaust.

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Seeing as this has been brought back from the dead I might as well update it with what I did yesterday.

Dean0 did a sweet yellow and black build in the same case and managed to fit a huge front rad in. So naturally I stole borrowed the idea.

I changed my 30mm pull rad to a 60mm push pull rad (XSPC RX360 V2) which I got off MM for a bargain £20 from SenTineL.

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Trusty and dirt cheap Artic Cooling F12s are my rad fans

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I then mounted the pump res combo onto that via an EK UNI 120mm pump mount. I also had to get a smaller tube for the res as the old one was too big. During the build I dropped the whole unit off the table snapping the D5 control knob and tachometer cable. Fortunately I rigged up a new control knob with a broken screwdriver, 2 nuts, a washer and some bluetac. The new knob sticks out so that I can easily change the speed without needing a screwdriver.

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It only just fits between my top fans and my 780. Which was definitely planned for. It was pure luck

I also got a matching SSDs and a new Xonar Xense soundcard. Another MM bargain and I love it - mostly cause of the Sennheiser logo.

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Moving the pump up gave my loads more cable management space.

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Unfortunately I broke the water temp sensor but have ordered a new one.

Random extra pics
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Bonus

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How's the jam? Still maxing out 1440p?

Oh course, at 150fps... in black ops 2. Which incidentally is the only game which will crash my overclock. GTA V and Witcher 3 run perfectly but blops2 has none of it.

Yeah what are the temps now ater you got the giant front rad in there?

TBH they haven't really dropped much - maybe a couple of degrees. But it was more of case of doing it because I wanted to rather than needed to.

Update time!

Got titans!

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I don't need titans so sold one, put the 780 block and backplate on the other and changed to fluid to yellow.
Also made a custom braided cable from cablemod.

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Glam shot

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Killed my new temp sensor by shorting the cables so got a new yellow one that is definitely orange. Bought a gold backplate cause it was cheap and will spray it white at some point. Changed the Arctic F12s for Silverstone FQ121WC resulting in a 4C temp drop.

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Z77 MPower started dying so replaced it with a Sabertooth for during RMA.

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Fan Control on the Sabertooth is bad.

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So I bought a NZXT Grid+ V2 (highly recommended)

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I also added some string so the pump didn't look so droopy.

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Dog Tax!

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The gold doesn't look too bad but I am hoping to reduce the number of colours to just white, black, silver and yellow.

The Grid+ V2 (make sure to get the v2 for individual fan control) is a delight to use. NZXT CAM is really easy to use and making profiles is super easy too. Just set it and forget it, though I do like to tinker with the profiles quite often and the monitoring is fairly decent too.
 
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