Phanteks Luxe Tempered Glass

[crazyDAJT]

OK. So it’s been a while since I posted anything but I recently got back into PC gaming and content creation so thought it was time for a little upgrade to my system. The X58 platform is still pretty powerful and the X5650 I picked up for £40 in January is a beast with well over 900 points in Cinebench. So I have held off an update to new systems as I don’t feel I will see a huge benefit with games being mostly GPU limited.

The Plan

1. Transplant setup into new case, re-pipe water-cooling loop
2. upgrade Fans and get some sleeved cables (because the look nice)
3. Have a go at Hard line watercooling
4. Upgrade to a 34in 1440p ultrawide with a water-cooled GTX 1070 to drive this badboy.

It’s been a while since I have built a full system and due to the age of some of my water-cooling gear (before things where standardised) there is going to probably be some unique challenges.

So let’s see how it goes

 

[crazyDAJT]

Current Status

I hope to keep this updated with where this project currently sits, and hopefully some sexy photos of the final build when I’m there

***

Spoiler

nice..

Progress made.

Radiator temporally fitted in the top, it fits !!!!!!!!!!!!
Most of the non-water-cooling hardware installed
unfortunately i have lost the top most drive bay due to thinness of Rad, I thought this would happen
pump mounted in removed drive bay area
motherboard 24 and 8 pin in place
front connections wired.
fan controller mounted
loop installed and and leak test
Top Fans installed
power and data cables fitted
Test Boot – no catastrophic failures, degraded my raid 1 array as I was fiddling with the power to the LED lighting (6Hr to re-build... no big problem)
Braded cables need fitted.
Speed controlling pump to make it less noisy
Finish cable management on rear of case
Speed controlling pump to make it less noisy
Finish cable management on rear of case
Speed controlling PSU fan to make it less noisy
Hardline - completed and filled with Pastel White

To Do

Work out what could fit in top bay
decided on GPU and Ultra-wide selection

 

[crazyDAJT]

baseline and case selection

My setup is as follows.

Motherboard – Asus P6X58D-E
CPU – X5650 6 core clocked at 4.4Ghz
Ram – 12GB of HyperX Fury (3 sticks)
OD Drive – 2xHyperX Savage 250GB SSD in Raid 0 – to get around the SATA 2 bottleneck
Storage – 2xSeagate 2tb in Raid 1
PSU - Corsair HX750
Waterblock - EK Supreme HF
Rad - Thermochill 120.3
pump - Laing 18W with plexi top
Reservoir – EK Tub Res

This is all currently (well not anymore) sitting in a Thermaltake Armor case, the case has served me well but this was of the age where internals off cases were not painted and cable management was not given any thought except in very pricy cases

Yuck

but it goes like stink...

https://c8.staticflickr.com/6/5681/30451568703_05b8859960_b.jpg

I picked the phanteks luxe TG for a few reasons. Firstly the non Glass version is very well reviewed and it has good support for water-cooling. It’s following the tempered glass craze along with the RGB one and doesn’t cost a small fortune. I also felt it was the only case i could see that would stand a chance of fitting my Thermochill 120.3 which does not have standard fan spacing’s.

this is one sexy case, I forgot to take a picture of the Glass window on, so you will just have to wait till I’m finished

On the positive note, the Rad does fit

 

[crazyDAJT]

Just a small update, as I haven’t been able to do much today due other hobbies and other items. Power to SATA and GFX card now complete, aquaero 5 LT mounted in the basement of the case. Power required to aquaero and pump still required, but should be fine.

Awaiting some fittings to finish loop off, then should be able to finish the loop and leak test, I hopefully should have a bootable system by Wednesday.

I have ordered new PWM fans for the rad, the stock ones look nice (all black) so i will fire them up and see how noisy the area before decided to replace them.

I cant fined the other reservoir mounting clip, so I only have one

 

[crazyDAJT]

leak Test Time

So the final fittings arrived today so i quickly attached them to the system and finished the loop off.

I have installed an EK valve to act as my drain (which is super important when I convert to rigid pipe) on the left, i think a 90 elbow will be needed to get it 100% right but it’s functional. i have also installed a Aqua Computer in-line sensor as i want to move to controlling fan speeds via water temp.

There is over 70mm above this setup, so i could easily fit a 240 rad in the basement if I need more cooling.

So the water loop is on leak test and everything looks ok, so far. I went a bit too short on the RAD to RES pipe, but it should be better when my new mounting clips arrive. unfortunately I’m out of pipe to fix it, however this is only a temporary measure until I upgrade it so I’m ok with it.

Only issues I think I’m having is the pump is a bit on the loud side, I plan to control the speed with the aquaero. However the PSU is a bit on the loud side as well.

 

[crazyDAJT]

I couldn’t resist get this up on the desk a bit early than planned...

All the fans are now in place and I am controlling them with the aquaero. Although they are all set at one speed for now i plan to control them using temperature data points and speed curves. The layout and plan is as follows.

FAN CH1 – pump (yet to install) – control via water temperature (delta to ambient?)
FAN CH2 – Rear 140mm case fans – control via motherboard temp
FAN CH3 – Front 140mm case fans X 2 – control via motherboard / HDD temps
FAN CH4 (PWM) – RAD Fans – control via CPU temps or water temps but need testing

The replacement clips I ordered for the reservoir where two big, so EK must have increased the size of the tubes at some time? have found some 50mm ones so will have to wait for them to arrive before I can fix it.

Braided cables are there way so when I fit them I can clean up the back and finish it off and make it much neater. One issue I have is that they haven’t put much thought into using the front two SSD bays and the reservoir bracket, there is no way of routing the cables without it looking dumb. I plan to cut a slot in it as below so I can feed the power and data cables straight from behind the plate so they are out of the way.

 

[crazyDAJT]

Thermal Testing

So whilst I wait for cables to turn up I decided to do a quick benchmark of cooling performance, as I have moved from a front mounted radiator to top mounted and have fans setup as push not push/pull. I wasn’t planning to do a full set of 12Hr stability test so i settled with 2Hr of Prime prime95 small FFT (which I feel is a highly unrealistic loading) and 2 Hr of realbench (which is a more sensible test).

My old benchmarks a 12Hr Prime maxed out at 65C (core #0) and 64 (core #4). This new test settles in 73C (core #0 & #4). So it looks like the switch a single set of high static pressure fans has lost me 8C in thermal cooling.

However i find prime an unrealistic loading situation, so realbech shows temperatures maxing about at around 68C.

Not too bad... in normal use, i can run the system almost silent (except the PSU fan) and CPU temperatures dot go about 40C, although I have only don’t light gaming so far.

If you're on an Aquaero 5 be careful sticking an 18W pump on it. It should cope with it - it's spec'd at 19.8W per channel - but watch the temperature of the fan amp (voltage regulator for each channel) in Aquasuite. Might be an idea to stick a heatsink on it (there's a specific heatsink available). Other option is a PowerAdjust Standard version (Ultra not needed) as that can do 30W (but not PWM) and is controlled by the Aquaero.

I have the heatsink attached so it should be fine. I can control the pump down to around 8V and its completely silent, amplifier temps are running at 85-90C. when running at 12V the temperature is 20-30C so it’s fine. I am starting the pump on full voltage then after 2-3 seconds ramp it down. I plan to leave it running in silent mode until the CPU temps get to 60C with max speed reserved for 70C

 

[crazyDAJT]

The front Bay Problem

So I’m trying to work out if anything can fit in the top bay, but as the radiator encroaches into the top 5.25” bay, I am very limited.

So I have 70mm of depth before I hit the Rad and about 30mm of height, I don’t know if can fit a card reader in this slot, maybe a 3.5” one?#

In the two bays below i have a CD/DVD drive (that i plan to upgrade to a blueray drive) and a tool less hotswap bay.

 

[crazyDAJT]

It's in spec but you want to make sure there's no cables touching the heatsink, you're not that far off hot enough to melt the insulation!
The Aquaero 5 will switch the output to 100% at 95°C and "permanently" disable (until cold boot) the output at 100°C....so you've not got a lot of breathing room!

What's your coolant temp doing through that benchmark? Can't be running away if your cpu temp levels out but worth knowing.

The heatsink is lukewarm to the touch and no cables are near, I need configure the front fans as I have them set at around 400RPM, so that won’t help as its mounted in front of the bottom one. I can’t completely remember the water temps, but they where around 28C, but I logged it with aquasuite, I don’t know if i fully trust this temperate but i know it varied by no more the 0.5C in two Hr after it heated up.

I will see if I can output the temperatures to take a better look.

 

[crazyDAJT]

Cablemod

cablemod cables have arrived. i ordered 3 customer ones to sort out the 2 font SSD, optical drive area and a single SATA power to add a USB3 card as the motherboard has no header for USB3

I think I will have to wait until i take the Rad out to paint it to switch over the 8 pin as its impossible to get out.

need to do some cable management, but it looks much nicer.

will hook these behind the reservoir mount when I mod it.

I need to neaten it all up and put the PSC cover back on, but I like to the blue and black theme that matches the motherboard.

 

[crazyDAJT]

Looking good
Do me a favor? How much space is there between the top of your motherboard and the top of the case? I'll be putting a H105 AIO rad in there and would like to continue using a push-pull fan configuration.

My rad is 60mm thick, there is about 2-3mm to the top of the motherboard. remember you can fit a set of fans in the top compartment so you should just be able to get away with a 40mm thick rad if you want push pull

 

[crazyDAJT]

looks like a bit of thermal paste under the heatsink did the trick for the temperature on the aquaero

 

[crazyDAJT]

Coolant looks watered down?

nope, but it was orderd on the 18 Oct 2015, so its over the hill a bit

 

[crazyDAJT]

Pump Bracket Modding

So out came the pump bracket so I could put two slots in it. This has allowed me to run the power and data cable behind the bracket to clean it up. So out came Mr Dremel after a liberal application of masking tape. I need to anchor the cables in the lower drive bay area (the one I removed for the pump), but I will do this after I have converted to ridged tube, just in case I need to re-do it.

It is a touch on the tight side, so I might have to make the slots a little deeper.

 

[crazyDAJT]

Lets plan the Fans!

So I have decided to add an additional 240 Rad in the basement of the case. I have an improvement to the top Rad planned (more on that in a post coming up) however with the plan to add a GTX 1070 down the road, I felt it would be prudent to upgrade my radiator surface area. There is loads of room to add this without getting in the way and it’s not like I’m going to use the basement area for anything else!

So after giving it some thought i have settled on the following fan configuration:

The two front 140mm fans will pull cool air into the case
The rear 140 will exhsaust air out of the case
The 3 120mm fans on the top Rad are configured in PUSH, pushing cool air into the case, not ideal but due to Rad thickness this was the only possible configuration.
the 2 120mm fas on the bottom rad will be configgered in PULL to exhaust air out of the cast

this gives me a reasonably balanced setting, favouring slightly on the positive side. the rad fans normal spin slower than the case fans the way I have them configured.

I have a 6 way PWM splitter coming so I can run them all off the same header and run them off the same speed curve. I have also switched over to controlling the pump and Rad fan’s via water temperature after some testing which is much easier on the ears.

 

[crazyDAJT]

aquasuite

I have setup a new aquasuite dashboard to give me quick access to all fan related goodness, at the moment I have two 1080P monitors, when i get an 1440P ultrawide i will retain one of them to display the dashboard (i plan to mount this above the main display.

need to correct the CPU Core names....

I am now controlling the Rad fans and pump via water temperature, this is useful as it is completely independent of the OS and Hardware monitor, so if i get a system lockup it all runs at the speed it should.

when the system is idle, the only thing i can hear is the PSU fan (i will fix that soon), during gaming only a little louder but very comfortable considering its now on my desk and not the floor.

 

[crazyDAJT]

So let’s void whatever warranty the PSU had left

Disclaimer – opening up a PSU can be extremely dangerous, don’t do this unless you know the risk.

So I am sick with my PSU fan only running at one speed form what I can tell. It’s annoying with the system is at ideal and it’s still the loudest part of this rig when I game. If I’m really pushing the system then I don’t mind fan noise.

so my plan is to swap the fan out with a spare 3pin 140mm I have, but with a twist. I want to control the fan speed with the aquaero, but I need to get a baseline first.

below you can see where I have attached two temperature sensors with blue masking tape (this is a temporary solution). I plan to run the system at full load to see how hot it gets.

And the test setup, I plan to run Prime Small FFT and FurMark to load the PSU as much as possible, I don’t have a clamp meter so i can’t check how much power I’m actually pulling

So after two hours of this loading test, the internals of the PSU are sitting at 47 and 45C. considering these units are rated to work at 50C ambient temperatures, i think i have loads of head room. Using a strobe it looks like the fan is stuck at 800RPM

 

[crazyDAJT]

Fixing the leak – well almost.

As mentioned previously the Rad doesn’t have standard spacing’s, so there are big gaps between the fans and an even bigger gap on each end. one of the reasons I feel I have lost a lot of cooling performance is that the air is just escaping around the edges of the Rad and not Travailing thought it.My previous setup had shrouds on both sides to prevent air escaping

that is going to leak bad.....

so I got a gasket of sorts laser cut to help seal these gaps off, it’s not perfect and I plan to add a thin neoprene seal around the edges but I feel it’s a big improvement

so running a quick load test produces similar core temperatures to previous tests (74/75C), however it’s a lot hotter in the room today (probably a good 5C hotter). But what was interesting the water temperatures took almost a full 2 hours to get up to 30C, where they stabilised, this was happening reasonably quickly before the installation of the acrylic gasket was added.

This was however with FurMark running as well, with my GPU maxing out at 70C, so that can’t have helped the situation.

 

[crazyDAJT]

Dynamic PSU Cooling

So after I worked out that the internals (heatsinks surface) temperatures hit 47C under maximum load (100% CPU and GPU) I have permanently attached a temperature sensor on the internal of the PSU to one of the heatsinks. I used arctic silver thermal adhesive (which is a two part epoxy) to secure the sensor, i made a bit of a mess and needed to have two goes at it, but it won’t go anywhere now.

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So out with the old and in with the new. The only reason I’m changing this is to get a standard 3pin header, however the case fan I’m using is much quieter than the PSU one at the same speeds

And a quick check shows it’s all working. I have a valid temperature reading, the fan works and can be completely silent. I plan to set up a fan curve so that fan spins at around 800 RPM @ 50C, with the speed as low as I can until it gets to around 35C.

 

[crazyDAJT]

Sometimes to more forwarded, you need to tear it all down

So all my PETG Tube and fittings have arrived and I plan to pipe this all up over the Christmas brake so it was time to rip it all apart and rebuild it.

Draining the system is so much easier now I have installed a drain

I have also upgraded the Pump with the EK Heatsink, this was mostly driven by how I would need to mount it and to see if I could reduce the noise levels due to the anti vibration mounts, as now my PSU fan is silent I can hear the pump again.

So I did a test fit of the 240 Rad to get an idea of clearance to ensure that it will all be ok. and it looks great and all fits ok, ther is plenty of room above the pump for the fittings and the upper drive bay will be able to removed and installed with no problem. I will need to re-home the aquaero but I have a good idea where I can put that, I have plenty of room at the side of and above the 240 Rad for cables so this hopefully should work out good..

So below is close to the final config of the rad / pump area. I will add another 90 fitting to the pump output to make fitting the tube easer, I plan to bend and install the Tube before I mount this in the case, this will be my first bend as its out of the way so if I mess it up a bit it won’t matter to much.

I have also moved the water temperature sensor off the pump, I plan to fit a second one just after the CPU so I will have two readings for water temperature.