Project Ariyah's Orijin

BudgetMODz · 1 Jan 2022 at 11:50

Happy New Year everyone!

In my drunken state I decided to order a 480mm Nemesis LS for the other radiator bracket, and some fittings and tubing. The rad is actually out of stock so it's anyone's guess when that will show up, but will at least even up the rear compartment a bit.

I also decided that I don't like the way the pump looks in the rear or the way the tubing will end up being, so instead I will use my Alphacool Eisball mounted to the false floor on a fan, I'll use 2 of my passthrough fittings to keep the tubing clean. I'll need to order 2 more passthroughs for the tubing run up to the main components, but this should look pretty good once done.

Hoping to get some cutting and painting done today, but with a few sore heads in the house that may be later rather than sooner.

BudgetMODz · 1 Jan 2022 at 13:43

Got the mount for the control board cut and painted, next up is the rear wall which needs cable and passthrough holes cutting before it's ready to paint.

https://imgur.com/gallery/qnUbGJG

BudgetMODz · 1 Jan 2022 at 16:32

Rear panel complete.

Although not clear in the pictures there is a small section cut out in the middle bottom for running the vga and power cable for the snowblind mod, the fan cable being installed in the false floor, and a molex for the pump.

The fitting and tubing shown is there just for marking up for the passthrough and will be replaced when the new stuff arrives.

https://imgur.com/gallery/thc8TGN

BudgetMODz · 1 Jan 2022 at 17:09

Control board mounted in the side.

https://imgur.com/gallery/ThvAWQc

Unfortunately paint doesn't like to stick to the cover plate, so I'm thinking I'll just vinyl wrap that bit and poke out all the ventilation holes, but I need to find some matt black vinyl first, I'm going to need some for the glass borders either way.

BudgetMODz · 3 Jan 2022 at 16:00

I'm undecided which fan to use in the false floor.

I have in my collection: Phanteks MP140 & MP120, EK Vardar aRGB (white) 120mm, an extra Artic P120, or Sahara Pirate aRGB 120mm.

I could also replace either of the 140mm Thermaltake fans that came with the case with one of the above and use that.

My plan is to cut the corners off one side of the fan and make a hole large enough to sink the fan into, rather than have it fully mounted on the top or underside, and as I don't have the right size hole saw (and I'm too cheap to buy one just to cut a single hole) so will be limited to cutting the hole with a jigsaw, I'm hoping that the fan frame will help hide any messy edges.

I'm not overly bothered about whether or not this fan is rgb due to the Eisball being mounted to it.

I'm kind of leaning towards using the Thermaltake fan from the top of the rear compartment to keep symmetry. It's not really required in the back as I'm planning to use an equal pressure set up back there with 1 rad intaking in push, and the other being exhaust in pull.

However, I've read in reviews that these fan can be a bit loud. That said, this will only be to provide some airflow to motherboard components as the main heat generators (cpu & gpu) will be watercooled anyway.

Thoughts?

BudgetMODz · 7 Jan 2022 at 22:41

OK so yet another disaster today... The (second) LCD got damaged when the box I was storing it in was knocked off the shelf. I've decided to just give up on trying to do a snowblind mod and will just buy a pre made screen for the back wall. Bit gutted not to be doing something new (for me), but it will still all end up looking pretty good eventually.

I'm still waiting for the second radiator. The supplier is also holding back on dispatching the fittings and tubing I ordered at the same time until it comes into stock, which is pretty poor customer service and clearly a shameless attempt to reduce shipping costs at their end. I've emailed them asking when they actually expect to receive the Nemesis LS480 in stock, and made it clear that if it's not soon then they can either cancel that part of the order or give me a discount on paying the difference for the LX480.

Again, another company that doesn't respond to emails over the weekend, so I'll have to wait until next week.

On the plus side I no longer have uncertainty in regards to measurements accounting for the extra bulk of the control board housing, so will be able to get the false floor cut tomorrow and mount the fan and eisball. The aRGB backlights are still in transit from China and I still need to order another pair of passthroughs, but I can at least get the the plexi cut, painted, and mounted in the case.

Once that's in I can also do some funky soft tube routing using old spare parts and flush the eisball and rad of any contaminants.

I should probably rename this thread to "epic fail of an epic vision"... But I ain't a quitter and there's a long way to go yet.

BudgetMODz · 10 Jan 2022 at 18:45

So thanks to having our extremely grumpy grand daughter over the weekend I managed to get nothing done besides marking up the cuts for the false floor, although as I will be bevelling the front edge at 45° for the aRGB strip and need to wait on some clamps to be delivered for holding some wood to the plexi as a guide for my jigsaw, that's probably not such a bad thing as otherwise I would have likely just rushed it and messed it up.

My new 5inch hdmi screen turned up last night

https://imgur.com/gallery/SKELuDZ

This was pretty cheap and designed for the raspberry pi, but I made sure it specifically mentioned compatibility with Windows PCs before ordering and have had it hooked up to my Steam link (closest thing to hand with a hdmi output) to confirm it works. It includes touch screen functionality but as this will be mounted inside the case and used just for displaying Aquasuite and / or Aida64 information that's a nice but basically useless addition.

Playing around with layouts while marking up, I've decided the screen will be best placed towards the front of the false floor, with the fan and Eisball mounted behind and to the right (to avoid conflict with long GPUs), the passthroughs for the Eisballs ports towards the rear centre, and my aRGB back lit project name to the rear left. The passthroughs for the tubing going up to the cpu block and back down from the gpu block are going either side of the screen.

A bit hard to explain, and impossible to take a picture of the markings due reflections on the unpainted plexi... This will make sense once it's done.

Heard back from the supplier for the last of my watercooling parts today and I should be receiving my fittings, tubing, and the upgraded LX480 radiator by Wednesday. Had to put a bit extra towards it, but at least the rear will look more filled out with 2 thick rads, even the one on it's own at 60mm thick looks tiny in the back of this case so I'm kind of glad I didn't end up with the thinner rad on the other side after all.

I'm away this weekend so unless by some miracle I manage to get something done before work during the week, there's unlikely to be any update until next week now.

BudgetMODz · 12 Jan 2022 at 17:50

So my 2nd Black Ice Nemesis LX480 turned up along with fittings and tubing, and I couldn't resist getting it in and the rear plumbing finished.

https://imgur.com/gallery/QX8E8mI

I really like the look of these blue Barrow fittings, they match the blue sleeve perfectly and look awesome (IMO) against the black of the case. I'm now thinking of using hot pink pastel coolant to tie in the colour scheme, which is probably a good thing seeing as my Eisball looks to be slightly stained from using pink coolant the last time I used it, and as I haven't had chance to run any cleaning products through it yet I don't know what the full extent of the staining actually is... Throw pink back in it and no one will know the difference lol!

The Eagle eyed will spot that I swapped the silver passthroughs on the back wall for black... I originally ordered 2 of each as that was all the seller had in stock at the time. I prefer the look of the silver so now that I have 2 pairs of silver I'm saving those for the false floor where they will always be visible, and moved the black to the back.

Besides sleeving the cables which I still haven't got around to doing, and general cable management, that's the rear complete so next I'll be tackling the false floor in the front.

I have everything I need for the "modding" and cooling side of things now, which was my plan to complete first, so the next things to buy over the coming weeks are the actual computer components. Motherboard first, then I'll probably get the M.2's, and see where AMD is at with releasing the 5800x3D by then... Not sure if I'd definitely buy that cpu as I still think the 5600x will be fine for my use case, but it's release might at least affect pricing.

The GPU is still the bit I'm dreading, I reckon it's going to take at least a couple weeks of solid overtime at work to be able to afford it so that's still the last thing on the shopping list.

BudgetMODz · 13 Jan 2022 at 10:10

Spotted a flaw in my plans... The JST connection for the Eisball aRGB doesn't fit the Rgbpx connector on the Octo, it's too big, does anyone know which adapter cable I need for this?

Searching Aquatuning throws up a few different ones, but I'm unable to judge by the pictures if the JST end will fit or is the same as Eisball, and the descriptions don't tell me anything.

BudgetMODz · 14 Jan 2022 at 11:56

Ordered the motherboard and 1x 1TB WD Blue sn570 m.2 drive today from amazon, will be here at some point today.

Ended up going for the MSI X570 Edge Max rather than the Carbon, it was £60 less while still offering all the features I need so didn't see the point of going for the more expensive model.

The WD Blue won't be used as an OS drive, just game storage, but I'm wanting to get a 1TB PCIe4 NVME drive for OS and a 2TB PCIe3 for game storage in the 3rd slot at a later date. The sn570 was on offer though so figured it would be best to get it while I could.

My last system had 3TB of total storage (1TB nvme + 2TB HDD) and I was often forced to uninstall stuff to reinstall something else, so I'm thinking the extra TB should allow me to keep most of my frequently played games installed on fast storage and I can always throw in a large mechanical drive later if needs be for everything else.

Once the motherboard arrives I can get on with finishing the cables, and if I can find where I put my old 2600x I can get a basic system up and running to sort fan profiles out at least.

Hoping to finally get the false floor done today too, so pics and updates to follow.

BudgetMODz · 14 Jan 2022 at 21:31

https://imgur.com/gallery/PuYaPzG

Motherboard and the first of the eventual 3 m.2's installed, really like this boards aesthetic, MSI sure do know how to make some good looking kit.

Also managed to crack on with doing the false floor. I knew from doing the back wall that cutting this 5mm plexiglass was hard work, but cutting the edge at 45° was an absolute nightmare and as it turns out, also completely pointless... My plan was to bevel the front edge and use edge lighting with an aRGB strip to light up the project name, but testing it with my phones torch (the aRGB strip still hasn't arrived from China yet) proved that just won't work, or at least not as well as I'd hoped.

Luckily for me I anticipated possible problems and masked off a section directly behind the project name before painting the plexi, so I will just mount the strip directly below. Although I forgot to take pictures, I "frosted" the plexi by sanding it before painting so the LEDs should be diffused a bit.

Had to scrap the idea of "sinking" the fan into the plexi as it would make the connections for the Eisball too low to get the 90° bend into the passthroughs. I could probably of achieved it by using 90° fittings, but I'm trying to avoid using extra fittings if I can.

Once I got the motherboard in I realised I made a rookie mistake and used the wrong 4 pin connector on the CPU power cable, so will be swapping that over tomorrow when I make a start on doing the rest of the cables.

BudgetMODz · 15 Jan 2022 at 19:15

Didn't get chance to do the cables but instead got the false floor mounted and plumbed up.

https://imgur.com/gallery/VwN7Bfp

I will be leaving it running for tonight with plain distilled water to flush the rads and hopefully clean up the pink tint on the Eisball. By-passed the upper part of the loop as I can't hardline that section until I have the cpu and gpu anyway, but the connections under the floor will be left with flexi tubing for ease of use as some of the bends would be a nightmare to achieve with hardline.

Pretty happy with how it's turning out so far though.

BudgetMODz · 16 Jan 2022 at 17:39

After 24hrs of running the pump at full speed and adding some white vinegar to the loop the pink tint to the Eisball remains, so looks like I will have to use pink coolant so it isn't so obvious.

Managed to pin up the PSU side of the CPU cable and swap the 4 pin connector at the motherboard end. I've had it hooked up to my PSU tester and confirmed it works correctly, but I did mess up the lengths on a couple of the wires and the orientation of the wires going through the last closed cable comb before the PSU, so it looks messier than I'd like.

I'll get around to sorting it eventually but for now I'm moving on to the 24pin.

Got all the wires cut to length and pinned at one end, including the 4 double wires which I soldered together 15cm from the PSU end so the join will be in the rear compartment rather than on show.

By the time I'd done that I needed to clear the table ready for dinner, so will sit down with a beer once the kids are in bed and get on with doing the sleeving.

BudgetMODz · 24 Jan 2022 at 18:51

No real update this week, 2 of my kids caught covid so haven't really done anything.

I bought some fittings to tidy up the tubing under the false floor but due to some random issue on amazon's end they were never delivered and it's now just saying that they are waiting for them to be returned before issuing the refund.

My aRGB strip turned up finally... I actually ordered a single 50cm strip that I was planning to cut and solder to have one strip under "Ariyah's" and another under "Orijin", but what they actually sent me was 2 separate 20cm strips which makes life a little easier although I will still need to splice the wires to a single header.

Got the wires for the 24pin sleeved but haven't pinned the other end or wired up the plugs yet, I'm hoping to get the time to actually do some work on this at the weekend now that the house is getting back to normal.

Unfortunately, having not been able to work for the past week means I can't afford to buy any more parts this week, but my boss is sorting me out with some overtime moving forward so from next week I should be able to get the last few bits over the course of 3-4 weeks.

BudgetMODz · 11 Feb 2022 at 19:04

Been a while since the last update, been busy working 72hr weeks and doing bits and bobs around the house but happy to announce I will finally have a running system by the end of tomorrow.

Bought the Ryzen 5 5600x last week along with 32gb Corsair Vengeance RT @ 3200MHz (thought I'd ordered the 3600mhz version but apparently clicked the wrong one when ordering on my lunch break, never mind, the performance difference is minimal).

Managed to get an MSI RTX 3070 Ti Ventus for a reasonable-ish price (less than £800) which is due tomorrow.

Cracked on today and managed to get the PSU cables finished, the aRGB strips behind the project name installed, and the CPU plumbed up using an old EK Supremacy EVO block I've had since Devils Canyon.

I still need to buy the GPU block but undecided whether to go with the Alphacool or Bykski block... The Bykski looks nicer IMO but will take a month to get here, whereas the Alphacool should only take a couple days from Germany... Both come to about the same price with shipping so I'll have to think about that one, but I wanted to run the card on air cooling for a bit first anyway to make sure it's fully working before blocking it, given the cost and warranty implications. I'll buy a better CPU block at the same time.

I also still need to buy the rest of the storage drives, but that's not a huge priority.

For now, or at least from tomorrow, I'll have a fully functioning kick ass gaming PC with a massively overkill CPU only loop, so I'm a happy man.

Pictures to follow tomorrow.

As a side note... If I ever mention making every PSU cable from scratch again, someone please slap me... It's possibly the most time consuming and frustrating task I've ever done for a computer lol!

BudgetMODz · 12 Feb 2022 at 18:19

Pictures

Of course, this wouldn't be my log without a disaster or 2... Immediately after taking these pictures my D5 pump packed in. I've tried re-wiring it, checking it with a different psu, etc, but it won't turn on. I've had it for nearly 10yrs so not a bad run, just gutted because it was working perfectly up until that point and showed no signs of dying.

So, all I can do for now is drain the loop and run the cpu with the stock cooler until I can buy a new one.

BudgetMODz · 12 Feb 2022 at 22:32

On the plus side, at least the sensor panel is working well.

It's a bit disconcerting to see the cpu essentially idling at 60c, doing nothing but downloading cyberpunk and running aida64, is that normal for these CPUs? I did run the aida64 stability test and the temp creeped up to around 87c which is below the thermal throttle limit but I will be happier once it's under water.

It's the first time I've ran a cpu on a stock air cooler in... A longer time than I can even remember, so not really sure what to expect to be fair.

Had a quick play around with aquasuite and realised I really don't have a dam clue what I'm doing... I can't even figure out how to change fan speeds, I've found a way to drag points on a graph but the actual fans don't seem to respond. Luckily the Octo only controls the radiator fans so I've got time to figure it all out before I actually need it to work.

BudgetMODz · 19 Feb 2022 at 09:53

Some more goodies arrived yesterday, the WD Black is now installed and I reinstalled windows to make it the boot drive.

The 90 degree fittings will be used to tidy up the tubing under the false floor and keep the runs straighter, but I am awaiting another delivery from Germany on Tuesday before I tackle that.

Also managed to get Aquasuite working with the Octo, it's not the most intuitive program but once I'd figured it out it's actually pretty awesome.

BudgetMODz · 22 Feb 2022 at 20:31

Treat Tuesday came...

GPU block, CPU block, and a new D5 pump.

All installed

All I've got left to do now is sleeve the pump, move the Octo under the floor (far too many wires in the rear compartment blocking the flow between radiators), and figure out how to get the RGBpx working on the CPU block.

All the other rgb is controlled via the motherboards Mystic Light, but I plugged the Aquacomputer Cuplex Kryos Next (what a name) into the Octo as I didn't have an rgbpx to argb adapter, and for the life of me I can't get it to light up. I might have plugged it in wrong, but will have to wait until tomorrow to play around with it.

Temperature wise, my GPU hit a max 45c and CPU low 60's with a water temp Delta T of 11.3c after 20mins running Heaven and the Aida64 CPU stress tests together. The fans didn't need to ramp higher than 450 rpm to achieve that either so pretty happy with the result.