Project Irony "Glutton For Punishment".

You can't glue what isn't there lmao. My knuckle is just a hole. Talking of it... I just set up the machine and got it going. Only to knock it and it pee blood again. It is worse than I thought *sigh*. New plaster, plenty of sudocrem...

Machine is going to take about an hour. The LEDs are coming today.... I want badly to have it done tomorrow arvo. Then I can download BL4 again (I changed the 1tb for a 2tb out of the NUC) and be back at it on Sunday. That's the ideal world, though. But we'll see :)

I do have to reinstall Windows. It is currently a mess tbh. Has broken apps on I can't uninstall and so on.
 
Other notes. I wish I had painted the IO shield now. Mind you, that could have ended badly if the board doesn't work. Talking of which, who noticed it has planets all over it?

Yesterday marked the 8th anniversary of my first ever water cooled project on this forum ! I built it as a tribute for Waynio who passed away. I still have it too !



I have also fitted a PCI bracket with two more USB 3 sockets on as the board is a bit squeaky with them. The wire holders came in today also. I should have another update later with any luck !

Edit. Pic not working. I think the site is down. I forgot to mention. I also fitted the RGB bars into the right side. The clear diffuser is fitted too, and I have ordered some frosted white vinyl.
 
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Well blimey.

I thought if I pushed hard I could get it firing up yesterday. But it seems I performed a GWB and misunderestimated just how much work this thing needed.

The button PCB is now done (pics later) and the fans and RGB wiring are also done. The front panel is now on. I had to buzz the power switch and led cables as they all look the same. Only for the labels to immediately fall off grrrr. I ended up tapping out around 9.

Some pics later.
 
OK so just know this could have been better. Thing is it doesn't need to be. The biggest issue was the LED holes. I did not have them to measure. I wanted to lay them on their side, hence the square holes, but it did not go to plan.



The power button went perfectly. It is counter sunk. I had to trim the plastic button part, though.



But it works perfectly. LEDs in.



Then seal up the back with super glue and activator.



So pretty? no. Functional? 100%
 
OK so I realised last night I would not be able to fit the top as it was. Mostly because it has a nose piece that goes into the front panel. Problem is my RGB strips and some wires live there. So, I lopped it off.



And now the top is mounted.



And so is the front panel.



As are the RGB logo strips.



I am going to print some labels for the header wires in a minute. And then laminate them on. I did treat myself though. I've not had speakers here for about 10 years. As soon as headsets and headphones got good I ditched them. So I got these for £18. Mostly because after my shower at 9pm I wanted to watch a YT video but had wet ears.

 
OK so many hours ago I fitted the GPU and connected the power button etc.



All went well, apart from me connecting both the LEDs the wrong way around. That is now fixed.



All booted OK. I had one final mod to do but wanted all of the OS etc set up first. That is when the fun began. Everything went on lovely. The RAM XMP to 4000 no problems at all, but I noticed during boot that the fans were revving. Not for long, but yeah. LOUD.

I then copied Borderlands 4 across and that was where the problems started. Immediately the fans would ramp to 100% and as it was compiling shaders it would crash. Many hours were spent trying everything, but still it persisted. I was beginning to think maybe the AIO pump was dead but nope, the entire chassis was red hot so the heat was deffo being pumped around. I've never seen a CPU hit 92c and throttle just loading a game before. I did get it to compile shaders once by disabling XMP but it still ran into the 90s and made the most ungodly noise. Even for me this was not acceptable and I don't mind some fan noise.

Took the AIO off, re pasted no difference at all. Updated the BIOS no difference. I was beginning to think I had made a serious mistake. Thought about undervolting but it just confuses the crap out of me as I don't know how to do it. Guides made little sense either.

And then the idea hit me. Going back to my old days on Sandybridge I wondered if I could limit the clock speeds. The issue is the bloody thing wants to clock balls to 5.3ghz all of the time. Eventually I set the voltage offset to - in the BIOS, and indeed found where you can limit the clocks. So I tried 42 (so 4200mhz). It worked ! not only did it work but it now consumes 0.96v on the CPU instead of 1.4+ and makes no noise at all.

So now I was getting excited but what will happen when I play Borderlands 4? ironically it loaded and compiled the shaders faster than the AMD 5700X3d and I have lost 0 performance. 4080 Super, not sure of the settings but same as before and I am getting 150 FPS+ with frame gen enabled. Which I could swear is more than I used to get.

I may try higher clocks tomorrow (maybe 4500?) but I am now convinced the CPU is running in the parameters it should have left the factory. Not clocking absolute balls and cooking itself to try and out epeen AMD.

So here is the last unfinished pic of the rig you will see.



Here is the final mod.



And the final pics will be coming over the next few days, as I now have to put everything left over into the loft, sort this room out properly and install the last of the new stuff (mouse, mat, speakers etc).
 
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180W at full turbo and max temp of 100°C. Yeah that's nuts. Could understand it if you're talking a high end CPU destined for some serious water-cooling and where the performance gain is "worth it"....but a mid tier (I mean i5 Vs i7/i9) CPU that's crazy. Maybe balance the turbo'ing against the temps, no? Glad I jumped ship and went team red for this gen!
Nice save on the clocks and volts though.
 
I’ll be honest I had exactly the same issues with a 3950x Ryzen on a 120 AIO. Only there was no fixing that.

Intel has a lot of pluses for me. Like running four sticks of RAM for starters. But yeah how it ships is simply insane. That said the competition is no joke now, and Intel have indeed fixed that with the core 200 series but the cost is everyone thinks it’s totally bad just because it’s not the fastest. Like it was literally slaughtered by influencers even though it was a good range of CPUs.

If we didn’t live in a world now of pure gratification the plus sides would have been noted. But the extremes people now expect is how we end up with CPUs like this.

Don’t get me wrong here I am elated with how it turned out. Beyond happy tbh.

The back of the rig especially looks incredible.

Also. I had “Ryzen jank “ with the 1920x, 3950x and 3600. The 5700X3D is by far the best AMD I’ve had tbh. For what AMD charge now you’d expect them to be able to handle four sticks of RAM but nope.

I also need to remember the CPU was literally sat there and had been paid for months ago so it was basically free. Same goes for the 8 Pack DDR4 which had been in storage for well over a year. So the sacrifice if you could even call it that given I’ve lost 0 performance is literally nothing but a benchmark result. You don’t play benchmarks.
 
Fantastic, those fans look lovely, I may have to pick some up myself. Great work on the case I'm lobing how this has come out. And pleased to hear you sorted out the crashing issue, and saved some heat, noise and electricity while doing so. Triple win there.
 
Thanks dude.

I’m just glad I could sort it.

Probably going to have a day off today. Three 12 hour shifts has left me knackered.

I’m on door watch atm for the speakers.

BTW the fans? Best RGB I’ve seen on a fan. Just beware they’re Delta noisy if they get angry.
 
OK so a quick update before I carry on with the cleaning tidying and etc. CPU is now extremely happy. I loaded up PUBG and it hit like 48c so there's deffo still room for higher clocks. I just need time, something I lack atm.



GPU temps are also very good indeed.



Mouse is working beautifully after the repair.



I now own the only R12 that has a bum as pretty as this.



And a face like this.



Side shots.





And the money shots.







OK so I thought this would take hours, turns out it took about 2 minutes.



So I ordered this.

 
OK so the final update on this.

The power LED and HDD LED have both left the chat. They are obs not capable of handling 3.3v or whatever the header puts out. Might fix it one day but probably not.

I also worked on the clocks yesterday. It seems that 4.4ghz max is the sweet spot, with maximum CPU temps in the 60s. If you have worked with fans on a curve you will know this is the absolute sweet spot, as when you get to the 70s things get noisy.

I also had RAM issues again. I looked at the JEDEC for both 4000 and 4133 and wrote all of the settings down. I figured if I used the JEDEC settings for 4000 but set the clock speed for the RAM to 3600 I would be super stable. However, it wasn't happening. I bought myself STALKER 2 a few days ago and used it as a stability test. No benchmark made the RAM crash but UE5 soon sorted the wheat from the chaff and made the game crash. It turns out that the culprit was once again the board. See, at 4000mhz JDEC recommends 1.35v. At 4133mhz JEDEC states 1.4. So what was the board giving it? 1.5v, yes. Because why not? /rolls eyes. As soon as I set it to 1.35? that was it, job done. No more crashing.
 
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