Project: ケイ - Watercooled Threadripper

All settled down now after having to re seat the cpu block. The temperatures were getting into the high 80's for no apparent reason. Still gets up into the high 70's after re-seating. Should'a gone with the raystorm neo. Hey-ho, wasn't available at the time. Switched the internal lighting over to RGB mode for now. I've also stripped out all of the dust filters as air flow has been pretty mediocre at best considering the number of fans. Doesn't seem to be getting any more dusty inside than before either and certainly runs a good 5-7 degrees cooler on ambient.

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Rearranged the room back at the start of the year so that the pc could come out from under the desk and benefit from greater airflow. Seems to have worked wonders as it runs about 5-10 degrees cooler again. Only disadvantage is that I can no longer see any of the fancy bits as it butts up to the hifi rack. Will need a case that can flip to be an upside-down design in order to have the pretty bits face outwards in the other direction.


Things are a lot less crowded since moving to a modular power supply. I miss my home braided cables, so will probably have to figure out how to make some new cables up for the PCI-E, EPS and ATX runs. I also finally figured out why the side was such a nightmare to reattach. Turns out the magnetic dust filter for the psu was sitting just into the area where the side panel contacts the edges of the case which pushed the side panel outwards making the screws a nightmare to get in place.
 
Nope standalone blocks didn't get the upgrade kit. They were offering a €25 voucher off buying a monoblock. I'm divided between that idea and going for a heatkiller IV all copper block. The VRM's can get quite toasty if it's under sustained heavy abuse, but they aren't particularly close to their thermal limits.
 
Replaced the one monitor with a bigger 27" smasung CHG70. The difference is astonishing, it's made the old 60Hz displays look like a slideshow and feel jerky as hell not to mention the lag.


Also gave the case a quick dusting as it's been roughly 7 months since I put it all together.


Some more artsy ones.

 
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6 months down the line and all is well. Threadripper & Vega working in perfect harmony. Added a replacement sound card a few weeks back as the on-board doesn't cut it in the ASIO department, so an RME HDSPe AIO went in which is much better working with audition and FL studio.

Not all that bad in the dust department either considering I've not dusted it since may. BMW nitrite free coolant still looking nice and teal. In the 6 years I've been watercooling, car coolant has always remained the same colour and kept everything 100% corrosion free. Still missing a blanking plate from the back, which I think may be in the server. I'm also still considering putting the GTX 780 back in along side the Vega to act as a cuda and physx card for applications that don't do opencl.

 
RME HDSPe AIO professional sound card added to make up for the loss of the xonar.


Decided to shove my old GTX 780 back in to use as a CUDA and physx accelerator along side my vega 56. Since I didn't fancy the pain of draining and refilling the loop, I stuck the old air cooler back on for now. I also discovered that I've managed to misplace the spare cables for the psu meaning I've had to power the 780 via the daisy chains which isn't ideal. Since it's only being used for basic tasks, the power draw is actually pretty low 99% of the time so it's not caused any problems.


I now have the following cards stuffed in there:
Vega 56
AJA Kona LSe
RME HDSPe AIO
GTX 780
 
I noticed an EK supremacy sTR4 nickel block in the B grade selection which I grabbed. It's in pretty nice condition considering the £40 reduction. It should make a fair difference to the cooling as I have one of the first EK blocks which is only a bit better than an AIO and worse than a noctua. Also grabbed a new thermal paste tube as I've used virtually all of my small tubes. I looked at kryonaught 37g at over £55 and decided that prolimatech PK-3 30g was significantly better value at £26 considering the small difference in performance between them.
 
Started stripping down everything this afternoon. Draining is quite easy provided you have the pc about 8-10" off the ground so the drain is downhill.


Picked up a few more fittings as the drain would be nice to have as a tap. Sadly the old fatboy barbs don't seem to be available anymore so XSPC black chrome was the next best thing. These should only be used on the drain for now anyway.


One well stuffed case. Some fluid always seems to like getting trapped between the radiator, cpu block and gpu block which always makes disassembly more interesting.


Old thermal paste contact patch. Covers the dies but not the whole IHS. You can see where the screws that are in the base of the block have no contact. It's most obvious in the lower left corner.


The sheer difference in size of the blocks is staggering. EK's first attempt at a sTR4 block was truly woeful.


The cold plate doesn't look quite so obvious but it's still quite a lot bigger. The weight difference is huge too, but that's down to the full plated copper build vs acetal top.
 
Checked the seals on the fittings that have been in use for the last 6 years. Look a bit squashed and feel slightly harder than the seals on the new fittings, so I've replaced them. I also replaced all of the PTFE tape.



Refitted the 780 block and fitted the new cpu block. Tubing routing is just about sorted, just need to persuade the tubing to go over the barbs now. The tap is put on the pipe from the top radiator to stop it from persistently dripping coolant as I work. I've shifted the AJA capture card back underneath the 780 as it needs the airflow from the radiator fans to remain reasonably cool.
 
All back together now. Ran the pump on an external supply all night, no leaks detected. EK squeezy filling bottle made filling significantly easier. Just filter the coolant into the bottle then squeeze it to fill the reservoir. So far in testing using prime 95 small FFT with FMA3 instructions, the highest I've seen is 71 degrees, compared to previously where it was peaking in the low 80's.


Also took apart the old block to see how it was fairing with debris and nickel plating. There was a small amount of plasticiser sitting in the jet plate which literally just washed away under the tap. No sign of any corrosion or plating loss.
 
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Acme said:
Looking great as ever! I envy your cable management abilities!

What is the lower-most card? Unusual to see a green PCB these days.
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Thanks. The card with the green pcb is an AJA Kona LSe which is a professional capture card. I primarily use it for capturing from VHS but can use it for other outdated VTR formats like betacam and dv. All pro capture cards seem to come with green PCB's for some reason.
 
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As part of my network 10Gbe upgrade, two intel x710 NICs arrived today for the windows pc's.


The workstation is now completely filled with expansion cards.
 
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