Project "One" - Corsair 650D

stueng · 20 Jan 2012 at 21:26

Small update... I am kinda waiting for my basement area thing to make any real progress at the moment. I got a bit of aluminium off fleaday and will be attempting to bend it tomorrow

The stock corsair and the Xigmatek 200mm fan that I ordered were both rubbish. They only pushed about 60cfm of air. After some looking around I found a Coolermaster Mega Flow fan that pushes around 110 cfm. I ordered this but had further difficulty with the 200mm holes not being 200mm on the Phobya mounting plate so I spent a bit with the dremel

Naturally I chose a red LED fan and this is what it looks like in the case and switched on

The gigabyte board arrived and I also got some of those lamptron slot covers in red. Here is the board showing the revision 1.3 and also the red lamptron covers in the case

stueng · 20 Jan 2012 at 21:31

Oh, I also want to mention to anyone looking to build a 650D. The Gigabyte board layout is really nice for this case. With the 140mm fans mounted on the top radiator they clear the top mosfet while blowing huge amounts of air over them. Additionally it looks to me like the CPU power supply will fit without any modding to the fans

stueng · 22 Jan 2012 at 18:34

While I try and build/source my box for the bottom of the case and my fingers recover I have decided to build the loop and get the PC running

Im going to run it like this for a few weeks while I wait to get paid again and build/source the box

I have a few cables left to sleeve which I will do as and when I get time

So... start building the loop:

I had to drill holes in the motherboard tray to screw in the reservoir brackets

I fitted the res and started filling the loop and then started the leak testing. The light is terrible at the moment so the ISO on the camera is set to 6400 so the colours and everything dont look very good. I will get some better pics when there's some natural light around

This is what I was talking about earlier with regards to this motherboard being a good physical fit for this case/setup. The CPU power is not obscured in any way and the top fans fit snugly above the CPU block. As you can see I am still not very good at braiding

almostgfx · 23 Jan 2012 at 13:27

looks amazing!

terminator2k2 · 23 Jan 2012 at 19:14

looking very nice......

Rainagul · 23 Jan 2012 at 19:34

Very nice, pretty much what I want to my 600t soon. Are you just going to be running the 200mm at the front to cool the front 240 rad, or are you going to add some other fans to it too?

stueng · 23 Jan 2012 at 20:54

The front 200mm fan cools a 200mm rad
The top 2X120 GT cools a 240mm rad

stueng · 24 Jan 2012 at 00:38

Leak testing succesfull so I powered it up today. No pics yet as its a mess while I figure out exactly how many power cables and SATA cables I need and all that

Here is my first boot up idle temp. Everything in BIOS is exactly how it was from the factory

My AMD used to idle at 20 degrees on air but I understand Intel operate higher.. no idea if these temps are good or not, they dont seem to be to me

I ran PC Mark with 1 X 560Ti installed and BIOS/CPU/RAM still at factory default

Did some very quick testing on the overclock, managed to get 5GHZ with minimal fuss, manual voltage of 1.5v for a brief time. Could boot but not run stress test

5GHZ idle temps

Played BF3 for two hours with the RAM @ 1866 and the CPU at 4.5GHZ

Then ran PC Mark with the 4.5GHZ overclock

Here are the temps @ 4.5GHZ with Burn Test doing a few loops

stueng · 24 Jan 2012 at 00:39

I'm going to continue messing around with this tomorrow

stueng · 26 Jan 2012 at 01:25

PC is running very well at the moment, the heat from the GFX cards is huge in comparison to the rest of the case, I really need to find a solution for my GFX cards so I can them under water but its all very expensive!

I continue to seek someone who can fabrikate this box that I want at the bottom of the case. I have send off these drawings to someone I found on fleaday but as with many of the people I have contacted they go cold after they find out I only want one of them

Here is what I have sent off anyhow; I have changed it from the original design

The purpose of this box is to hide away the PSU and pump and to have tubing coming in a straight line out of the box as I think it will look good

jonnylaris · 26 Jan 2012 at 03:04

That's exactly what I wanted to do with my 650d, make a box like that a cover it with carbon print.

I was thinking of just buying some thin sheet metal and bending it.

Let me know if you find anyone.

stueng · 26 Jan 2012 at 09:23

Carbon print is a good idea... Wonder if I can find red/black carbon print will have a loot

The guy I have sent the picture too if he makes it it will be acrylic 2mm thick and I will dremel it to fit

Are you interested in his details or wait for me to photograph mine?

Wazz-1 · 26 Jan 2012 at 11:07

stueng said:
PC is running very well at the moment, the heat from the GFX cards is huge in comparison to the rest of the case, I really need to find a solution for my GFX cards so I can them under water but its all very expensive!

I continue to seek someone who can fabrikate this box that I want at the bottom of the case. I have send off these drawings to someone I found on fleaday but as with many of the people I have contacted they go cold after they find out I only want one of them

Here is what I have sent off anyhow; I have changed it from the original design

The purpose of this box is to hide away the PSU and pump and to have tubing coming in a straight line out of the box as I think it will look good

I have just made a similar thing to cover my PSU , some cables and a small inverter. Sorry for the poor photo

stueng · 26 Jan 2012 at 11:09

nice looking machine too bad about the photo

how did you make that then?

Jay794 · 26 Jan 2012 at 11:16

Damn, looking at this build makes me want to trade in my HAF 922 for a Corsair case, their cable management is so much better

Ary101 · 26 Jan 2012 at 11:54

looks amazing

Wazz-1 · 26 Jan 2012 at 15:57

stueng said:
nice looking machine too bad about the photo

how did you make that then?

Got a bit of mild steel sheet from B&Q, (steel because the Alu was silly price)
made a cardboard pattern and the just cut the steel with tin snips, the steel is only .5mm thick then sprayed up matt black. also made a new fan plate for the back of the drive bays to pull more air in

Keeps my system nice and cool.

Again sorry for poor quality photos
Have a go your self if you make a balls of it you've lost nothing but a couple of quid

stueng · 26 Jan 2012 at 21:14

I have read a few places to turn off C1E, Thermal Monitor, EIST and other advanced CPU features to increase stability with overclocks and this is one of the first things I did when I overclocked my CPU

With these things turned off I managed to get a boot at 5GHZ 1.5v but could not complete a benchmark/stress test

After some tinckering around I settled on a 4.7GHZ overclock because I could run this at not much over 1.4v

I came accross an official Asus post today and read with much interest that they recommend that you actually leave these advanced settings turned on.

I came home tonight and turned off these settings and tried again to squeeze the most out of my CPU at a reasonable voltage and here are my results

Prime has been running for about an hour now

I am going to keep lowering the voltage until I become unstable and will update again

Jay85 · 28 Jan 2012 at 14:36

I want to do something similiar with mine but instead of the plain black floor i have now i want a reflective mirrored one or chrome so i can see the fan side of my GPU.

No idea whether to vinyl wrap it though or to buy a mirror sheet and cut it.

stueng · 28 Jan 2012 at 19:00

@Wazz-1

Your machine looks amazing.. you really should get some decent photos of it and stick them up I really wanna see all the angles and everything in some good quality photos