Project OTT

Catanonia

Catanonia

Catanonia

Associate
Joined
15 Mar 2012
Posts
2,315
Location
Santas Grotto
This is my 1st project log on OCUK and it will be to refresh my ugly current setup.

Currently I have a mess of a system, functional, powerful, but let us face it a bit of a mess and cobbled together throughout the year with no real thought to aesthetics.

Current specs are

Old Antec 900 series case, can't even remember the model number
3930K CPU overclocked to 4.8 with RayStorm Water Bock
32GB Corsair Ven 1600 RAM OC to 1866
Sapphire AMD 7990 with EK Copper Water Block
NVidia GeForce 8300 GT 512MB
Single 240 Generic Radiator
Samsung 830 256 SSD as OS Win7 64bit
2 x Generic 1.5TB HDD in Raid 0
1 x Asus PQ278B IPS 27 inch Monitor
2 x HP 22 inch side monitors
1 x HP 17 inch monitor
QPAD Mechanical Keyboard and RocCat Gaming Mouse.

Corsair 850W Power Supply

All this is water cooled with a XSPC Rad / Pump

All of it dusty and in need of a complete clean.

"Ignore the kink in the tubing, only there when I took side off for pictures"

DSC01973.JPG


DSC01979.JPG


I mainly use this for iRacing, hence the 4th pit board screen run by the older VGA card, the odd other gaming such as Crysis, Diablo III, Astrophotography processing (lots of processing) and mining LiteCoins. Also gets used for multiple VMWares building and testing domain solutions.

I want and need an upgrade to get this all in a nice new shiny case along with a good clean and loads more rad space for the CPU and GPU's

So arriving tomorrow from OCUK

£124.99 x 1 - NZXT Switch 810 Ultra Tower Case - Matt Black
£42.49 x 1 - Hardware Labs Black ICE Radiator GTX-Lite 360
£6.66 x 2 - EK-CSQ Adapter 90° G14 Black
£4.99 x 1 - XSPC HighFlex Hose 716" ID, 58" OD, 15.911.1mm, 2m, ClearUV
£1.49 x 2 - XSPC G14" to 12" Barb Fitting (Black Chrome)
£0.41 x 1 - XSPC Radiator Screw Set 6-32UNC (Black)

It will be a complete strip down and rebuild to incorporate a 2 rad solution and hopefully get these temperatures down for gaming and mining.

More to come soon when DPD arrive with my new kit tomorrow.
 
Last edited:
Well it arrived and spot the obvious mistake !!!!

DSC01984.JPG


Yes I ordered matt black and the order says so, but yes it is white !!!!! Comon OCUK, it is not that difficult.

However, I was considering the white and with the CDROM cover (nice touch) and the fact I can't wait another 3 or more days due to work, white it shall be. I will of course be contacting OCUK venting my frustration and asking for the £10 difference back :D:D

DSC01998.JPG


Ok so here are the goodies as they arrived :D:D

The case
DSC01987.JPG


It is big
DSC01991.JPG


Loads of accessories
DSC01993.JPG


360 Radiator, 2 x 90 bends, 2 x barbs and some tubing
DSC01983.JPG


Really nice case and my 1st proper one. Love the easy access, the swappable HDD unit, the tilted fan to cool graphics cards. Love the whole lot and a really quality item. 4 Fans are included all connected to a 7x3 pin pan splitter module included power by a standard molex. Sweet :)
Also has 2 x removable filters on the bottom and of course the top grill that can be opened or closed.



So I have started to strip down the parts I didn't need.

I am going with the 360 on top and the 240 on the bottom
So out with

Swappable HDD = Reservoir and pump are going here with a silver XSPC face.
Lower drive cage, 240 rad is going here.
Switched the fans around. The radiators will draw in cold air and the fans on the front and back will pull it out again. Kind of hope this will work

Airflow idea
Airflow.jpg


Blue is the Rads, Red are the fans

DSC01995.JPG


Removed the lower cage and place another fan in to draw out air
DSC01994.JPG


DSC01997.JPG


Also added in the top 360 radiator, nice simple fitting here.

DSC01996.JPG


The 7 splitter fan connector included, not sure how I am going to use this, might just keep the fans 100%, not sure yet or to use my crappy 6 fan controller which is black and well crap.
DSC01999.JPG


Some more piccies of the case.
DSC02000.JPG


DSC02001.JPG


So overall, very impressed with the WHITE switch 810 case. Very nicely built and so many options. Looks like cable management, radiator placement, airflow etc etc are all covered here.

So now the thread stops for a while whilst I destroy this machine I am typing on and build the cuts of the OTT project.
 
Last edited:
Here are some pictures of the finished build. I was quite wary of the black front fittings, but I personally think it works and so they are staying.
So hard to take pictures of such a large case in my office with a 18-70mm DSLR lens :D Hopefully they are clear enough

Have a few cabling issues to sort out, but I reckon this is a vast improvement over the initial build I had. Looks nicer too, but boy is it heavy :D

The front and rear fans are exhaust and during mining, I have the front cover off to get max unrestricted output from the fronts.
The radiators are intakes to bring in as much cold air as possible. I am probably going to swap out the crappy rad fans for Corsair SP 140 fans soon to try and get more air over the radiators.

Also going to add some blue strip lights into the case to light it up at night as it is dark through the window.

DSC02002.JPG


DSC02004.JPG


DSC02005.JPG


DSC02006.JPG


DSC02008.JPG


DSC02009.JPG


DSC02010.JPG


DSC02011.JPG


DSC02012.JPG


DSC02013.JPG


DSC02014.JPG


DSC02015.JPG


DSC02017.JPG


Temperatures got the hottest yet in the office whilst I was at work, still at 30 degrees ambient when I got home to take these pictures.

The GPU's maxed out at 59 degrees, so impressed, considering the GPU's were at full 100% power for all night and all day mining.

Had a couple of crashes, got to sort out the reasons for this, probably due to me moving the 7990 to another slot now I have the room.

Hope you enjoyed this little build, I did :)

Cat
 
Last edited:
Catanonia said:
I have more than enough rad spec and it was in budget for a triple. Still not told the wife yet that on top of the £150 I spent over the weekend on a GPU block, I just spent another £230 or more :D
Click to expand...

True, money is as good a reason as any to pick something!
To be honest they may well be good radiators, I just get put off by the word 'Lite', which is probably unjustified.
Also, to be honest I looked it up afterwards and I was confusing the GTX-Lite with the GTS-Lite.
Still, with those 2 rads it hopefully shouldn't matter if they're not the absolute top of the range rads.
Hope it all goes well for you, both the build and when the wife finds out...
 
GoogalyMoogaly said:
True, money is as good a reason as any to pick something!
To be honest they may well be good radiators, I just get put off by the word 'Lite', which is probably unjustified.
Also, to be honest I looked it up afterwards and I was confusing the GTX-Lite with the GTS-Lite.
Still, with those 2 rads it hopefully shouldn't matter if they're not the absolute top of the range rads.
Hope it all goes well for you, both the build and when the wife finds out...
Click to expand...

thanks mate, I would love to get gold plated top spec stuff, but I have blown the budget on the CPU and GPU and other stuff :) To me a rad is a rad, and when I have probably 50% more than I actually need, skimping a bit on it hopefully will be ok. The GTX-Lite is a chuncky thick rad too, so fingers crossed.

I had to tell the wife as she is at home today whilst I work and the delivery will happen :(... She is actually ok with it, but I do now have to take her underwear shopping :eek::eek::eek:
 
Delivery expected at noon today. Bet the wife will be surprised how big the package is whilst I am still at work. oh eh, that doesn't sound right :)

Not been this excited for ages about my computer. Somehow having a new case is like a brand new computer :)

EDIT : 1 large box and one smaller one delivered at home for me :) Now I have to wait till clocking off time to get home :) Top notch OCUK and DPD
 
Last edited:
Catanonia said:
Well it arrived and spot the obvious mistake !!!!

<...lots of pics and stuff...>

So now the thread stops for a while whilst I destroy this machine I am typing on and build the cuts of the OTT project.
Click to expand...

I believe both the fans at the front are set as intake, not exhaust.

Personally I'd be more tempted to have the 2 front fans and bottom rad blowing in and the top rad and rear fans blowing out. But that's just my preference.
Having both radiators as intakes will probably provide better temps too as neither will be using hot case air to cool.
 
4 hours hard slog, it is running :)

Whilst mining the CPU (not used) are back to normal 30 degrees and the GPU temps have dropped about 10 degrees. All due to the extra 360 rad :)

It does look good in black and white, except for the front with a black CDROM and Fan Controller :(

The fans on the front were set to intake, swapped them to exhaust as per my diagram.

Not sure if my pump / res is powerful enough, time will tell I suppose

Just swapped the XSPC front plate from silver to black. Black on white is really doing me actually :)

The £10 that OCUK owe me for the white compared to black case, hmmmm, some blue LED case lights :)


Pictures will follow tomorrow.
 
Last edited:
2am and testing, up at 6:30am :(

Ok an hour of very hard Litecoin mining on the 7990 and the temps refuse to go above 53 degrees compared to 63 and climbing before. Also the CPU temp (still stock 3930K) is under 40 pretty much idle.

Considering I am pushing both of the GPU cores at full overclock and 100% max for over an hour I consider this a RESULT :D

Gaming, well expect the GPU's to hardly touch 40 and the CPU to take more cooling power :)

Bedtime, piccies to follow tomorrow night. Thanks all.

Cat
 
All on a single 360 rad?

Nice to know, I've been looking in to a WC setup for myself and been doing a lot of head-scratching over how much rad space I need and how it affects temperatures.
 
Now I have a bit more time, some thoughts.

The build has been hard graft mining all night both GPU's @ 100% and the temperature has not budged from 53 degrees on the GPU's :) Will leave it all day and monitor from work when it gets hotter during the day, hopefully we have a result.

The Switch 810 is a beautiful case, I did wonder at spending £130 on a case, but I can see where the money goes and it is wonderfully made. The white, yeah really glad I kept it now. The paint quality on it is fantastic, no rough edges, nicely put together with a lot of thought behind it.

Some Pros and Cons

Pro
Beautifully made and fitted
Easy to remove hard drive cages along with simple rubber snap caddies
Hot swappable option.
Loads of cable management gromets
2 lots of filters below easy change and clean
4 free fans + 7 fan splitter included
Nice angled fan for cooling GPU's
Plenty of accessories and screws included, everything and more that is required.
Plenty of room for w/c and radiator layouts.

Cons (not many so being picky)
Thumb screws over tightened on shipping
Top vent cover could be designed better for fastening
Front cover could have more airflow for exhuast options

So impressed with this case, definately worth the money and if you want a w/c case and are wondering which to get, get the Switch 810, you will nto be disapointed.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom