Welcome to my first ever build log. Ive always enjoyed reading others so thought I'd stick my own efforts up. (apologies in advance for the photo quality but all I have access to camera wise is an iphone)
Project Recase isnt the most exciting of names but was a damn site better than the other halfs suggestion of project geek, and it captured the essesnce of what I was trying to achieve.
After sitting on my hands for most of last yeah ignoring the urge to upgrade my rig which consisted of the following :
Asus P8Z68-V
I5 2500k @ 4.5ghz
8gb Ram
Corsair RM650 80+gold
Sapphire R9 290
evo 850 120gb & 500gb SSD's
250gb HDD
BR optical drive
All housed in this rather attractive case
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So when I saw an offer on a phanteks evolv during the black friday sales, I jumped on it.
Fast forward to after xmas I finnaly got round to getting to work on the pc and it became apparent that given my last build was rather untidy and the fact I now have a widow in the case to display my fine work I'd be best actually making some effort.
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It also seemed a perfect opportunity to have a go at watercooling, which is something I've always wanted to have a bash at, so off to our favourite pc parts retailer to order what I thought I might need, and well there was some scope creep...
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So the final spec ended up like this
enthoo evolv atx case
5820k
x99 krait edition
16gb hyper X predator 2400mhz
r9 290
120gb & 500gb Samsung evo 850 ssd's
corsair RM650 + braided cables from cable mods
water cooling parts
ek xres 140 revo d5 pwm
ek r9 290 acetal+nickel gpu block
ek supremacy evo x99 cpu block
360mm coolgate g2 rad
240mm magicool g2 slim rad
mayhems ultra clear 10/16 tubing
EK 16/10 fittings 4x 45°, 10x compression
for a drain point 1x Y 45°, ball valve, double nipple, extender and 3/8" barb
ocuk 120mm 3 fan bundle
4x corsair sp120 led (comedy over order as I only needed 2, but turned out to be a good job in the end as you'll see later) 1x corsair af140 led
1litre mayhems pastel ice white
and finally some thermal grizzly paste and coollaboratory cleaning set
no Haribo
Once everything arrived I got to work and removed everything I was planning to reuse
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Given that Pascal/Artic Islands are due to release some time this year and I'm hoping with it will come the ability for single card 4k gaming I decided to keep the 290 which does me fine for 1080p / 144hz and underwater will hopefully get rid of the stupidly loud cooler.
The plan was to stick the 360 rad in the top and the 240 in the front of the case, this is where I hit my first problem, in that I serioulsy under estimated how deep the 360 was and how big the d5 combo actually was.
So after much head scratching and taking advantage of the flexibility of the evolv case I finally figured a way to get everything in and with the aid of a pair of pliers to the rad bracket, managed to get the pump to clear the card and after junking the HDD bays managed to squeeze the 360 in the front
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Next up was blocking the gpu which was pretty painless, although probably helped by the knowledge that I'd had my use from it and if it went pear shaped it would be getting replaced with a 980ti lol
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Then I got on with putting the drain point together, which will live in the bottom of the case out of sight - pro tip - when you count out how many fitting you think your going to need remember to include the drain point, and finally getting the loop in
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Once filled, I ran the loop for 12 hours and was pleasantly surprised that there wasnt a single leak, so it was on to final assembly.
Here I hit my second issue in that the leads on the ocuk fan bundle were a little on the short side and only one of them would reach the fan hub.
As luck would have it, I had over ordered on the corsair fans and ended up using those. So the d5 now runs of the cpu 1 header and the fans, via the phanteks hub, connect to the second cpu header, and despite reading various reports of the fan hub being a bit flaky can happily report mine operates fine
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And there we have it all done over the course of a Saturday
Currently I've been getting stuck into overclocking, at the moment the cpu is upto 4.5 and 1200 core on the gpu (for the life of me I cant get any increase on the gpu memory, but hey ho)
CPU temps under full load don't really get above 60°C and the gpu sits at 52°C with everything whisper quiet so happy days
Fin.
Project Recase isnt the most exciting of names but was a damn site better than the other halfs suggestion of project geek, and it captured the essesnce of what I was trying to achieve.
After sitting on my hands for most of last yeah ignoring the urge to upgrade my rig which consisted of the following :
Asus P8Z68-V
I5 2500k @ 4.5ghz
8gb Ram
Corsair RM650 80+gold
Sapphire R9 290
evo 850 120gb & 500gb SSD's
250gb HDD
BR optical drive
All housed in this rather attractive case
So when I saw an offer on a phanteks evolv during the black friday sales, I jumped on it.
Fast forward to after xmas I finnaly got round to getting to work on the pc and it became apparent that given my last build was rather untidy and the fact I now have a widow in the case to display my fine work I'd be best actually making some effort.
It also seemed a perfect opportunity to have a go at watercooling, which is something I've always wanted to have a bash at, so off to our favourite pc parts retailer to order what I thought I might need, and well there was some scope creep...
So the final spec ended up like this
enthoo evolv atx case
5820k
x99 krait edition
16gb hyper X predator 2400mhz
r9 290
120gb & 500gb Samsung evo 850 ssd's
corsair RM650 + braided cables from cable mods
water cooling parts
ek xres 140 revo d5 pwm
ek r9 290 acetal+nickel gpu block
ek supremacy evo x99 cpu block
360mm coolgate g2 rad
240mm magicool g2 slim rad
mayhems ultra clear 10/16 tubing
EK 16/10 fittings 4x 45°, 10x compression
for a drain point 1x Y 45°, ball valve, double nipple, extender and 3/8" barb
ocuk 120mm 3 fan bundle
4x corsair sp120 led (comedy over order as I only needed 2, but turned out to be a good job in the end as you'll see later) 1x corsair af140 led
1litre mayhems pastel ice white
and finally some thermal grizzly paste and coollaboratory cleaning set
no Haribo
Once everything arrived I got to work and removed everything I was planning to reuse
Given that Pascal/Artic Islands are due to release some time this year and I'm hoping with it will come the ability for single card 4k gaming I decided to keep the 290 which does me fine for 1080p / 144hz and underwater will hopefully get rid of the stupidly loud cooler.
The plan was to stick the 360 rad in the top and the 240 in the front of the case, this is where I hit my first problem, in that I serioulsy under estimated how deep the 360 was and how big the d5 combo actually was.
So after much head scratching and taking advantage of the flexibility of the evolv case I finally figured a way to get everything in and with the aid of a pair of pliers to the rad bracket, managed to get the pump to clear the card and after junking the HDD bays managed to squeeze the 360 in the front
Next up was blocking the gpu which was pretty painless, although probably helped by the knowledge that I'd had my use from it and if it went pear shaped it would be getting replaced with a 980ti lol
Then I got on with putting the drain point together, which will live in the bottom of the case out of sight - pro tip - when you count out how many fitting you think your going to need remember to include the drain point, and finally getting the loop in
Once filled, I ran the loop for 12 hours and was pleasantly surprised that there wasnt a single leak, so it was on to final assembly.
Here I hit my second issue in that the leads on the ocuk fan bundle were a little on the short side and only one of them would reach the fan hub.
As luck would have it, I had over ordered on the corsair fans and ended up using those. So the d5 now runs of the cpu 1 header and the fans, via the phanteks hub, connect to the second cpu header, and despite reading various reports of the fan hub being a bit flaky can happily report mine operates fine
And there we have it all done over the course of a Saturday
Currently I've been getting stuck into overclocking, at the moment the cpu is upto 4.5 and 1200 core on the gpu (for the life of me I cant get any increase on the gpu memory, but hey ho)
CPU temps under full load don't really get above 60°C and the gpu sits at 52°C with everything whisper quiet so happy days
Fin.
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