Project Smurf 3.0

[Smffy]

Nah, the GPU cable comb looks terrible....you should post it to me; it'll look much better in my case! I promise to be very gentle when I cut it in half for my non-sli setup

You're right though, the blue looks awful. Purple is better but I think of the lot I prefer the light orange (one before blue). White's good too but could be construed as boring. Colour change based on mood perhaps? Rig it up to a breathalyser and have it change colour based on number of repetitions of step 1?

I've actually got a spare comb but its literally 8+6 sent in error so no good for the majority of modern GPUs. Think they're like £4 though...

Following some techy thread elsewhere where someones developing software control for these LED fans, the Corsair logic was seriously lacking considering in effect you can control every LED individually it makes no sense to have preset effects. The key issue being that all the cool breathing or motion effects cycle EVERY colour with no option...

 

[Cenedd]

I was only pulling your leg but thanks. Mine's 8+6 as it happens but I'm not sure a double-back comb would help unless I redesign things. Still haven't got round to sleeving the ATX cable yet. I'd like to say it's entirely because I've had more pressing things to do....but some of it's just laziness!

 

[OJ46]

Think it's fair to say you've got this build race in the bag mate, and it's looking bloody beautiful as well!

Definitely think the light golden orange is best for lighting, really shows off the copper without being overpowering like some of the more bold colours. Might just be as I've never really been a fan of the whole "make everything shine like a nightclub" thing, and the subtle tinge on the gold really works for me

Whatever the colour it's looking great though, which must be a relief after all the hassles you've had along the way

 

[Smffy]

Think it's fair to say you've got this build race in the bag mate, and it's looking bloody beautiful as well!

Definitely think the light golden orange is best for lighting, really shows off the copper without being overpowering like some of the more bold colours. Might just be as I've never really been a fan of the whole "make everything shine like a nightclub" thing, and the subtle tinge on the gold really works for me

Oh you might be right mate... incoming updates!

I'm a fan of that yellow/gold/orange too - looks a bit like a sort of Sepia tint to it which I like with the oldie industrial feel. One thing i've defo decided is i'm going to order a slab of plexi cut to size and replace the small window with that - just way to much hidden with the stock cover on. Not a fan of the RGB acid disco.

New OCUK cable swag arrived... Slim Sata cables to hide away - seriously slim. Product feedback: incredibly small and hide-able, but there is NO way that picture on the product sitting side by side is legit. All are right angled and its literally a case of force them in side by side which I don't feel is right.

New kitchen roll mod arrived, installed lots of it for those long gaming sessions where you can't be bothered to go to the toilet. That or I prepared for Dr. Drop being a little liar and it actually leaks like a sieve...

Before filling it I noticed I was a total retard and didn't connect a fan to the 'RPM' slot on the splitty................ FML. Opened all the back AGAIN to literally move a fan 1 slot over. #Dumbass. So once it was back together I filled it up - oh my god it was the most effort I've ever had to physically put in to a PC. Things to note:

1. This thing WEIGHS. Like i'm not kidding, pretty sure it is over 30kg comfortably.
2. Rads much? Getting the pumps totally free of air is essential with that bitspower dual top - any air means one pump just spams bubbles at the other and they dont get any kind of flow going...
3. Had to spend about 1.5 hours filling, picking this massive thing up, turning it over (whilst running), filling, repeating, until eventually all the air was gone

But its done, full, running, and most importantly as yet is not leaking...

Whilst messing with the fans I've also decided the old SP120s at the front at quite a bit louder than the nice HD120 magnetic lift, noticeably higher pitch too. Soooooooooo i'm probably going to buy MORE fans and swap those out, i'll time it with draining this de-ionised out and replacing with the actual fluid - of which I might need more because this just drank 3 litres of water in one sitting. I plan on draining partly and topping up with the de-ionised for a few more litres at least (2-5lt) to flush it out before finally filling with the good stuff and cooking up my nice copper orange fluid.

Probably going to have time for that on Friday all going well, then we can see how much of it i've killed making the thing. (pls work 1080s and delid 6700k)...

Progress.

 

[Cenedd]

1. This thing WEIGHS. Like i'm not kidding, pretty sure it is over 30kg comfortably.

Welcome to my world! With each draining I have to lift the whole case from carpet onto the desk in a fairly restricted space, being careful not to smash a monitor off the desk in the process Reckon I've got some sort of hernia coming on now!

2. Rads much? Getting the pumps totally free of air is essential with that bitspower dual top - any air means one pump just spams bubbles at the other and they dont get any kind of flow going...

It's almost certainly classified as 'unorthodox'....but you've known me long enough to know that doesn't stop me! If you connect a straight fitting and a bit of tube to a spare port on the top of your res (if that's possible on that) and blow, it'll push the coolant into the pump so it's pumping fluid and not just bubbles. You can also do it by squeezing the tubing in sequence....but probably not with copper!

3. Had to spend about 1.5 hours filling, picking this massive thing up, turning it over (whilst running), filling, repeating, until eventually all the air was gone
Whilst messing with the fans I've also decided the old SP120s at the front at quite a bit louder than the nice HD120 magnetic lift, noticeably higher pitch too. Soooooooooo i'm probably going to buy MORE fans and swap those out, i'll time it with draining this de-ionised out and replacing with the actual fluid - of which I might need more because this just drank 3 litres of water in one sitting. I plan on draining partly and topping up with the de-ionised for a few more litres at least (2-5lt) to flush it out before finally filling with the good stuff and cooking up my nice copper orange fluid.

3 litres is pretty much what mine took....but mine is somewhat offset by the oversize 880ml res!
The SP120's I've played with were pretty good. Loud on full whack but you could turn them down ridiculously slow and still feel them pushing a breeze through a rad. Could be worth trying them slower on their own so you can feel the air they push and then see what the noise is like in concert. Might save you a penny or some.

Front bezels on the Aquaero and res are looking good.

 

[Smffy]

I know I don't NEED new fans... but. When they run full it's like 2,100RPM so I will drop them down some anyway. Can always swap them out in future but I'll admit to being close to throwing £80 at some New non LED MLS.

Thinking about it I'm sure someone was selling 10 they won... I'm also tempted to add a rear fan to improve flow but I might just see if it's better when I remove the cover and could just be a passive exhaust with a grill.

 

[Cenedd]

Well if we're talking about stuff you don't need and would struggle to justify that's a different matter. I'm not going to dissuade you...that'd be massively hypocritical!

I think the batch of ML120's you were talking about has already been sold.

Are all the rads drawing cold air in? If so, a high flow (low SP) fan might help as long as it's quiet enough.

 

[Smffy]

Push/pull shoving air in the front(x8) and bottom(x4) with the top exhausting hot out (x2 front/x3 rear).

I mean 17 fans is enough I know but will no doubt mess with it moving forward

 

[Cenedd]

Quantity != sufficiency.....otherwise I wouldn't still be eyeing up various shiny power tools [I'm not likely to use sufficiently to justify the cost] despite there being a stack of boxx's (sic) next to me that's three high already. I think I might have become obsessed with the boxes now to make everything tidy.....if only I could be bothered to finish what I start. Such is the dilemma of the lazy perfectionist. At least it's in some way self-balancing!

Should be a good balance of flow. You might find that a rear exhaust robs the top rad of some flow....but you're only going to know by trying the variations and benching the temperatures. That is the perfectionist route. The lazy route is to declare (probably quite accurately) that the difference between all the permutations is likely to be less than 1 degree - certainly less than 3 - and hence it probably isn't worth the effort for the return. Hmmm, sometimes I even depress myself!

 

[Smffy]

Yay fan geek out!! Haha.

I'll probably just try removing the guard. There's another option also, 3 more fans at the rear back chamber pulling more cold in... or maybe I need another rad? Lol

 

[Cenedd]

... or maybe I need another rad? Lol

....and then another CPU to get it warm

 

[Smffy]

Just booted up windows... nothing has exploded yet.

 

[Cenedd]

Must need overclocking then...clearly running too cool

How's the colourful vocabulary going around the fill and bleed?

 

[Smffy]

Must need overclocking then...clearly running too cool

How's the colourful vocabulary going around the fill and bleed?

Its a dream to bleed and i've figure out easy fill...

Bottom drain port does some amazing work, then because i've got multi ports on the top I can literally turn the ball valve to seal, stick the PETG in a fitting up top and lay it on its back. Open the drain valve to vent air and it drains the rest.

About to drain and fill with coolant before the OC starts, idles are low... Fans on 100% until i sort the Aq. config

 

[Smffy]

Soooo, boring bit first... Drained and refilled the de-ionised water for a final rinse and while it was running made the last few cables:

Tidy up round back...

And finally drain again after testing that everything wasn't dead from the months of building... Amazingly works fine, so commenced filling with the proper stuff:

Its not really gone at all Orange but I don't mind it, spot of colour is all you see here so its pretty nice:

So its now working, fingers crossed nothing odd happens with the coolant and pipes. Few quick benchmarks and a basic 4.5 overclock on the CPU it seems much improved on the last case... The CPU idles at about 17c (sometimes 15), GPUs 23c, particularly impressive is the GPUs under full load are between 30-33c which is almost half the previous and lower than anything I've ever seen on a single GPU let alone two of these heat monsters. Difficult to overclock them as they've always just run at 2025 as is.

A promising start.

P.s. its so cold sitting near it I need to sort out my Aquaero and dial down the breeze!

 

[OJ46]

Nice! Those are some properly crazy temperatures, either you're an Eskimo or you need to turn the heating up

Scrap that... How about adding 2 more GPU's so you can test it properly? Can't have the cooling system that under stressed, it doesn't look justified then lol

Baffles me where they get the 'boost' figures from for the GPU's as they always seem to run at a completely different speed to the one advertised anyway. Will see what the Gaming X defaults to when running properly cold

 

[Cenedd]

Does not need to turn the heating up, just needs to game for longer until the room comes up to temp!

 

[Smffy]

Ordered replacement fans... Its not very effective trying to manage the speed of the MLs with the SPs as the power reduction to stop the whine on the higher RPM SP results in the ML dropping to say 400rpm at 50%.

I've gone for the plain black ML120s though which come in twin packs so only about £50. Still need to get the glass ordered, and I'm going to redo my delid CPU as it literally won't clock over 4.5 right now when it originally ran @ 4.8 no dramas. The GPUs seem to overclock really well but i'm hitting 'SLI' limit in GPU-Z which I think is probably down to the lane limit and 8x - unless i'm missing something? I can clock the 1080s at 2,150 with fans at 50% and they only hit 40c, no crashes just the performance peak seems more like 2,100mhz. Memory would also run happily at 5,505.

So more draining to be done, i've ordered the yellow coolant to mix with red in the hope it will actually change colour lol.

 

[Cenedd]

Ah, yes if you've got a mix of ML and SP (or any non-identical fans) on one channel, that would make things more challenging.

Run out of PCI-E channels? So well be seeing a migration to X99 next then?

 

[Smffy]

Ah, yes if you've got a mix of ML and SP (or any non-identical fans) on one channel, that would make things more challenging.

Run out of PCI-E channels? So well be seeing a migration to X99 next then?

I'll be honest I was thinking about it before but i'd want top end and the 6950 pricing is still insane. So we will see what Ryzen brings, I still get strange performance when benching like freezing in Heaven runs for example but sort of sticks a frame for fractions of a second then continues (just enough to notice it). No FPS drops reporting, voltage limit seems to kick in unless ramped up a lot but still the same problem occurs when its not even clocked... Difficult to figure it out, will think about it while im away for the weekend and see next week!