unholy_walrus

1) Define "hot". Sure, the radiator heats the air to an extent. That's how radiators work. The point is that (at least I claim) the effect on internal component temps is minimal. 2) What factors did I not take into account? Saying something isn't being taken into consideration and then not mentioning what that something is - that's not great. Note that while I would never claim that my testing is anywhere near even adequate, I do think that if running rads at intakes, dumping all that "hot" air into the case, was really that bad temp-wise, I should've seen at least some indication of it during my fairly extensive run of stressing, gaming, movies, work etc. Obviously this isn't the first time either, and I've yet to see a "hot" internal temps -scenario. To be clear - I'm not claiming there is no difference. I'm saying the difference in internal temps is very small. However, having thought about it, I think I am ready to make the claim that having radiators as intakes is slightly more benefitial as a whole (obviously doesn't apply to every case). I'm just trying to make sure I don't misunderstand - I'm not sure if I'm getting this right. It seems to me that you're saying that having a rad as an intake in the front is bad, but on the top it's okay? I really don't think that's what you're saying, hence why I asked about this. I mean the first post was; Now, the only two options I see here are that you're saying what I discussed just now, or that a) you're running rads outside the case a'la MoRa or b) you have a case with a basement for example, that allows you to run them as intakes without effecting the main compartment. If either a or b is correct, that would've been really good to know as it would've made this post much, much less confusing. I wouldn't be surprised if much of this is just misunderstanding either. If that's the case, I'm sorry.

There is no "hot air". I wish I could find where this whole concept of "having rads as intakes is bad" was investigated and debunked, because I know I've seen that just a while back. I'd be willing to bet that even in a fairly extreme case such as mine the effect to case temps is mininmal, even negligible. What I can say personally is that when I tested 240 rad front intake-360 rad top exhaust-120 fan back exhaust vs 240 rad front intake-360 rad top intake, 120 fan back exhaust, even when stressing both the cpu and gpu the difference in MB temps & a case temp probe was negligible. Hardware used was a GTX 1080 & a 4770k @1.41v, fans at around 800-1k rpm. Having said that, I did see enough of an improvement on water temp on the second configuration, though I'm aware that my testing was absolutely inadequate, thus I won't make any absolute claims here. It was enough for me to choose that configuration for daily use though. What do you mean by "fresh air"?

I won't pretend to know the science of it, but I do know that even with a 240 & 360 rads set as intakes and a single 120mm fan as an exhaust, the internal case temp won't reach even 40c during load at 25c ambient temp (Define S). Setting all rads as intakes has had only positive effects when running both cpu & gpu under water, based on my experience in the past few years. I don't mind having a very slightly higher case temp if as a result the liquid temp is lower.

If you don't want to spend a whole lot of money, Noctua's NF-P12 redux fans are shockingly good for rad use considering the price, at 500-1k rpm. Their performance tends to drop off at higher rpm's compared to NF-F12 and especially NF-A12x25, however I don't think you should ever run fans much faster than that or it sort of defeats the whole idea of watercooling. I could never afford the NF-A12x25 or NF-F12 for my rads, however even if I could, I'd still go with the NF-P12 redux for that use case. If I have to run fans on a custom loop at 1k+ rpm, I've done something wrong or I have a very small case. My own testing was very much limited and flawed, but based on the tests we did on my friend's NF-A12x25 fans the performance was pretty underwhelming at sub 1000 rpm in rad use. It got consistently beaten by the NF-P12 redux until at around 1100 rpm, and then at 1200+ rpm it was finally both more quiet and performed better. At 1300+ rpm the performance was great, better than anything else, but the noise was already too much for me, despite being impressive for the airflow. The higher the rpm, the more impressive the performance. For the NF-P12 the exact opposite was true, performance at 1100+ rpm wasn't great.

I would suggest getting some other fans for your rads. The NF-S12A is a fantastic fan, but it doesn't do great on rad use. I wouldn't use it even on low fpi and/or slim rads. The performance really isn't great in my experience. The NF-P12 / NF-P12 redux would be a significant upgrade already, and you can't go wrong with the NF-F12 (though I prefer the NF-P12's sound profile at 500-1000rpm). Then there's the new NF-A12 fans that are supposed to be great, but shockingly expensive. The NF-P12 redux is my new go-to for radiator use at 1000 rpm or less for a reasonable price. If you don't want Noctua, the EK Vardar, Corsair ML120, CoolerMaster Silencio FP120 are all good choices. The FP120 might just be the most underrated radiator fan in existence. If you want to go super cheap, the Arctic P12 is the obvious choice. For 7€ you'll get a fan that pretty much competes with 2-3x more expensive fans.

It's very common to have some of the fins get damaged/bent when handling rads. They're made of aluminum or copper, thus making them fairly soft. All of my rads have bents fins from dropping fittings on them etc. Just like @Semper said, you'll lose some cooling effectiveness, but very little - unless the damaged are is large and prevents airflow significantly. In your case, you shouldn't even notice it. Do make sure the liquid channel is indeed intact, but if there is no visible damage on it at all, you should be completely fine. Luckily the channels themselves aren't quite as fragile as the fins, and most modern rads tend not to have them directly under the screw holes or they have protective plates under the holes to prevent damage - though I would still be careful when handling rads. I've had to repair channels on a couple older rads damaged by using wrong screws, and it's not great fun. Personally I have a hard time trusting my own (sort of botched) repairs so it's usually a death sentence for the rad.

I had a leak due to a 45° EK-AF fitting that pretty much completely failed. It's a miracle I didn't end up with serious damage. I figured I might aswell move the rad from the roof to the front and generally re-do the loop. It's basic as fuck, but I'm working on a non-existent budget. The camera on my Honor 6 really doesn't do it justice either. I'll still need to fix the LED strips and sleeve those ugly ugly wires, but meh. I'm a lazy bastard.

If you plan on watercooling your card, go for EVGA. Otherwise the Gainward card is the obvious choice because of the fantastic cooler it has. Also, didn't EVGA fuck up the Pascal cards pretty badly, missing thermal pads and all that? I'm not sure which cards were effected or if they've finally fixed the issue.

Those temps are perfectly normal if you don't have a delidded chip. My liquid cooled 1.32v 4770k hits 65-70c in Witcher 3 with sub 40c liquid temp, which is why I'll be delidding this chip like every Haswell I've ever owned. So far I've just been too lazy to do so, but soon I'll re-do my entire loop so I won't have any excuses not to do it any more. The TIM between the IHS and the CPU die isn't good but it isn't exactly horrible either. The problem is usually just bad contact. Delid the chip, get rid of the epoxy glue or whatever the gunk is they use to glue the IHS to the chip and then use liquid metal TIM between the IHS and the die, and be amazed by the temps you get. Delidding, when done right, is easy, safe and definitely worthwhile - especially with Haswell chips.

What kind of heatsinks did you use for the VRM if I may ask? Seeing this has made me want to try something on a reference 780 I'll get soon. I have a bunch of small copper heatsinks I used on one of my R9 290s somewhere around here but I suspect they may be way too high to fit inside.

I was referring to the power delivery though, not the vram chips.

I still find most full cover blocks to be better looking, but I have to admit this is a very nice mod. It's definitely the best one of these mods I've ever seen - most of them look amateurish and sloppy, unlike yours. The idea is nice and the end result looks sharp. My only real concern when comparing this to a full cover block would be VRM cooling, but it seems that the reference design provides no VRM heatsinks to begin with (correct me if I'm wrong, I've never seen a reference 980Ti up close) so I suppose it should be okay with just airlow from the blower fan.

I'd suggest going for whichever decent quality custom card is the cheapest where you live. The GTX 1060 should give you a slight performance edge in gaming right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if the tables were turned a bit in a while. If the cards are within like 10-15€ of eachother, I'd probably advice you go with the GTX 1060, but both cards will do well. If I had to choose a card, I'd probably go for a Sapphire RX 480 Nitro. Sapphire generally makes fantastic cards and I've yet to hear anything bad about the 480 Nitro. The 4GB Nitro is by far the best deal when it comes to buying a new gpu where I live; the price-to-performance ratio is really just amazing. Sure, the 4GB vram could end up being somewhat of an issue in the future, but the value is just so good. I'll probably end up getting the 4GB Nitro for my 2500k machine to replace the R9 290 that's having problems.

In all honesty I find this whole PCMR circlejerk more annoying and sad than anything.

I'm in the same boat. If I were to lose hardware now, I'd be completely fucked unless warranty saved my ass. Like I could replace the mobo alone, if I could find a good Z97 board second hand, and I might even be able to replace the CPU with like a 4690k or 4790k if I absolutely had to. But if like my loop leaked all over the place or I lost my GPU? Yeah, I'd be without a decent PC for a long time. Unemployment is hell.