sl06bhytmar

Cutting circular hole is easy with dremel when you watch the guide here
 
 

This project has been put on hold, but now it's back! I'm going with a new power setup, thanks to some very slim power supplies that let me keep a console-like shape for the case and without going too long.
 
I bought a 160W power supply on eBay that is salvaged from a HP All-in-One PC. It is a very slim form factor, only 25mm thickness (to compare, FlexATX and 1U are 40mm). The pinouts were easy to figure out and de-pinned and inserted a 6-pin connector to power the PCIe part of my GTX 1060 video card.
 

 

 
The skinny green wire is not needed and I should trim it. I guess that it is a low-voltage "sense" wire that the HP uses for another purpose. I will replace the HD-Plex DC power supply with a PicoPSU to make the entire system run from the 12V out of the AC power supply. That is not all, though. I bought another PSU which is supposed to be even thinner, should be coming next week...
 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylene_glycol_poisoning 
 
Go see a doctor OP
 

OP hasn't been online in 15 hours. RIP.
 
 

How exactly did you manage to "Accidentally" drink the coolant?
 

I have to agree, I think the Maingear probably is the worst. Didn't like the color or how things were put inside. Tacky.

I do about an hour of testing everytime I make a change. I always run the system like normal, turn the pump to max then put on some benchmarks. 
 
Ive had a leak on almost every thing in my pc. I always have fresh fluid so I never worry about it. I'll never go back to air cooling. Unless I give up on pc gaming. Just too many pro's over the con's. 

That's why I'm weary of water cooling. 

You get more advantage when you add more radiators where heat is dumped to ambient temperature trough much larger area than conventional air cooling units. Down sites of course are increased weight, leak risks, pump failure etc. 
 
Does it help you achieve better overclocks for instance? yes but not truly a lot because you're still limited by ambient temperature thus cost for increased overclocking potential is not recommended because money you dump into loop you can buy better components to get more bang for your money.

Things might change how big players like evga are rushing to market with pre-filled parts that you can hook up more easily and with much bigger manufacturing volumes costs go down also thus prices become lower also with increased competition so in future we might have very cheap 'custom loops'. 

So to finally answer you question completely: It is more cosmetic than overclocking potential increase. Also it technically increases lifespan of components because delamination happens underside ball grid array (BGA) chips when it goes trough heat cycles and how big the heat cycle delta T is. 
 
But ultimately both systems will heat up your room same amount

Spec: i7-6700k, Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 7, 32GB Avexir Core RAM (White LED), Asus 1070 ROG Strix Gaming OC, Samsung 961 512GB, Samsung 850 PRO 512GB SSD, Samsung EVO 2TB SSD. Loop consists of the Alphacool Eisbecher D5 150mm Acetal reservoir and Alphacool VPP655 pump, with EK Supremacy Evo CPU block and mostly EK fittings. I used a Bitspower drain valve, located at the bottom of the rad.
 
The Phanteks Evolv ATX Glass is wrapped in 3M Di-Noc Black Carbon Fibre vinyl, with a custom acrylic shroud wrapped in the same vinyl.
 
More pics over at my pcpartpicker page: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/b/RHxG3C
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finished swapping the cards around this weekend. Atleast one rig is ready for hard tubing one day. 

AIO = all in one. Something like a Corsair H100i is an AIO. 
 
For those, you don't put liquid in, they are already filled. You just mount the block to the CPU and the radiator to the fans and case and you're done (after plugging a few things in like fans and power). AIOs are basically maintenance free, other than dusting the radiator. 

So, the glossy samples of my carbon fiber tubing came in today. Here's some pictures.
 
 

Did you notice your hardline tubes are not straight? 

I wanted a small case without a window that looks very neat and premium. As I couldn't find such a thing and i had a little time to spend, I thought why not build one myself. Wood is very easy to work with (you can just glue everything together), looks amazing and isn't too expensive. I really like the looks of the dark wood combined with matte metal.
 
Here are some pictures:

nearly finished case
 

first design on the left, later design on the right (sketchup)
 

final design
 

interieur layout, gpu not shown for better visibility. the cables come out the top. Both the top panel and the rear panel are removable. The first for accessing all the I/O ports on the motherboard / GPU, the latter for maintenance.
 
Moving on with some pictures of the building process:
 

front I/O cutouts with recesses (made with a dremel), for (top to bottom): headphone jack, microphone jack, 2x USB3.0, vandal on / off switch
 

bottom panel with cutout and recess for the SFX power supply. It draws air from the buttom and exhausts it out of the left side.
 

Motherboard tray mounted to the side panel. The two rails were used from an old case, mounted to an aluminum sheet. All of the inside was coated with a layer of graphite "paint" and earthed (EMI protection)
 

Thats the top panel with the motherboard cutout. On the top theres the reset switch and the HDD LED (not visible from the front) and a fan grill.
 
 
Thats the finished build from the back. The back panel holds on with 2 magnets to the metal brackets. The fan was mounted on the CPU heatsink in pull, so that there's no problem exhausting the air out of the back (since there are no more fans). A plastic shroud prevents the hot PSU air from circulating inside the case. The SSD is mounted with velcro underneath all of those cables. The PSU is (kind of ghetto-) mounted so that it's decoupled from the case, since wood would amplify and vibrations. There are dust filters on all the intake perforated metal shields (bottom)

 
The system is extremely quiet (inaudible for me over the very quiet hissing of my speakers). Max CPU temps registered are 57 degrees celsius after prime 95 small FTT's stress test (BIOS setting:silent, stock CPU cooler fan).
 
The wood used is 18mm thick acacia glued wood. The motherboard cutout panel is a 3ish mm MDF panel. Side lengths of the sqare base is 300mm (outer), height is 375mm (without the feet). The feet are round matte lian li case stands.
 
Specs:
-i5-7500 (relying on iGPU so far, but there would be space for a mini edition GPU)
-AsRock Z270M-ITX/ac motherboard
-Thermalright True Spirit 140 Power CPU cooler with stock fan
-8GB of corsair valueselect DDR4-2133 MHz RAm
-Corsair SF450 SFX modular PSU
-500GB Samsung 850 evo 2.5" SSD
 
I'm fully aware that the specs are nothing special and it's not suitable for gaming. Well guess what, i wont be gaming on it, i wanted a quiet, stylish office / media / browsing the web kind of pc. If i would want to play some games i can add something like a 1050ti later. I know as well that a Z motherboard is kind of useless with a non-K SKU CPU, it was the only decent available here...
 
This thread will be updated if you have any questions or requests for more details, more pics or whatever.
 
Note that I'm not a native speakers and there may be some mistakes in this post but meh... I've tried

Update XI
 
24-pin is done! 
Went for the smallest cable length possible. I don't want to draw attention to the cables at all, I'm going for that stealthy look. 
 
The smallest cable is 74mm long, and the longest is 140mm. The black paracord is a lot easier to work with for some reason, the melting and welding was much more willing and forgiving.
 

 
Im very pleased with the end result.
 
CPU and SSD coming this week

^ Going to rebuild My Gaming PC and most likely transfer it to one my other Case-Lab Cases. So far looks like it will be my S8.

S8S is just to tight to fit everything. I have zero room for my drain, Going to try a few things with my SM8 Case I still have. Not sure if I'll use the peds or not.
 
Here is the original Concept of the loop for my SM8.

Shit just got real.....

Finally done!