Kalm_Traveler

first one is a 12v 4 pin non-addressable RGB plug, second is for your front panel USB type C connector. I don't see the type C internal header on the edge of your MB so you probably don't have one. There are little adapters to let you connect that type C plug into the older USB 3.0 header that I see unoccupied though - of course that will only run connected devices at 3.0 speeds but at least you'll be able to use it. Just to make sure we're not missing anything, what motherboard model do you have?

Definitely just put a 280mm in the front. Unless you're trying for some crazy overclocks or something, for 'normal people' use I'm sure CPU and graphics card temps will be fine (as long as you don't obstruct the front intake venting, or the top/rear exhaust fans). I just swapped my step brother's 12 year old PC guts into this case from my old 2008 Antec case with basically no legitimate airflow and it's been amazing - granted only using a 120mm AIO for the CPU on the rear exhaust spot, but I'm waiting for his b-day in June to upgrade the guts to something that will last him another 10 years (he doesn't game so he gets a lot more use out of less than most of us on here). Definitely will be putting a 280mm AIO for the CPU up front when this happens.

Vogons.org is a great place for information, but as everyone else has said ebay is the easiest place to source old parts. I have two motherboards, 5 Pentium 3s, a bunch of SDRAM, etc now.. It can become addicting. Also, remember what your goal is. Do you want to recreate a past experience, or are you just wanting to run old software / games on hardware it was designed for? My main keeper parts are a dual socket 1.4ghz Pentium 3, 2gb pc133 SDRAM, 250gb sata ssd, Quadro 4000, Aureal Vortex 2 sound card, sata card, IDE DVD-rw drive, USB 2.0 card, USB 3.0 card in a modern Thermaltake Suppressor case. Still modding an old Enermax PSU to put the guts into a modular Corsair PSU case.

There's about enough space just for 2 fittings to be there - not enough to put 2 fittings on a tube then tighten them down, or put one on tight, then the other. Might be able to do it if the radiator is unscrewed, leaned forwards a bit, then put back into place... You might be on to something with lapping the block. I have no experience doing that though so it would be new territory

reinstalled the cable management shroud in the back section, and part of the PSU shroud in the front section. I can't get the top part of the shroud in without pulling the front radiator out a bit so just going to wait for the bottom fan bracket to arrive since the PSU etc will need to come out at that time anyway. On that note, Cooler Master's store is back up today so I ordered the cooling bracket (price jumped up from $8 to $10) and with $14 shipping. Thanks CM, the $400 case wasn't expensive enough! Also got the Cablemod cable order in so hopefully it doesn't take any longer than the Aliexpress order for the graphics card water block so I can get this thing completely buttoned up by end of the month! still a little concerned about the idle CPU temps being identical to stock, I may try to remount one more time but also might have to ditch the Heatkiller block and try one that is more flat for direct die. I had good results with the 9900k build in 2018 with an EK Supremacy Evo so might go back to EK, or try Aqua Cool's CPU block.

@NotSoEpicMods here's a different angle for the runs - you can see the doofy circular loop I ended up having to do to connect both radiators. Got the UV LED strip installed tonight, and ordered a Bykski water block for this thing on Aliexpress so it'll be a few weeks. Tomorrow I'll measure the power cables needed and put in the Cablemod order. I think given what will be visible I'll just do MB, 2x 8 pin CPU, and the 3x 8 pin PCI-E for the graphics card. There are 3 or 4 cables behind the MB tray but since they can't be seen and are not causing cable management grief no real point in upgrading them to sleeved. Still waiting for Cooler Master to turn their store back on so I can order the $8 fan/rad bracket that they really ought to just include in the case instead of the 4 throwaway fans...

Not sure what counts for you, but as I said the 2019 case trend was pretty strong in an airflow direction. Lots of meshed front cases released last year.

I did from my first build back in 2000 but have toned it down over time. The HEDT has only 2 now, mounted on the inside middle section - CPU and a custom Titan RTX sticker I had made. On the new gaming rig I have not put any on and probably won't because it seems like it would ruin the clean aesthetic.

I would have agreed with you a year ago, but over 2019 it seemed to me that after the disastrous 2018 year of poor-airflow cases we saw the industry finally go back to cases that actually performed well instead of just having tempered glass on all sides to block any potential cooling capability. Though if I'm honest, even some in 2018 were meshable up front... I picked up a Cooler Master C700M for my new gaming rig and although its main front panel is not exactly mesh city, you can remove the LED front panel to reveal a full mesh panel behind it and use that alone. Gamersnexus even pointed out that it still looks pretty good without the main LED front panel, though if you want the LEDs, removing the inner mesh panel is fine since the vents on the LED panel are already mesh themselves and provide decent airflow.

If you really want to have both connected, the 8 pin CPU end of that cable pulls apart into two 4 pin sections, so you can run a 2nd cable and only use half of it. As others mentioned though, shouldn't realistically need more than one 8 pin for an lga1151 cpu. That being said, i am using both 8 pins on my 9900ks rig just because they're on the board.

Thanks - may be indeed. My 7960x (16c/32t) idles around 25-26c in the same room so I was expecting this to be at least that cool given half the cores but who knows. Load temps are more the concern anyhow but it is a head scratcher for me. I'll get a better tubing run today, and totally agree with you the 3 fans up top (which is again sort of what I initially envisioned, just not on a radiator) does look a TON better! I think you'll see what I mean about not enough room to do a nice short direct run between the two rads though. As it is, loop order is: pump -> graphics card -> CPU -> top radiator -> front radiator -> pump I wish there was a way to do that top rad to front rad connection without the circular loop run but I tried several combinations of fittings and the ports are just too close together. Top radiator was a bit janky to install; had to flip the bracket around and rather than installing the rad to the bracket, then put the assembly into the case... had to hold the rad with fans installed squished in from the inside while installing the mounting screws through the bracket from the top. It fits, but just barely, and I'll be happy with the custom PSU cables because these stock Corsair CPU 8 pin cables have some capacitors right up at the CPU end of their cables, which makes routing them between the radiator and MB female connectors quite a PITA.

Quite a bit done this weekend - remounted the pump/res so it wasn't pressing up against the graphics card PCI-E cables, and redid the drain to run from a T on the outlet rather than as one of the inlets. Next, installed the Heatkiller back plate for the CPU block, delidded the 9900ks, and have it direct die mounted now. Finally, managed to get a second 420mm radiator installed - swapping the top 280 but surprisingly I had to mount with the ports up front. This meant unfortunately that they are too close to the front radiator, so I had to get creative and ended up making a funny little circular loop for the run from the top radiator to the front one. While I was at it, also decided to remove the top metal plate over the top air filter panel because its cutouts are not very good for airflow, especially on the front-most fan area, and if you remove the metal plate there is just a fine mesh filter on top of an actually-good-for-airflow plastic honeycomb pattern on the panel. Probably going to either glue the mesh to the plastic, or maybe just some velcro or similar adhesive. Remaining steps off the top of my head: get additional cooling bracket (fan/radiator bracket) for the bottom fans - waiting for Cooler Master's online store to be up. It's been down for at least a month reinstall bottom PSU/fan shroud buy and install Bykski Kingpin 2080 Ti water block measure for and order Cablemod custom power cables - this is pretty important since the stock PCI-E cables are way too long, and the MB/CPU cables are really stiff near the ends once that's all done.... overclock this bad boy Strange to me though, light use CPU temp is exactly the same as pre-delidding and direct die. in 22 C ambient, CPU (on the Asus MB OLED display) reports 34-35 C. Under Cinebench back to back runs it is much cooler though, boosting to 5ghz all core and settling in at 55 C.

Correct, the Asus P5Q3 board has SATA 2, so max 3 Gbps. I was a little off on what hardware he had changed, so he had a 250gb Samsung 840 Evo SATA boot drive, everything else is on a pair of 2 Tb Seagate HDD's. Worse still - the graphics card is a 550 Ti, not 750 Ti. Still, running much much cooler after repasting. What I did for today was move the guts into an NZXT H510 (adding in a pair of 140mm fans for intake that I had laying around from last years Fractal Define R6 build), swap his broken and glued 250gb SSD for a new 1tb, and swap the 12 year old Corsair 850w non-modular PSU for a new Corsair CX750 semi-modular 80+ bronze unit. Also since I had it laying around I threw in a PCI-E USB 3.0 card so the front panel connector could be used, and it adds 2 rear ports. Once Windows 10 was installed, he's not entirely wrong... it's 'usable' for basic computing, but I'm so used to more modern rigs that waiting for anything to load at all shocked me. I'll probably wait for his birthday in a few months to do a platform upgrade like you said. Given he's running a Geforce 550 Ti, wouldn't something like a Ryzen 2200g be an improvement even on the graphics end? CPU + MB + 8gb kit of 3200mhz DDR4 seems like it would be a nice jump, no? *EDIT* just put this together from PCPP: PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/bKhwTB CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3200G 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor ($92.98 @ Walmart) Motherboard: Asus PRIME B450-PLUS ATX AM4 Motherboard ($99.99 @ Amazon) Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($68.99 @ Newegg) Total: $261.96

ahh gotcha - do you have any links to data about it? Just asking since as I mentioned, I haven't personally seen any data about any other tubing being better for longevity than PrimoChill LRT Advanced, and that EK article is only from 2018 so if something new is better I would have imagined it is less than 2 years old.

Hey guys, I am looking for suggestions on a surprise upgrade/update for my step brother's rig. Back in ~ 2011 or so I built an all-new machine for myself and gave him my ~ 2008 build which at the time was a Core 2 Duo E8500, 4gb 1600mhz DDR3 ( 2 x 2gb OCZ DDR3), 200gb SATA HDD, Corsair 850w non-modular PSU, in some old I think Antec case with a metal front door. It has one 140mm intake fan behind a terrible grill, which again is behind a metal door, and one 120/140mm exhaust fan spot. PSU is mounted above the motherboard. He installed an Asus Geforce GTX 750 Ti some years ago, and a couple years ago I helped upgrade it to 8gb DDR3 and a quad core LGA771 Xeon X5492. Further, he has installed a 120gb SSD for Windows 10/apps, and it looks like another 200gb SATA HDD. --- Long story short, I had a new old-stock Corsair 120mm AIO sitting here because I had intended on using it with a retro PC on an old Asrock LGA774 board with a Core 2 extreme 2 core cpu, but scrapped that idea so I figured it would be better with push-pull than the single tower air cooler he had (I think it was a 212 Evo? single tower with one 140mm fan). Had him come over two days ago and junked the 2 loud case fans (both of which only ran via molex adapters, no motherboard plugs or control - bearings were going bad), installed the AIO as rear exhaust with 2 new EVGA 120mm fans in push-pull, and put a new Thermaltake 140mm ring LED fan I had laying around from a new case in as front intake (the original fan there was orange, and installed as exhaust.... SMH) After getting the fans set up (the 2 AIO fans are on a Y-splitter on the lone 4 pin CPU fan header, pump is a 3 pin cable on CHA 1, front intake fan is also 3 pin and on CHA 2, there is an unoccupied 3 pin PWR header I think for old PSUs that could tell the MB how fast their own fan was spinning), I sent him on his way. However - after thinking more about this... I really want to update the system at least somewhat. He does not play games, so the 4 core Xeon and 8gb of RAM actually works just fine for normal basic PC usage for him but that case is awful, he broke the SATA connectors on his SSD so the data cable has been hot-glued on and the drive isn't even secured in the case - it's on a 3.5" bracket but for some reason he just has it wedged in the floppy drive/zip drive cage, and in 2020 I cringe at seeing the poor kid running a 120gb ssd with a pair of old 200gb HDDs. ---- TLDR; point - I would like to surprise him with some updates to his rig, not necessarily building a new one since the core guts still work fine for what he wants from a computer (browsers, media, word processing, streaming 1080p content). Offhand, was thinking a new case, new modular PSU (right now all the extra cables are just bunched up and shoved in the 5.25" drive bay cage), and maybe a 1tb SATA SSD to replace all 3 of his smaller drives would be pretty sweet. Do you guys have any suggestions for a decent mid tower that can reuse that 120mm AIO for the CPU, and have decent airflow? Also - while I'm at it, noticed that 750 Ti was pretty toasty, looked like it was sitting around 55c just on the desktop. Could repaste it, thought maybe updating it to a 1050 Ti or thereabouts might be a cheap way to both give better video processing for streaming, and a cooler/quieter card for less noise. What do you guys think?

'best' meaning what? I haven't found any other tubing besides PrimoChill LRT that is recommended specifically for not leaching plasticizer - which most clear tubing will (this will eventually gunk up your blocks and make the tubing look foggy/dirty). EK themselves even recommend LRT rather than their own clear tubing if you are worried about plasticizer: https://ekwb.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205160252-What-is-plasticizer-

It is still sold on USA Amazon so I would imagine someone in Europe carries it. If you can search more I would keep looking because it is basically the safest clear soft tubing you can use since it doesn't leach plasticizer.

I've been using an xrite i1 display pro for a few years now and highly recommend it even if all you do is use its software to do a basic calibration. I've used it at home on 2 Samsung TV's, Asus PG348Q, Asus PG279Q, my new LG 38", two Razer laptops (which come with factory-calibrated color profiles already but still improved slightly with the xrite's generated profiles), my work MacBook Pro, ViewSonic 1080p and 2k screens at work, and will be using it to calibrate a pair of LG 5k Thunderbolt 3 screens I managed to acquire at work recently. On pretty much every display, the brightness out of the box has been way too high, and most of them the color accuracy has been pretty off as well (the Razer laptop's factory calibration was not bad, but still obviously different after Xrite calibration).

looking at that case (if this is it) http://www.aerocool.us/pgs/pgs-b/mechatron_b.htm it looks like you could put a 240mm AIO up top, which I would not recommend for the 9900ks - for an AIO I would stick to 360mm or maybe 280mm if you like living on the edge. Unfortunately neither of those will fit your case, and the max cooler height is 176.3mm so keeping that in mind for a big tower air cooler...a Noctua NH-D15 is 165mm height with the fans installed so it would fit. Air coolers don't really get any better than that.

If you use EK's configurator tool on their website they will recommend radiators based on your components and case. On a guess, I'd say probably a 240mm each for graphics card and CPU for decent cooling with low fan speeds but considering the cost is about the same I'd always recommend going with as much as you can fit in the case - initial investment doesn't vary much, and you'll either get lower temps/quieter operation or at worst similar low temps and similarly quiet operation. *EDIT* Looking at NZXT's website for that case, it only supports max of 240mm radiator on the front with push-pull (fans on both sides) and a 120mm on the rear so you don't really have any options. If you do exactly that (front 240 with 4 fans and rear 120) it will be fine but not as quiet as you could get with a more water-cooling-friendly case. If you haven't ordered the case yet (or can return it) I would honestly consider looking for a different case with better water-cooling support if cooling and/or quieter operation are important to you.

I bought a Das Keyboard 4 Professional for work, and unfortunately these days use a MacBook Pro. It works fine on a Mac, and they sell a version with Mac bottom row keycaps if that's your jam. I like it for an office environment because it doesn't look worth stealing - just all black with no lights. Sounds like you would want the Cherry MX brown switch version, and to go the extra mile in making it quiet I'd throw some o-rings on the bottom of the keycaps for a little bit of sound dampening. Another nice quirk I use from time to time is that it has a built-in 2 port USB 3.0 hub on the top right. Looks like they're about $160 on Amazon at the moment (assuming you're in the USA).

Stock but Asus MCE is enabled (by default). What temps do you see with your 9900k? My 7960x is idling around 25 c stock with MCE enabled, granted that is delidded + LM and has its own 560mm radiator... Room ambient is between 19 - 20 c according to an ambient sensor I have checking air temp below the PC

Slight change of plan today - I had meant to do some research about swapping the top 280mm radiator for another 420mm, but the 9900ks showed up so I swapped the existing 9700k out, and found a disturbing surprise; the CPU block was not making contact with the CPU really at all. Thermal paste had squished to about a 1 cm circle but was obviously not spreading like it should. Long story short, I found that with these Heat Killer IV blocks on lga1151 you want to mount them sideways, with the text vertical and outlet port below the inlet port for what Water Cool calls "normal" orientation, so that the block doesn't hit anything and will mount flush. After rotating it thusly without cleanins off the IHS or block and just remounting for a quick test - max load temps dropped significantly from mid 90's C to 63 C max, though light use temp is still high-ish to me around 33-36 C. I'm sure if i clean everything off and remount it while laying the pc on its side so the MB is horizontal would lower these even more but I have a direct-die kit so I'll just wait until I have time to delid the 9900ks and do the direct die install along with a Heat Killer backplate for better mounting pressure.

nvm - in case anyone searches and finds this - the block may need to be installed 'sideways' which is actually 'normal' per Water Cool. The text should be vertical, and the outlet port should be below the inlet port. Based on a thread I found on OCN I tried flipping the block around to match and voila, better mounting pressure and not hitting TJ max at stock settings anymore - seeing max temps of ~ 63 C instead of 95 C.

Just got my 9900ks, so I was replacing the 9700k, and noticed that although the thumb screws were all the way down, there was so little pressure on the IHS from the block that the thermal paste barely spread out at all. I'm 100% positive I used the correct mounting hardware (no backplate yet so just screws + plastic washers through the back of the board), correct standoffs, etc but obviously something wasn't happy. After installing the 9900ks I (against the instructions) held the standoffs with pliers, and cranked on their rear screws with the included hex wrench to really snug them onto the PCB, and installed the block again as per instructions (metal washer, spring, thumb screw until it stops). Idle temps are lower, the 9700k was idling around 35-36 C, this 9900ks is idling around 25-26c but under Cinebench R15 it hit mid 90's, in Time Spy Extreme it hit 85 C. My only other Heat Killer IV block is on the lga2011 rig and on that one it's mounted nice and flush, but screws into the stock mounting mechanism. Anyone else here had issues getting this thing to mount securely on LGA 1151?