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Why do people say that air cooling is quieter? I have a D5 pump and I can't hear it at 40% PWM, which seems ideal for 1 CPU 1 RAD loop. Futhermore, a large radiator, for example 360 has 3 times the surface area of a 120 heat piped air cooler. Therefore 3 fans does the job of 1 fan so they can run at much lower speeds. Futhermore, since a rad is usually put where case fans go, you need less additional plain case fans making noise because some of the radiator fans do that work already.

My new and second custom loop, since last time in early 2000: 9700k @ 5.0GHz 1.330V Asus Z390-E Gaming EK D5 pump & res EK 360 fat radiator Heatkiller 4 Arrow fittings A ball valve for draining Old GTX980 Also some videos: Photos are first of how the tubes and fittings get together, then everything assembled and final liquid in, and finally with RGB somewhat set up with Aura:

Top use cases SolidWorks, Adobe Premiere, Visual Studio, Fruity Loops, GIMP (all only lightly) Both latest and older Windows games DosBox emulator (serious about single thread performance) RPCS3 emulator (Playstation 3, serious about AVX2 performance and 8 cores) Running virtual machines in VMWare, but only one a time New components bought few days ago Intel 9700K (SIL Quality in Asus bios settled to 93% - Is that good or bad or even a meaningful value?) Asus Strix Z390-E Gaming G.Skill 3200MHz 2x8GB DDR4 RGB Existing components in use Antec Kuhler h2o (Old 120 AIO) 1TB Samsung EVO mSATA SSD in a mSATA-SATA adapter (It was left over from old build where the motherboard broke) Asus GTX980 Strix Corsair 650W PSU Fractal Design Meshify C Bunch of Fractal Design and Corsair fans Asus 27" 144Hz 2560x1440 IPS monitor Samsung 47" Full HD TV in PC/Gaming mode (60Hz) Results 5.0GHz 1.330V ran benchmarks no problems, but in prime95 (AVX enabled) CPU temps went up to 100'C, water temperature also rised significantly so the old small AIO could not keep up. 4.6GHz 1.200V seems a sweet spot for the old AIO, where 60'C when gaming and 80'C in prime95 AVX torture I do not want to use Negative AVX Offset because I actually need decent AVX speed to run the RPCS3 emulator in high frame rates. At 4.6GHz I could get 35-50fps in Initial D Extreme Stage, which was totally playable and fun. 60fps would be the ultimate! It is also an emulator work in progress, so on software side it will get faster over time also. What next right now / Where you could give input Obiviously bottleneck is the old AIO. I already have some Coollaboratory Liquíd Ultra, but I'm afraid of using that with the AIO because I hear it can leave permanent marks to copper, which "soaks" it during years? Also, I wanted to try out the CPU before scrubbing it for the liquid, because I hear scrubbing might void warranty? I've thought about ordering an EK waterblock, preferrably a nickeled version because those are the best for liquid metal? I would want to go either with a slim 280 or 360 rad, but Meshify C might get too full because of the long gfx card, so I might also buy a larger case and go to the thickest 360 they have? I want to get RGB fans that are Aura compatible, but I'd also want them to have high static pressure and good bearings like magnetic or liquid bearings? Do you have any recommendations? To be even more picky, I'd like them to have a circular light circle outline around the fan instead of the whole fan being light up. For pump & reservoir I'd go with an integrated RGB model from EK that simply fits in the space of 3.5" hard drive bays removed and bottom PSU shroud front cover removed For tubing I'd go with normal flexible tubing because the Meshify C is so small and the gfx card so large in the way. But if I go for a larger case, I would go with hard plastic piping because I think I could do it In total, it might make sense to choose a kit from EK rather than individual parts More far future plans I Add to total 4x8GB G.Skill RGB while the same model is still in stock, because it seems to work well with Intel at that 3200MHz and it would look more cool to have 4 than 2 x) Get a NVMe SSD to acompany the ~550MB/s mSATA SSD I attach photos about the build, existing, old parts and some photos about the possible future EK parts that I've thought about. Also some benchmark screenshots. video_2018-12-06_03-37-36.mp4 video_2018-12-06_03-38-02.mp4

Components are not the cheapest here in Finland unfortunately, which can be proven with the actual store links. It's an averagely priced component shop in general around here, which sometimes has stuff in stock other shops don't have and vice versa. As a plus, you can go pick up the ordered parts even during the night if you can't wait. https://www.verkkokauppa.com/fi/product/6615/jrrgs/G-Skill-Trident-Z-RGB-DDR4-3200-Mhz-16-Gt-muistimodulipakkau https://www.verkkokauppa.com/fi/product/4215/knqnq/Intel-Core-i5-9600K-3-7-GHz-LGA1151-suoritin https://www.verkkokauppa.com/fi/product/30107/kqkmc/Asus-ROG-STRIX-Z390-E-GAMING-Intel-Z390-LGA1151-ATX-emolevy 8700k is a good thing to think about. Though it has 6 real cores and 12 hyper-threaded, it's probably about the same as 9700k in practice, which has 8 real cores and no HT. It's still a lot of cores and it has lower TDP than 9900k, which is nice for overclocking with smaller cooling.

I've enjoyed a 2500K for 7 years, of which 1.5 years highly clocked on a z77 board. The board however broke up recently and I've been wanting to update ever since. I mostly play recent games but also use special cases like Dosbox emulators and I'm interested of getting into the RPCS3 Playstation 3 emulator. Both heavily benefit specially of Intel and even Ryzen 2700x gets destroyed. Also, even though I will go with the existing GTX980 for starters, I think I also want some of that extra gaming speed for the future.. much like how 2500K was a great buy for very long. I begun a topic here earlier about 9600K, but I watched some Gamers Nexus reviews where they noticed that some of the latest games which utilizes 8 threads properly, like Far Cry 5 and the Unreal Engine, would benefit of having more than 6 cores (to eliminate stuttering.) For that reason and the longetivity of having extra cores, I think I want to now go with 9900K, especially because it's only a little more money from the 8 core 9700K. I was worried that 9900K is very power consuming, but after checking some power supply calculator pages it seems safe to put 9900K and GTX980 to a decent 650W PSU, which I have. The page calculated 496W as absolute minimum recommendation. I have only a couple SSD's and few USB peripheals. The case that I have is Fractal Design Meshify C. I think I want some Asus motherboard model which is decent for 9900K. It doesn't have to live up to LN2 level overclocking because I plan to go only with water AIO for now. Perhaps custom hard piping in the future with a better PSU. I also like RGB because of having a window and some RGB fans already. I think Asus Aura is a good thing to have for compatible fans and stripes? Would you recommend going with some other RGB standard? The motherboard model I thought about most is Asus ROG STRIX Z390-E GAMING, because it is currently in stock in nearby shop at 280€ here in Finland, along the 9900K about 600€. I also like that it has integrated WI-FI and relatively good integrated audio. Picture attached. Would you recommend some other model instead? For memory I was thinking about G.Skill Trident Z RGB DDR4 3200 Mhz, because it looks cool, is in stock for 189€ for 2x8GB. I am being told though, that is not good quality memory. Picture attached. What "RGB sticks" would you recommend for 9900K? In total the 9900K + the motherboard + the memory would be 1069€, which is 1213 USD or 1602 CAD.

Background I've had a 2500K for 7 years and it has been simply amazing even to this year, since I moved from H67 to Z77 board and then was able to OC a lot with an AIO. The second hand Gigabyte Z77 board however broke recently, after 1.5 years of use in my build, and the system feels very slow now back on the H67 and stock 3.3GHz. Also I can now use only half of my 4x4GB sticks. Aim Mostly running things that use only a few threads but need max performance to those threads. Like old & new games and emulators. I sometimes use apps like Premiere but do not need huge speed in encoding. For streaming / capturing I have been pleased offloading it to GTX980's NVENC. All other heavy apps like Visual Studio and Solidworks I use with so simple projects that even 2500K has been good enough. So to put it simple, 4 core max performance is what I need right now. Having some extra cores, like 6 or 8, could however benefit in the future. I do not want to go beyond 8 cores because of increased cooling and PSU requirements (especially when overclocking.) New component choices So I was thinking of finally upgrading from the 7 years old 2500K simply to get a decent and modern MB. It looks like Ryzen 2700X is not an improvement for me because I need a lot of single thread performance mostly. On some CPU benchmarks oc'd 2700X was on par with oc'd 2500K with only 2% difference. I want the system to be at least faster than the old one if I start throwing money at it. It seems the i5/i7/i9 situation in the current generation is nice so that you can simply take a z390 board and then choose your cpu model simply by your core/threads needs and power consumption/heat. I was first thinking about 9900K but it would force me to update from the old AIO and 650W psu to something better, and I don't really need that many cores. So I was thinking about 9700K next, but it feels lame they took hyper threading away and I don't think I need even 8 cores yet. So there's 9600K left, which seems an amazing choice because 6 cores are slightly more than 2500K's 4 cores which even was never a problem. Because 9600K does not have insane amount of cores, the heat and power should be nicely in check with old AIO and 650W PSU. Also, it seems that current gen intel oc'd is actually somewhat faster in single thread performance than oc'd 2500K - about 25%. I have Fractal Design Meshify C case (tempered glass) and I like rgb stripes and fans. Stepping down from 9900K to 9600K I don't need an extreme motherboard, so I went by looks and was thinking about this: - ASUS Prime Z390-P @ https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/PRIME-Z390-P/ I really like the looks of it and I think it has enough capabilities to overclock the 9600K nicely on water? (AIO for now and maybe custom hard pipe loop later). It misses some things I'd like (wifi / bt / toslink), but I can do with the wifi card slot and the spdif header. For memory I was thinking about: - G.Skill 16GB (2 x 8GB) Trident Z RGB, DDR4 3200MHz, CL16, 1.35V It again looks nice and with Intel I think you can just choose any DDR4 that looks nice, even when you OC. The old graphics card I have is ASUS Strix GTX980. I think I'll stick to it because I never had problems with it and it's black design matches anything. I might update it next year if there comes any interesting new Nvidia models. Price and location Total cost of the Prime Z390-P, a 9600K and the G.Skill would be 160€ + 309€ + 186€ = 655€ = about 741 US $ or about 986 Canadian $ with the prices of a good component shop here in Finland. Pictures and after thoughts I link some pictures of the parts and will post build photos if I go for it. Let me know if u think some component is seriously imbalanced or something else would be a lot better choice.

These are great laptops, having a 5100 myself with a 90MHz pentium, 24MB RAM and a 4GB CF card as hard disk. It is especially good for DOS gaming, because the integrated ESS sound chip is known to be extremely compatible with Sound Blaster Pro, and it contains even a very decent clone of Yamaha OPL3 or "Adlib". The color display, while quite small, is active TFT so it quite useable for games while being rather small though (12" and sometimes quite large black borders top of that.) These laptops don't support CD-ROM booting so if you have a working Windows 95-98 on the hard drive it it would make sense to take good care of it (not break the installation) because it can be troublesome to reinstall if they don't come with a bootable floppy drive that can be swapped to the same slot where the cd-rom drive is.

I solved the problem of light "bleeding" to front panel by having both front panel fans as black fractal design fans and kept the RGB fans on back of the radiator and on the rear panel. Of the extra HD120 fan I took out the RGB stripe from inside it and attached it to back side of the front panel using two sided tape. That allowed me to have a freely placeable stripe that is controlled by the bundled 3x HD120 kit's controller without need for anything more fancy. The end result on the picture satisfies me now as the components look nicely lit and there is no light coming out of wrong places. I also modified a molex to sata adapter by adding a rear panel switch to the 5V line, so it is now possible to turn off the lights completely, which is, ridicuously, not possible with the Corsair controller out of box. I'm not using it much though because the lights are supprisingly eye friendly at all times.

The new PSU went in nicely and the black ribbon cables are nicely "out of the way" compared to the old separate and colored wires, that were bulging out of zip ties. I'm testing again if higher OCs have became stable but I doubt it because I think the cooler was a cap and not the PSU. About the HD120 fans however. I find it crazy they don't have an off mode for those times you don't want the case to blast off your eyes! Also I think I might have been happier with NZXT or Thermaltake fans that have black fins so the color is more a stylish thin circle ring than a large round flat area. Still, they're pretty cool looking fans compared to those old dim cheaply made static LED fans of earlier years. I'm thinking of cutting molex->sata and sata->molex adapters and wiring a slim power switch to rear panel on the 5V leads in order to be able to turn it off and on. Now I really wish I had gone for those more ringular looking NZXT or Thermaltake fans as they could have been also turned off by USB. Corsair seems to lag behind in this thing in their product innovation, and with people buying their "lightning node" for more control of HD120's they seem to have encountered firmware bricking! One unexpected side result of fan lights was the supporting frame of the "meshify" front panel, behind the air filter, creating shadows that look like a spider web. I didn't realize there is such a frame hidden in there. I think that might be a great idea for some goth style person though, who wants a case with lights, but I didn't like it myself so much. I think I'll move the lower front fan to the top, where an old white non-lighted fan is now, and have both front fans as ordinary black fractal design fans. The radiator doesn't bleed much of light through, so I'll keep the rear side radiator fan as HD120. That way the case would in total have three HD120 fans, two black fractal design fans and the PSU ofcourse.

I think the point of the video was clearly to just show how much you can stuff ready out of box RGB products into a tower today and how bright and colorful it can get. No ordinary build has that much RGB. I think the video also succeeded in making a good point that if RGB is the only reason for choosing components then you will get a system that is not very optimal otherwise and as some said in this case suffers from bad air flow for example. Of course the price/performance also goes out the roof. It just makes no sense, but that's what you get for going too much overboard in choices. What I found interesting is how much you could synchronize the products together these days and obiviously Asus and compatible products, that can be connected to it on hardware or software level, are the way to go. I couldn't care less if they chose what Intel CPU or Ryzen, because it was about just showing off the RGB products.

I determined that the 1.325 actually was the lowest stable voltage for continuous prime95. Going to replace, as someone recommended, the old trusty 500W Chieftec with probably a Corsair CS650M tomorrow, because it seems good enough for the future and is available on shelf. Though the reason for actually buying one is that I'll use the Chieftec on another, more low power system, than this. The bottle neck for more OC is the Antec 920, I'm pretty sure, but I'm going to stick with it because got it second hand so cheap (20 euros, or 23 USD) and I'm happy with the 4.4GHz for now. I'll also use the money saved of not going for a huge Noctua or more powerful water cooling by buying some quality RGB fans instead, because I always wanted those and think it'll look great with the tempered glass. Those currently installed Ikea Dioder stripes rather blind the viewer than light up the components nicely, though they're better than nothing. For the fans I'm thinking of a kit of three Corsair HD120 RGBs, including a controller, and it's easy to add separately a few more 120 or 140mm fans in the future because the controller has 6 connectors. I'm under the impression that those Corsairs are the best RGB fans you can buy (brightness being uniform and strong, less dot-like, and both the performance and noise of the fan being pretty good)? Will post photos of how it will look then. I already thought the build finished, but there always comes up some ideas to make it better.

Thanks. That stable 4.4GHz is at 1.325V while stock 3.3 is at 1.240. I'm still in progress of figuring out how down the voltage can go, since I want to test prime95 at least 8 hours each step down. The result seems acceptable looking to that link. The case is a Fractal Design Meshify C. Took a while to receive one here in Finland, where components seem to be always slighly more rare in stock, and are slighly more expensive.

I bought a 2500K when it was new, but till this week had it on old H67 motherboard. This week installed it to a second hand Z77 motherboard along an Antec h2o 920 cooler that I got from a friend and applied some Thermal Grizzly paste. For first time overclocked, it seems stable at 4.4GHz when it was possible to run prime95 indefinitely (now past 14 hours) without errors. 4.5GHz resulted in random rounding errors and with 4.9GHz it was no longer possible to run any benchmark without crashing. I'm happy of the performance boost. Here are rest of the specs and some photos. QPAD MK-85 cherry mx red keyboard (though I'd want blue keys these days) Zowie FK1 mouse Gigabyte Z77X-D3H motherboard Kingstone HyperX 2x4GB 1600MHz (will add more later, now that there are free slots) Samsung 256GB Pro SSD + Kingstone 240GB SSD IKEA RGB led stripes with Arduino connected to internal USB pin header Asus GTX 980 card Asus MG279 2560x1440 27" 144Hz IPS Samsung 1280x1024 19" secondary monitor (for chatting) Asus Xonar Essence STX sound card AKG K550 headphones Beyer dynamics HD990 pro headphones A home hifi-set as speakers, through a coax to Xonar Essence STU Chieftec 500W power supply that I had for a long time because it's quiet and stable The IKEA RGB striping works but I find RGB LED stripes a bit harsh looking. I think I'll try with an old blue + red neon kits I have laying around and also consider simply replacing with RGB fans that look nicely round and less dot-like. I think RGB striping is a most difficult thing to do stylishly? Anyway it's fun that the controller is hacked together myself so it's easy to make improvements to the code, like animations or syncing by externally communicated events.

Yeah I remember those rounded IDE cables became to fashion some time before people moved to SATA. There used to be sleeved cables where the ribbon cable was just squished together, and cabels that had an actual round rubber covering the 80 individual wires. I had forgotten about those. Anyways, I had some time and a spare Fractal Design R3 case, so I put the build into that and think it looks more interesting now, and a bit more cable managed even with the normal ribbon cables. I tried to also take a photo with some better light, because the previous one was so horribly taken with a flash, sorry. I wanted to keep both types of floppy drives and ran out of external bays so the smaller 1.44MB drive is now interestingly located in a HDD tray.. but sort of accessible if there is ever need to use it.