D3LTA9

Soon as I saw the arctic camo Asus Sabertooth Z170S I had to buy it. Little bit of a step down in places from my ROG formula VII but still pretty happy with the look of the build. Really not impressed with my 6700K though, definitely was shit out of luck with the silicon lottery this time but even so, still annoying coming from a 4790K that I could undervolt at 4.5ghz or even hit 5ghz at max OC. Also have a strange issue where default voltage and clocks pushes over 1.4vcore. Only thing that I would like to improve is case airflow. To jam in x2 360mm rads I had to remove the rear exhaust fan and put the front rad where the fans normally would be which then meant I had to run the fans on push exhausting out instead of push intake. I could reverse them and run a pull intake setup but would look ugly with the fans backwards and temps are still pretty good overall. Also still a few red/black touches left from my previous ROG build ideally I would swap. Specs: Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ATX Case x980ti classified @1500mhz. 6700K @ 4.5ghz 32GB crucial ballistix DDR4 2400mhz 256GB Samsung 950 pro boot drive x2 250GB Samsung 840 EVO in RAID 0 Sandisk ultra II 480GB SSD Sandisk SSD plus 240GB AX860i x6 Corsair SP120 PWM fans x2 360mm rad's (Swiftech and XSPC) EKWB blocks EKWB X3 250 reservoir D5 PWM pump bitspower fittings Mayhem's pastel white fluid

Thanks, no problem happy to help!

On molex pin 1 is 12v and pin 2 is 12v earth. Usually they are labelled if you look closely at the plug. Otherwise, if you put the flat side facing up and the curved side touching the table pin one is the far right and pin 2 is obviously next. 5v is pin 4 and 5v earth pin 3. For PWN it uses both wires. With the two little nubs facing down the green is far right and blue beside it. Luckily was just testing a pwn d5 that I thought had died so took a pic for you. Have done this exact thing so many times when sleeving, ended up marking the plugs in the end haha.

Turns out these features are disabled by Asus in the driver as they are too cheap to license them for this board. This is absolutely ridiculous for a motherboard that retails here for the best part of $500 (NZD). Fortunately, there are workarounds for this (and any ALC based codecs) where you can add a registry entry and modify a .dll file and it unlocks both DD Live and DTS connect and just like that it is all working.

Just swapped from a Asus ROG MF7 to a sabertooth z170S. Installed the audio drivers and as far as I can the tell this heap of shit mobo doesnt even support multi channel optical sound out using either dolby digital or DTS connect. Can anyone confirm this? Guess I should have checked but just assumed, as every mobo I have bought for the last few years has had these features. Thanks for any input

Awesome, thank you for that. Yeah you are correct I started with paracord so would like to keep with it, especially given how tedious sleeving is I really dont want to remove the paracord and start again - so many times I have given up and thought dammit I will just spend the money and buy a cablemod pack haha. I actually have used teleios to sleeve some other fan cables/sata cables but think I prefer the look of paracord, well at least for 24pin mobo and pcie psu cables. Thanks again for your help!

Not sure if this is in the correct section or not but anyways - does anyone know where I can get black sleeving so I can finally finish sleeving my 8pin pcie power cables? I have tried lutro customs/mainframe customs but I am pretty sure they have been out of stock for like over a year now, possibly longer. Ideally shipping to NZ would be good but I can work around shipping to US or UK even. Here is a link to what I am after: https://mainframecustom.com/shop/cable-sleeving/lc-coreless-paracord/lc-coreless-paracord-black/ Cheers

Thanks for that, I had actually completely forgotten about EK's compatibility checker. Looks like evga has released more stock of the classifieds and they are back to 700 usd so will just go with them. That exchange rate to nz/aus right now though... yuck.

Just wondering if anyone has put a waterblock on an evga 980ti FTW edition? As far as I am aware they are ref pcb but just have slightly different components to support extra power phases and higher OC. Cant see anything about waterblock compatibility though. I was always going to grab x2 980ti classified but the premium that is on them right now through amazon (only place that has stock) is ridiculous so really cant justify an extra $240 for two of them versus two FTW editions. Thanks for any input

Cheers guys, and sorry about the large amount of text beforehand!

A short time ago I finished my latest update to my loop(s). I never can just leave my rig and just enjoy gaming on it without a new update or mod planned. I feel now though that I really cant fit any more hardware in my HAF X (which is hardly a small case...) so might be forced to leave it for a bit until I grab a couple of 980 TI's to swap for my 780's. Anyways, so the main point of this update was to swap to dual loops, one cooling CPU and VRM and the GPU's. I had already read about the results and that it generally wont affect temps (providing you have adequate flow rate and cooling capacity in your single loop) but I wanted to experiment a little myself and was already bored of my last upgrade haha. And no suprises, my GPU temps stayed roughly the same, maybe a little colder at the same fan speeds, but what is noticeable is how little heat my CPU and VRM dumps back into the loop. CPU especially will spike in temps all over the place but the water temp actually hardly changes. Unlike GPU's which have a very linear curve as they heat up and the heat is transferred into the loop. As is also to be expected your GPU's generate all the heat in your loop. I also did a fair bit of testing on coolants vs distilled water (with kill coils). I initially started with black and red tubing and just water but I feel the black pastel and red aurora coloured coolants with clear tubing are more aesthetically pleasing (there was no real difference in performance, the values were all with an acceptable margin of error). Finally, I tried using PWM D5 pumps instead of the vario model I had been running. As I have commented on some posts here. I would NEVER use PWM pumps again. So many hassles initially bleeding the loop (only fixable by booting into bios which a huge no no whilst leak testing/bleeding). Then just trying to a get a program that would consistently recognise both PWM signals and control them was another giant PITA. Some of this is Asus's fault, as I have since had issues with PWM fans not being recognised as well. So clearly the my ROG VII formula mobo has some issues with its PWM fan headers and/or AI suite and speed fan also do or just dont play nice with this mobo. You really dont need pump speeds to vary with workload as D5's are so quiet even at full speed, I knew that just wanted to see how flow rate affected my temps directly. So yea, let me know what you guys think, I have posted pics with coloured tube and 2 different sets of coloured coolant so also let me know which you feel looks better. *N.B - Pics were taken over a couple different weeks so you will notice stuff changes around on my desk a fair bit haha also the red LED lighting in my case in some shots makes colours look a bit strange depending on the ambient light at the time. EDIT - For some reason I messed something up so the photos arent displaying in full when you click on them. Go to my imgur if you want to see all the full size shots. http://d3lta9.imgur.com/ They are public albums so should be able to see them fine. Coloured Tubing Pics: Coloured Fluid Pics: Pastel Coloured Fluid Pics:

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I think the others have really covered your questions, but just to elaborate - DDC pumps are not cooled by your loop so depending on ambient temps and airflow they can require passive cooling with a heatsink or active with a heatsink and fan. D5's are cooled by your loop so dont require any extra cooling and are quieter as W-L points out. Both pump types are good though so I dont think you will have issues with either. I would be a little cautious with PWM pumps and actually probably would not recommend them, I swapped from 2 d5 vario pumps to the PWM versions and had lots of issues with RPM control - apparently they do not follow the PWM standard properly. Also when bleeding air from your loop and leak testing you have the problem that the PWM D5's do not run at full speed (usually necessary to bleed all the air out of your loop) without at least being able to adjust them in the bios and obviously leak testing with a fully running PC is definitely not desirable. You can unlplug them from your mobo and they will run a bit faster but I found it still was not enough to properly bleed all the air out. I actually ended up swapping back to my 2 vario models in the end and generally find them superior as you dont really need to adjust rpm dynamically as they are damn near silent even at full speed, your fans will be much louder. Hope that helps!

You have unfortunately hit one of the biggest issue with high density displays - windows/application scaling. And as far as I am aware, someone correct me if I am wrong, there is no real easy fix right now. They have improved windows scaling but as you point out some things still look terrible. I actually run my 3k ultrabook at 1080p now, after trying for ages to use the native res and having issues with everything I just gave up - I know its annoying but guess its that earlier adopter tax we all pay! EDIT - just was thinking steam specifically, I guess you could increase text size but that wont really fix the overall scaling I dont think also you could just use it in big picture mode but its not really a perfect solution as it would be a bit clunky with keyboard and mouse I would imagine.

Umm it is up to you really, would the extra money be better spent somewhere else? Or is budget not such a problem? I really love the distinct look the formula has with the armour (some do some dont) and while its not a huge benefit cooling the power train of your mobo it still doesnt hurt either and gives a more exotic look to your loop.