Profezzional

Heyo,So I did what I think is a pretty cool thing. As the title suggests, I basically integrated iCUE with Google Assistant. That being said, there's a pretty big asterisk on that statement.What I DidWhat I REALLY did was had Google Assistant use IFTTT to modify a text file with a color name in my OneDrive, which then auto-synced to my computer. Meanwhile, I made a web wallpaper with Wallpaper Engine, the JavaScript in which continuously pings a local Node/Express server I have running, which serves the contents of that file. The wallpaper then parses the HTML color name into RGB, and uses Wallpaper Engine's iCUE integration to set all the LEDs on my rig to that color.So while it's a bit more convoluted than the title suggests, all you have to do is say "Hey Google, make the PC lights ____" and about 10 seconds later, the LED colors change, making it seem to the end user like they're fairly tightly integrated.How I Did itHere's a link to the Github repo with the code for the Node server and the wallpaper, and a more detailed walkthrough of the PC end of things: https://github.com/profezzional/iCUE-wallpaper-engineOn the IFTTT side, it was as simple as making an applet #triggered by Google Assistant, having the text ingredient be the HTML color name, and then the action being append the TextField ingredient to a file in OneDrive. I separated the names with "|". Then when the Node server reads the file contents, it replaces the file with only the new value followed by "|". This is so the file size doesn't keep growing as you continue to use the program.Next StepsThe next thing I'll do is wrap the Node server up into probably an AHK script or something and run that on startup. I may also add applets to start/stop Wallpaper Engine, which might use nodemon on the Node server or something to track a flag in a file, track the Wallpaper Engine process to stop it, and know where it's installed to start it.How I Got ThereThe motivation for this was I've been thinking about doing this sort of thing ever since I got my RGB LED light bulbs after I got a Google Home Hub. After I finally redid the custom loop in my PC, and right before I get the new Corsair water blocks, I finally decided to sit down and do it.Getting to this point took me about 2 days of trial and error. I was going to start down the path of trying to hook into iCUE's Far Cry 5 integration, but from a couple posts I saw, that was going to be super complicated and I don't like C++ (see http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=181358). Then I remembered Wallpaper Engine had iCUE integration for wallpapers, so I checked that out and, as primarily a web developer, was very pleased to see I could do things in JavaScript.I had code for a simple C# HTTP server, so I tried to use that initially, but that was being funky, so I used some NodeJS code I had from a much more complicated app and trimmed it down to just the extreme basics, since all I needed was for the server to give me the file contents on any route.My next conundrum was how to get Google Assistant to modify a file. I first tried to dabble with making my own Actions, but that got complicated super quick. Not that I'm afraid of complicated things, I just figured there had to be an easier way. I then tried to use a couple existing Actions like Vodo Drive to modify a file in my Google Drive, but it seems like it's really only for spreadsheets, at least for the time being. Then I stumbled upon IFTTT, and I remembered having heard about it a while ago, but I'm shocked I didn't have this in my life before.I then initially tried to find a way to have the Node server query my Google Drive directly, but the Drive API was also suuuuper complicated. I was trying to find a way to not have to wait for a file to sync from the cloud to my PC, but quickly resigned myself to that, and I'm not disappointed with the delay. I'm sure if I took the time and made the effort to use the Drive API or something, and had the Node server continuously check my Drive for updates, it would be faster. Looking at the OneDrive API, it seems like it may be marginally simpler than Google's, but at this point what I have is fairly smooth and doesn't take too long.So yeah, that's been my journey over the past 2 days. Let me know what you guys think, if you have any suggestions for improvement, or if I'm missing a totally obvious better way to do this. Side note: I also started this discussion over on the Corsair forums to try to get more input on it, so check over there for more ideas.

Got it; another Aura reinstall, this time with CCleaner clearing out registry issues, and flipping the plug around worked.

Windows reinstall didn't work

Heyo, So I redid the custom loop in my PC late last week, and now the RGB header on my Asus z370 Prime A isn't working. Aura is working and controls the the actual RGB lights on the motherboard itself, but none of my EK RGB components are lighting up anymore. I first I thought it was my splitter cable, but plugging each of the components in individually didn't work either, even after a couple Aura reinstalls and corresponding restarts. Everything else on the board (and the rest of the PC) seems to be working, so I highly doubt I inadvertently fried anything. As far as what all I did while redoing my loop, I ended up doing basically a complete teardown, short of physically removing the motherboard from the case. The only possible thing I can think of that might have happened that's remotely related to this issue would be getting a little bit of water on the LED strip in my EK reservoir, but I took care of that pretty quickly, and I'm pretty sure the system was off during that, since I don't think I did any other flushing/filling after I finished the cable management and actually turned the system back on (it was a long 3 days lol). I haven't been able to find another example of these particular symptoms happening, so I'm at a loss. Any help would be appreciated.

This may fit better in a different thread, so please feel free to either move it or tell me I'm dumb for putting it here, but I figured since a build may come out of it that it'd work here. TL; DR: I have an old server machine I don't know what to do with; see everything after the first paragraph for the specs and my options. So the backstory is the small accounting company that was next to my mom's old office left some old hardware in the building they abandoned when it went out of business, and long story short I ended up with this piece of history for free not quite a year ago. I started using it at the startup company I (until very recently) worked for as a local test environment server and storing some test databases. On a side note, I have the original fans and the CD drive and the floppy drive, but the fans were loud so I had swapped them for a couple cheap modern fans I had lying around, since I only had a couple hard drives I didn't use very often in them, and the drives just made it heavier. Here are the specs: Case: Chenbro SR10769-C0 (https://goo.gl/t6j96h) Mobo: Intel S3200SH (https://goo.gl/CoAwY8) CPU: Intel Xeon E3110 (https://goo.gl/bxXYK7) RAM: 2x 2GB Crucial 800MHz PSU: Silencer brand sticker on the fan, but otherwise no markings on it 3ware 9650SE-4LPML RAID Controller The machine might have been a Tarox ParX T300c G4 since the specs are similar, but the company was American and the hot swap bays in the images are different, so I'm not sure. There weren't any hard drives in it when I got it, of course. My options are (and these aren't mutually exclusive): Upgrade it (i.e. more RAM [from 2 to up to 8 gigs], trying to use some sort of video card with it, etc.) Use it (I don't store a lot of files, but I could use it for a media server or something, idk) Sell it (I'm starting a new job in a couple months after I graduate but in the meantime from what I'm seeing, I could probably get at least a couple hundred bucks out of it?) Turn the case into a sleeper build of some sort (I already have a gaming build I'm pretty happy with, but it'd be fun to do something with it) Turn it into a decorative piece (basically just throw some RGB into it and use it to display something, idk. I'm not the creative-y pinterest type, so I'm just coming up with random ideas at this point) Throw it away I had tried to put a graphics card into it when I first got it, but a GTX 750 didn't want to cooperate, and I didn't do a ton of research to see what's compatible. I was able to get Ubuntu on it since I didn't have a Windows version on hand that I knew was compatible, but I'm open to having it headless. Those things are only relevant if I were to keep and try to use the hardware, of course. The RAID controller could be useful and interesting to use if I could get it to work on a newer motherboard; I haven't researched its compatibility yet. I haven't done a lot of case modding and I don't really want to start chopping it up and not get anywhere with it since it's in very good shape, but as an engineer I still wanna do something with it. Any and all suggestions are welcome.

Got a Google Home Hub from my boss for Christmas so now I can control the lights by voice. Here's some more PC porn:

Sorry for the confusing wording; the final build is in the 500D SE, yes. Also forgot to include an image with the last update: The bottom left corner is a little messy, but il'll take it. I've dabbled with overclocking the GPU, but haven't gotten a ton of performance out of it. I was only able to get about 100MHz core clock improvement (from 1935MHz to 2040MHz) and 500MHz memory clock boost (7000MHz to 7500MHz) and still have Time Spy be stable, but I couldn't get Crysis stable with it so I'm just leaving it at the base clocks for now, until I work my way through the earlier games in series and actually get to the demanding titles.

If you want to record a lot of gameplay then you might be better off just getting a larger HDD to store the footage on, then a decent-sized SATA SSD to store your games on, and a small NVMe SSD as a boot drive. I've had a great experience with my 1TB 860 Evos as game storage and my 250GB 970 Evo as a boot drive. I agree with the others that the motherboard may be a bit much; I've been fine with my Asus Prime z370-A. I can't comment on G3 versus G2 since I've been fine with my G3, but 850 may be a bit more than you need; 650 has been fine for my build, which has a good bit of stuff in it. I think the 2080 is a good choice; I've been fine with my EVGA XC Ultra at 1440p 144hz playing GTA at almost max, Witcher 3, and some other pretty demanding titles. I'm glad I saved myself a few hundred bucks by not going for the 2080ti. You should also be able to overclock a decent amount with that big triple-fan cooler on there. Depending on how much RGB you want, I've personally had a great experience with a basically full-corsair build (check out my specs in my profile and build log), and even though I swapped out my 570x for the 500D SE, I still 10/10 recommend. If your budget is around $2k, you might save some money on some other parts and splurge a bit on some LLs. Apart from how great Corsair's iCUE has been for me, going with one brand for the majority of your RGB usually makes it pretty convenient to sync all the colors in your system. If you want to overclock an 8700k, you might consider going with an AIO rather than air cooling; something like a H100i will give you pretty good performance and some more RGB, and I also like the cleaner look of an AIO better than an air cooler. I overpaid for my 9700k because I'm impatient, but you'll really get pretty similar performance from an 8700k. I also agree the motherboard may be a bit overkill compared to the rest of the systemI also personally prefer the look of Corsair's Vengeance RGB Pro over GSkill's Trident series, but that's just me.

Update: I managed to fit another Commander Pro in there. The cable management isn't quite as pretty, but its still pretty good I think. Especially for having 9 2-wire fans, 2 RGB water blocks, a RGB pump, 4 LED strips, 2 Commander Pros, 2 LED fan hubs, a Lighting Node Pro, and 4 2.5" drives. It's really satisfying looking at it now that it's done.

This is an extremely long post, but I feel the need to justify some of the decisions I made here since a couple of them are cringe-worthy, so I want to walk you through my journey with this build. Fair warning: being an engineer, impatient, and having saved up a good bit of money is not a good combination ? Also, I apologize for the crappy pictures; the only camera I have is my phone, a 6-year-old Galaxy S5 ? I finished my build in the Corsair 500D SE a couple months ago (specs in my profile); I originally had the 570x but to the 500D SE after a couple weeks because I wanted doors. It's my first PC build, though having dabbled with some hardware stuff in CIS classes in high school, being an IT guy and programmer, and watched a fair bit of YouTube videos on PC builds, I had a rough idea of what I was doing. I did push/pull with Corsair LL 120s and originally used the H150i: I wanted to go pretty much entirely black with the components (note the painted motherboard bottom heat spreader and I/O cover (I/O shield too)), though some gray/silver/chrome accents, primarily on the the motherboard, were welcome. This way I could change the RGB colors to match whatever I was feeling like on a given day. At the same time though, I wanted to avoid a disco PC, since I've seen some ugly RGB builds out there. I didn't get the LED strips or the top/rear LLs until after the initial build, once I experienced the magic that is iCUE. I wasn't content with my 2080's noise level when the fans were ramped up, and even though the H150i kept my i7-9700k just under 70C or so under load at stock 4.9GHz, I wanted to go all out with a custom loop. Since I already had the LLs and the return window had passed, I wanted to use them, and so I had the same dilemma of wanting to do push/pull (almost entirely for aesthetic, because the LLs are pretty sexy). I also wanted to go pretty heavy on cooling capacity (I'm overclocking, but not going super hardcore; I mostly wanted a pretty quiet system even under load), so I wanted 360 and 280 rads. I couldn't figure out how to mount EK's XRES 140 D5 pump combo normally and still have room for push/pull; the PSU shroud goes too far foward to have it on the bottom front fan, and the res was too tall to have it on the middle front fan and have the top rad as well. My other options were to go with a different res/pump combo or separate components, but I couldn't find an easy-enough way to mount those either. At this point I doubled down, determined to find a way to keep my push/pullI ? It turned out that while the pump combo wouldn't fit between the PSU shroud and the fan with the mounting holes facing the fan, but it would fit with the mounting holes perpendicular, with a few millimeters to spare (I had about 82mm of clearance, and the pump is 78mm wide): This renewed my hope, but I couldn't find any brackets that were thin enough to mount the pump to the bottom of the case. Another option I considered was drilling holes and mounting the pump directly to the side of the case, but I wanted to leave that as a last resort. So I decided to get creative and use the CAD skills I learned in my engineering classes to design and 3D-print my own bracket for the pump that would mount to the bottom of the case (the cutout in the support circle was for the cables coming out of the bottom of the pump): A couple lessons were learned here. One is don't design parts at 3AM on no sleep during midterm exams (the back wall of the bracket was a lot thicker than it needed to be for some reason, so I "had" to drill out those holes a bit for a countersink for the pump screws). Another was to not try so hard to work with what you already have that you choose to drill holes in a part you designed and 3D-printed instead of just buying longer screws for a couple bucks. By the way, I'm using EK's SE 280 and SE 360 radiators. I went with the 28mm-thick rads since the 360 was the same thickness as the H150i's and I had already measured and determined that I could make it work, and since if I went any thicker on the 360 then it'd probably be kind of pointless to get the 280 as well, especially with just the 9700k and a single 2080. After that ordeal, the bracket fit really well, but I ran into another problem: I couldn't put the front 360 rad in there with the ports at the top, because of the top 240 rad. I also consequently wasn't able to run lines around the pump (I know this isn't a good picture, but it's the only one I took of the pump with it in that spot before I did the rest of the loop): This seemed to be a show-stopper, especially due to my impatience after having all the necessary parts sitting in my apartment for several days while I waited for the bracket to be printed, then waiting another week for a 2-slot bracket from EVGA to vertically mount the graphics card, so I didn't want to wait several more days to re-print a different part (though I probably should have). So as I was sitting there forlorn, I got looking at the PCIE slot covers, and got an idea (warning: cringe): After that picture I flipped the brackets the other way and moved them to the bottom screws on the middle fan so the pump is hanging rather than being held up, to get the pump down as far and as close to the top of the PSU shroud as possible, to give myself more room. What is actually kind of cool about using these is the resulting adjustability in the pump position. I do however, fully intend on designing and 3D-printing a new bracket that will let the pump go in the same spot, use the screws from the top of the bottom fan for added support, and go from cringe to cool. Anyway, here's what my end result loop looked like: This was of course my first time doing a custom loop, and my friend talked me into going with hard tubing (I'm using PETG). Mistakes were made; the bends aren't perfect, and I should have brought the line from the CPU outlet to the pump inlet instead of the top of the res, because currently it's a hassle to fill (I'm probably going to redo that line later). In addition, I probably could have ran the GPU lines in from the front like Corsair did in their build, but I didn't think I could bend that tight. I might still be able to do it with just bends, but I'd rather just do it with fittings. I'm also a noob and at first used the thermal pads that were on the stock EVGA GPU cooler, which are a lot thicker than EK's thermal pads, so the GPU block initially wasn't making contact; I had to do the GPU block twice before I figured that out. Speaking of which, I'm not super happy with the GPU block lighting, since it really only permeates through not quite half of the block (the light on the left in that picture are from the LED strips). Note the lines are cloudy; I'll talk about those in a minute. For the drain line, I had to get creative again to use the fittings I had after changing my plans with the radiator directions; I have a splitter off one of the ports in the front rad that goes to the GPU inlet and also to a line of soft tubing with a ball valve for draining (another example of in the context of the money spent on the rest of the system, a note to self is don't cheap out on fittings). While tricky to assemble initially (because the soft line runs under the hard line from the other port almost immediately), this makes it actually pretty easy to drain, and the doors hide the drain line decently well. I'm also not sure about the physics of the height of the res in relation to everything else, because when you stop the pump, the res fills back up while I'm assuming the top rad empties. On a positive note though, I only had one leak that I found pretty quickly and haven't had any issues like that since. I plan on redoing the lines at some point, probably using 90s at every bend like Corsair did instead of trying to bend things myself. In the meantime, I'm just gonna relax and enjoy the awesome temperatures. I also don't like not being able to control the speeds of the top and rear case fans with iCUE, since I had to plug those straight into the motherboard, so I might have to get a second Commander Pro eventually, which will be tough to fit in there. It'd probably go in the bottom HDD slot, and I'll probably put the Lighting Node Pro in between them, then the lighting hub will go...somewhere else. While I think that I'm getting pretty close to maxing out the capabilities of what the case can handle, it's surprised me how much I've been able to pack in there, given enough time and effort. Cable management with 9 LLs, 4 LED strips, and 4 2.5" drives was definitely a fun challenge (the 4th 2.5" drive is tucked on top of the rats nest behind the power supply), but I'm proud of the job I did: Because you'll probably ask, yes I have 3 1TB SSDs, because I'm tired of waiting for GTA to load. I've filled up 2TB across my 4 external drives already, so I feel justified in my decision. I've historically had a great experience with Samsung's 860 Evos, and they were on sale during Black Friday. I also have the slow 1TB 2.5" HDD that originally came with my laptop; it's tucked in under the PSU shroud. Probably not the best place for it, but I wanted the 2.5" mounts to all be consistent and pretty. After the initial assembly of the loop, one problem I had was that the water was extremely bubbly and consequently appeared cloudy while the pump was running. As soon as the pump stopped, it cleared up. I was also getting some foam at the water's surface in the reservoir. The bubbling continued even after letting it aerate for a couple days, and the noise from the water was a bit louder than I wanted. At first I thought maybe the EK-CryoFuel was doing it (I have about a 1:12 mixture since I borrowed the last of my friend's bottle), but before I tried it with just distilled water, I turned the pump down to 50% and the bubbling and noise went away; in the end I'm able to have it up to 65% (around 3275 rpm) before it starts bubbling more and making more noise. This slower also allowed me to aerate it a lot more (notice the difference in the reservoir levels from the photos above and below, I didn't drain or refill the fluid between those pictures). One annoyance is the bubbles that tend to hang out in the top right of the GPU block; I have to tilt the PC forward almost 90 degrees to get those to clear out, and it's gonna take a while to get all the air out of the front rad. So now that the tubes are clear it looks a lot better (notice again how the GPU block's LED color is slightly off; I haven't figured out why yet): So that's pretty much the entirety of the story with the PC itself. I've dabbled with overclocking it; the CPU seems to handle 5.1GHz fairly well, but I haven't taken the time yet as of this post to massage the voltage enough to get a stable 5.2GHz. I also was able to add around 100MHz to the 2080's core clock and a few hundred to the memory, but I again haven't put the time in yet to get much higher and be stable across different games. Just for some housekeeping notes, let's talk about the peripherals. I got the Corsair K70 (my first mechanical keyboard experience) because I liked brown switches the best after trying the different kinds for about 3 minutes in the store at the time. In my ignorance of not having put any time into blues or reds, I really like the browns, especially after having come from rubber domes for the past few years. It would have been nice to get the gaming buttons, but as my friend pointed out I probably wouldn't end up using them. The Corsair MM800C is nice; it's been easy to keep clean and is soft enough to be comfortable; I mostly got it for the RGB. I also like the Corsair Dark Core that I got. I've always been a huge fan of wireless peripherals, and I'm not hardcore into e-sports enough that going wireless would make a noticeable difference. Beyond that, the other reasons I didn't go with something like the G502 was for the relative lack of thumb buttons. I tend to grip the mouse a little harder and have historically ended up not using thumb buttons effectively, while gaming or normal use. I do like the sniper button, and the DPI switching buttons are out of the way but easy to access. The ease of syncing RGB colors was another added bonus. I've always had the wireless receiver in my USB 3.1 port and on 2.4GHz, and plugged it in to the mousepad to charge it, and continued using it, and it's performed fine. As of a few days before this post, however, the Dark Core has been refusing to work when I plug it in; iCUE says it's disconnected. On a random note, my Vengeance RGB Pro RAM has also occasionally given me issues: the LEDs get stuck on whatever color they were last after the PC goes into sleep, then fix themselves after a second sleep cycle; still working on this over on Corsair's forums. I'm currently using my TV for speakers, $20 earbuds through my gaming monitor, and a $20 desktop mic. I really prefer earbuds over headphones, and I haven't convinced myself I need higher sound quality yet. I'd probably go for the Void Pro, mostly for the RGB sync. I'm using a $50 chair from Staples that's actually really comfortable and I like the shorter back on it. Ok, now for the last part, the monitors. Full disclosure; I REALLY like monitors. I have 5 (3 x 27" and 2 x 19") at work, which is invaluable to me as a programmer. Even when I'm not coding, it's always helpful to have several screens, like when I'm doing homework or other research, etc. I first got a Samsung 1440p 144hz 27" curved monitor to game on, and I already had a cheap Acer 1080p 60hz 24", as well as a cheap Magnavox 32" 1080p 60hz TV, so this is what I started out with initally, when I had the 570x (laptop also pictured): My mom got a couple old monitors and an old server machine from a friend whose company abandoned them, and since I was quickly running out of room on my desk, I decided to mount them after I got the 500D. I got an extra tall mount on Amazon for $60, then most of two dual-monitor mounts from my friend and his housemate for a collective $40. I was able to cobble those together, and I was initially fine with it: After a couple friends made fun of me for how out-of-place the smaller monitor looked, I took advantage of some black Friday deals and got another Samsung 27" curved monitor, this time only 1080p at 60hz, since I didn't want to spend that much, I didn't need another 1440p monitor, and I was only going to game on one: Yes, that bottom left one is upside down; this was because the VESA mounting holes on the two curved monitors didn't line up at all, and they were a lot closer to being in-line when the one was upside down. Anyway, my friend's housemate works at MicroCenter, and the Friends & Family discount temptation got to be too much, along with the inspiration from SilencedTech's setup. So after I got my watercooling parts, I picked up a second Samsung 27" curved 1080p 60hz monitor. Mounting these suckers was a bit of a challenge. This is an example of where being determined to make something work with what you have actually paid off, albeit with a little cringe. The first challenge was mounting the TV and the 1440p monitor to get them as close to the pole, and hence as far back away from my face, as possible: The next challenge was when I figured out I didn't quite have the right combination of arm pieces to fit 3 27" curved monitors, so I again had to get creative. Yes, I am going to get proper nuts for these screws, but again, working with what I had because I'm impatient: As jerryrigged as this is, it does work, at the expense of just a little sag on the right monitor: Along with some RGB WiFi LED lightbulbs (though one buzzes slightly and the other sometimes flickers), iCUE, and Wallpaper Engine, I can sync the colors of everything with about 30 clicks: Is this build log long enough yet? Anyway, I'm going to wrap it up. I'd appreciate any constructive criticism anyone can give, although compliments, advice, and praise are preferred ? I'm also debating what to name the PC, or even if I should; suggestions are welcome, as are tips for improvement or cheap upgrades, etc.

@Antigrandbean TL;DR: push/pull in the 500D is possible, if you get creative and are really determined. On a side note, my 9 LLs are pretty much silent under 900 rpm or so in the 500D with the doors shut. This is a bit of a long post, but I feel the need to justify some of the decisions I made here since a couple of them are cringe-worthy, so I want to walk you through my journey with this build. Fair warning: being an engineer, impatient, and having saved up a good bit of money is not a good combination ? I finished my build in the 500D SE (originally had the 570x but swapped it after a couple weeks because I wanted doors) a couple months ago (my first PC build actually, though having dabbled with some hardware stuff in CIS classes in high school and being the IT guy at a 7-person startup, I had a rough idea of what I was doing), doing push/pull with LLs and originally using the H150i: It wasn't too cramped, but cable management with 9 LLs, 4 LED strips, and 4 2.5" drives was definitely a fun challenge (the 4th 2.5" drive is tucked on top of the rats nest behind the power supply): I wasn't content with my 2080's noise level when the fans were ramped up, and even though the H150i kept my i7-9700k just under 70C or so under load, I wanted to go all out with a custom loop. Since I already had the LLs and the return window had passed, I wanted to use them, and so I had the same dilemma of wanting to do push/pull (almost entirely for aesthetic, because the LLs are pretty sexy). I also wanted to go pretty heavy on cooling capacity (I'm overclocking, but not going super hardcore; I mostly wanted a pretty quiet system even under load), so I wanted 360 and 280 rads. I couldn't figure out how to mount EK's XRES 140 D5 pump combo normally and still have room for push/pull; the PSU shroud goes too far foward to have it on the bottom front fan, and the res was too tall to have it on the middle front fan and have the top rad as well. My other options were to go with a different res/pump combo or separate components, but I couldn't find an easy-enough way to mount those either. At this point I doubled down, determined to find a way to keep my push/pullI ? It turned out that while the pump combo wouldn't fit between the PSU shroud and the fan with the mounting holes facing the fan, but it would fit with the mounting holes perpendicular, with a few millimeters to spare (I had about 82mm of clearance, and the pump is 78mm wide): This renewed my hope, but I couldn't find any brackets that were thin enough to mount the pump to the bottom of the case. Another option I considered was drilling holes and mounting the pump directly to the side of the case, but I wanted to leave that as a last resort. So I decided to get creative and use the CAD skills I learned in my engineering classes to design and 3D-print my own bracket for the pump that would mount to the bottom of the case (the cutout in the support circle was for the cables coming out of the bottom of the pump): A couple lessons were learned here. One is don't design parts at 3AM on no sleep during midterm exams (the back wall of the bracket was a lot thicker than it needed to be for some reason, so I "had" to drill out those holes a bit for a countersink for the pump screws). Another was to not try so hard to work with what you already have that you choose to drill holes in a part you designed and 3D-printed instead of just buying longer screws for a couple bucks. By the way, I'm using EK's SE 280 and SE 360 radiators. I went with the 28mm rads since the 360 was the same thickness as the H150i's and I had already measured and determined that I could make it work, and since if I went any thicker on the 360 then it'd probably be kind of pointless to get the 280 as well, especially with just the 9700k and a single 2080. After that ordeal, the bracket fit really well, but I ran into another problem: I couldn't put the front 360 rad in there with the ports at the top, because of the top 240 rad. I also consequently wasn't able to run lines around the pump. This seemed to be a show-stopper, especially due to my impatience after having all the necessary parts sitting in my apartment for several days while I waited for the bracket to be printed, then waiting another week for a 2-slot bracket from EVGA to vertically mount the graphics card, so I didn't want to wait several more days to re-print a different part (though I probably should have). So as I was sitting there, forlorn, looking at my parts, I got looking at the PCIE slot covers, and got an idea (this is where the cringe comes in): After that picture I flipped the brackets the other way and moved them to the bottom screws on the middle fan so the pump is hanging rather than being held up, to get the pump down as far and as close to the top of the PSU shroud as possible, to give myself more room. What is actually kind of cool about using these is the resulting adjustability in the pump position. I do however, full intend on designing and 3D-printing a new bracket that will let the pump go in the same spot, and also use the screws from the top of the bottom fan for added support. Anyway, to wrap this too-long post up, here's what my end result loop looks like: This was of course my first time doing a custom loop, and my friend talked me into going with hard tubing (I'm using PETG). Mistakes were made; the bends aren't perfect, and I should have brought the line from the CPU outlet to the pump inlet instead of the top of the res, because currently it's a hassle to fill. I also have a suspicion that having the inlet in the top of the res may make it harder to aerate the system (I'm using EK's clear cryo-fuel, but it looks white at the moment because of all the bubbles; hopefully it clears out once it aerates a bit more). In addition, I probably could have ran the GPU lines in from the front like Corsair did, but I didn't think I could bend that tight. I might still be able to do it with just bends, but I'd rather just do it with fittings. I'm also a noob and at first used the thermal pads that were on the stock EVGA GPU cooler, which are a lot thicker than EK's thermal pads, so the GPU block initially wasn't making contact; I had to do the GPU block twice before I figured that out. Speaking of which, I'm not super happy with the GPU block lighting, since it really only permeates through not quite half of the block (the light on the left in that picture are from the LED strips). For the drain line, I had to get creative again to use the fittings I had after changing my plans with the radiator directions; I have a splitter off one of the ports in the front rad that goes to the GPU inlet and also to a line of soft tubing with a ball valve for draining (another example of in the context of the money spent on the rest of the system, a note to self is don't cheap out on fittings). While tricky to assemble initially (because the soft line runs under the hard line from the other port almost immediately), this makes it actually pretty easy to drain, and the doors hide the drain line decently well. I'm also not sure about the physics of the height of the res in relation to everything else, because when you stop the pump, the res fills back up while I'm assuming the top rad empties. On a positive note though, I only had one leak that I found pretty quickly and haven't had any issues like that since. I plan on redoing the lines at some point, probably using 90s at every bend like Corsair did instead of trying to bend things myself. In the meantime, I'm just gonna relax and enjoy the awesome temperatures, though the pump filling was still making more noise than I'd like (we'll see if it quiets down once it's done aerating and the doors are on). I also don't like not being able to control the speeds of the top and rear case fans with iCUE, since I had to plug those straight into the motherboard, so I might have to get a second Commander Pro eventually, which will be tough to fit in there. Anyway, that's what I did in the 500D; I love the case and the flexibility it provides. While I think that I'm getting pretty close to maxing out the capabilities of what the case can handle, it's surprised me how much I've been able to pack in there, given enough time and effort.