The idea behind the name
As you might have noticed, looking at my nickname I am a great fan of the Matrix movies. As my current build is based on two colors and the new update will also maintain these two colors I thought about a matching name for this build. Thinking of blue and red I was remembering the two pills neo gets to choose so he can follow the “white rabbit”, leave the matrix and starts his journey.
My history in PC building
My history in pc building started when my dad got his first Windows PC. The CPU was an Intel Pentium 1 166MHz. It was actually built by my uncle and I was helping him and my dad with the assembly and installation. Later I got my first own PC with a Pentium 2 400MHz. Time went on and for a couple of years I ran with AMD and their Athlon XP 1200MHz already slightly overclocked. Back with Intel some time later I moved from the 3200MHz Pentium 4 to Core2Duo E6300, Core2Quad Q6600, Core i7 860 and finally to my current CPU which is a i7-5820K.
Watercooling my PC started with a custom loop for the Core2Quad Q6600. I expanded the loop to the GPU and tried to pack more and more radiators to my case. Always with the focus on cooling performance. 3 years ago, I moved over to the Corsair 900D and finally had a lot of space to do all the things that I had in mind to get a good looking system besides the cooling performance .
The starting point
Hardware
Intel Core i7-5820K
ASUS X99-S
16 GB Kingston Predator 2800 MHz
MSI GeForce GTX1080 Reference PCB
Samsung 950 Pro m.2 256GB
2x Samsung 850 Evo 500GB running in Raid 0
EVGA 1000Watt G3 PSU
Corsair 900D
Watercooling Dual Loop
CPU+VRM
D5 Pump
EKWB Supremacy EVO
EKWB ASUS X99 Mosfet Block
480mm Alphacool Radiator
Alphacool Helix Reservoir
GPU
D5 Pump
EKWB GTX1080 Reference Block
360mm + 240mm Phobya Radiator
Alphacool Helix Reservoir
Aquaero 5 LT for Monitoring and Fancontrol
Caseparts from Coldzero for the 900D
Midplate
Mainboard Tray
Front Internal Cover
What is the plan?
Streamline
With two 60mm thick radiators and the psu in the bottom, the actually pretty large 900D is absolutely fully packed. So the first thing I wanted to do, is to get rid of the 240mm rad in the bottom so there is more space.
With modern Mainboards and all the options in controlling fans, pumps and even using external temperature sensors I want to throw out the aquaero as well.
Clean
When drilling the holes through the Midplate of the 900D I didn’t measure the correct position and had to improvise with an additional plastic plate covering the wrong holes. That flaw always was bothering me.
I want to achieve the cleanest look as possible.
Performance
As I’m tearing the whole system apart I thought this is a good opportunity to upgrade the hardware. Even though the system wasn’t actually slow it was struggeling a bit with getting enough FPS on 4K.
The radiator size is a total overkill for the CPU/GPU I’m using. But that’s not the point I just wanted to get as many radiators as possible in the case maintaining a clean look.
And of course RGB ?
New Parts
Hardware
Intel Core i9-9900K
Gigabyte Z390 Auros Master
32GB Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB 3200MHz
EVGA RTX2080Ti Black Edition
EKWB RTX2080Ti Vector RGB with Backplate
Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB m.2
The Case and PSU will stay the same
Watercooling
Changing the GPU Loop
480mm EKWB Cool-Stream XE in the bottom
240mm EKWB Cool-Stream SE in the front
Case addons
RGB Lightbox from Coldzero
Front- and Top-Grill from Coldzero for a better airflow