mrmeeseeks84

Mighty fine thanks to several on these forums for tips and tricks to help get through my conversion from soft loop to a rigid loop, as well as some hardware weirdness I was troubleshooting.
 
I decided it was time for a change, so I retired my old Corsair 900D and Intel i7 5820K for some new hardware, keeping pretty much only my GPU and PSU from my old rig.
 
Motherboard: ASUS STRIX x570-E Gaming
CPU: Ryzen 3700x
GPU: ASUS RTX 2080 Ti STRIX
RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Neo
SSD: 2x 1TB PCI 4.0 NVME M.2
 
I had some issues with the installation of the new EKWB Vector Strix back-plate on my card. I discovered through trial, error, and luck that the GPU plate was shorting out the card. I may have missed it in instructions somewhere, but putting plastic washers between the back-plate and the GPU solved the issue, and didn't impact contact with the GPU at all. Phew.
 
The rigid tubing was actually pretty painless.... just tedious really. I imagine the use of 90 fittings and using the distro plate made things a tad easier. I did get to try one 90 degree bend though where I couldn't fit both fittings on the tube because the distance was so small. Might revisit that one in the future to see if I can get a smaller fitting on there.
 
Overall I'm pretty pleased and thrilled with the way the rigid tubing came out. Had always wanted to do try it out and I could not be happier.
 
 

 
 

I recently finished my new build with a custom loop (I'll attach a pic so you can see the loop) and it runs Distro > GPU > CPU > RAD > RAD > Distro. My water temperature sensor is at the bottom of the distro-plate.
 
I've been watching temps and noticed that my CPU seems to run a bit hot. In gaming it's not too bad, so perhaps it doesn't matter but thought I'd explore a bit so I started running Aida64 stress test on CPU/GPU.
 
During the stress test, the temps seem to shake out like this:
 
CPU immediately spikes to ~70c then climbs gradually to ~80c
Water temp reported as 28c and seems to stay there
 
GPU/CPU running 100% GPU steady around ~50c CPU steady around ~80c Water temp says 27c  
Because of the way the CPU temp seems so much higher than the GPU in the loop (granted, the GPU is BEFORE the CPU and after two radiators in the loop so maybe it makes sense) that perhaps I need to re-seat the CPU block or something, although I feel pretty confident the paste and seating is fairly solid but we all make mistakes.
 
Very possible I could be nitpicking here too as again, during gaming it seems relatively fine with CPU temp closer to the 60c mark. Idle temps are typically under 40c
 
 

Super nice and clean!

I got a boner looking at your build. Wow.

Mighty fine thanks to several on these forums for tips and tricks to help get through my conversion from soft loop to a rigid loop, as well as some hardware weirdness I was troubleshooting.
 
I decided it was time for a change, so I retired my old Corsair 900D and Intel i7 5820K for some new hardware, keeping pretty much only my GPU and PSU from my old rig.
 
Motherboard: ASUS STRIX x570-E Gaming
CPU: Ryzen 3700x
GPU: ASUS RTX 2080 Ti STRIX
RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Neo
SSD: 2x 1TB PCI 4.0 NVME M.2
 
I had some issues with the installation of the new EKWB Vector Strix back-plate on my card. I discovered through trial, error, and luck that the GPU plate was shorting out the card. I may have missed it in instructions somewhere, but putting plastic washers between the back-plate and the GPU solved the issue, and didn't impact contact with the GPU at all. Phew.
 
The rigid tubing was actually pretty painless.... just tedious really. I imagine the use of 90 fittings and using the distro plate made things a tad easier. I did get to try one 90 degree bend though where I couldn't fit both fittings on the tube because the distance was so small. Might revisit that one in the future to see if I can get a smaller fitting on there.
 
Overall I'm pretty pleased and thrilled with the way the rigid tubing came out. Had always wanted to do try it out and I could not be happier.
 
 

 
 

Those are some sexy hard line runs.

My God! Beautiful!
 
Good Job m8.

Mighty fine thanks to several on these forums for tips and tricks to help get through my conversion from soft loop to a rigid loop, as well as some hardware weirdness I was troubleshooting.
 
I decided it was time for a change, so I retired my old Corsair 900D and Intel i7 5820K for some new hardware, keeping pretty much only my GPU and PSU from my old rig.
 
Motherboard: ASUS STRIX x570-E Gaming
CPU: Ryzen 3700x
GPU: ASUS RTX 2080 Ti STRIX
RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Neo
SSD: 2x 1TB PCI 4.0 NVME M.2
 
I had some issues with the installation of the new EKWB Vector Strix back-plate on my card. I discovered through trial, error, and luck that the GPU plate was shorting out the card. I may have missed it in instructions somewhere, but putting plastic washers between the back-plate and the GPU solved the issue, and didn't impact contact with the GPU at all. Phew.
 
The rigid tubing was actually pretty painless.... just tedious really. I imagine the use of 90 fittings and using the distro plate made things a tad easier. I did get to try one 90 degree bend though where I couldn't fit both fittings on the tube because the distance was so small. Might revisit that one in the future to see if I can get a smaller fitting on there.
 
Overall I'm pretty pleased and thrilled with the way the rigid tubing came out. Had always wanted to do try it out and I could not be happier.
 
 

 
 

Mighty fine thanks to several on these forums for tips and tricks to help get through my conversion from soft loop to a rigid loop, as well as some hardware weirdness I was troubleshooting.
 
I decided it was time for a change, so I retired my old Corsair 900D and Intel i7 5820K for some new hardware, keeping pretty much only my GPU and PSU from my old rig.
 
Motherboard: ASUS STRIX x570-E Gaming
CPU: Ryzen 3700x
GPU: ASUS RTX 2080 Ti STRIX
RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Neo
SSD: 2x 1TB PCI 4.0 NVME M.2
 
I had some issues with the installation of the new EKWB Vector Strix back-plate on my card. I discovered through trial, error, and luck that the GPU plate was shorting out the card. I may have missed it in instructions somewhere, but putting plastic washers between the back-plate and the GPU solved the issue, and didn't impact contact with the GPU at all. Phew.
 
The rigid tubing was actually pretty painless.... just tedious really. I imagine the use of 90 fittings and using the distro plate made things a tad easier. I did get to try one 90 degree bend though where I couldn't fit both fittings on the tube because the distance was so small. Might revisit that one in the future to see if I can get a smaller fitting on there.
 
Overall I'm pretty pleased and thrilled with the way the rigid tubing came out. Had always wanted to do try it out and I could not be happier.