Build: Cosmos Sv2 (Custom Loop, i9 9900k, 2080Ti)

[NotSoEpicMods]

On 3/29/2019 at 3:04 PM, Vegard_ said:

That is quite the jump in performance, wow. This is gonna turn out great.

 

I, too, am gonna try to be more active here.

Thanks!

 

Well this update is a week or so old but here it is. I've been pretty busy but I should have another update pretty soon.

 

As you can see I had originally decided to go with another Ultrawide monitor however I had a few issues with the one pictured above which were mainly nit picky on my part. First, is that the ultrawide monitor is not curved and after having used this 34″ Ultrawide I can honestly say in a desktop setting a curved Ultrawide with the way to go. Second, you might be able to see a re 360 console hiding behind those parts. Yes, yes, PCMR aside I still play some older console games and honestly games look horrible when stretched to 21:9 aspect ratio. So I opted instead to return the monitor and purchase a 144Hz 32″ Samsung 1440p monitor which came in the most plain boring box ever as seen below.

I mean my 32″ 1080p Samsung monitor at least had a colored box but I guess the box isn’t as important as the actual product inside which I have to say is beautiful but we can get to that a bit later. First we have to build the pc.

Even with high end gear it’s still your standard affair when it comes to assembly. The only exception in my case is that the custom loop for the CPU is something I had to deal with and having to change the mounting bracket. Honestly one of the reasons I went with Intel instead of AMD is the fact that I had an existing Intel bracket for my cpu block that would work with the high end chip. All in all it turned out great and performs pretty good so far at stock speeds. My stress test has been running for several hour now at stock speeds to make sure everything plays nice before I begin to start overclocking.

[NotSoEpicMods]

Just a small update, a few more parts have arrived. I got a nickel-plexi gpu block as well as a black backplate as well as a few fittings and a new multi-port res top.

I have also been stress testing my system over the last few weeks. I managed to get my 9900k to 5.1ghz with a 0.100 offset which makes the cpu peak to 1.376v under full load but for some reason I can’t get all threads prime95 stable there’s always 2 threads that don’t run but it can fold and run RealBench all day long which I guess is good enough for me since I don’t think I will be running prime95 a lot. I don’t plan on running any higher voltage trying to make prime95 stable since it pegs my cpu at 92C and it’s not even summer yet. I also made a pcpartpicker list here: https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/user/NotSoEpicMods/saved/LYysZL

 

I thought it would be a nice comparison seeing my before and after of my CPU-Z validation. This is how my machine was pretty much ever since 2014 minus adding 2 ssds in raid 0 and to be honest even at that time it was pretty out of date: http://valid.x86.fr/hvspzq and here is my system now: https://valid.x86.fr/1qbv4w which I expect to be “out of date” within 6-12 months. However I do think that this hardware will suit my needs for several years to come or at least until I get the itch to go to something even more extreme.

 

And before I forget here’s the screen shot of my Cinebench20 run with cpu-z not sure how it stacks up against other 9900k cpus but I think it’s by far better than my 1256 score with my previous cpu.

[NotSoEpicMods]

It's me again! Woo been a while and actually been doing small upgrades here and there. I've actually been posting these upgrades on my website but not here idk why but anyways prepare for a long copy and paste from my website. I tried to remove any links or anything else that might be against posting guidelines.

 

Update #17 April 20, 2019

A very minor update bought a new fan to try out think I’ll like it but wanted to try it out first. It’s from Arctic Cooling it has probably the smallest fan motor hub I’ve seen which looks great.

   

 

---

 

Update #18 May 10, 2019

Working on a vertical gpu case mod so show off that sexy 2080ti gpu block once I get it installed. I want to get the vertical mount done before I throw the block on so that I get the proper tubing runs even though they’re flexible. I also got a single 120mm rad for the rear exhaust to be plumbed later with the gpu.

This was my mock up with an old gpu I had. I wanted to make sure the holes and whatnot I’m drilling are in the right spots. The pci slots that will face the back of the case were stolen from an old Shuttle pc that was dismantled long ago and I just cut the section of the case I needed.

Marker outline is where I’m cutting out the access to the gpu I/O. I already have the mounting holes drilled and I did have to make a reinforcement plate since the aluminum on the Cosmos S and the part from the Shuttle PC were pretty flimsy.

Yes she doesn’t look too pretty but I mean it’s not too bad either and I think once it’s done it’ll look way better. There are 4 screws holding the mount in place and the weight support for the card will be burdened onto the top of the PSU.

Probably the blurriest picture I’ve taken but it’s all I have and I don’t want to crack the case open again and it’s late while I’m writing this. If I was getting paid to do this maybe I would’ve taken another picture. Maybe consider this one of those blurry teaser pictures until I get the gpu block installed.

 

---

 

Update #19 June 10, 2019

Well today was the big day installing that gpu waterblock. It’s pretty nerve wracking taking apart a gpu you paid $1900 after taxes for especially when you’ve never done anything like it before. Though I was confident going into it doing all my research into getting the right block etc and I dove in head first.

Wow what a beautiful feat of engineering that this card is. I almost wish I could afford a more top tier card but they were all sold out and the ones that were in stock had no waterblocks available from EK at this time. Almost looks like the thermal paste application from factory could’ve been a bit better but I never had temp issues with the stock blower cooler so I guess it was good enough.

Got that massive gpu die all cleaned of thermal paste and followed the EK instructions and got the thermal pads cut and positioned. Honestly not too hard to do if you’re used to tinkering with stuff.

I also got these Thermaltake flow indicators I’m gonna try out. reviews were mixed about these since some experienced them not spinning while others say they’re great.

 

Well there it is, waiting for the bubbles to bleed before I test out thermals but hopefully everything is ok.

 

---

 

Update #20 June 11, 2019

Well maybe I spoke too soon. Looks like something I did wasn’t quite right when I installed the gpu block and well I was actually getting worse performance than with the air cooler.

After I tore the block off I found out what had happened, and no it’s not the missing thermal pads in the picture those were still stuck to the block, it was the thermal paste application. As you can see the too corners had no thermal paste on them and it looks like the paste kinda just oozed all the was down to the bottom of the die. All I can think of is uuggghhh. Well I put some Arctic mx-4 thermal paste I had which was quite a bit thicker than the EK provided stuff and well it seemed to improve it greatly and I was able to get much better performance than the stock air cooler. Oh also those Thermaltake flow indicators are kind of a no go since they seem to bind even with some sanding and polishing. Oh well at least it’s up and running properly now. Not sure when the next update will be but stay tuned for that.

 

---

 

Update #21 July 13, 2019

Well the next update came sooner than I thought. I loved that one Arctic cooling Bionix fan so much I went and ordered more.

  

A whole lot more, haha. Got six of them the replace my Cougar and Bitfenix fans. Mmm so many fans.

I also picked up a fan splitter? Powered hub? Idk the thing pictured above to allow one mobo header to control multiple pwm fans.

 

The old fans for refrence.

Uhhhhh, eww. Guess even with dust filters that stuff still gets in. Looks like I have to do some vacuuming while the fans are off.

Looks like I’m gonna have to sort out some of this wiring mess also.

Here you can see the difference with the fan motor sizes. Also idk why but I really like the looks of the blades on the Bionix fan.

 

In with the new. Even though you won’t really see them I think they look great.

Well here’s everything I’ve ripped out of the case so far for this build. The two ssd will be going into a case (pictured with them) and I’ll reuse the fans in other computers. the cables some of them I’ll toss and some I’ll store away in case I need them.

 

---

 

Update #22 July 24, 2019

Well I got fed up with the onboard fan control on my Asus mobo. Don’t get me wrong it’s adequate for most systems but not what I want in this system. So what do you do? Why spend more money of course *facepalm*

 

Introducing the commander pro from Corsair. Yea yea you could call me a fanboy since my last and current keyboard and mice as well as my ram are Corsair but hey when a company makes good products you buy em. I’m not sponsored by Corsair or any other company for that matter for this build. Anyways, the commander pro fits the bill for my uses. I can hook up my daisy chained rad fans to control and monitor them. I can also just monitor my pump rpm with it as well. There are also 4 temp probes which I plan on having 1 on the vrm heatsink, 1 on the front rad, 1 on the top rad and one for ambient intake air temp. biggest thing is I can have iCUE control the fan rpm by the temps.

Well that’s where it will sit in the case for now. Yes I know my wiring is still a horrendous mess back there but no one is really gonna see it. Unfortunately, the temp sensors for the commander pro while yes work great I can’t seem to get attached well enough to the end tanks of my rads. Even with insulating them with lots of electrical tape they still seem to have readings that are off since they read way too close to ambient temp. So I just ended up using the temp directly from the gpu and cpu. Only downside to this is the cpu temp fluctuates a lot +-5 degrees so makes setting the fan curve a little tricky to get my desired slightly positive air pressure.

 

---

 

Update #23 July 24, 2019

Big things are coming.

 

Well it may not look like a lot of parts but stay tuned for the upgrades in the coming days. Happy Holidays!

[NotSoEpicMods]

Update #24 December 24, 2019

Alright lets get into this. So one of the first things is the flow meter is pretty restrictive so I will be widening the ports on it and polishing the machining on the inside.

Her you can see how restricted the inlet/outlet is on this flow meter. It makes me a little concerned since I only have a single D5 running this loop which will have 420x30mm rad, 360x60mm rad, 120x30mm rad, gpu block and cpu block.

Not the best picture I have of it but how can you take a clear picture of something that is blurry? Anyways as you can see where the impeller sits I have a piece of tubing and you can see how opaque the acrylic is.

  

Here’s the finished product. As you can see with the fitting in place there is now no restriction. I also added a white piece of paper on top of the black pcb for the rpm sensing. Makes the impeller way more visible I might change it to red later but we’ll see since atm it matches with the white on the motherboard. I also used Meguiar’s PlastX to polish out the machining on the acrylic.

  

I’m also posting these pictures here as a sort of before and after reference I don't expect the rear cable management to improve drastically but I'm aiming for the front to look clean. I’ll be dismantling it later tonight and hope to have another post ready for Christmas day.

[NotSoEpicMods]

Update #25 December 25, 2019

Alright so I spent some time tearing apart the system, man this thing was dusty.

Well here’s the front of the case with all the mesh taken off. The current rad in there is a 3x120mm and from my initial parts picture you’re probably thinking oh well he’s just swapping out to a cross flow rad for better tubing runs. Well what might have been hard to see in my parts picture is that the 30mm thick rad is actually a 3x140mm rad which I’m going to "finesse" into the front of this case. I did measuring and well it’s going to be a little tight.

Blegh, even though I did vacuum this a few months ago it still looks horrible in this lighting.

Well don’t ask me why I used such long tubing runs cus I don’t either. It might of been a combination of first time custom water cooling and my impatience. This is also how I had my hard drives mounted because apparently they would kinda fit length wise in the 5.25″ bay. I wouldn’t recommend doing this though. Well that’s it for this update the rest of the disassembly is pretty boring and standard.

[NotSoEpicMods]

Update #26 December 28, 2019

Ok so the case is apart and I’m doing some test fitting for that front rad. First thing first is to smash down those 5.25″ drive bay support tabs.

One nice thing about the case being aluminum is that it’s really easy to bent those tabs. After getting all the tabs flattened it was time to see if the rad fits and with my measurements it should?

Well, it fits, kinda. Oof those clearances are almost too tight for comfort. The side to side clearance is tight enough to securely hold the rad in place and the top clearance with the rad sitting on the bottom of the case is about 5mm. The bottom fan will only be held in with the top 2 screws and looses a little air flow on the bottom portion but honestly it’s only like 2mm. Reason for only the 2 screws on the bottom fan is that this front rad will not move up and down enough to expose the screws and the entire case has to be disassembled to remove the screws. That or a good portion of the internals including the top rad will have to be removed, speaking of which…

Test fitting the rear fitting of the top rad and the rear fan/rad combo.

Well I’ll leave you with this water flow chart I came up with and which is why I purchased new cross flow rads. One of my main goals with this upgrade is the simplification of the water cooling system and trying to eliminate unneeded/unwanted tubing runs. Let me know what you think, both of my plans and my MS paint skills haha.

[NotSoEpicMods]

Not really an update so I’ll just tack this onto here. I should be receiving my Christmas gift to myself tomorrow and let’s just say my wallet is still recovering and will be recovering for a long while. Will be posting some pics when I get it.

[NotSoEpicMods]

Update #27 December 29, 2019

Well my drive came in and wow it looks real slick. Was it worth the price I paid? Probably not.

Remounted the CPU block with the Phobya flow through temp sensor fitting on the exit side.

While I was at it I threw in that smexy NVMe drive. There’s also no doubt that I’m going to have to do some sheet metal work for the interior of the case. I just used some very thin galvanized ducting for ease of use.

With the 2 NVMe ssds now in the system I no longer need 4 hard drives so I will be retaining my two WD Red drives and moving my WD Black and Green to other PCs. As you can see this is how I’m planning on displaying those drives. I used mobo stand offs I had to space them from the case.

Here’s a better look at how things will sit inside the case. If you noticed I cut out a large portion of the 5.25″ bay mounting area. I may or may not regret this at some point in the far future but we’ll see. I was also planning on making a cut out for the cpu back plate but after thinking for a little bit I honestly don’t think I would ever change my cpu block or cooler enough to justify cutting one. I also I only made necessary cut outs for the 24 pin, sata data, and front panel connectors.

After I got everything mocked up I walked by my box of random pc junk and this 2.5″ to 3.5″ drive adapter that I got with some ssds long ago caught my eye. It looks just tall enough for something…

Perfect, looks like I can add another drive haha.

Well this is everything I will need to paint. Mobo tray cover, 2.5″ drive bracket, new case floor, vertical gpu bracket and the case itself. I’ll be using a matte black automotive wheel paint once I get all the surfaces prepped tonight.

[NotSoEpicMods]

Update #28 December 30, 2019

Well parts are painted.

While I was waiting between coats and the paint to dry I decided to tackle my gpu. If you didn’t know when I first installed my full cover block I had temp issues. After a remount the temp issues improved but I never really got quite the performance and temperatures I was expecting even though I did buy a lower tier 2080Ti.

 

So I decided to crack this thing open since I have the entire system apart anyways. I also want to clean the block since I had some residue in my old loop which seems to have collected in the gpu block. This is also kind of the reason I went with a clear block instead of a solid acetal block like my cpu is so that I can easily see if the system needs any maintenance.

I also purchased new Arctic MX-4 thermal paste and Arctic thermal pads to replace what I had already on the card.

Well that thermal spread looks pretty crap. No wonder my temps weren’t that great and my boost clock wasn’t nearly as high as I wanted. While it was a better spread than my last attempt it still wasn’t great so it got me thinking what the hell. Then I noticed it, if you look at the mounting holes around the die you’ll notice that there’s some squished glue on them. It was like a light bulb turned on and I couldn’t believe I didn’t see it before. So I very very very carefully took a box cutter and scraped away all the glue I could.

 

Well I wiped the block clean and got all the thermal pads applied and applied thermal paste. I probably didn’t need the 4 dots since the center of the X was fairly thick but since it’s non conductive paste I figured it won’t hurt. I also filled the parts of the mounting posts on the block that face the corners of gpu die.

I also began prepping all the other parts including the pump and res. I probably should’ve checked clearances like this 90 on the res earlier since I want to get the pc up and running for new years but I guess it worked out.

[NotSoEpicMods]

Update #29 December 31, 2019

So all the best plans can always have some hiccups.

The 90 I was planning on using, the one out of the rad, turns out was leaking quite a bit. It was one of those re-branded type fittings and is the second that has leaked on me which is why I never really used them for critical points in the loop like over a gpu. So time for a redesign.

 

Yep that’ll work. I guess the paint isn’t fully cured yet either since some of it has flaked off from the plastic clips. I ended up drilling another hole on the other side of the case and just ran a tube through it cus really who’s gonna lift my system just to check how my drain port works.

This is how the tube will be stored under the case so it’ll be totally stealthed. I don’t have a drain valve just a plugged fitting. My plan is to just pinch off the hose then pull plug out to drain the system. It’s worked find for me in the past so why make it more complicated?

Plus these only cost a couple dollars anyways.

Before getting the drives and res in I put some black car edge trim over the jagged parts that I cut away. That hose coming from the top is actually coming from the fill port and not the top of the rads. The way i connected the 2 rads together is probably the tightest tubing run I’ve ever seen/done I’ll put a pic below.

All parts are in. Now I know what you’re thinking. why in the world would you put a 2.5″ 5400rpm hard drive in this system? Well, I actually have an ssd on the way and a family member will be bringing it tonight for New Years when they visit.

This is my tube routing, it’s as short as I can get the tubing runs but I’m not 100% sure about the layout. None of the tubes really cross too much. I’m not even sure how else I could change it. But I really love that EK matte black tubing.

Pretty easy to fill this loop. You may also notice that there’s no front I/O and well since I removed it 5 years ago I haven’t missed it at all. At my last place I actually had a USB extension mounted to the underside of my desk which is really all I needed for this pc. Now I have a usb port on my keyboard so I don’t even need the under desk usb port.

Here’s all the old tubing which I will keep most of for just in case and other stuff and the 2 old rads.

Sorting through the mess of wires while I bleed the bubbles out of the loop.

The almighty commander pro. Surprisingly one of my favorite purchases for my pc. While it’s not perfect it does pretty much what I need it to do. It’ll also work with my 2 Phobya in line temp sensors. It also adds 2 usb headers behind the mobo tray if I want to add things later.

Well she ain’t pretty at the back but she works.

But aww man look at that front. Does it ever look clean. What do you think?

Transferring the files off the old hard drive onto the new WD NVMe.

Well until I get my SSD I’m gonna hold off on doing glamour pics. I also have a new mic for my setup which I’ll probably do a whole setup picture as well.