Downsizing my Watercooled NCase M1 to the Dan Case A4-SFX

[amvoith]

So this might be happening  Might be trading one of my 970s plus some cash for it. Will be putting it under water of course!

[amvoith]

So with the 980ti in the works, I've decided to upgrade my Asus VG248QE 1080p 144Hz TN monitor to an Acer XB271HU 1440p 144Hz G-Sync IPS monitor. They are currently on sale today at NCIX for any other Canadians out there interested in one. 

 

Very excited for this!!!

[astheria]

Excited to see the next steps! Thinking at all about moving everything back inside the Ncase and giving up the external rad?

[amvoith]

2 hours ago, astheria said:

Excited to see the next steps! Thinking at all about moving everything back inside the Ncase and giving up the external rad?

I have thought about it, but my temps are much better with the external rad in the loop, and the build is near silent as I have all the fans running at very low RPM. All I can really hear is a little noise from the D5. I do plan to clean the build up a bit though by integrating the external rad into the shelf below where the case sits, that way the rad won't be right on my work area. 

[amvoith]

Got one, waterblock is also on the way

 

If anyone is interested in waterblocks for a 970 EVGA ACX, PM me, I've got two with backplates.

 

Loving the new monitor also! 

 

 

[amvoith]

Got the 980ti under a waterblock yesterday. Currently I'm only using the 480mm external rad as I can't seem to fit the internal 240mm rad in with this card without removing the pump and everything. I still need to get a backplate for the card though so I will wait until I have that to get the internal rad in.

 

Here are the temps with only the GPU OC'd. Currently running +130Mhz clock and +147Mhz Memory. (I've only got 3 fans on the 480mm rad at the moment too). The max temps listed are after running unigine valley and The Division for a few hours. Fans don't spin up past what you see there so it's very quiet. If I ran them higher obviously temps would be lower but I'm happy with the low noise level.

[amvoith]

Ok so I finally had a bit of time to sit down and overclock my CPU. 4790k @ 4.6Ghz at 1.285v is what I'm sitting at right now. I have to go over 1.31v in order to get a stable 4.7Ghz. I'm using AIDA64 for stress testing. The chip still runs very cool with my cooling setup but I'm not sure if I wanna keep it at that voltage 24/7. Thoughts?  

[iiNNeX]

3 hours ago, amvoith said:

Ok so I finally had a bit of time to sit down and overclock my CPU. 4790k @ 4.6Ghz at 1.285v is what I'm sitting at right now. I have to go over 1.31v in order to get a stable 4.7Ghz. I'm using AIDA64 for stress testing. The chip still runs very cool with my cooling setup but I'm not sure if I wanna keep it at that voltage 24/7. Thoughts?  

Nothing wrong with the voltage, as long as you are under 1.35 you're fine for 24/7.

[hearthofsin]

clean up the wires and mount the rad to the underside of your desk and your setup will look killer! 

nice build 

[amvoith]

1 hour ago, iiNNeX said:

Nothing wrong with the voltage, as long as you are under 1.35 you're fine for 24/7.

I've managed to get 4.7Ghz @ 1.32v. I'm happy with that. Unfortunately my Raid 0 array got messed up in my over clocking endeavours (had to reset cmos) so now I'm reinstalling windows and my programs/games  This is the second time this has happened to me on various builds. I don't think I'm gonna bother with Raid 0 any more. 

1 hour ago, hearthofsin said:

clean up the wires and mount the rad to the underside of your desk and your setup will look killer! 

nice build 

Yeah the rad is currently on the shelf below my computer. I moved it shortly after posting that pic; looks much cleaner there. As for the wires, I'm going to be cleaning those up at some point haha they do look horrible  Thanks a lot man!

[amvoith]

I've finally got some fans on the way. Decided to go with EK Vardars. Up until now I've been running only 3 fans on my 480mm rad lol. 

 

What are your thoughts on requiring push/pull on a 60mm thick rad like the EK XE480? I notice not much air reaches through the rad even with my current corsair SP120 fans ramped up. 

 

I've also got a backplate for the 980ti on the way as well as a few more plans in store. Stay tuned. 

[amvoith]

Ok so here is the first of a few updates to come over the next few weeks. 500GB Samsung 850 Evo mSATA SSD. This will give me more storage than my 2x 128gb 2.5" Samsung 850 Pro SSDs and allow for less cables in the case. 

 

 

 

I've also purchased some EK Vardar F2 120mm fans (1450 rpm) for the external radiator. I'm not sure how I feel about them as they are very loud at any speed over 50% (which is the lowest PWM signal that they will spin at). I may just need to get four more to do a push/pull as anything less than 80% rpm there isn't much airflow through the rad. I'm not too concerned at this point though as eventually I plan not to have any fans in the same room as the computer and I can just run them at 100%  More to follow on that eventually.

 

 

That's it for today. More to follow soon!

[amvoith]

Disclaimer: Pictures will span multiple posts (not sure how to get around this 20mb upload limit).

 

Update: I've received a few packages over the past few days. Here are a few shots of the hardware so far and outline of what to expect next. I still have two packages on the way, one of which has what will become the main feature in this build; should be here on Wednesday.

 

One huge disappointment is that the EVGA Z97 Stinger motherboard will not fit a regular mSata drive, despite their manual and website saying that it has an mSata port (it will only fit a half size mSata). I called EVGA to inquire about getting my money back due to false advertising and they pretty much said "f*** you, you should have realized EVGA didn't mean that it would fit regular sized mSata devices". Very nice of them. 

 

Four more EK Vardar F2 fans to complete my push/pull setup:

EK Titan X Black Backplate:

 

or EK Titan X Nickel Backplate:

 

More pictures to follow.

 

 

[amvoith]

Yesterday's update part 2 (more pics):

 

Finally making the switch to hardline . Will be using Bitspower fittings for 10/12mm tubing. 

 

Oh, and tubing for this will be nickel plated copper!

 

What are your thoughts on which GPU backplate I should use? I'm leaning towards the black one as there may be a bit too much nickel in the build with the other one.

 

[Infin8]

Personally I'd go with the black backplate. I'm so jealous of your build, I can't seem to get my M1 even somewhat quiet. I have a h105 in there which kepps my delidded 6600K cool, but when gaming it spikes up over 75° causing all fans to spin at 100%...And getting an external rad is no option for me since, well, i want a small PC

[amvoith]

15 hours ago, Infin8 said:

Personally I'd go with the black backplate. I'm so jealous of your build, I can't seem to get my M1 even somewhat quiet. I have a h105 in there which kepps my delidded 6600K cool, but when gaming it spikes up over 75° causing all fans to spin at 100%...And getting an external rad is no option for me since, well, i want a small PC

Thanks man! Keep an eye out, I've got some big updates/changes coming once these busy few days are past  

[amvoith]

A few more pics of the parts that have been arriving. I haven't installed any of the hardware yet, but now it's all here (minus one thing I'd like to pick up once it's available again - it will be a game changer . 

 

Here is the future centrepiece of the build; a custom full board waterblock for the EVGA Z97 Stinger Motherboard. A member over on evga forums manufactured these a few years back and I managed to get my hands on one recently. A little scratched up but hopefully I can buff the scratches out. I'll have this all polished up soon.

 

With vanity plate on:

 

Without Vanity Plate:

 

Underside:

 

Very excited to try this puppy out! 

[amvoith]

And in my pursuit of even cooler temps, I picked up one of these with some Coolaboratory Liquid Ultra. Woot!

 

 

[amvoith]

Just fried 4 of my EK Vardar fans. there's a $200 CAD mistake... stupid exchange rate and customs charges.. Does anyone know where I can get EK Vardar F2 in Canada? Dazmode doesn't sell them and I'd like to avoid the $40 delivery charge + customs that performacePCs has.

 

Edit, found some at NCIX, just on 2-4 week backorder.

[amvoith]

I'll just leave this here

[amvoith]

So I've transitioned my build into the Dan Case A4-SFX. The NCase M1 was just too big for me I also took the opportunity to make the switch to hardline copper tubing and made a custom midplate. Custom cables are next on the list. Let me know what you think!

 

 

 

[CtW]

Looks dope. I really want to find a way to put a rad in that thing.

[amvoith]

On 28/02/2017 at 7:19 PM, CtW said:

Looks dope. I really want to find a way to put a rad in that thing.

Thanks man. I've looked into it a little bit and depending on which PSU you are using and if you need the 2.5" drive mounts at the bottom or not, you could likely fit a 92mm or 2x92mm rad in there (with mods). I tend to like the external rad though as it offers very cool temps and low noise. 

 

Next on my list is doing custom cables to get rid of the mess in the front. Going with 18 AWG and black sleeving.

 

Also putting my 512GB mSata drive into a 2.5" enclosure and getting rid of the 2x 128GB drives.

 

In addition I need to do my delid and check my block mounting as my temps are a bit too high. The block has been tested to perform a few degrees better than the EK evo but at the moment it isn't performing to that standard. I think it may be my trial and error with thermal pad thickness lol

 

Anyways thanks for the feedback. 

[CtW]

7 hours ago, amvoith said:

Thanks man. I've looked into it a little bit and depending on which PSU you are using and if you need the 2.5" drive mounts at the bottom or not, you could likely fit a 92mm or 2x92mm rad in there (with mods). I tend to like the external rad though as it offers very cool temps and low noise. 

 

Next on my list is doing custom cables to get rid of the mess in the front. Going with 18 AWG and black sleeving.

 

Also putting my 512GB mSata drive into a 2.5" enclosure and getting rid of the 2x 128GB drives.

 

In addition I need to do my delid and check my block mounting as my temps are a bit too high. The block has been tested to perform a few degrees better than the EK evo but at the moment it isn't performing to that standard. I think it may be my trial and error with thermal pad thickness lol

 

Anyways thanks for the feedback. 

for the rads, i was thinking you could put that new hdplex psu down by the gpu which might even free up enough space for a thick 120mm rad.

[amvoith]

12 hours ago, CtW said:

for the rads, i was thinking you could put that new hdplex psu down by the gpu which might even free up enough space for a thick 120mm rad.

Have you got one of the cases? I'd be interested to see what you do with it.

 

But yeah if you didn't have an SFX or SFX-L PSU in there, you could theoretically put up to a 48mm thick rad on the CPU side (48mm of space) of the case and a 25mm thick fan on the GPU compartment of the case (using a short GPU). I suppose you'd need to drill some vent/hole pattern for airflow through the mid-plate for airflow but this would be an awesome project. (i haven't measured any of this btw). DDC pump would be tricky to fit in I think.