in-progress Frosted Silver - Custom 570x Watercooled Ryzen Build

[Dennism]

Hi Everyone,

 

This was my first fully custom pc build that I am attempting with the help of a friend. I've spent months researching components, brainstorming ideas, and planning the mods and layout. Finally, this week I began to assemble them together. I'm still missing a couple of pieces of my liquid cooling loop and custom cable sleeving, but I have enough to get started.

 

Now, let's start with the case and base layout. I chose the Corsair 570x since I really like the full tempered glass aesthetic, and I thought the inside layout of the case was favorable to what I had in mind. However, my first objective was to fit two 360mm radiators into this case. To those who are unfamiliar with the 570x, it is intended to accommodate a front radiator up to 360mm and a radiator on top up to 280mm in size, so this was going to be a challenge. Upon closer inspection, I learned that the radiators mount to the case via the provided brackets.

Front bracket: Top bracket:

After measuring I decided to order a second front bracket from Corsair and to use that to mount the top 360mm radiator. I was going to use two Black Ice Nemesis 360GTS® Ultra Stealth U-Flow Low Profile Radiators. Although these are very low profile radiators, I was still going to have major clearance issues with my planned layout.

 

So I sketched out what I had to mod in my case, and got the dremel out. I had to cut out openings in the back side to allow the fittings to reach the ports. Also, had to extend the bracket mounting slots to allow the radiator to slide further back.

Here are a few pics with the radiator and the fittings installed.

This is where things became even more interesting. When the top radiator and fan assembly is mounted, the IO shield was now in the way of the last fan. So I took my beautiful new Corsair LL120 fan and started dremelling.

Now that I was finally able to mount both of the radiators and fans, it was time for the next stage. This is where I would like to get into my builds theme or design. I decided to do an all frosted build with silver/nickel accents. I was inspired to do this by the Pump and Reservoir components that Singularity Computers offer. I loved the look of their frosted pump tops and silver mounts and pump covers. So, I got in touch with them and asked if they could "frost" one of their 250mm reservoirs for me. After looking into it, they let me know that they could do it!

 

Initially, I really wanted to do teal colored sleeving and coolant, to go together with the frosted components and loop. However, I wasn't able to find the exact color I wanted in the type of sleeving I was hoping. So I was left with the color choices that MDPC-X offers. This is one of the last few things I haven't pulled the trigger on yet, and I'm leaning towards something like this:

To complete my frosted theme, I started with tubing. I had a few clear PETG pieces lying around and so I tried to give them the frosted effect (wet sanding with fine grit). I didn't necessarily like the end result since it looked "scratched" and was hard to do in a consistent way and very time-consuming. So I started searching for pre-made options and quickly discovered that there weren't very many options. So, I bought some Alphacool Eisrohr 16mm Satin tubing which is only stocked in a few places and is a lot more expensive than regular acrylic or PETG.

Since I was going with EK waterblocks for my CPU and GPU, I knew I would have to manually "frost" them, since they no longer sell frosted acrylic blocks. I carefully wet sanded the top of the acrylic block with a 1000 grit sandpaper. And while the frosting wasn't exactly the same as the tubing, I think it is close enough to look consistent. These were my results for my Ryzen waterblock:

Although I frosted my 1080ti EK waterblock as well, since the acrylic portion is facing down, it wasn't as crucial. For a while I considered doing a vertical GPU mount just to show it off, but considering the lack of proper parts and the compromises necessary for that, I decided against that. So I de-lidded my EVGA Black Gaming Edition 1080ti, installed the block and nickel EK backplate and mounted it inside my case.

 (the EK reservoir is a placeholder while I wait for my Singularity Custom Res combo to arrive)

Here are a couple of beauty shots of the Ryzen 1800x in the Asus Strix board with the waterblock along with my Samsung 950 Evo 512GB with a nickel EKWB M.2 heatsink (excuse the logo stickers) and G-Skill RGB Ram:

 

With all the main components modded and in place, it was time to start working on the water loop. This is where once again things got complicated. This was my first attempt at doing a full custom loop, and while I was aware that 16mm tubing is usually a little more challenging to work with, I loved the aesthetics of the larger tubes and was going to stick with it. I found very little info about these particular tubes, and boy oh boy were we in for a surprise. 

 

I'm not sure if it was due to the fact they are acrylic (PMMA) or 16mm OD / 13mm ID or perhaps because of both of those reasons, but they were incredibly more difficult to bend than our previous experience with 10mm PETG. They required an immense amount of heat to start flexing and if you went too slowly quickly bubbled. In addition to all of this, the loop that I had planned involved very minimal 90-degree fittings and required us to get all the runs out of the tubes. After many hours of toiling and many wasted tubes, we realized we might need to change our approach. This would be easily achievable with smaller tubing or maybe by a more experienced "bender", but I wasn't satisfied with our results.

 

So the next day I went back to the drawing board and decided to substitute most of our planned bends with 90-degree fittings. And since the fittings are generic that also meant I had to buy more Bitspower 16mm multi-link fittings. This meant that I had to wait a few days for my shipment to arrive and that I would have to prepare a lot of straight runs. 

 

Another thing I noticed while cutting and bending the Eisrohr Satin tubing was that as a result of the heat, friction, and maybe because we handled them with our bare hands, most of the tubes looked a lot more polished and didn't have the same frosted effect. So, I had to be a lot more careful with the leftover tubing to avoid accidentally polishing it.

 

Currently, I'm still waiting for the rest of the fittings to come in so I can get back to working on the water loop. Also, I still need a few things from Singularity Computers to wrap the build up. In the meantime, I plan to take a few more pictures and make some minor adjustments to the radiator mounts. Also, I'm thinking of installing a small XSPC temperature LCD display into the PSU shroud.

 

I will keep updating as I make progress and share the finished results since I plan to take extensive pictures and even a video. Thank you so much for reading, and I hope to hear your thoughts, suggestions, or questions!

[Dennism]

I figured I should post a part list while I work on finishing up and tidying up the build, and waiting for my final few components to come in.

 

• CPU - AMD Ryzen 7 1800X ($280)
• MOBO - Asus STRIX X370-F GAMING ATX AM4 ($170)
• Memory - G.Skill Trident Z RGB 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4-3200 (bought from a friend)
• Storage - Samsung 960 EVO 500GB M.2-2280 SSD ($200), Samsung 840 EVO 1TB 2.5" SSD (drive from my previous pc)
• GPU - EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11gb SC Black Edition Gaming ($500)
• Case - Corsair Crystal 570X RGB ($190)
• PSU - Corsair HX850i 80+ Platinum ($170)
• Radiators - 2 x Black Ice Nemesis 360GTS Ultra Stealth U-Flow Low Profile ($135)
• Fans - 6 x Corsair LL120 RGB ($210)
• Fan Controller - Corsair Commander Pro ($65)
• CPU Waterblock - EK-Supremacy EVO AMD Nickel Plexi ($78)
• GPU Waterblock - EK-FC GeForce GTX FE Nickel/Plexi ($113)
• GPU Backplate - EK-FC1080 GTX Ti Backplate ($44)
• M.2 Heatsink - EK-M.2 NVMe Heatsink Nickel ($15)
• Tubing - Alphacool Eisrohr 16/13mm Plexi (PMMA) HardTube Satin ($32)
• Fittings - Bitspower Silver Shining ($550)
• Pump - EK-XTOP Revo D5 PWM ($100)
• Reservoir Combo - Singularity Computers Ethereal Single V3 Reservoir Mount Silver, SC Protium D5 Pump Top Frosted Acrylic, Singularity Protium Reservoir Large 250mm Silver Frosted ($204)
• Fluid and Dyes - Mayhems Pastel Extreme White, Mayhems XT-1 Nuke Coolant Concentrate, Mayhems Non-Stain Dyes ($70)
• Temp Display and Sensor - XSPC LCD Temperature Sensor V2 ($7)
• Cables - SC Custom Wiring Bulk Kit ($104)
• Sleeving - MDPC-X Shade-19, Gulf-Blue, White-Carbon sleeving ($88)

Total Spent = $3325

[Voxels-Box]

Looks like a great build! Im looking forward to see how the frosted SC res tube turns out! I used the same components from them in my recent rebuild (Minus the custom frosting). Love the way frosted acrylic diffuses light!