Meshify C Transplant (1 year maintenance)

[For Science!]

 

So the time for the annual maintenance of my Define C was upcoming. So i decided to take the opportunity and upgrade my case to a meshify C since a TG upgrade didnt look like it was coming anytome soon for the Define C.

 

Below is whay my previous systrm looked like (almost 1 year ago) and it has served me well although with a few things that i wasnt happy about.

Old Build

Spoiler

 

 

Wonky bends in a few places

Uneccesary fittings here and there

Lack of a rear fan

janky reservoir mounting solution

 

Soi have been working on ironing these issues out and thought maybe some would be interested in the journey too.

[arnavvr]

How'd you mount the pump? Also is that a 360mm and a 240?

[For Science!]

3 hours ago, arnavvr said:

How'd you mount the pump? Also is that a 360mm and a 240?

Yes its a slim 360 and 240, both hardware labs gts.

 

The pump is an EK D5 with their pump top. its mounted onto the case with some custom janky feet using the UNI HOLDERs and some anti vibration HDD pads. On the case its just held on with some tape and the rigid tubing itself. Its fairly crammed down there so it doesnt move around alot anyway. it could be screwed in via the slots on the uni holder if i wanted to.

 

 

 

[For Science!]

I wanted to also demonstrate that my drain port works quite well. the drain is roughly in the lowest sector of the pc in the basement area.

 

Its made from a standard male to male dual rotary going to a Tsplitter and a ball valve followed by a 45 degree fitting. 

 

Upon opening the drain. all the fluid except fpr the bottom of the GPu and some fluid close to the res drains naturally by gravity with no additional help requored. The rest of the fluid comes out with a bit of tilting.

 

 

[For Science!]

Gross alert.

 

I took out all the components and was suprised to see not "so" much dust accumulated on the rad. I have been very bad with dusting my pc so its pretty much 1 year worth of dust. I also made the stupid mistake of having all my rads and fans as intake. that was dumb, but i only realized it a cuple of montha ago when i revisted my build log.

 

Minor "staining" of the fittings on first impression, but a bit of scrubbing removed it and so it looks fine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[For Science!]

Block dissassembly time.

 

GPU block had arctic Mx4 which seemed to have good spread with no obvious degradation or tarnishing of the nickel.

 

 

The thermal pads were still nice and moist and so did not need replacing.

 

 

The CPU monoblock had arctic silver 5 on it and was a similar story. All good.

 

 

[For Science!]

No real staining observed on the blocks themselves. there was some kind of residue of unknown nature accumulat4d on the fins. but they brushed away veru easily.

 

You can see in this picture some residue that probably originated from the oring oil that i complained a while ago, but this alsp cleaned off well with a simple wipe.

 

 

little poops, no problem to remove. fins looks good

 

GPU block looks good too.

[For Science!]

So one thing i noticed is that my acrylic block for the GPU was quite cloudy. i dont remember whether it was like this originally or not. So i decided to polish it using Plastx and that workrd marvelously, ending with a almost glass like finish.

 

before

 

Before/after

 

However since the inside of the block will contact the coolant i made sure to rinse out the inside part of the block with soapy water followed by distilled water.

[For Science!]

So clean blocks. Now you can see there really isnt any tarnishing over 1 year use with EK-Cryofuel (Navy Blue)

 

 

 

 

 

 

[For Science!]

Cleaned the die, reattach thermal pads. This time ive used thermal grizzly kryonaut.

 

 

 

 

monoblock wacked back on

[For Science!]

My intentions were to maintain some degree of cable management this time around, so I had started to zip tie early to hopefully maintain it as it goes on.

 

Radiators were cleaned by simply running them under the sink followed by distilled water. Same goes for the dust on the rad.

 

Now I can see why Noctua maintained their poop and brown color. When you put the Fractal Dynamic fan against the Noctua Industrial iPPC you really can't tell on first glance which is the Noctua (left). Brand identity is important :p.

[For Science!]

One of the big changes in this re-build will be the introduction of Phantek Halos Lux for each fan. This adds ~5 mm onto the fan thickness, making the build even tighter and at the same time, requiring a whole new set of screws to hold the fans onto the radiators. In this case I just got some generic M4 40 mm screws and some washers just in case.

 

This is the 3D printed reservoir bracket I printed previously for this maintenance. Using a UNI-holder I planned to suspend the reservoir in front of the RAM, to clear enough space for a rear fan.

 

The reservoir  mount adds another 5 mm onto the fan + Phanteks Halos, so I needed to also get a couple of 45 mm M4 screws to mount the mount + Halos + fan onto the GTS rad.

 

This does however mean that there are this many cables that need to be managed from the radiators alone...ooh boy.

[For Science!]

Just to highlight my drain port again in case other people ask. It is constructed in this case from a male-to-male dual rotary fitting, one T-splitter, ball-valve, and another 45 fitting. The 45 fitting is actually necessary in my case becasue the ball-valve from bitspower is a dual rotary, meaning it is incredibly tedious to remove a plug from it.

 

Also wanted to remind that to fit a pump in front of the 360mm rad in the meshify C basement, you need to offset both radiator ports using 2x 90 degree fittings so that the tubing can clear the pump itself.

 

More bends. This time I wanted to achieve a "pseudo-parallel" look. You can see that the tubing only just fits between the rear fan and the top fan. Life would have been easier if either I didn't use the Halos (so that the rear fan wouldn't protrude so much) or if I used thinner tubing.

 

You can see that the reservoir is "just" floating above the GPU. Although there is quite some flexibility since there are fittings coming off the res. I moved the temp sensor to the rear, but it is important to remember to use the port extender, otherwise the recessed port will leak slowly.

[For Science!]

Sometimes being Asian and being good with chopsticks can be really useful. Like plugging in the CPU header through the top grill.

 

Filling the new loop. Maintained the blue liquid as voted in a thread I asked previously.

 

The tempered glass in the Meshify C is super dark, but I am confidient that with all my LEDs, it will shine :P.

 

I'm sorry, I have failed you all. You have to be some kind of cable management god to neatly manage this many cables in the meshify C :(. At least my back panel still closes, but I am not proud of the rear.....

[For Science!]

Looks fantastic

The tempered glass really looks like its not there when the lights are out, and is a big improvement over the clarity of the original Define C.

 

You may notice that I have all my radiator fans on exhaust. This is partly because the phanteks halos look better this way, but also because previously my Define C was overheating internally with the incoming air from the 360. This time I have 1 intake vs 5 exhaust, but the radiator fans are spinning super slowly (i mean like, 200 - 800 rpm) and the intake is working a little bit harder, so I anticipate the airflow is in fact reasonably balanced. The rear fan does have a filter, so we will see in a few months what the dust situation is.

 

A little bit pissed that I couldn't get the res --> pump connection straighter. Will do it when I next have an excuse to, will be very trivial.

[For Science!]

Since I have 2 sets of controllers (one remote controlled, one motherboard) These are the potentials for lighting, although to be honest, I prefer static white on white as the above pictures since its a bit more tame.

 

White ambient + rainbow accents

 

Rainbow ambient + white accents

 

 

Ambienty only

 

Accents only

 

[arnavvr]

Why didn't you go with the R6? 

[For Science!]

4 hours ago, arnavvr said:

Why didn't you go with the R6? 

That would have been too easy

I really like the small footprint of the C-series.

[arnavvr]

9 hours ago, For Science! said:

That would have been too easy

I really like the small footprint of the C-series.

Nice. I'm running a Nano S with a 280mm+240mm radiator. That was a challenge, but I really like Fractal cases.

[For Science!]

47 minutes ago, arnavvr said:

Nice. I'm running a Nano S with a 280mm+240mm radiator. That was a challenge, but I really like Fractal cases.

nice! you should finish your build log to show everyone though

[GER_T4IGA]

Oh dear! I was searching for some builds to give me ideas for my first watercooled system, also is the Meshify C. 

Sadly inow found this after finishing. I built using used electrical hardware but also thought about going SLI but was unwilling or unable to solve the reservoir placement issue. 

Two suggestion: Halos look way cooler on white fans.  I must know, Noiseblocker eLoop 120mm white ;-)

Airflow could have potentially been improved by utilizing the filtered front as intake instead but it would have undoubtedly looked inferior (!). 

 

Do you have any tips for putting in a GPU backplate after completion without draining? Is it even possible?

[For Science!]

On 3/15/2018 at 6:20 AM, GER_T4IGA said:

-

Thanks for the feedback

Yes Halos would look way better on white fans, but I already have the Noctua iPPCs so I wasn't going to swap them out

 

I used to run front intake on the Rads, but due to the small size of the case and the heat coming from the SLI, the inside of the case heated up extensively. Having the rads on exhaust has dropped my water temperatures close to 10 degrees under heavy load. The big consideration was dust at the time, but since my loop performs so much better now, the fans do not spin very hard at all and so my one intake seems to be producing a balanced airflow so dust build up is very little.

 

My waterblock requires to be installed with the backplate so not in my case, but also even with EKWB you need to remove a couple of screws, so you might manage, but it'll be difficult.

[Quadriplegic]

 

I'm not worthy of seeing this magnificient piece of art. I want one so bad 

[DailyProcrastinator]

On 2/14/2018 at 12:55 PM, For Science! said:

 

 

Sweet baby Jesus those are some sexy curves!