The white rabbit

neoone · September 14, 2019

The idea behind the name

As you might have noticed, looking at my nickname I am a great fan of the Matrix movies. As my current build is based on two colors and the new update will also maintain these two colors I thought about a matching name for this build. Thinking of blue and red I was remembering the two pills neo gets to choose so he can follow the “white rabbit”, leave the matrix and starts his journey.

My history in PC building

My history in pc building started when my dad got his first Windows PC. The CPU was an Intel Pentium 1 166MHz. It was actually built by my uncle and I was helping him and my dad with the assembly and installation. Later I got my first own PC with a Pentium 2 400MHz. Time went on and for a couple of years I ran with AMD and their Athlon XP 1200MHz already slightly overclocked. Back with Intel some time later I moved from the 3200MHz Pentium 4 to Core2Duo E6300, Core2Quad Q6600, Core i7 860 and finally to my current CPU which is a i7-5820K.
Watercooling my PC started with a custom loop for the Core2Quad Q6600. I expanded the loop to the GPU and tried to pack more and more radiators to my case. Always with the focus on cooling performance. 3 years ago, I moved over to the Corsair 900D and finally had a lot of space to do all the things that I had in mind to get a good looking system besides the cooling performance .

The starting point

Hardware
- Intel Core i7-5820K
- ASUS X99-S
- 16 GB Kingston Predator 2800 MHz
- MSI GeForce GTX1080 Reference PCB
- Samsung 950 Pro m.2 256GB
- 2x Samsung 850 Evo 500GB running in Raid 0
- EVGA 1000Watt G3 PSU
- Corsair 900D
Watercooling Dual Loop
- CPU+VRM
  - D5 Pump
  - EKWB Supremacy EVO
  - EKWB ASUS X99 Mosfet Block
  - 480mm Alphacool Radiator
  - Alphacool Helix Reservoir
- GPU
  - D5 Pump
  - EKWB GTX1080 Reference Block
  - 360mm + 240mm Phobya Radiator
  - Alphacool Helix Reservoir
- Aquaero 5 LT for Monitoring and Fancontrol
Caseparts from Coldzero for the 900D
- Midplate
- Mainboard Tray
- Front Internal Cover

What is the plan?

Streamline
- With two 60mm thick radiators and the psu in the bottom, the actually pretty large 900D is absolutely fully packed. So the first thing I wanted to do, is to get rid of the 240mm rad in the bottom so there is more space.
- With modern Mainboards and all the options in controlling fans, pumps and even using external temperature sensors I want to throw out the aquaero as well.
Clean
- When drilling the holes through the Midplate of the 900D I didn’t measure the correct position and had to improvise with an additional plastic plate covering the wrong holes. That flaw always was bothering me.
- I want to achieve the cleanest look as possible.
Performance
- As I’m tearing the whole system apart I thought this is a good opportunity to upgrade the hardware. Even though the system wasn’t actually slow it was struggeling a bit with getting enough FPS on 4K.
- The radiator size is a total overkill for the CPU/GPU I’m using. But that’s not the point I just wanted to get as many radiators as possible in the case maintaining a clean look.
And of course RGB

New Parts

Hardware
- Intel Core i9-9900K
- Gigabyte Z390 Auros Master
- 32GB Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB 3200MHz
- EVGA RTX2080Ti Black Edition
- EKWB RTX2080Ti Vector RGB with Backplate
- Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB m.2
- The Case and PSU will stay the same
Watercooling
- Changing the GPU Loop
  - 480mm EKWB Cool-Stream XE in the bottom
  - 240mm EKWB Cool-Stream SE in the front
Case addons
- RGB Lightbox from Coldzero
- Front- and Top-Grill from Coldzero for a better airflow