HELIOS - ASSEMBLED 2015-SEP-06 - (Caselabs SMH10 | Black/Copper | EVGA SR-2 )

[alpenwasser]

So much text to read trough

Yeah, I tend to do that. :lol:

I love this build and it's not often somebody loves their PC just as much as i and so many other do. I don't even want to think about how many hours i used for prepping to build my W/C system just with tubing and a few fittings. I planned it down to the detail on where the tubing was supposed to be. I didn't do it on paper but i did have it all planned out in my mind. But one thing is sure, my first time building a water-cooled system was super scary but SO worth it!

 

I can't wait until i can start my V2.0 of my system

Thanks! And yeah, W/C is awesome!

[onevoicewild]

700 replies Incredible. You need one of those radio talk shows where you are able to talk about anything. there has been a lack of food pictures around here! if this keeps up I might start loosing weight - naaah to much time spent waiting for parts.

[alpenwasser]

700 replies Incredible. You need one of those radio talk shows where you are able to talk about anything. there has been a lack of food pictures around here! if this keeps up I might start loosing weight - naaah to much time spent waiting for parts.

Haha, yeah there has been lots of chitchat in this thread (which I find pretty

awesome, as stated before ). Although I think I've seen enough food pics for

the time being.

[flibberdipper]

Removing them was easy (and necessary, otherwise things would have gotten a whole

lot worse). The only thing that I'm actually annoyed about is that I didn't have

them removed soon enough (although there was no way to know they were going to

start pushing, so it was primarily bad luck).

 

I look at it like this: Money might be tight, but I'm most likely still pretty damn

privileged to be able to put together such a PC, most people probably couldn't (or

wouldn't) do this even if they didn't go to college. I've been very lucky to have

been able to save up enough money for this over the past few years, not everyone

can do that.

But yeah, having a paying job would make things easier, and I certainly wouldn't

need to be as austere in the rest of my life.

A. At least I'm just under 15, so I still have a little bit of a cushion.

 

B. From the looks of it, I'll be relying on my trusty ASUS Eee PC 1005HA, and my (Sort of) Rig and my Old Rig (Their specs are in my sig. Not to mention my old Dell OptiPlex 170L, with a 2.8GHz P4 and 1GB of RAM.

[alpenwasser]

A. At least I'm just under 15, so I still have a little bit of a cushion.

Yup, no cause for urgency just yet.

B. From the looks of it, I'll be relying on my trusty ASUS Eee PC 1005HA, and my (Sort of) Rig and my Old Rig (Their specs are in my sig. Not to mention my old Dell OptiPlex 170L, with a 2.8GHz P4 and 1GB of RAM.

Now those specs make me downright nostalgic (that's a good thing, I'm a rather

nostalgic person by nature).

On another note, I have now cracked the 25 hour mark on loop planning with no

end in sight just yet.

[flibberdipper]

Yup, no cause for urgency just yet.

Now those specs make me downright nostalgic (that's a good thing, I'm a rather

nostalgic person by nature).

On another note, I have now cracked the 25 hour mark on loop planning with no

end in sight just yet.

A. Thankfully.

 

B. I know, right? Granted, I'm not that old but.... It's power. And when I get my new cooling set up, I might take my P4 to 3 or more GHz.

 

C. You'll get there eventually. BTW, what are you using until you get your desk set up? Are you using ZEUS?

[alpenwasser]

B. I know, right? Granted, I'm not that old but.... It's power. And when I get my new cooling set up, I might take my P4 to 3 or more GHz.

Hehe, that's the spirit!

C. You'll get there eventually. BTW, what are you using until you get your desk set up? Are you using ZEUS?

Yes, ZEUS is serving as my personal rig until HELIOS is up and running. It's

doing quite nicely so far, although 4 GB of RAM is a bit tight from time to

time (it will be plenty enough for the build's actual purpose though, it's just

that my browsing habits result in tons and tons of tabs open at the same time

which eats up a lot of memory).

[flibberdipper]

Yes, ZEUS is serving as my personal rig until HELIOS is up and running. It's

doing quite nicely so far, although 4 GB of RAM is a bit tight from time to

time (it will be plenty enough for the build's actual purpose though, it's just

that my browsing habits result in tons and tons of tabs open at the same time

which eats up a lot of memory).

Look at my rig's RAM. Feel happy. And I got my other rig up to 3+GHz. It has a 2.8GHz Prescott Hyper-Threaded processor, 2x 256MB DDR400 RAM, ASUS P4P800 SE, and an ASUS NVidia RIVA TNT2 32MB video card. My 30% OC (3.6GHz) didn't get past the boot screen in XP, but my 20% OC (3.4GHz) was stable enough.

 

See? : Overclocked Pentium 4

[alpenwasser]

Look at my rig's RAM. Feel happy. And I got my other rig up to 3+GHz. It has a 2.8GHz Prescott Hyper-Threaded processor, 2x 256MB DDR400 RAM, ASUS P4P800 SE, and an ASUS NVidia RIVA TNT2 32MB video card. My 30% OC (3.6GHz) didn't get past the boot screen in XP, but my 20% OC (3.4GHz) was stable enough.

 

See? : Overclocked Pentium 4

No worries, I am happy!

512 RAM? Holy crap, Chromium alone usually uses up a Gig or two on my machine.

That really is one sweet retro rig you got there, haven't seen a TNT graphics

card in ages.

[onevoicewild]

Thanks for putting up that video, that is very cool!  they will need a tricorder to follow this conversation now. He he he

[alpenwasser]

Thanks for putting up that video, that is very cool!  they will need a tricorder to follow this conversation now. He he he

Hehe, we are tending towards maximum entropy.

[flibberdipper]

No worries, I am happy!

512 RAM? Holy crap, Chromium alone usually uses up a Gig or two on my machine.

That really is one sweet retro rig you got there, haven't seen a TNT graphics

card in ages.

The card doesn't support Halo: Combat Evolved, but even though the card was maxed out, the P4 kept it's head above the water (got about 50FPS at 800x600 with all the possible settings maxed, since there were only 3 or 5 options I could set.) I put vista on it with my FX 5200, and with the CPU overclocked to 3.5GHz, the score for it was about 2.6 or 2.8 (with Hyper-Threading enabled). In comparison, my Atom N270 has a 3.

[onevoicewild]

So how is collage going? keeping you very busy? my eyes cloud over when I try to learn anything complicated anymore? My Hard Drive Is reaching full capacity and I might have to delete some unused file's before I can continue further downloading? The Brain is a funny thing! I can vividly remember things that I did when I was 4 years old, but I be damn if I remember yesterday Dx

[alpenwasser]

The card doesn't support Halo: Combat Evolved, but even though the card was maxed out, the P4 kept it's head above the water (got about 50FPS at 800x600 with all the possible settings maxed, since there were only 3 or 5 options I could set.) I put vista on it with my FX 5200, and with the CPU overclocked to 3.5GHz, the score for it was about 2.6 or 2.8 (with Hyper-Threading enabled). In comparison, my Atom N270 has a 3.

 

Oh man, I remember seeing the first trailer for Halo when Bungie hadn't yet been bough by

MS, those were the days man.

 

So how is collage going? keeping you very busy? my eyes cloud over when I try to learn anything complicated anymore? My Hard Drive Is reaching full capacity and I might have to delete some unused file's before I can continue further downloading? The Brain is a funny thing! I can vividly remember things that I did when I was 4 years old, but I be damn if I remember yesterday Dx

 

Yeah it's keeping me decently busy, although it's not too bad so far. I am well familiar with the HDD

Filling up Syndrome, in fact ZEUS is already well below 1 TB of usable space, I might need to put

together another rig or upgrade my HDD park in the near future (depends on money though, if I can't

muster up the funds I'll naturally have to start putting things into the virtual shredder, too).

The human memory certainly is no computer, but I'm not so sure if that would really be a good thing...

[alpenwasser]

Question Time...

OK, question time: I have a slight dilemma when it comes to fittings, and while I won't

be making a decision right now I thought I'd bounce some ideas off of you guys...

The basic concept for the piping (at least at the moment) is this: I take some 16/12 mm

Copper pipe (already bought, impressively massive ), into which I will cut G1/4" female

threads, which I will then screw directly into fittings. The nice thing about this is that the

fittings are about as wide as the pipe is thick, which gives the hole affair a very sleek

look IMO, avoiding those compression-fitting-like bulky fittings which are usually used

for rigid tubing.

Now, there are a few options when it comes to fittings, none of which I'm perfectly happy

with yet. The original plan was to use Alphacool's shiny copper fittings. Unfortunately,

the only angles which are available from Alphacool in shiny copper are female/female

angles (leaving aside the dual 45° rotaries, which are female/male), namely these guys:

Keep in mind that I need the revolvable version, otherwise this will not work. To get

that male thread I need, I could use this:

As you can see, depending on loop complexity, this will become rather extravagant, requiring

somewhere between 40 and 60 nipples alone. I have about 20 angles in my loop at the current

stage of planning, which might still change a bit depending on what I can come up with, but

the general ballpark figure is about what I'll end up using most likely. I have actually ordered some

shiny copper fittings for testing purposes, and the finish is indeed very lovely, so I can't complain

about quality from what I've seen so far.

Alternatively, I have been thinking about using black fittings, since this might actually provide

a nice bit of contrast to the copper pipes (keep in mind that I will polish the copper tubing to

a mirror finish, so having black fittings might bring them out much more than having copper

fittings). Alphacool themselves actually make a dual-male 90° connector, but there's also these

guys from Bitspower, which will certainly be ridiculously expensive, but would be perfect from

a mechanical viewpoint:

There are also multiple-45° rotaries with dual-male endings. The big trouble with the Bitspower

fittings is their exorbitant price and actually getting them.

I'm really not sure at the moment which of these paths I will eventually end up going down,

so I thought I'd get some input from you folks to get the creative juices flowing. It will be end

of year at the earliest when I can progress to this stage anyway, so it's not a matter of great

urgency.

I can't promise to follow any and all advice, but I certainly would be grateful for input on this

matter. Thanks!

PS: I have actually asked Alphacool if they would manufacture a special edition shiny copper

with dual-male fittings, but no dice. They don't do special requests.

[flibberdipper]

I kind of like the idea of the black ones to give some contrast.

 

P.S. FINALLY ANOTHER UPDATE RELATING TO THE BUILD!!!

[MG2R]

I'd go with black fittings. Think it would look better.

 

I don't like the bitspower ones, though... I'd search for completely black fitting (without a label on them)

[Liam-McShane]

I would choose the black fittings. I think the contrast would help big time

[Liam-McShane]

I would choose the black fittings. I think the contrast would make it stand out

[CJPowell27]

Agreed with everyone else. Copper is great but contrast would help tremendously IMO

[Kiwiandapple]

Black, but not betfenix ones! Unles you can get rid off that logo. I dislike that personally. 

[TheYoungEnthusiast]

That matte black look of those fittings would look awesome with some shiny copper tube! I say go with the Bitspower fittings As you and everyone else has said, the contrast would be very nice

[Bluejay0]

You had me at nipples... BLACK FITTINGS!

[jscho]

Black fittings. Black is the new black

[Darkmatter35]

Use black fittings. if you make everything is your build one color there will be no contrast. Black + Copper =