Define R6 - The Overhaul

[Mamonos]

Hello everyone,

During the last weekend I performed an overhaul and update to the custom water cooling loop of my build.

 

Link to the original build thread (i please mods NOT to merge the topics):
https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/933877-fractal-design-r6-build-lot-of-pics-and-vids/

 

Specs:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/6XmZjp

 

Hardware upgrades done during the last two years:
-Installed a Wireless Network Card (Asus PCE-AC88)
-Installed an NVMe drive (Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB)
-Installed another 16GB of DDR4 memory, total now 32GB

 

Work done during the last weekend of maintenance:

-Drained and disassembled the loop
-Cleaned the CPU waterblock
-Cleaned the GPU waterblock, replaced thermal compound and all thermal pads, removed the waterblock cover from Aorus in order to show the whole acrylic block.
-Cleaned all the other parts (pump, reservoir, radiator, fittings)

-Flushed and installed a new 360mm radiator at the front.

-Upgraded the system with Noctua chromax.black fans (6x NF-F12 PWM for the radiators, 2x NF-A14 for the chassis)
-Added a water temperature sensor from Phobya
-Added a water flow sensor from Bitspower
-Installed the GPU vertically using Fractal’s riser cable (Flex-VRC25)
-Added two new addressable RGB strips from Phanteks (Neon Digital RGB)

 

-Installed some new fittings and angled adapters to get things in the right place.
-Installed new clear tubing.
-Filled the loop.

 

Here is a 4-minute video montage of the overhaul, hope you like it.

 

Pictures are coming in the next post!

[Mamonos]

Before..

 

 

 

...and after

 

 

 

Detail of the GPU, I think with the vertical mount the visual improvement is quite huge!

 

 

 

To show the whole acrylic block, I removed the AORUS cover that was glued on the GPU, otherwise as you can see here only a small portion of the fluid would be visible

 

 

 

Noctua chromax.black fans. Three 120mm NF-F12 for each radiator (front pull, top push) and two 140mm NF-A14 for the chassis (intake from the bottom, below the pump, exhaust at the rear). They include only 4 pads for each color so I used the black one towards the outside and the white one towards the inside, to match the color of the build. The fans are PWM, max speed 1500RPM.

 

 

 

Detail of the reservoir. There are no brackets holding it, it's held in place by the rotary extender connected to the pump and by the other connections (fill port, return from radiator). Hope it will hold... The whole loop needs exatly 1 liter of fluid.

 

 

 

A detail of the Phobya temperature sensor and the Bitspower flow sensor. The temperature sensor allow me to get a fan curve based on the fluid temperature. The flow sensor was more to add something nice visually. Not sure Bitspowe has the same quality of EK components... hope it won't leak...

 

 

 

The ball drain valve was also revisited in order to grant an easier access than before.

 

 

 

Here you can see the previous version. It was similar but to access it I had to enter from the back of the case, between the pump and the PSU. It seems spacious but with all the cables in places it was not so comforable.

 

 

 

A detail of the custom, self-made sleeved cables. This one is the 2x8-pin for the GPU.

 

 

 

Detail of the connection between the two reservoir. They are placed one after the other in the loop, less tubing mess.

It was hard to get the connection right due to the limited space. The front 360mm rad has no room to move in the R6. With the top one you have a bit more chanche to play around (not that much anyway).I wasn't 100% sure it would work until I received all the parts. I used one 90 degree and two 45 degree adapters.

 

 

 

With the glass on it gets a little bit darker.

 

 

 

To finish off, two pictures of my setup after the overhaul

 

 

 

 

It took approximately 20 hours to perform the whole work; at least half of that time is dedicated to shooting and editing pictures and vids. Hope you enjoy.

[Belac F]

11/10 photography and editing skills!

[DailyProcrastinator]

 Love the upgrades! Looks really good, especially the white pastel fluid! Also A++ editing.

 

 

Feel free to post your updated pics in:

 

[Mamonos]

4 minutes ago, TheDailyProcrastinator said:

Feel free to post your updated pics in

 

Thanks, just did it!

[Mamonos]

Here I share with you some temperature and noise measurements.

 

I would not call these as real "benchmark" - there are too many differences between the two systems for a fair comparison.

Example: are temps lower because of the second radiators or because of the new, different fans?

The waterblocks and loop components were cleaned after two years of use: how does this affect the results?

 

In addition, the maximum speed of the fans is also different.

 

That said, it is still possible to get an idea about the update.

 

I was going to keep these results for myself but maybe they can be useful to someone (saw many threads in the past years "how many radiators do I need?", "will my temp drop by adding a second radiator").

 

CPU is i7-8700k @ 4.9GHz (1.35V, AVX neg. offset 2)

GPU is GTX 1080Ti, overclocked.

 

Comparison of the two systems

 

 

 

Let's start with folding@home, processing on both CPU and GPU.

This is a very demanding activity, therefore for both systems all fans were set to their maximum speed.

 

 

A 7C drop on both average CPU and GPU temperatures.

In addition to that, the new system is also quieter by 4dBA (remember that dBA is a logarithmic scale).

The old system had three radiator fans spinning at 2200RPM and three chassis fans spinning at 1000RPM, while the new one has six radiator fans and two chassis fans all spinning at 1500RPM (the chassis are 140mm and noisier)

 

 

Now 3DMARK Timespy Extreme 4K, first DEMO + GPU Test 1 and 2.

For this test I also ran both system at their maximum fan speed.

With the new system I also ran the test working under the fan curve that I setted up, which is based on the coolant temperature. In this case the fans were running at around 1200RPM.

 

 

So again with the systems at max speed we have a drop in both average temperature and noise, this time of 5 (CPU) and 6 (GPU) degree C.

With the fans based on the coolant temperature we are a bit in the middle, but it shall be noted that we still have lower temperatures than before with a MUCH quieter system (almost half RPM on the rads).

 

 

When running the CPU test the differences are less evident (but still a 4C drop on full speed), this is also because the test is very short (approx 1 min 30 sec).

 

 

 

Finally a test on Red Dead Redemption 2, 1080p with maximum settings.

During this test both system were running following my custom fan curve, with the old system at an average of 1500RPM while the new again at an average of 1200RPM.

The averages were calculated on a 60 minutes period, which begins 20 minutes after starting the game (so the temperatures are "stabilized")

 

 

Again we have a temperature drop on both CPU and GPU with a slightly quieter system.

 

From this last test is also interesting to see that the 3xEK fans at 1500RPM with the 3xFractal fans at 1000RPM recorded 45dBA.

This is the same value recorded by the new system with all fans at 1500RPM (max speed), tough it must be said that the new system has two more fans (eight in total) and all of them are running at 1500RPM, while the old system had six fans and three of them were running at 1000RPM.

 

So as expected we have an improvement in both temperatures and acoustic noise and freedom to play with it in the desidered direction (a system that has the same noise than before but lower temps, a system that has the same temp than before but lower noise, or something in between).

 

 

Let me know what you think.

 

Please also let me know if you want some additional test.

 

Of course I cannot bench the old system anymore but I do have benches done on that system that lying around and maybe I can do something with it..

[DailyProcrastinator]

9 hours ago, Mamonos said:

Let me know what you think.

Wow great job!

 

What are your Cinebench R20 scores like?

 

It would be annoying now since the block is mounted but next time you should consider deliding the CPU and applying liquid metal on the IHS. I did this to my 8700k and have an all core OC of 5.1GHz at 1.3600V. With my 240mm AIO my temps float around 55-65 degrees C under load.

[Mamonos]

8 hours ago, TheDailyProcrastinator said:

What are your Cinebench R20 scores like?

 

I don't record those number so don't have them right now but I will make a run as soon as possible

 

8 hours ago, TheDailyProcrastinator said:

Wow great job!

 

What are your Cinebench R20 scores like?

 

It would be annoying now since the block is mounted but next time you should consider deliding the CPU and applying liquid metal on the IHS. I did this to my 8700k and have an all core OC of 5.1GHz at 1.3600V. With my 240mm AIO my temps float around 55-65 degrees C under load.

 

The CPU was delidded two years ago (Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut). I instantly lost 20 degrees on load after delidding.

Even after that I have never been able to have a totally stable OC at 5.0 or higher, even if pushing 1.4+ V.

Guess I just lost the lottery and got a bad chip.

 

I was/am thinking about re-delidding it to re-apply liquid metal to see if there is any difference (I read that it was not worth it), I will probably do that in the near future. Is no big deal since I can do that without draining the loop. I also wanted to wait to have the full system to get a real comparison on that.

[DailyProcrastinator]

9 minutes ago, Mamonos said:

I don't record those number so don't have them right now but I will make a run as soon as possible

Cool! Just wondering!

 

9 minutes ago, Mamonos said:

The CPU was delidded two years ago (Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut). I instantly lost 20 degrees on load after delidding.

Even after that I have never been able to have a totally stable OC at 5.0 or higher, even if pushing 1.4+ V.

Guess I just lost the lottery and got a bad chip.

 

I was/am thinking about re-delidding it to re-apply liquid metal to see if there is any difference (I read that it was not worth it), I will probably do that in the near future. Is no big deal since I can do that without draining the loop. I also wanted to wait to have the full system to get a real comparison on that.

Yeah delid made a huge difference in temps for me as well, maybe not as drastic TBH but definitely a 10 degrees C difference. To bad though, but 4.9GHz all core is pretty good.

 

I had mine at 5.0GHz for a while with higher temps but changed cases and with better airflow + rad mounted at the front with a push-pull fan config I dropped temps significantly over my previous case so I pushed my OC further. I continued to play with voltage over the past 2 months to see how low I could go While remaining stable. Really happy with the results, I have had this system for 2 years but really only started to fine tune things as of recently. 

[Mamonos]

9 hours ago, TheDailyProcrastinator said:

Cool! Just wondering!

 

Cinebench R20

 

Multi-core: three, back-to-back runs: 3688, 3675, 3679

Single-core: one single run: 491

 

Temperatures

 

 

[Ginga_NZ]

As Borat would say. "I like. Very Nice."

[DailyProcrastinator]

5 hours ago, Mamonos said:

 

Cinebench R20

 

Multi-core: three, back-to-back runs: 3688, 3675, 3679

Single-core: one single run: 491

 

That's pretty good, love your graphs!

[Mamonos]

My ASUS PG248Q looks sad today!

 

 

 

 

Why? Because after three years of good service he is about to being replaced... meet our latest purchase...

 

 

 

 

 

[DailyProcrastinator]

Hey I have the PG248Q as well! I kept it for my gaming PC but thinking of selling it now.

 

Is that Acers new 4k G-sync display? 

 

That will be a nice upgrade from 1080p. I nearly went 4k but went for a 1440p curved 34" IPS UW instead. I decided on more screen real estate vs higher pixel density. Thinking of getting the Dell AW3420DW possibly later this year. But I am waiting to see what the Nvidia 3000 series is like though before I make a decision. 

[Mamonos]

5 minutes ago, TheDailyProcrastinator said:

Hey I have the PG248Q as well! I kept it for my gaming PC but thinking of selling it now.

 

Is that Acers new 4k G-sync display? 

 

That will be a nice upgrade from 1080p. I nearly went 4k but went for a 1440p curved 34" IPS UW instead. I decided on more screen real estate vs higher pixel density. Thinking of getting the Dell AW3420DW possibly later this year. But I am waiting to see what the Nvidia 3000 series is like though before I make a decision. 

 

I had a wonderful time with the PG248Q, really a nice monitor for competitive games.

When I bought it, it was one of the few (if not the only) 1080p 144Hz (up to 180Hz) display that featured G-SYNC.

 

Nowadays I am always less into competitive games. I cannot play super-consistently and have a bit less time than before so I prefer to play more relaxed, single player and story-focused games (adventures, light rpg, ...). Therefore I decided that it was worth to switch to a 4K, HDR display and be set for a while.

 

The new display is the Acer Predator X27P.

It's a 27" 4K, IPS, HDR, 144Hz, G-SYNC panel with FALD (Full Array Local Dimming).

 

It is extremely expensive, it has a fan on the back for active cooling of the display, and the drawback of FALD technology is that if you have a white object moving on a dark background (like mouse pointer in photoshop) you will see some kind of shadow.

 

As you can see I am still able to game at 144Hz but of course due to the response time of 4ms and some ghosting effect when in "overdrive" modes it's not going to be the best panel for that purpose. I currently run it at 98Hz because if you go beyond that (120Hz or 144Hz) you lose some colour fidelity.

 

The X27 has been around for almost two years now, along with its rival, the ASUS PG27UQ (they feature the same panel), the X27P is a slightly revisited version that came out last year (essentially the same and they fixed some minor issues).

 

Those are basically the two "best" (=highest specced) monitors that you can get at the moment.

ASUS also annouced a new version of his monitor, the PG27UQX which will feature additional FALD zones (576 instead of the 384 that both displays feature right now), but despite being announced one year ago, release date is still unknown.

 

[DailyProcrastinator]

3 minutes ago, Mamonos said:

-Snip-

I agree the high refresh rate is nice but for non FPS games it does not matter much, not that you new 144Hz is going to be much different than 180Hz but it' i going to be hard to actually hit 144fps at 4k unless your drop quality.

 

Yeah I actually had my PG24 as a 3rd display that I only gamed on (long story short eventually moved it to a another room with a new computer). I work a lot from home so at the time I bought the PG24 I already had 2x Samsung 24" 1080p 60Hz IPS monitors (can't remember models but they had very good color accuracy).

When planning to upgrade initially I wanted 4k, ultimately decided I liked having 1x 34" screen over two 24" ones. But I had to sacrifice IPS over high refresh rate because it was not even an option at the time other than a $1,500cad Asus display that was still 5ms (now selling for like $700).

I honestly can't go back from IPS on a primary display having used it many years prior, so I got the Dell U3419W. Love it, great panel, love the big screen so I can't give that up with my next purchase. But I am thinking on getting the AW3420DW and Vesa mounting my U3419W above it.

 

Anyways 1440p 60Hz IPS still feels okay as I play a lot of single player games as well vs. FPS games (really into Anno 1800 right now). But for the times I do play those FPS games I also can't play on a 60Hz panel which is my predicament now. So I still play on my second system with my PG24 (i7-8700k w/ GTX 1080) only because I have no good way of mounting that display along with my 34" UW. But a second UW would look great. And the AW3420DW seems like the best option, 2ms IPS 120Hz G-sync. But gonna wait a few months to decide, I am in no rush.

 

Based on the high quality edits and photos you take I know you are going to LOVE that 4K IPS display, there is no going back, especially since you do not give up G-Sync or high refresh rate. I'd call that a no comprises upgrade haha! Enjoy!

[Mamonos]

10 minutes ago, TheDailyProcrastinator said:

Based on the high quality edits and photos you take I know you are going to LOVE that 4K IPS display, there is no going back, especially since you do not give up G-Sync or high refresh rate. I'd call that a no comprises upgrade haha! Enjoy!

 

Yeah, so far I've always edited my content in a different system (btw I put lot of effor in shooting, e.g. light, white balance, colors, ... so there is very few color work of the editing, is mostly cut, crop, and so on) but I am going to calibrate this new display and of course start working on it!

[DailyProcrastinator]

49 minutes ago, Mamonos said:

 

Yeah, so far I've always edited my content in a different system (btw I put lot of effor in shooting, e.g. light, white balance, colors, ... so there is very few color work of the editing, is mostly cut, crop, and so on) but I am going to calibrate this new display and of course start working on it!

Ahh I see. And yeah I know how much time those edits took haha, I used to edit a lot, even made a job out of it for a summer between high school and university, I was making tutorial videos for an online exam prep company. So I can appreciate the time and quality of your edit!

 

Also is your room that bright lol? Or are you using lights/editing? I recently spent a bit more effort to take "good" photos of my main rig but was to busy/lazy to spend more than 15 min haha. I mostly just dusted my system and used my camera instead of my phone and shot in my low light basement office and in the dark haha, spent zero time editing, just downsized my files.

 

But your shots look great, the lighting really makes the big difference!

[Mamonos]

13 minutes ago, TheDailyProcrastinator said:

Also is your room that bright lol? Or are you using lights/editing? I recently spent a bit more effort to take "good" photos of my main rig but was to busy/lazy to spend more than 15 min haha. I mostly just dusted my system and used my camera instead of my phone and shot in my low light basement office and in the dark haha, spent zero time editing, just downsized my files.

 

The room is quite small and has a single window but it get very quite bright during daylight, you can see how it looks like by looking at the two pictures of the complete setup above (the one where you see the gaming chair).

 

For all other shots the blinds were closed so the room was completely dark and then I have two softboxes that makes a good amount of light (at least for those "equipment shots").

 

I also have a couple of RGB lights that are quite amazing to add some color taste in the background (like the yellow and green on the walls on my latest shot above, or the example shot here below). Due to the room being very small and the softboxes being very powerful compared to the RGB lights is quite difficult to have good lighting on the object and good color in the background so I often shot with only one softbox or with the light pointing in another direction.

 

[DailyProcrastinator]

9 hours ago, Mamonos said:

-Snip-

Yeah very good lighting, your shots look great. My old setup at my parents house was also smaller but because it was in my room on the second level the lighting was much better. My office is much bigger now and I have 2x the desk space but it is in the basement. So not very bright. I recently ordered a really nice desk lamp but the shipping process has been very delayed.

 

Any other upcoming/potential PC parts you are planning to upgrade?

[Mamonos]

16 hours ago, TheDailyProcrastinator said:

 

Any other upcoming/potential PC parts you are planning to upgrade?

 

Nothing at the moment.

 

 

[DailyProcrastinator]

7 hours ago, Mamonos said:

Nothing at the moment.

Well your PC looks bad ass haha!

 

I want to custom loop because then it will keep me from continuing to upgrade semi-needlessly, although I was good and avoided the current RTX cards all together, mostly because it was not much of an upgrade from a 1080 Ti at all. 

 

So other than a new UW I was planning to do a hardline loop in my main build but I may want to see what the new Nvidia stuff is like first. Then I will likely pull the trigger, so for a good 2-3 years after the plan would be to not upgrade haha, we will see.