Thermaltake S300 Snow Edition build

[zogthegreat]

Hi everyone!

So I've been planning a build for the last year and I've slowly purchased "most" of what I will need to do the build. I ordered a Thermaltake S300 Snow Edition from NewEgg Canada for $120.00 CDN. The build quality is phenomenal for such an inexpensive case! Since there are numerous reviews, I won't take time here to go into the details, but this is a really nice case! I will be doing a water cooled set up on this build.

OK, so here is what is going into the box:

MSI Z270-A Pro motherboard
i5 6600K CPU
Zotac RTX 2060
16gb Team Group DDR4 2133
512gb NVME SSD (mounted on the board)
3 x's 1TB 2.5 HDD's
Corsair HX1050 PSU

I'm planning to upgrade to a B550 setup with a Ryzen 3 CPU when all of the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales start this year. Until then, this gear works "adequately" i.e. it get's the job done, but it kinda sucks for gaming.

So, before everyone starts screaming about it, I'll address the elephant in the room.

Yes, I know!

I do not need water cooling for the hardware I have! I understand this, but I want a water cooling set up anyway!

I understand that the RTX 2060 absolutely does not need a waterblock, (in fact, it barley needs the fans on it!)! It doesn't change the fact that I want to have a waterblock on my card!

Deal with it!!! 

So let's get into it. Here's my new case:



Ain't she a beauty?! 

This will be a long build due to the fact that this computer is my daily driver, so any major mod's will have to be planned out in advanced to minimize system downtime. I'm lucky enough to have a friend who is both a graphic designer and and he also does industrial design. (he's a Mac user, but I forgive him for that! ).

Right now I'm thinking of running 2 loops, one for the motherboard and one for the GPU. I have a rather gorgeous XSPC TX360 white radiator:

 

I managed to snag this as a "open box" on an eBay auction for $30 USD! I shop on eBay quite a lot and I often bid on on "open box" items. Usually when it's listed as open box, there is some use to the item. Not in this case! This thing is pristine, with the factory packaging and plastic inserts still in the radiator! I guess that someone was planning to use this in a build and changed their mind. All I know is that I have a huge grin on my face every time I look at this beauty!

Right now I'm thinking to either put my pumps and reservoirs like this:



Or maybe something like this:

 

White with black will make this build a challenge. It will be real easy to end up with a really boring case if I don't get creative about this build. So, let's get started, shall we? 

[zogthegreat]

So I'll start with the video card, because... well, you will see!

 

I got the Zotac RTX2060 "Gaming" 6gb because it was what I could afford. This card was $500 CDN and the cheapest RTX 2070 was $1000 + CDN, so... yeah.

 

However.... sometimes you end up getting a case of the stupids. Par exemple:

 

 

(sigh) Yes, that is the heating element from my stove melted into the fan and shroud of my 3 day old GPU! 

I was draining my loop and put my card on the stove next to the sink. Unfortunately, I forgot that I had turned off the stove 5 mins earlier. Stupid, stupid, stupid! "Fortunately", I had put it face down, if I had put the circuit board side down, I would have ended up with a nice expensive paper weight! So, the real reason that I'm adding a water block is that at times I lack the common sense of a squirrel!

Since there aren't any blocks that are made for my card, I had to find one with the same PCB layout. I emailed every waterblock manufacture that I could and only Bitspower and Bykski had a block that matched my PCB. It turn out that the Zotac Gaming GTX1660 Twin Fan has the same PCB layout as my RTX2060. I decided to go with the Bykski N-ST1660TWIN-X waterblock:

 

 

(sigh) However.... when I received the block, there was a problem. The block fit perfectly except that I was about 1mm from touching the GPU die, memory and VRM's. The mounting screw holes were 2mm high and this prevented proper contact. These mounts were threaded in and I contacted Bykski about some shorter ones, but unfortunately, they didn't have any. So I ordered a piece of 1/16", (1.58mm), copper plate and cut out some shims.

 

 

I then used the thermal pads that came with the block to cover the GPU die, memory and VRM's:
 

 

Then I put on the copper shims and covered the copper with Artic MX4 to give a better interface between the copper and the block:
 

 

 

After that, I assembled the card with the block:
 

 

Right now I need to decide what to do about the back plate, as it sticks out on the end. I could cut it, but I'm also thinking that I would be a good place to put some type of LCD display for temperatures, (I'm doing a vertical mount). Or I can just trim it down. Thought on this are appreciated!

 

 

[TVwazhere]

4 minutes ago, zogthegreat said:

That's some straight up PC gore right there. I'll never get this image out of my head

[zogthegreat]

I also have to modify the vertical mount adapters that came with the case. The vertical mount brackets are nice, but, the mounting inserts are a little strange. I don't know if ThermalTake want's you to use some type of proprietary PCI-E extension cable or if some engineer just messed up, but a standard PCI-E cable doesn't fit properly:

 

 

I could have just drilled new holes on the bracket, but the I would have to fill the old holes and repaint the bracket. Instead I used one of the back expansion slot covers and some black hot glue to fix the problem:

 

 

I trimmed up the excess hot glue and then mounted the bracket with a Perc H310 RAID card so that I would have space to reach behind the card and make adjustments if necessary.
 

 

The nice thing about using hot glue is that if something is off, you can use a hair dryer to loosen the glue and adjust things. Finally, I mounted my video card to test the fit:
 

 

I'm happy with how it looks. I'm trying to reach ThermalTake about purchasing some more mounting brackets. With the vertical mount on this case, I can install my Asus PCE-AC68 WiFI card, along with a USB 3.0 PCI-E card that I use with this board. I'm also considering using my PERC H310 for the three 1TB drives. Since I will have a backup server running, I can setup the RAID as a JBOD or RAID 5 so that I have one volume instead of 3. I can "hide" the PERC card behind the video card.

I'm also considering mounting my Asus WiFi card in front of my video card. I would have to do something about the color of the PCB and rather massive heatsink, but it might look good if I do it properly:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[zogthegreat]

3 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

That's some straight up PC gore right there. I'll never get this image out of my head

(sigh) Yeah, believe me when I say "same here!" Bleeping card was only 3 days out of the box!

 

Hmm, maybe I could convince Zotac to cover this under RMA? (Yes, I live in Canada where cannabis is legal! )

[burh4n]

@zogthegreat Hey man props on being able to make best of a crappy situation! You know there is something to be learned here...doing the wrong the the right way can end up saving your @$$. 

If you can, you should try to do something about those mismatched RAM sticks. At the least maybe match color of the heat spreaders? The build is looking good, but when you can I think you can get it looking really good 

[zogthegreat]

Thanks @burh4n! 

 

I will very mysteriously say "I have plans for the memory!" 

[zogthegreat]

For my graphics card loop, I'm using a Swiftech MCR220 XP radiator that has been banged and dented over the years and is in need of refurbishment:

 

 

I straightened the bent fins the best that I could and sprayed them with black enamel spray paint. Then I covered the fins to protect them and sanded the radiator clean and then used some self etching primer to prep it for painting:

 

 

 

OK, this part is stupid, I know. But there was a dent in the corner of my radiator that was driving me a bit crazy. Normally when I have a problem like this, I would use some automotive spotting putty to fix the problem, but I don't have any handy, so I used solder and a micro torch to fix the problem:

 

 

I used a Dremel with a 120 sanding drum to reshape the corner. Then I started painting with white enamel spray paint:

 

 

I sprayed 3 light coats, then wet sanded with 400 grit. Then I added another 4 light coats of white and re-sanded with 600 grit:

 

 

Overall, I'm happy with how it turned out. I have another Arctic F12 for the other side, but of course I can't find it right now!

[zogthegreat]

Curse you @burh4n! Curse you!

 

You had to mention the mismatched memory sticks! They kept glaring at me every time I looked at them! So I did a quick and dirty paint job on them so that my ram would stop irritating me:

 

 

I really didn't take that much time on this, since I have something else planned for my memory. I hit both sticks with some rattle can white, taped it off so that the "low" parts would be black and then I used rattle can black to finish it off:

 

 

OK, definitely not a show piece paint job, but that's not what I was after here since I have something else planned. Realistically, I should have removed the heat shields and taken more time. But for now, it's good enough that it just doesn't annoy me as much. Here it is installed:

 

 

Once again I say Curse you @Buraan 

[zogthegreat]

I had a few parts trickle in this week and I was able to get a basic working computer. Even though I'm planning on two loops, right now to keep things simple I went with a single loop. 

 

 

I set up my loop like this so that I would have plenty of space to reach into the case without having tubing getting in the way. I also did some very basic cable management for the same reason. This is my daily desktop machine and I don't have the spare hardware to have a desktop and project box, so... I have to work around my daily routine. Right now don't have any algaecide available, so I don't want to run straight distilled water. I had some Feser One purple cooling fluid from my server handy, so I'm using that for right now. The good thing about it is if I have any leaks during my loop testing, it will show up real well against the white of the case.

[burh4n]

7 hours ago, zogthegreat said:

Curse you @burh4n! Curse you!

Sorry to have planted such an infectious idea, but if it wasn't me, I'm sure someone else would've. I actually like that you kept some of the black and did mostly white accents, and especially digging the overall black & white theme (even tho the fluid is purple, looks black enough from here).

What's next on your list to do? Get your game on a little since you have the single loop running?

[zogthegreat]

(chuckle) Yes, now that you mention it, I am planning to do some gaming!  I fraked my GPU three days after buying it, so I've been itching to game for about 2 months now. I also messed up my CPU by not checking the mounting before replacing my waterblock:

 

 

That would be an i7-6700 that I cracked the PCB. I don't know why, but I've went through a string of hardware hell problems in the beginning of April. 

 

Bleep!

 

I been working on my Dell Precision M4800, which is still an awesome machine... unless you want to game. It has an nVidia K1100m 2gb, which was a really great card in it's day, but can only run older games. It's great for CAD work though, i7-4800MQ with 32gb DDR3L handles Fusion 360 with no problem.

 

As for the memory, the more I look at it, the more I know that I either need to redo the horrible paint job or finish what I'm working on. I'm going to buy a airbrush kit on Amazon next week:

 

https://www.amazon.ca/Double-Action-Airbrush-Compressor-Dual-Action-Regulator/dp/B014OIC95M/ref=sr_1_16?keywords=Master+Airbrush&qid=1588435022&sr=8-16

 

My son suggested this one to me. He uses his for making his Star Wars costumes for Comic Con. Of course, if I had removed the heat shields and prepped the surface better, and sanded properly.... I just keep telling myself that it's temporary. 

 

As for the purple fluid, yeah, it really does look black, so it matches my setup. I have bottles of Mayhem's Pastel Black and Pastel White ready to go, I just don't want to use the expensive stuff until I have the parts for a proper drain for my loop. This way if I have to drain my loop, my fluid won't get contaminated and I won't spill half of it on the floor. The fittings that I need should arrive soon from China.

 

I hope!