Ultra silent build V2

[Chen G]

I had a proof of concept silent build which I hacked together with existing and used parts, while it certainly wasn't gehtto, it wasn't as refined as I had hoped. I was able to sell it and recoup almost all my investment, and I tried again.

This time I am mostly focusing on improving aesthetics, because the cooling and silence already worked pretty well.

I start with the same Cooler Master SL600M case.

 

 

Rather than brown Noctua fans, I got black ones this time.

 

These fans aren't cheap, and they don't make all that much of a difference. However, since these are the ONLY fans that cools everything, it'll still be worth it.

 

I still wanted to improve cooling so I chose slightly thicker rads, knowing I would have to raise the radiator bracket to make it fit.

 

However this created an additional problem, I could no longer rely on taping up the radiator bracket to stop air from escaping without going through the radiator, which is absolutely critical to the performance of my design.

 

Since I don't have a 3D printer, black cardboard will have to do. I am basically cutting out a gasket for the radiator to fit through, sealing all the holes to force as much air as possible through the radiator.

 

The chosen hardware this time is X570 with 3950x. Having just one CCD would be weird because the other spot is empty. And having one chiplet be like partially disabled would also be kinda weird, so for best aesthetics, I had to choose the 3950x. Although admittedly any disabled chip is aesthetically unsatisfying, like the 2080ti, but the RTX Titan is just too expensive. Plus, the situation is less severe with monolithic dies.

 

[Chen G]

While I don't really like colour fluids, I thought clear looked boring, so I tried some which didn't work out as I imagined but still somewhat better than totally clear I think...

Rheoscopic Fluid. You basically just add extremely fine powder in the water, it never dissolves so it makes these swirly patterns.

It looked really cool at first, and although it doesn't clog or dissolve, it doesn't just stay looking like this either...

 

It seems to stick to the walls of the loop, so there's less and less of it actually circulating in the water. I didn't want to add more of it because I'm afraid of clogging. But I also didn't try to get rid of them, so I guess we'll see what happens in the long term.

Last time I got lazy and just used a card that came with a block. It was terrible, there is a huge gap between the GPU and the plate and temps were abysmal until I changed to better paste, it was still not good but at least better than air.

This time I'm putting on EK blocks myself.

It just looks like fog/droplets, or probably ice/frost, which is probably a decent effect?

No, it does not clog at the water channels at all.

 

Now, fully completed beauty shots:

 

[ImAlsoRan]

Wow, this is a very clean build! Could you perhaps provide some color pictures? I'd love to see how it looks with RGB.

[Chen G]

So a bit about the specs.

 

I really had a crush on the ASUS X570 WS board, but I did not end up going that route because I want to put a block on the chipset to get rid of the fan. I had already made another x570 build so I know the fan doesn't really bother anybody at all but still, it's aesthetics. EK only makes blocks for the gigabyte boards so that's what I had use. 

I picked the X570 Master because it's the only one without display outputs, and I like that, because it's more elegant to just not have something you'll never use anyway.

 

For storage, I am actually doing a RAID-0 with 2x 970 Pro. I don't think this will give better performance than one PCI-E 4.0 drive, since you are now going through the chipset rather than the CPU. However, I don't like any of the existing PCIE 4.0 drives, they all have silly designs and silly names. Plus they're all TLC or 3D VNAND, not MLC.

 

The PSU still has a fan on it sure, but I have confirmed that it never actually spins because of the efficiency is so high. The system when gaming operates exactly around peak efficiency of this platinum rated PSU, so that's just perfect. I could go get a Seasonic fanless, but it's a bit cheaper to use the used HX850i I already have.

 

The GPU is as mentioned, a reference design 2080ti. BTW I like this reference design much better than the non-reference I had las time. That one was much bigger but there were quite a few empty spaces on the board and I don't like that. Much better to have them all cramped on a reference sized PCB, there's a waterblock ontop anyway so thermals isn't a problem. The EKWB block worked like a charm this time, GPU temps is only like 15 degrees higher than water at max load. Where as before it was more like 30 degrees.

 

Is the full cover monoblock necessary? Oh hell no, in fact I'm not sure it cools better than the stock fin array, because there's like 1cm of metal between the water and the VRM, and it's just flat metal, no water channel. It's just for aesthetics, which I'm kinda glad I did this because the plastic I/O cover conflicts with the radiator and I had to remove it. Without the big monoblock this would look quite sad also without that plastic I/O cover.

 

The chipset block is also just thick flat metal, so the cooling performance isn't stellar there either, the chipset can get as high as 56 degrees, which is just fine for chips but still, couldn't they at least make the metal thinner?

 

Here is the RGB

 

With clear water those lights kinda just goes through and light up the ceiling, which I did not like that much. Having this white/silver stuff in the water really makes the RGB shine, literally. A lot of them stuck to the walls but that kinda works too.

[DJ46]

Very clean, love it.

I've never seen cables done like this, are they made up of unsleeved wires? The less bulky look is great.

 

What are the temperatures like under a full CPU and GPU load?

 

Also, maybe a silly question, but would there be more airflow through the PSU if you pointed the fan side of it toward the inside? The exhaust from it isn't sealed to the radiator, but some airflow from the fans might hit the GPU and flow through it. Since its an "i" version you could monitor the internal temperature and see the difference, if there would be any.

Though that would probably be a lot of work for a very likely pointless experiment.

[Chen G]

1 hour ago, DJ46 said:

Very clean, love it.

I've never seen cables done like this, are they made up of unsleeved wires? The less bulky look is great.

 

What are the temperatures like under a full CPU and GPU load?

 

Also, maybe a silly question, but would there be more airflow through the PSU if you pointed the fan side of it toward the inside? The exhaust from it isn't sealed to the radiator, but some airflow from the fans might hit the GPU and flow through it. Since its an "i" version you could monitor the internal temperature and see the difference, if there would be any.

Though that would probably be a lot of work for a very likely pointless experiment.

Those are just not the mainstream kind of fabric sleeve, it's a layer of clear teflon coat.

 

CPU is around 55 for gaming and ~65 fo max load. GPU is just chilling, doesn't even go over 45.

 

The PSU temp readings don't go above 50, I cannot flip it around for cable management reasons, that would make the back a lot more messy.