completed Phoenix, or the PC literally risen from ashes.

[RollinLower]

First part of watercooling is done, tho I hit a few roadblocks on the way. 

 

First off, i first planned to mount the pump/res on a 90 degree angle opposed to the fans on the side. This wouldn't work tough, as that would leave all the fittings way too far behind the motherboard tray. 

So I instead mounted it on the included spacers, which still leaves space for the fans to function. 

 

This ties in nicely to the next problem; mounting the top radiator.

 

I managed to squeeze it in there with the normal 120mm fans I planned to use. This won't fit sadly. 

Even tough it looks like it would work, I cannot get the fans aligned with the screw holes in this config. And it's also literally pressing on to the pump res combo. Not something you would want in a loop that's going to be going through a lot of heat cycles.

 

I ordered new fans that will fix this problem, but untill then no top rad. 

 

I also need a few more fittings to really get everything lined up. I knew this tough, but I needed the blocks and radiators in place before I could really know what else I needed. 

 

So yeah, this is how she now stands. So close to completion, but somehow still so far aswell. Bonus points to whoever can figure out the planned loop with the fittings already in there!

 

As always, expect updates when stuff gets delivered

 

[sub68]

looking good!!!!!!!!!!!

[RollinLower]

4 minutes ago, sub68 said:

looking good!!!!!!!!!!!

thanks! i can't wait for it to be done to be honest. i've been stuck with my work laptop for weeks now and i really crave something a bit more powerfull.

[sub68]

Just now, RollinLower said:

i've been stuck with my work laptop for weeks now

poor you

stares at dilapidated acer dual core

1 minute ago, RollinLower said:

i really crave something a bit more powerfull.

*happy a10 warthog noises*

1 minute ago, RollinLower said:

thanks! i can't wait for it to be done to be honest.

I would too after that fire

[RollinLower]

Small update: the storage has been expanded to 2TB with a 1TB 970 evo plus. 

It's going into the DIMM.2.

 

[RollinLower]

Remember that top radiator that wouldn't fit? well, the solution has arrived!

Enter: a fellow with a 3D printer!

And: slim 120mm fans!

 

and what you get is: a 360mm radiator and fans with the mounting holes offset about 2CM!

okay i'll admit. this solution does not win any beauty contests. It also blocks off airflow to the top rad quite a bit. but it works, and when it's installed in the computer it really doesn't look half bad. you'd almost say it was meant to go like this.

 

It also clears the reservoir nicely.

 

So yeah, turns out top mounted rads in a O11 mini are definitely possible with an E-ATX motherboard. you just need to think outside the box a little.

 

I have to say tough, it feels good to finally have all the main components installed in this box! The final parts are just some fittings and a tube cutter, tough it's been stuck with GLS for over a week now. Eventough other packages i ordered from the same company always shipped within a few days. I wonder if something went wrong? I hope not, this project is taking long enough already!

 

[TVwazhere]

Just goes to show you: You can make anything fit with a Dremel and a 3D printer

[RollinLower]

little update:

I've contacted both the shipping company and the business that send me the package containing the last bit of watercooling stuff.

Sadly neither knows where the package actually is at this moment in time. Meaning it's probably lost in the mail. Who knew that was still a thing in 2021?

 

They agreed to just ship me the same stuff again, since i've been waiting for over a week for this package now. We'll see when (if?) this one actually makes it to my doorstep.

[RollinLower]

Watercooling happened! Well, it almost happened anyway.

 

I finally got the package containing the last bits of watecooling stuff i needed, but i'm still missing some parts. They shipped everything except two extender fittings, which are actually crucial to this build. Welp. I did get a lot of other fittings tho.

 

Anyway, onto the build!

I started out flipping the bottom radiator, so the fittings would be positioned towards the front of the PC. I did this because these EK Torque fittings are massive, and they would actually end up colliding with the stuff i have in the PCIe slots.

So, with the rad flipped, i also needed to rethink part of the loop. this means i also needed a lot less fittings than i originally planned. and the loop order is kinda flipped. so now the flow is backwards through both the waterblocks.  I know from experience that this doesn't really matter, but it's still somewhat of a shame i guess.

 

So with the bottom rad flipped, i could cut and make the first tubing run. And boi, this gon be gud!

 

The colours match nicely on the tubing and the nickel plating on the CPU block, and cutting the tubing turned out a lot easier than i expected. I eyeballed most measurements and it turned out pretty straight.

1 tube in, on to the next one.

 

looking good, again i just eyeballed this one. on to the next!

 

 

This is where things get a little tricky. Remember those extender fittings i didn't get with my last package? I need those to extend de 90 degrees on the CPU block so they match up with both the tubes. i have the one in the top radiator in an offset rotary fitting, meaning i can change how far away from the CPU block it goes, and i put in a bit of straight tube in the other fitting on the res to see how far i should put it, if that makes any sense.

I won't know if this is the final cut yet, since i really need those extender fittings to finish this loop, but i think it's pretty close.

 

Sadly i forgot to take a picture of the second to last tube on it's own,  but you get the idea. It goes from the CPU block, where i again need one of those extender fittings, and into the res again.  This is also where i decided to make the last tube coming from the res into the bottom reservoir a bit more of a showpiece. I could have done some fitting work to make it go from the bottom of the res straight into the radiator, but i instead opted to use another bend coming from the bottom radiator all the way up to the top of the reservoir. Looks a lot better, right?

 

 

 

 

And there she is, so close to completion, but still so incredibly far aswell. The entire build just hinges on two little extender fittings.

I'm still not 100% sure about the GPU cables. If i have them going over the tube they look kinda sloppy, but if i run them behind the tube there's not a lot of room to make a clean bend either. Maybe i should just use different cable combs to create 1 16-pin cable instead of 2 8-pins?

 

also, lets not talk about how much i had to re-do that one run coming from the bottom rad into the reservoir.

 

That's it for now, more updates as packages get delivered!

 

 

[RollinLower]

Welp, I actually re-did the bend from the bottom radiator to the top of the reservoir again. This time I changed out the fittings in the bottom rad from the offset fittings to 2 90 degree rotaries. This looks a lot better!

 

I also changed out the top 90 degree rotary fitting for a T fitting. This way I keep the fill port at the top. If I had kept the old configuration, I actually wouldn't have had a way to fill the loop once it was completed. Slight oversight?

[RollinLower]

well, there's good news and then some very bad news.

 

lets start with the good. I received the last fittings, eventough the extender fittings i needed are out of stock everywhere. What i did to fix this was order multiple smaller fittings and just put them together. Succes! The loop works, and no leaks whatsoever!

Filling took some time tough. These EK FLT reservoirs hold a lot less fluid then a simmilar sized tube res would.

 

So now on to the bad then.

This motherboard is DOA. That means i once again need to take everything out and start from the beginning. The weird thing is that i thought i saw it POST/boot once. but i really should have tested it outside of the case before building the entire thing.

 

I already ordered a new one, and for those counting along at home that would be motherboard number 3 this build receives. that's almost 1800 euro's just in motherboards!

 

New one should arrive today, so hopefully in about 8 hours after work i'll have some better news for you guys. For now tough, that's all i have again.

 

PS: it's turned out to be quite the beauty tho!

 

[TVwazhere]

6 hours ago, RollinLower said:

So now on to the bad then.

This motherboard is DOA. That means i once again need to take everything out and start from the beginning. The weird thing is that i thought i saw it POST/boot once. but i really should have tested it outside of the case before building the entire thing.

I always build outside cases first before building in them, and I dont do custom water loops (though I will one day). Paid off in my last build where the board was truly DOA, it was a good teaching lesson for the kid I was assisting in the build process. 

 

Swift and safe shipping!

[RollinLower]

New motherboard arrived, and also, new PSU arrived!

The PSU that was in there was perfectly fine, but to be honest the fact it didn't have 2 8-PIN EPS connectors bothered me a bit. This VRM really does work best with both connected. So i bit the bullet and just decided to swap it out for a Coolermaster V SFX 850 while i was already taking the entire thing apart for the motherboard swap.

 

This PSU tough, it's a smoll boi. The Silverstone SFX-L was already tiny, but that basically still dwarfs this little guy. Eventough the silverstone was rated for 50Watts less.

 

after a bit of cable management, and a whole lot of help from the SSD mount, it looks pretty tidy back there.

 

With the new PSU in, the new board in, and finally everything working, this buildlog is now complete!

 

There is still a lot of stuff i would like to add ofcourse. There is only a single SSD in the ASUS Hyper M.2 card below the 6900XT, and when (if?) in the far future GPU's become affordable again i would love to get another 6900XT in here. That's all definitely going to have to wait a bit tough. I would probbaly also need to upgrade the PSU again for something even more powerfull.

Also, the 10Gig DAC turned out to be redundant, since this motherboard already hs 10Gig ethernet onboard! I really should have done some homework before all this.

 

For now tough, here she stands. She already folded away her first WU's and i have to say she keeps remarkably cool with all the power under the hood.

Here's some final beauty shots, and a bonus beofre/after shot tof my setup. I'd dare say it turned out pretty nice again!

 Thanks for reading along!

 

Before:

 

And now!

 

[monx101]

On 1/20/2021 at 10:12 PM, RollinLower said:

Yep, that's the one. It was the bottom 6-pin on the lower 2080. Probably some bad solder joint that increased resistance so bad that it got hot enough to catch fire. The foam pad on the back just acted as kindling basically.

Hi I was planning to use this on my 3080 and got notified by other users that you had your pc burned by this pcie adaptor. Have you checked the pinout of the ones you have before you installed this to your pc with a multi-tester? maybe the one you had is the 9K14 version which is power and ground pins use same bus lane in the pcb thats why it over heated and burned.

[RollinLower]

7 hours ago, monx101 said:

Hi I was planning to use this on my 3080 and got notified by other users that you had your pc burned by this pcie adaptor. Have you checked the pinout of the ones you have before you installed this to your pc with a multi-tester? maybe the one you had is the 9K14 version which is power and ground pins use same bus lane in the pcb thats why it over heated and burned.

i probably had the 9K14 ones since, well, everything went up in flames.

 

i hope you understand i can never in my life recommend you take the gamble on these tough. my house still smells like burning electronics sometimes, and the fire was 3 months ago. it's a part where depending on your GPU a lot of power flows through. if the manufacturer makes a mistake, or maybe the product got damaged somehow you will have a fire.

it's up to you if you trust the seller enough to deliver a quality product.

[DailyProcrastinator]

Amazing turnout! Wish I followed this as it happened, but nonetheless a sexy build!

[RollinLower]

10 minutes ago, DailyProcrastinator said:

Amazing turnout! Wish I followed this as it happened, but nonetheless a sexy build!

Thanks! i'm just happy to finally have a proper PC again to be honest. The weeks after the fire all electronics where taken from our house by the insurance guys for professional cleaning. You don't know how much you rely on those things for entertainment untill you lose them i guess.

 

There's still a few small changes i have planned for this build:

 

I bought a full acetal version of the same waterblock with matching backplate. The stock 6900 backplate doesn't work for me aesthetically.

I also want to swap the RAM out for some simmilar performing sticks without RGB. i'm not going to use the RGB anyway and the big white strips of plastic on these DIMMs also look kinda bad considering this is supposed to be a black/chrome build.

 

i'll probably update this thread when those changes happen.

[DailyProcrastinator]

19 minutes ago, RollinLower said:

Thanks! i'm just happy to finally have a proper PC again to be honest. The weeks after the fire all electronics where taken from our house by the insurance guys for professional cleaning. You don't know how much you rely on those things for entertainment untill you lose them i guess.

I work from home and am at my desk for 10hrs+ daily, so I cannot even imagine.

 

I did have the minor inconvenience of a plumbing leak directly above my desk, luckily it was minor and no water damage to my system, I just had to move it out for a week while it was fixed. Even that was not enjoyable.

 

At least everything is now (mostly) sorted out for you, but that is not a nice experience to deal with. 

 

27 minutes ago, RollinLower said:

There's still a few small changes i have planned for this build:

 

I bought a full acetal version of the same waterblock with matching backplate. The stock 6900 backplate doesn't work for me aesthetically.

I also want to swap the RAM out for some simmilar performing sticks without RGB. i'm not going to use the RGB anyway and the big white strips of plastic on these DIMMs also look kinda bad considering this is supposed to be a black/chrome build.

Yeah that's fair, I think it will pull the aesthetic nicely together. 

 

I have decided that I am going to hardline my main rig, I am ditching the blue theme, just going for a more clean/simple black+white, and I am waiting of proper Canadian availability of the 3080 or more likely to wait for a 3080Ti, if that moves the updates to 2022, so be it. 

 

Otherwise I will just update the case, most likely to the Meshify 2, and go for new (non blue LED) fans. 

27 minutes ago, RollinLower said:

i'll probably update this thread when those changes happen.

Followed, and looking forward to the updates!

[RollinLower]

Quick little update:

 

Under full load the fan in the little SFX PSU got louder than the system itself, so that had to change. I swapped it out for a 92mm Noctua that's plugged into a PWM header on the motherboard, so i get full control over the fanspeed!

 

I also got the new waterblock in, and it's installed on the 6900XT, but taking pictures of something black in low light conditions is pretty hard, so this is all you get for now.

 

I'll make some better pics soon in daylight.

 

[monx101]

On 3/4/2021 at 4:05 PM, RollinLower said:

i probably had the 9K14 ones since, well, everything went up in flames.

 

i hope you understand i can never in my life recommend you take the gamble on these tough. my house still smells like burning electronics sometimes, and the fire was 3 months ago. it's a part where depending on your GPU a lot of power flows through. if the manufacturer makes a mistake, or maybe the product got damaged somehow you will have a fire.

it's up to you if you trust the seller enough to deliver a quality product.

Thanks for the info. I just bent my pcie custom cables to the max possible. Here's a view from the front.

[RollinLower]

welp, i finally got around making pictures of the GPU in her new waterblock.

 

I also made these with my GF's new camera, and boi does that ever make it harder to make decent pictures. before i just used my phone, but a DSLR really requires a level of skill i do not posses yet.

The following pictures are the very few that turned out okay of the dozens i made.

 

Items still on the to-do list of this build:

- swap out the RAM for a kit of just all black DIMMs.

- get new cablecombs for the GPU cables. 

[sub68]

2 hours ago, RollinLower said:

but a DSLR eally requires a level of skill i do not posses yet.

It took me a year to get used to a DSLR

what is the camera anyway?

[RollinLower]

1 minute ago, sub68 said:

It took me a year to get used to a DSLR

what is the camera anyway?

It's a Canon EOS 4000D. i really don't know what i'm doing or how it works but my GF just put it on some settings and all i really had to do was ajust zoom/click the button.

still 99% of the pictures turned out to be a blurry mess tho.

[sub68]

Just now, RollinLower said:

still 99% of the pictures turned out to be a blurry mess tho.

let it focuses

Just now, RollinLower said:

It's a Canon EOS 4000D

forgets that you live in europe (these are know as rebals in the US)

but thats a decent starter camera.

2 minutes ago, RollinLower said:

i really don't know what i'm doing or how it works

Reminds me when I was first starting out and starting to figure out my camera fun times

[RollinLower]

There's been a couple little changs again.

 

first off, i got better cablecombs for the GPU cables. These are originally 24-Pin combs, but i just cut them down to being 16 PIN. Looks a lot cleaner!

 

Second, i swapped out the 4266Mhz Trident Z for a kit of 3200Mhz Dominator Platinum RGB's.

These look a lot better with the RGB off IMO. The Trident Z's have this big white lightbar on them which just doesn;t play nice with the black/chrome colorscheme i'm going for. 

 

It's a bit of a downgrade tho, but realistically on 2nd gen threadripper you're not clocking RAM above 3.5Ghz anyway.