Project Stealth Boy 2015

[Ehsteve]

 

Thought I'd throw my hat in the ring with a little build I'd like to call the Stealth Boy. As the old rig will soon pass on to the great PCB in the sky (bubbling on the motherboard), there was a need, and an idea fuel by an unconditional love of Fallout which started many years ago on a Pentium III and whopping 512MB of RAM. The idea is to have silent, LED-less performance. So in order to achieve this we're going with effective but down-geared fans and a custom water cooling loop.

 

So without further ado: the Stealth Boy:

 

Case: Corsair c70 Vengeance Gunmetal Black

 

CPU: Intel i7 4790k

GPU: ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti

- ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti

Motherboard: Asus Maximus VII Formula

RAM: Corsair 16GB (2x8) C10 Low Profile

HDD: Samsung 850 PRO 128GB

- Seagate 2TB SSHD Hybrid

- Seagate 2TB SSHD Hybrid

PSU: Seasonic 860W XP2 Platinum

Fans: Noctua Industrial 2000RPM (non-PWM) x3

 

Water Cooling:

Pump/Reservoir: Koolance RP-1250 (a failure on my part in planning, with the final build will probably not use even half of the features at best)

CPU: Koolance 380I CPU Waterblock

GPU: EK-FC Titan X GPU Waterblock (Black Acetal Nickel) + EK-FC Titan X GPU Backplate (Black) x2

Fittings: Koolance Black 10mm ID 16mm OD Compression Fittings (including threaded coupling

Radiator: Koolance 2x120mm 30FPI Radiators x2

Tubing: PrimoFlex PrimoChill Clear 10mm ID 16mm OD

Fans: Noctua Industrial 2000RPM (non-PWM) x4

 

PSU will be accentuated with a black CableMod sleeved cable kit.

 

---

 

The stars align...

 

 

All the pieces are here...except the Motherboard. Having possibly held up the build for another 3 weeks after a supplier revision, decided to source it through another store that'll have it here in the next few days. That should give enough time to dig out the lighting booth and the good camera (apologies for the quality). Will post better pictures on the morrow. I hope you enjoy the log!

[Aytex]

[KamiKatze]

The Titan X blocks fit on Asus Strix 980 Tis?

[Tagiau]

Cool.

[SonoDanshi]

The Titan X blocks fit on Asus Strix 980 Tis?

That would depend entirely on whether Asus put a custom cooler on a reference PCB or made their own. 

 

@EK Luc might be able to clarify.

[KamiKatze]

That would depend entirely on whether Asus put a custom cooler on a reference PCB or made their own. 

 

@EK Luc might be able to clarify.

 

 

Yeah. But i thought the 980 Ti was finally the card where the manufacturers can go banana on the PCB and power delivery.

[SonoDanshi]

Its certainly open compared to the Titan X, but manufacturers will probably release multiple cards with the "cheaper" (and I use that term loosely) being reference designs with a custom cooler.

[Ehsteve]

Far as I know the Strix is a non-reference card and would not work with the EK-FC Titan X block. You'd have to go with a universal cooler or the like.

 

Do not hold me to that though, haven't touched that particular card before.

 

I'm just using their reference card...mainly because it was the only one in stock at the time here in the land down under.

[EK Luc]

That would depend entirely on whether Asus put a custom cooler on a reference PCB or made their own. 

 

@EK Luc might be able to clarify.

 

The Titan X blocks fit on Asus Strix 980 Tis?

 

No. The Strix 980Ti has a non-reference PCB and will have it's own waterblock.

[KamiKatze]

No. The Strix 980Ti has a non-reference PCB and will have it's own waterblock.

 

I'm interested to see how the build log will turn out with that in mind.

[Ehsteve]

I'm interested to see how the build log will turn out with that in mind.

 

Don't worry, they're not STRIX cards, they're just the standard blower reference 980 ti cards from ASUS.

[KamiKatze]

Don't worry, they're not STRIX cards, they're just the standard blower reference 980 ti cards from ASUS.

 

oooooh. okaay. cool. didn't see that.

[Ehsteve]

Well, lost the sun before it was time for shooting, but as they say: when the going gets tough, the tough get some cardboard boxes and an embroided tablecloth and they take pictures dammit.

 

So sit back and tune in to Galaxy News Radio

 

The powerhouse:

 

 

 

Here I was, minding my own business trying to survive in the badlands, when without warning, a super mutant attacked!

 

 

 

Before long his rampage had destroyed the whole shelter:

 

 

But as abruptly as he appeared, the super mutant vanished...and all that was left to do was rebuild and try to survive another encounter in this unforgiving wilderness...

 

The storage:

 

 

Now for the good stuff (the blurry, out of focus good stuff. 2 SLI bridges in the back with either 1 or 2-3 slot spacing as I was unable to eyeball the slot spacing on the Maximus VII Formula):

 

 

My apologies to EK for not including the water blocks yet, but I couldn't seem to get any good pictures to do these pieces any justice. Will get on those ASAP, they look awesome though.

 

Now for some of the smaller details, picked up some M4 screws for the radiators. Since most radiators do not include screws to mount directly to the case here are some 35mm and 6mm black screws with a nice block-ish look to tie into the quasi-military/utility look. Depending on how the fans are mounted, either the 35mm screws (test fitted and they are perfect!) will go through the case and fan into the radiator or otherwise I can simply use the screws included with the radiator to mount the fans to the radiators then use the 6mm screws to mount the radiators directly to the case.

 

 

I love the solid feel and look of Koolance's 380 CPU waterblock. It will probably be the only real 'bling' inside the case, once completed, but boy does that baby shine:

 

 

The radiators (30 FPI) and pump/reservoir combo (with the RP-1250 probably the weakest choice in the build given there's now little justification for the features for the cost, but that said it came in black ):

 

 

And finally the case, the Corsair c70 Vengeance Gunmetal Black. A personal favorite due to solid steel design, ample cable management space, ease of maintenance due to the latch-secured side plates and the handy...handles...for hauling it around (not that this will travel far):

 

 

Now the plan of attack:

 

- Remove the bottom Hard Drive cage, leaving the top one suspended from the optical drive bay leaving us with the 3 slots for the 2 storage SSHDs in RAID 1 and SSD for the program/boot drive.

- Remove the stock fans and replace then with the Noctua Industrials, putting the top HDD cage with a push/pull configuration to draw air over the storage devices and over the motherboard and back directly into the exhaust out the back.

- Install motherboard with all the good stuff, but not before installing those waterblocks on the CPU and GPUs along with fittings.

- With the bottom HD cage out of the way, then mount the bottom 240mm radiator as an intake in pull configuration as well as on the top as an exhaust in either a pull or push configuration (still undecided, whatever mood takes me at the time?). Because of this, I had to select a power supply of a maximum length of 160mm or less. So that's why we've gone with the Seasonic 860w XP2 Platinum (also because you can use the CableMod kits with Seasonic power supplies).

- Mount the RP-1250 in the available 5-1/4" optical drive bay.

- Tube it up with clear tubing.

- Set all the LEDs to only activate on use on all components.

- any unstealthy elements to be dealt with either a decal of some sort or a blast with some matte black primer.

 

However, none of this can happen until I get that motherboard and unfortunately the store has yet to even process the order for some reason (well over 3 days now), will give them a call tomorrow to see what the deal is (being the end of the financial year, they might just be busy...or sitting on their hands).

 

Hope you enjoyed the update, and end our broadcast day with another hit from Galaxy Radio News

 

EDIT: Welp, got in contact with the motherboard supplier and apparently they're out of stock...and were happy to keep my money floundering around waiting for me to make the first move...

 

So given options...it's either get it from overseas before the end of the next week for a little bit extra or hold on for another 3-4 weeks (not even guaranteed to get a hold of one then). I went with the overseas options simply because I need to claw back space currently occupied by boxes which doesn't involve putting them in storage.

[Ehsteve]

So a lot has happened in the meantime, well actually not that much. Motherboard is scheduled for delivery tomorrow and so begins the POST'ing. The day after, having been tabled an offer I couldn't refuse, a G.Skill Phoenix Blade 960GB PCIe SSD at a reasonable price (at a better $/GB ratio than the Intel and Kingston products currently available in Australia), shall be arriving as the boot drive (the Samsung boot drive has already moved on to a better place). That covers the PCIe 2.0 slot down the bottom and leaves just enough room to slide in a cheeky Xonar DX between the two graphics cards. The direct airflow from the push/pull over the hard drives in the front should definitely give it enough breathing space.

 

This is the exact setup that was originally envisioned, but wasn't able to justify the cost of a PCIe SSD.

 

That means POST'ing tomorrow, full boot and driver installation the day after and finally the assembly being done over the weekend.

[Ehsteve]

So after some less than successful POSTing due to some faulty SATA cables (error A2/99) the cables were swapped out and eventually all components detected successfully!

 

And today, the final piece arrived in the office:

 

'Tis beauty:

 

[ALXAndy]

Can't beat a good PCIE SSD IMO.

[Ehsteve]

Well, it's been a hellish few days trying to get progress done, but to surmize:

 

- Needed a new bottle of isopropyl alcohol, was given surgical spirits (unusable due to castor oil content), had to send it back and search myself, which delayed fitting the GPU waterblocks another couple of days

- Issues demounting the heatsink from the 980 ti. Of the 20 screws required to be removed (4 large GPU screws and 16 regular screws) one board will need to have 2 drilled out due to manufacturing tollerances having the screw so misaligned (touching one side of the mounting hole in the PCB) and tightened that it is impossible to remove. The other board will need *seven* drilled out. Every trick has been employed to coax it out without possible damaging the PCB in any way. I must have lost the lottery here when it comes to build quality. On a good note, the large heatsink screws and ones holding in the backplate were very easy to remove. This just means there's an issue with consistency (yay?).

 

These will be drilled out by hand (not by a power tool) mind you to prevent any possible damage to the PCB, having done this kind of thing on a regular basis with miniatures it's the class of fine work I'm used to.

 

I honestly have seen some of the worst quality from ASUS in terms of presentation. Not having the chance to actually benchmark anything yet, it is impossible to comment on the actual performance. What can be remarked on is that the box was lacklustre, with nothing but a plastic sheet holding it down over a couple of folded pieces of cardboard (no custom foam for that premium feel), that the tollerances on the screws was laughable at points, with several screws having their drives misaligned on top of being misaligned to the threading into the heatsink. The product feels rushed at best, and I can say that after this, probably won't buy an ASUS card again. Keep in mind that this is a reference GPU, and I can only hope that this was a first batch teething issue.

 

I tested the hex-head screws on the heatsink to see if there was any kind of issue there but they came off very easily, even with one of them having the drive misaligned. Don't know what else to say.

 

Of all the components, only the Corsair c70 Vengeance case, Phoenix Blade PCIe SSD and Seasonic PSU have really impressed in terms of presentation and quality.

 

Waterblocks will be mounted tonight at all costs, so that the weekend is free for the actual *building* part of the build log with actual pictures.