Project "My Computer"

givegomezthegun · May 21, 2016

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I've never named a pc before, and I'm not going to start now.

Anyway- I've always had complete budget builds. For the last 20 years, every PC I have built has been with one goal in mind, the best price to performance ratio for the money I had to spend at the time. It's always resulted in various combinations of hardware that I wasn't really happy with. My last PC was actually not a very bad rig at all, sporting an i7 3770, 16gb ram, and a GTX 970... but it looked horrendous. I want something that will handle AAA titles in 1080 at nice settings and frame rates, AND look good on my desk, damnit!

So I sold that piece of junk and started ordering again. This time with a slightly bigger budget than I'm used to working with - and while not with a specific plan, at least some sort of foundation in mind. I wanted a black and white themed build, and I wanted it to be cooled with a custom rigid loop.

I started this build in early March, and I had one setback.. I wanted it to have a GTX 1080. So I ordered most of my parts, and a GTX 960 as a place holder until the 1080 launched. I could have just gotten by with anything really, but my wife's computer could use an improvement from the Radeon 6790 she's been using for a long time.

So, in order to have a functioning system in the mean time I decide to order an EK full kit. I figure it's a decent investment because I can add to it later on.

I'm browsing Kijiji(Canada's version of Craigslist?) a couple weeks ago, and I come across a brand new EVGA GTX 980 Hydro Copper GPU for $500 CAD. The deal is too good for me to pass up. The 1080 would be nice, but realistically it's overkill for me, I have one 1080p 60hz display, and this is probably less than half of what I'd pay for the GTX 1080 and waterblock/backplate.

So my build as it stands right now, consists of;

System Components:

Case: Fractal Design Define S

CPU: Intel i5 6600k

Motherboard: MSI Z170a Krait Gaming R6 Siege

RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws 4 16gb DDR4-3000

SSD: Samsung 850 EVO 250gb

PSU: EVGA Supernova p2 750w

GPU: EVGA GTX 980

Misc/Cosmetic:

Corsair MM300 KB/Mouse mat

Cablemod White Cables

Cablemod Magnetic White LED strip

Peripherals:

Keyboard: Corsair K65 RGB

Mouse: Roccat Kone Optical

Speakers: Logitech Z323

Cooling Components:

EK Coolstream PE 360 Radiator

EK Coolstream SE 360 Radiator

EK Supremacy MX Waterblock

EK EVGA Hydro Copper Water Block for the GTX 980

~~EK XRES DDC~~ w/ 204MM Reservior

Darkside D5 Vario w/ EK-XTOP Revo

3x EK Vardar F3-120 1850rpm Fans

4x Corsair Air SP120 Quiet Edition Fans

Bitspower 10mm ID/12mm OD PETG Tube

Fittings are a mix of Darkside and Bitspower, I got what was available and in the colour I wanted

Mayhems Pastel Ice White Coolant

So, I will apologize now for the crappy pictures. My super awesome camera is just my Nexus 6 phone, and the lighting in my room is less than ideal.

Why go from an i7 to an i5? To be honest, the K. And the price. But this was still an upgrade, it overclocked nicely and is much faster than the 3770 in every way I need it to be.

Things coming together in the early stages... Funny story about the motherboard, I chose the "R6 Siege" edition strictly because the SATA ports were at a 90, opposed to the normal edition of the motherboard where they are straight. I didn't even realize that the R6 stood for rainbow six, and that it came with a copy of the game, so that was a bonus.

Beginning final assembly...

Tubes bent, loop filled, nerves wrecked. Leak testing.

Leak test was a success, so here it is all assembled and closed up.. in the dark.

And, the entire desk setup

This is probably far from done. I still have to dial in overclocks, and frankly I like tinkering with it more than I like using it. In the future I would like to move to a D5 pump, maybe add another video card if I can ever find the same one again. I will probably redo the tubes quite a few times, this was my first time working with rigid tubing and some of these are in here purely because I ran out of tubing on mistakes and practice bends.

Oh, temperatures. Stress testing the CPU alone the temp seemed to peak at 30 degrees C. An hour of playing DOOM and having the GPU throwing heat into the loop brought the cpu to 41 and the GPU to 44. I can live with that

This is the first 'build log' I've ever posted anywhere so I apologize for the crappy format, anyway, thanks for looking.

Cheers

Vercii · May 21, 2016

Lovely. I plan to do something similar but with black/blue.

givegomezthegun · May 28, 2016

So, I guess when I put the top back on the DDC pump I was using I must have tightened the bolts too hard and caused a crack to form. It was very thin, so thin I could not get it to show up in any picture no matter how good the lighting, but after about a week enough fluid had leaked into the pump to fry it.

So.. if you ever find yourself putting a DDC top on, I guess be careful about that. Anyway, I immediately ordered a D5 and ran a slightly ghetto looking setup while I tried to come up with another plan.

Using a different pump meant I needed new fittings and most of the lines re-run. I also wanted to try my best to avoid having to drill any holes into the case, so I was left with very few ways I could mount everything in a somewhat functional way. After a few days I was able to come up with a plan I thought would work, I put the order in for fittings, a pump top, some more PETG tubing, and some white sleeving for those nasty pump wires.

I'm kind of glad I wasted all that time and money because I'm actually much happier with version 2.0 of my water cooled build here.

I moved the LED strip to the floor of the case, I like it better there, but now the top is dark.. so I will be getting another strip or 2 to play around with and try to get the case lit up a little better.