in-progress Chocolate Box - ITX Parvum

[JR23]

 

Hello LTT, i'm sure several members will know me from elsewhere on the interwebs, i've already seen several familiar usernames however this is my first time posting here! This project is actually a rebuild of one of my existing systems so i'll take a little time to give some background in this post. Hopefully over the course of this thread I can figure out how the forums work and get to know some of the regulars so things go smoothly on the next project here, whatever it may be!

 

Chocolate Box was originally finished (if a PC can ever be called finished!) in March last year, it came about following a successful Parvum S2.0 build when they offered to sponsor me with an X1.0. At this point i'd just made my first foray into watercooling and was eager to try it again however it seemed appropriate to keep the case as standard as possible. With limited radiator area I decided cooling both the CPU and GPU with water was not a sensible option and the decision was made to watercool just the GPU. Consequently I searched for the biggest suitable CPU air cooler which at the time was the Noctua L12. After browsing their portfolio of products I was desperate to use their newly released industrialPPC fans hence the rather individual black and brown theme of the system came about.

 

 

It wasn't my intention to upgrade this build on a whim however sadly the original reference 290X developed some rather concerning cold bugs, so while it had to be disassembled it made sense to capitalize on the opportunity and perform some upgrades. Really there wasn't much that disappointed me with the system initially, aside a very loud pump which was rectified using a PWM variant, so for it's re-incarnation there wasn't too much I wished to change from an aesthetic perspective.

 

One tiny niggle I always had was the slight sag of the tubing to the GPU and the inconsistency betweeen the Alphacool, Bitspower and EKWB fittings consequently I will be using exclusively Bitspower Silver Shining for the rebuild.

 

 

Aside just gaming I also use this system for 3d rendering quite frequently and so I decided to upgrade to a Skylake i7 requiring the EVGA Z97 Stinger be changed to Z170 along with some new DDR4 making the full specification as follows....

 

Case - Custom Parvum X1.0
CPU - Intel i7-6700k
Motherboard - EVGA Z170 Stinger
RAM - Corsair Vengeance LPX 2x8GB 4000C12
GPU - XFX R9-390X DD Black Edition
SSD - HyperX 3K 120GB
SSD - HyperX 3K 240GB
PSU - Silverstone SX600-G

Fans - Noctua IndustrialPPC NF-F12 ip67 2000PWM x2
CPU Cooler - Noctua NH-L12
GPU Block - EK FC290X Nickel/Acetal w. Backplate
Radiator - XSPC AX120
Pump - EK-DDC 3.2 PWM
Pump/Res - EK DDC X-RES 100
Fittings - Bitspower Enhance Silver Shining
Tubing - Bitspower 10/12mm Silver Shining

 

Since the concept came to me i've always been very fond of this build and i'm looking forward to sharpening all of the details to keep it relevant for a little while longer, catch you all soon.

 

JR

[JR23]

 

First on the list of parts to procure and the main culprit for this rebuild was the graphics card. I went with the best possible option to fit my original R9-290X (Rev2.0) block, which actually was quite limited now the reference design has been dropped.

 

 

That was of course the XFX R9-290X Double Dissipation Black Edition, clocked at 1090/6000 from factory, a decent boost but I hope its capable of 1210/6500 like my old card.

 

 

 

 

I mean I wouldn't say I removed the sticker, there may be some screwdriver damage, hopefully it will fly if this card goes wonky too. Neat backplate for a relatively cheap card too.

 

 

 

It seems a shame to discard such a pretty cooler, but back into the box it must go, at least I had the chance to appreciate the underside for a moment and it's respectable array of heatpipes.

 

 

 

 

Bring on the block!

 

 

 

Dat ac... etal.

 

 

 

One piece down, just a few more to go and then a little fabrication can commence before it's time to assemble again.

 

JR

[JR23]

 

I'm starting to get excited for the rebuild now i've had some hands on time with the motherboard, as I acquired an i7-6700k I have switched to the newer Z170 Stinger and my god it's beautiful, one of the finest Z170 motherboards I have ever witnessed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 A quick test fit of the Noctua L12 and thankfully it nestles in just as neatly as before, hopefully later in the week I will collect some DDR4 and fresh Bitspower fittings and get Chocolate Box back in the scene.
 

 

With the move from Haswell to Skylake it not only meant that I needed a new board but of course some DDR4 to go with it.

 

 

 

While this may appear to be Vengeance LPX, it really isn't, just yeah

 

 

So to remove one element of confusion and to add another I decided to remove the 'stock' LPX not LPX spreaders and fit watercooling kit spreaders just like the old DDR3 that came out.

 

 

 

 

 

So thats the last of the main hardware upgrades taken care of!

 

 

Next I will be addressing the tiny aesthetic details. Chocolate Box had always been a huge mix of watercooling parts with an EK pump and block, XSPC radiator, Alphacool tubing and the occasional Bitspower fitting. Purely because at the time that was the most effective solution performance wise and aesthetically. However to alleviate the huge mixture of fittings I will be switching them all to Bitspower along with the relatively recent 12mm OD chrome tubing.

 

 

Today i've just been working on the back of the case and as before using a lathe to accurately face the pipework to length. Not exactly a requirement but just because I can.

 

 

The one new tube fitted perfectly into place!

 

 

 

I also swapped in Bitspower pass through, rotary and extender fittings to keep things extra clean and consistent. I went for 'enhance' style compression fittings as although I prefer push-in style for rigid tubing these just looked incredibly slender and discrete. Each length of tubing stems from a rotary hence it made sense to just use the one fitting rather than conventional rotary and C47.

 

 

 

So the back side of the loop is looking on point once more, I just need to pick up two more 90° enhance rotaries and then I will progress with the front half.

 

JR

[amvoith]

Looking great. Love the stinger motherboards (have one myself) I'd love to put chrome tubing in my build eventually.

 

Why just water cool the GPU though and not the CPU as well? And the mix of EK blocks and pump and Bitspower ram modules?

[JR23]

21 hours ago, amvoith said:

Looking great. Love the stinger motherboards (have one myself) I'd love to put chrome tubing in my build eventually.

 

Why just water cool the GPU though and not the CPU as well? And the mix of EK blocks and pump and Bitspower ram modules?

 

Thanks, yep, can't fault the Stingers at all I loved the Z97 and this is even prettier.

 

The reason against watercooling the CPU too was just down to the available radiator area (single 120mm) and the fact I just wanted to execute something original and rarely seen. In my testing it really was no detriment to acoustics or performance to have the old 4440 on air, obviously there wasn't room to overclock as far as on water however that was never the purpose of such a small build. Other sacrifices could of been made such as a lower TDP GPU, like the 970 which was available at the time but I wouldn't have it any other way. It is different, it performed epicly originally on all levels and i'm sure it will now.

 

I've actually cut down the huge mix of watercooling brands quite a lot consolidating all tubing and fittings to Bitspower, it wasn't really the mixture of brands which annoyed me but more so the mixture of finishes. Everyone's nickel plating and knurling is slightly different whereas now it's all consistent silver shining. The radiator is XSPC AX, because i've just never seen a higher quality rad. The EK pump fits in the rear chamber with absolutely no room to spare so that choice was made for me, I actually had to mod it slightly to make it work with the loop. So essentially everything had to be exactly as it is to fit together the way it does. I guess that the GPU block could of been different but the EK acetal option definitely fitted the theme best overall.

 

JR

[JR23]

 

Over the weekend I cut the four remaining tubes for Chocolate Box using the lathe just as before.

 

 

I'm using Bitspower enhance style fittings which incorporate a traditional compression ring into almost any imaginable fitting, in this case a 90° rotary.

 

 

 

There are also 90° links with a compression ring on both sides allowing relatively slender and simple bends without attempting to form the pipe.

 

 

So a quick test fit was in order to ensure my measurements were accurate, everything came together neatly.

 

 

 

 

When it's possible I like to keep a consistent knurling pattern and diameter throughout the build hence I found some matching stop plugs.

 

 

 

I'm really happy with the results and the consistency now all of the tubing and fittings are Silver Shining. It's actually much lighter than the previous 10/13mm components and

the rotaries are much tighter too so hopefully it will sit just as true in the build when coolant is added

 

 

 

 

Next up I just need to give everything a clean off and then reassemble, very excited to see how it looks and performs with all the little changes now.

 

JR

[ManOfGold93]

So I take it this is the older model (but so much better) of the r9 390x without the new inductors??

[JR23]

 

With the tubing completed in the previous update, there really was not much left to do besides add the cables and fit the CPU cooler but after many months of service the L12 deserved a thorough cleaning.

 

 

So I decided to give him a shower!

 

 

...and of course the IP67 F12 wanted to be involved too.

 

 

 

Left to dry out in the afternoon sun, I wanted to be sure the fan would not throw out some water when it was powered on in the build.

 

 

 

 

While the original vibration mounts were still in perfect order I had 120 or so original brown parts left over from LIGHTNING, hence I just picked out some fresh new ones.

 

 

 

Just like new again.

 

 

 

 

 

Always the tricky part of this build is connecting the CPU fan, but it can be done with some patience.

 

 

Second round of final pics to come very soon

 

JR

[NaLu]

This build is just MAGNIFICENT. I love how well colors are matching and overall aesthetics.

[Yahtadi]

There are some top notch photos!

[colinreay]

JR, you've only been watercooling for a year!? Sorry if I misread that, but holy sh**t dude, you are already one of the watercooling gods! Also, if it is okay for me to ask, do you work at Parvum, or just do a lot of projects with them?

[JR23]

55 minutes ago, colinreay said:

JR, you've only been watercooling for a year!? Sorry if I misread that, but holy sh**t dude, you are already one of the watercooling gods! Also, if it is okay for me to ask, do you work at Parvum, or just do a lot of projects with them?

 

I completed my first watercooled build αclass in September 2014 so nearly two years ago, as that build was drawing to a close I simultaneously did a Parvum S2.0 build. They contacted me shortly after asking if I wanted to do an ITX build in the unreleased X1.0 and so Chocolate Box was started in November 2014 and completed the following March.

 

Since then me and imersa have collaborated on lots of projects MATE, KRAIT, DOOM and currently HOF. I've helped them to develop several cases, the L1.0, R1.0 and X2.0 as well as having some input into custom requests, hence my personal projects LIGHTNING and FURIA are Parvum fabricated too. We've also done a few builds for our friends too like SHEEDY and APIS, My daily build αclass 2.0 is in the first L1.0 production sample.

 

JR

[JR23]

 

Each little detail has manifested into the latest revision of Chocolate Box and while none of these changes were radical together they make quite a difference. So for the second and i'm sure not the last time here are the 'final' photographs!

 

Case - Custom Parvum X1.0
CPU - Intel i7-6700k
Motherboard - EVGA Z170 Stinger
RAM - Corsair Vengeance LPX 2x8GB 4000C12
GPU - XFX R9-390X DD Black Edition
SSD - HyperX 3K 120GB
SSD - HyperX 3K 240GB
PSU - Silverstone SX600-G

 

Fans - Noctua IndustrialPPC NF-F12 ip67 2000PWM x2
CPU Cooler - Noctua NH-L12
GPU Block - EK FC290X Nickel/Acetal w. Backplate
Radiator - XSPC AX120
Pump - EK-DDC 3.2 PWM
Pump/Res - EK DDC X-RES 100
Fittings - Bitspower Enhance Silver Shining
Tubing - Bitspower 10/12mm Silver Shining

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I suspect another installment of photographs will come, these just stood out from the 250 or more that I took this afternoon. Thanks for checking it out, catch you all soon!

 

JR

[8uhbbhu8]

OMG. This is absolutely beautiful! I love it!

[JR23]

 

Once again Chocolate Box returns, this time for a massive upgrade! Even at this early stage it's obvious what will be going down and i'm very very excited about it. After the previous platform upgrade to Z170 there was certainly no shortage of CPU speed or efficiency and now it's time to apply the same ethos over to the GPU side of things with just a hint more brutish ignorance.

 

 

 

 

Momentarily I had planned to swap in a 980Ti K|NGP|N which would have been a significant undertaking of swapping PSU's, many cables and lots of little tweaks to make it all fit. But then while contemplating how to orchestrate that elaborate transplant a Titan X Pascal was bestowed upon me. So now I must go forth and do what I have to do!

 

 

 

 

The super vigilant among you, or just everyone, may have noticed that was slightly too many TXP's to fit on an ITX board. Well you were correct, and no I won't be using 4 this time, sorry. However I will be using the best one of this set, because 'a' TXP clearly wouldn't have been good enough for a build with one of the best 63840K's and DDR4 kits in the wild.

 

 

 

 

So to determine a clear victor and a worthy companion for the current hardware a huge amount of overclocking and benchmarking took place. Here are some of the highlights...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now you may have expected that one card in the pack shone through, clocked higher, scored like no other and those 5 screenshots were all from one of the finest examples of a TXP to ever exist. Well I must admit, I did too, but that wasn't the case at all.

 

 

Card - Core - Mem - FS eff - FS - Heaven - Valley

TXP1 - 220 - 600 - 31877 - 32074 - 4145 - 6679

TXP2 - 220 - 700 - 31836 - 32214 - 4170 - 6707

TXP3 - 220 - 700 - 31791 - 31621 - 4117 - 6809

TXP4 - 250 - 700 - 31739 - 32279 - 4124 - 6838

 

 

On all four cards I tested the highest achievable core and memory offsets with the stock cooler, once I established they could all easily achieve +200mhz core and +500mhz memory I ran Firestrike Standard graphics with the same settings on each card to determine the relative efficiency. The same thing as an ASIC value attempts to represent, the deviation was quite significant and it gave me a great insight into what I could expect from them without investing hours and hours into watching Firestrike. The two most efficient cards were able to achieve the highest Unigine Heaven scores while the higher leakage cards fared better at Valley. Firestrike made things very interesting as it took advantage of the very high clocks TXP4 was able to achieve while at the same time the more balanced blend of efficiency and clocks TXP2 offered also did well, unlike earlier in Valley.

 

 

With all that information picking the optimal card wasn't a simple decision as they all performed reasonably well under different conditions. In the end it came down in favor of TXP2 as it had great efficiency and was still able to achieve relatively high clocks, visible in its strong performance across all 3 benchmarks. The shear speed and leakage of TXP4 were very alluring and i'd be excited to see what it could do at lower temperatures, however with only a single 120mm radiator efficiency seemed like a more suitable asset. Plus I did a little SLI testing and TXP2 was by far the most cooperative as a primary card.

 

 

So enough of the boring reading, many sexy pictures!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All the credentials are now ready for action, I just need a little watercooling gear to suit the new card, few cables, few tubes and I will be ready to hit LAN's with some next level Farm Simulator settings. No seriously, only a few weeks until i60 and there is lots of farming to be done!!!

 

 

JR

[JR23]

 

With the air cooled testing concluded (I thought) the card was stripped down ready to send nudes get blocked.

 

 

 

But wait...

 

 

...wats dis. Well while reading 1080Ti reviews I got a bit wrapped up in an uncorking guide and noted quite an elegant power mod, rather than shorting the shunt resistors with liquid metal 3x 10Ohm 0805 resistors were added to the capacitors on the power monitoring circuitry. I don't really like the idea of liquid metal long term but this seemed viable so onto RS to order some resistors.

 

 

Must admit, I was very surprised how small 0805 was when they first arrived, so quickly nipped out to a friend to solder them on. Not that I didn't trust myself, but it was easier for him as I didn't say how much it was worth until afterwards. They can be seen above labeled C252, C253 and C257, notably hand soldered and weird at that being on top of another component, nonetheless well attached both physically and electrically, we checked.

 

 

Glad to say it worked really good, they don't influence the amount of power supplied to the core, instead they offset the cards monitoring so it never reaches '100%' power target and starts to throttle. With a substantial overclock it now runs at ~75% power target, on air that translated to a ~1.5% performance gain, hopefully it will start to help out more when the temperature throttle conditions are also removed.

 

 

And on that very subject, a delivery from Slovenia!

 

 

I think a lot less me writing stuff and more you looking at stuff is called for at this precise moment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just the way it should be, a brutally obvious sandwich of nickel, copper and acetal. More tomorrow.

 

JR

[JR23]

 

Right, intense speed is required on this update because it's 3am, LAN is tomorrow and I spent waaaaaay too long picking through hundreds of shots! I finished the build last Sunday, ran some benchmarks... got very close to topping a few leaderboards and then got very obsessed with that instead of updates or photos. Then FURIA died, which was about to make comeback with a new riser, pump and fans but now I need a new motherboard and CPU... so back to it.

 

 

Some of you might have caught my mini update about the case and all of the little changes, but i'll keep that to the end before its revealed. First thing was to fit the freshly adjusted cables into the midwall, very literally.

 

 

And then neatly tuck them all into the motherboard.

 

 

 

It all went back together just as before with the modded EK X-RES hanging out on the triple M-M snake.

 

 

 

Getting very speedy at building up Parvums these days. Also EK SF3D spreaders on the memory with shortened black M3 dome head screws to complete them a little.

 

 

 

 

Right, time for benchmarks! I was able to get the 6700k stable at 5.0ghz for 3d runs on the NH-L12, 4.9ghz for physics, both with 4000mhz C18 memory and 4.8ghz cache. The Titan ran even better than ever with its new block too sitting in the 2114-2139mhz range for every test.

 

 

 

The freshly released Unigine Superposition, 1080p Extreme and 4k optimized presets.

 

 

 

And of course some Firestrike, physics suffered a tiny bit compared with my bench tests using the EK S240 kit however keeping the Titan under 40°C easily made up for it overall.

 

 

 

Well now I know you know it's finished I can't just leave it at that. So some teasery glimpses before LAN!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Right, sleeps, gon.

 

JR

[KrZaj]

Looks SWEET!

[BeardRex]

Daaaaaamn

[Yahtadi]

This build would win some contest for sure

[MODZERO]

It looks even better IRL. Great work JR. 

 

J.

[JR23]

 

Phase III is drawing to a close after an astounding performance at LAN, surely one of the most demanding environments for a gaming PC, so I think this configuration will stick for a while now. I will have to turn my attention back to some larger rigs so I can run the same settings at home. The fact this tiny pupper runs circles around my triple 780 X79 rig simply won't do.

 

I hope my LAN recovery time was well spent editing the remaining pics, not including all 400 or so was the hardest part and there's still more i'd love to shoot. Perhaps after the next LAN there will be more, so for now!

 

Intel i7-6700k

EVGA Z170 Stinger

Corsair 8 Pack 2x8GB 4000C12

Nvidia Titan X Pascal

HyperX 3K 120GB

HyperX 3K 240GB

Silverstone SX600-G

Custom Parvum X1.0

 

Noctua NH-L12

Noctua iPPC NF-F12 2000 x2

EK-FC Titan X Pascal - Acetal+Nickel

EK-FC Titan X Pascal - Black

EK-SF3D EVO Adapters - Black

EK-DDC 3.2 PWM

EK DDC X-RES 100

XSPC AX120 - Black

Bitspower Enhance 10/12 - Silver

Bitspower brass 10/12 - Silver

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chocolate Box, Lightning and FTW are now awaiting rapid deployment to LSUCS LAN only tomorrow!

 

JR

[JR23]

Time to reveal what was inside the well-travelled package!



After a fast airline blast Chocolate Box was looking quite neat again, just a little dusting and disassembly needed







Removing everything is pretty simple, luckily the standoffs can't fall out of the back and the loop doesn't get in the way at all.



Obviously it couldn't be just 'a' 7700k, can't leave anything to chance with such an awesome Titan XP and b-die. They were getting impossible to find in Europe but still some good silicon out in Texas!











As always a nice clean for the L12 which is the oldest PC components i'm still using regularly.



Still love the fitment, flush with the EK heatspreaders and tight to the GPU. The only thing I don't love is attempting to plug the fan in around the heatpipes and the EPS cable.



Complete once again, time to test!



So to revisit the last benchmarks the i7-6700k was running 4.9GHz on air in the Stinger achieving a physics score of 15860.


Firestrike - 24164

The i7-7700k is consistently clearing 17000 at a clock speed of 5.3GHz with 5.0GHz cache and 4000MHz memory, so an improvement of ~8% for physics and a distinct bump in combined score. Somewhere along the way i've lost 4fps on GT's, hopefully I can get the card running that well again and get on the high side of 25k! Lots of other benchmarks to try too, i'm sure this setup will shred Valley.


Firestrike - 24678

Temperatures are firmly in the 80°C's to run that frequency under load however it's proving to be solid for repeated Heaven passes, definitely not something I will run every day but awesome that it's possible with such a small heatsink.



And of course still looking as handsome as ever! 

JR