My Inverted & Watercooled Ryzen Build

[hamibh]

This is my first watercooling loop!

Specs:
AMD - Ryzen 7 1700X 3.4GHz 8-Core Processor
MSI - B350 TOMAHAWK ARCTIC ATX AM4 Motherboard
Corsair - Vengeance LED 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory
Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (OS)
Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 1TB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Storage, Steam library etc.)
MSI - GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB Founders Edition Video Card
Corsair - Carbide Clear 600C ATX Full Tower Case
Corsair - RM 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply

 

Watercooling:
EK-XRES 140 Revo D5 PWM (incl. sleeved pump)
5x EK - Vardar F1-120 40.0 CFM 120mm Fan
EK-CoolStream PE 240 (Dual)
EK-CoolStream PE 360 (Triple)
EK-FC1080 GTX Ti - Nickel
EK-Supremacy EVO - Nickel
EK-FC1080 GTX Ti Backplate - Black
PETG tubing and nickel compression fittings

 

Accessories:
Silverstone sleeved extension cables
Cool White LED strips
Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 Usb Computer Audio Interface
LG - 34UC88 34.0" 3440x1440 60Hz Monitor
Vortex KBC poker 3 Keyboard
Logitech - G602 Wireless Optical Mouse
KORG nanoKEY2
Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro Headphones - 80 Ohm
M-Audio - BX5 D2 140W 2ch Speakers
WD MyBook Duo 6TB (Backups)
Racksoy Bluetooth adapter
Logitech C320 Webcam

 

Because my PC is to the left of my desk, I chose the Corsair Carbide 600C which is an an inverted case with a window on the right. Temperature difference compared to right-way-up is a few degrees at most as confirmed by Hardware Canucks. My 1080Ti Founders Edition the stock cooler would quickly hit its thermal limit with and start throttling, even at stock clock speeds. My 1700X would also easily reach 80+°C even with a Corsair H80i GT all-in-one cooling loop, so I decided to spring for a cooling looped based on EKWB configurator's recommendation for a silent setup. Delivery took almost three weeks due to parts being out of stock. They were a long three weeks, during which I installed SketchUp and mocked up the entire build, reiterating until I had a sensible number of bends that looked tidy:

 

 

Once all the parts arrived I discovered that my original plan to have the pump and reservior unit mounted upright to the front of the case would not work because the graphics card is too long to allow for it!

 

 

My mockups went out the window and I had to resort to good old pen, paper and holding the reservior in various places while trying to decide which looked the best. Unfortunately I had to settle for blocking the view of the CPU block. Total setup took around seven hour including bending the pipes before leaving the loop to run overnight.

I ordered some white 5V LED strips from Ebay and cut them to length for inside the top of the case, the underside of the GPU facing down, and the bottom of the case facing up, then soldered them to a molex connector with thin electrical wire. Combined with the white and grey motherboard, this helps the blue water dye and nickel fittings to stand out nicely!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The RAM is rated for 3200MHz but Ryzen isn't quite ready for these profiles yet. Following a couple of BIOS updates I've managed to squeeze out 2667MHz with one of the motherboard's "Try It!" presets which seems to match the RAM's 3200MHz XMP timings but at the lower speed. With the pump set to minimum I'm seeing 20-30°C lower temperatures even with overclocks applied.

 

Clocks:
CPU: 3.9GHz at 1.3875V (up from 3.4GHz stock)
GPU Clock: +150MHz
GPU RAM: +450MHz

Benchmarks:
Cinebench All Cores: 1695
Geekbench 3 Single Core: 4296
Geekbench 3 All Cores: 33162

PCMARK 8 CREATIVE CONVENTIONAL 3.0
Fire Strike Extreme: 12,924
Time Spy: 9,615

 

To round out my setup, I attached some RGB strips to the back of my monitor which are controlled by a cheap knockoff Arduino Nano. This lets me control the colour, as well as match the colour of videos as they play:

 

 

 

These photos were taken before my latest upgrades/watercooling which is why the PC looks different (and much bluer).

 

 

 

[tom_w141]

Ryzen system with blue blood? Thou hast betrayed AMD /s

[Simon771]

Looks great

 

May I just ask what are your CPU temps when running AIDA64 with CPU + FPU + cache stress test for about 20min or so?

[PCGuy_5960]

39 minutes ago, tom_w141 said:

Ryzen system with blue blood? Thou hast betrayed AMD /s

Blue is better than red. Deal with it

[tom_w141]

6 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

Blue is better than red. Deal with it

I'm a fan of orange  

[r3loAded]

that's art...simply beautiful...speechless...PC porn...enjoy it fully

[hamibh]

41 minutes ago, Simon771 said:

Looks great

 

May I just ask what are your CPU temps when running AIDA64 with CPU + FPU + cache stress test for about 20min or so?

Sure. It started getting a little toasty. I've set AIDA64 to offset these readings by 20°C so they should be accurate:

 

[Simon771]

14 minutes ago, hamibh said:

Sure. It started getting a little toasty. I've set AIDA64 to offset these readings by 20°C so they should be accurate:

 

Thanks for you info

 

I guess I went with the right choise when I bought my Dark Rock 3. 

3,85GHz at 1,35V and I get max 75°C with this stress testing.

And in real life usage, max temp after 2 weeks was 61°C. Not sure when that happened, since I'm mostly seeing 40°C at idle (no p state sadly ... otherwise it would be below 30°C), and when gaming it's aroun 48-52°C.

 

I just hope you won't have any leaks like I did ... that scared me

[hamibh]

19 hours ago, Simon771 said:

Thanks for you info

 

I guess I went with the right choise when I bought my Dark Rock 3. 

3,85GHz at 1,35V and I get max 75°C with this stress testing.

And in real life usage, max temp after 2 weeks was 61°C. Not sure when that happened, since I'm mostly seeing 40°C at idle (no p state sadly ... otherwise it would be below 30°C), and when gaming it's aroun 48-52°C.

 

I just hope you won't have any leaks like I did ... that scared me

I could get the temps lower if I ran the pump above minimum but the quietness is too good to pass up.

 

How bad was your leak, and was it down to faulty parts or just not fitted tightly enough?

[Simon771]

2 hours ago, hamibh said:

I could get the temps lower if I ran the pump above minimum but the quietness is too good to pass up.

 

How bad was your leak, and was it down to faulty parts or just not fitted tightly enough?

It was pretty bad since it woke me in the middle of the night. All the watter went out, so pump was running dry and making weird noise.

Luckily it was leaking from fitting that was at the bottom of the case, and water didn't go over any of my components. My room did stink for a while, and I had a lot of work to clean everything, but my components survived luckily.

 

Still not sure what caused it ... I was running with that loop since November 2016, and leak happened somewhere in April I think.

It could be just bad luck, but when something like that happens to you, you think twice before going back to water cooling. So I decided to go for something that's is more safe and I don't need to worry about leaving my PC on all the time even when I'm not around.

[Reaver83]

Why did the original mockups not work? Was the Radiator/Fan combo too thick? Do you think that if I got the Slim kit from EK that that Pump/Res combo would fit beside a Graphics card of similar length? Working with the same case, and Ryzen 1700x/Aorus X470 Gaming 7 motherboard. Originally had a H100i GTX, but after 2 replacements have decided to just do a open loop.

[thedemoncowboy]

Damn, this looks great!