watercooled Custom watercooled upgrade

[Jelle458]

So I did this build almost a year ago, but I recently got into really overclocking it with (finally) a good BIOS for RAM speeds and figured I'd do a quick upload of it here.

 

I have been custom watercooling my system since AMD's first phenoms came out, and this has followed all my builds with the eventual upgrade on the cooling system every time I'd upgrade the hardware.

 

Previous hardware:

MSI Z87 XPOWER

Intel Core i7 4770K

16GB Corsair Dominator Platinum 2133MHz DDR3

2x AMD R9 290 reference (I think one XFX and one Sapphire)

CoolerMaster Cosmos 2 with custom sidewindow

2x ADATA SX900 256GB 2.5" SSD's RAID 0

2x WD Blue 320GB 3.5" HDD's RAID 0

SeaSonic SS-1000XP 1000W Platinum PSU

 

Previous watercooling:

EK DCP 4.0 pump with reservoir added

XSPC Z87 XPOWER Fullcover block

Alphacool NexXxoS Monsta 120mm radiator

HWLabs Black Ice GTS 240mm radiator

XSPC Raystorm Intel CPU block

2x Aquacomputer Kryographics R9 290 block with active backplate

FeserOne UV blue liquid

 

Here is a picture of it before I touched the watercooling, but PSU got removed:

 

So now it's time to clean. I didn't actually remove any dust from this in a very long time, neither did I service the watercooling. It actually looks pretty decent after such long time with no care.

 

 

Now that looks a bit more like what I was expecting.

 

 

Cables everywhere. And yes, I am using my kitchen for this. Best place in the house with wood floor.

 

 

Draining the old loop...

 

 

Cleaned and ready for a new platform. Not a lucky picture for my friend here

 

And now for the new hardware:

Gigabyte Z270X-Gaming 9

Intel Core i7 7700K

16GB G.Skill TridentZ RGB 4133MHz

 

Finding a motherboard with a waterblock, or even one where a waterblock was made, was not easy. I ended up with this one because it already has a block and since I previous cooled my motherboard with water I would like to do that again. Expensive motherboard but I got a good deal on it, which is what allowed me to get some of these memory. Before I never really used any serious money on memory, i figured this time could be it. Of course I am not expecting to run 4133MHz, that requires a pretty good CPU and I haven't been very lucky in that department for a long time now.

 

 

The CPU, something isn't quite right here...

 

 

That's more like it...

 

 

My CPU block seems to be known for being very plain, and after some search I got the idea that it wouldn't be half bad going without the IHS. I used Thermal Grizzly Kryonaught thermal paste here. On the picture is liquid metal though, ended up being too hard to handle and I got cold feet in the end. The CPU block is simply mounted on top of the CPU and it runs fine, no need to cut off some of the socket like I have seen some people do.

 

 

CPU block mounted with tubing between the motherboard block and CPU block.

 

 

Motherboard mounted in the case.

 

 

So as I wrote earlier I usually add something to the watercooling when I do an upgrade. Ever since I got into watercooling I always wanted to cool the RAM with water, but I could never justify it since it won't really matter anyway other than for me it looks kinda cool. I went for it this time since I got expensive memory and figured I would go all in.

 

 

I am not sure if it makes a lot of difference, but I still went with thermal paste on the new RAM heatsinks.

 

 

On came the memory waterblock.

 

 

I didn't feel the need to completely disassemble my watercooling, so both radiators are still together and mounted as a whole.

 

 

At the top of the motherboard, where water exits the motherboard waterblock this happened entirely by luck. The two fittings from the motherboard block and the top 240mm radiator are just touching ever so slightly. The old motherboard didn't do this. It's in there snuck but it's okay.

 

 

I am not good with cable management on this side of the case, but what you can't see can't hurt, eh?

 

 

Some cables connected for the front I/O, SATA cables and some power cables.

 

 

Some thinking of how to route the tubing had to be done to incorporate that new RAM cooler.

 

 

The two graphics cards I also didn't feel the need to disassemble, I had great temperatures even towards the end with almost blocked radiators. Tubing still fits quite well.

 

 

This new motherboard has the first PCIe x16 at the very top, where my old motherboard had a PCIe x1 there. That means the graphics cards move up one slot, and by pure luck there was exactly space for it. This was my lucky day indeed.

 

 

Some more tubing done...

 

 

All tubing is done and most cables are done too.

 

 

A mess never to be seen...

 

 

Filling and making sure it won't leak. No leakage was seen.

 

 

That sweet, sweet RGB..

 

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I have my beloved NZXT touch fan controller, and my much needed DVD burner along with two temperature sensors. The left temperature on the display shows water temperature before entering the radiators, the one on the right shows water temperature just after exiting the radiators. These temperatures are usually up to 2 degrees different, with the right one being the lowest obviously. This just gives me a bit peace of mind knowing that the radiators are cooling and that my temperatures doesn't go haywire. I am cooling this on a small amount of radiator space so this gives me a bit of peace when looking at it.

 

So what am I getting out of it? As an overclocker I had to try to push it. I am running on temperature in the low 70's on the CPU, and a maximum of 58 on both graphics cards, and this is with the overclock.

 

Before I have had my graphics cards running at up to 1200MHz on the core, but I never pushed it beyond 1100MHz since life and girlfriend happened. The CPU can run 5GHz, but it needs an extremely high vcore, I had to push 1.5 to get a pass on Cinebench R15, which also shot CPU temperatures up to 85 - 90, so dialing down to 4.8GHz at 1.3 vcore seemed to be the better setting.

As stated earlier I wasn't expecting 4133MHz on the RAM, but I was able to push it to 3000Mhz with the latest (at the time) stable BIOS. Going with the F6b beta BIOS gave me another 200MHz making the RAM run at 3200MHz @ 16-16-16-36 timings. Going lower seems possible with more tweaking, but for the sake of being fast that is where at ended at the time.

 

Here is a 3Dmark Fire Strike pass:

 

 

And here is a cinebench R15:

 

 

Now to why I suddenly post this... Gigabyte released a new BIOS some time ago, but not before now I saw it and got it installed. Mostly because Gigabyte is hosting an overclocking competition on hwbot.org that this system is eligible for, and figured I could go for lucky draw or something. With those 8700K dominating (up to 6-core CPU's allowed, and maximum 5GHz) I don't think I will win anything though.

 

This BIOS that I found allowed me to push the RAM actually pretty far. I didn't think it would change anything as I thought I was limited by the IMC in the CPU, turns out it may have been a BIOS limit.

 

This is where I got to for now:

 

 

3466MHz and I actually managed to run 3500MHz with 32 tRAS. The 4.7GHz is simply because I ran into some instability and wanted to make sure it wasn't the core speed or the cache speed. Now it got really late and I hope I can spend some time in the weekend pushing the RAM speed. The XMP setting on the RAM is 4133MHz @ 19-19-19-39 so with 3500MHz @ 16-16-16-32 I may be pushing the RAM a bit and need looser timings. It seems like XTU is scaling well with RAM speed as I manage to go from 1074 to 1156 just by going from 3200MHz to 3500MHz RAM speed.

 

If anyone has any tips on timings or clocks, or even voltages I would appreciate it. Would be nice to push it as far as possible now that I did spring for 4133MHz RAM.