Fractal Design R6 Build - Lot of pics and vids!

[Mamonos]

Hello everyone!

 

I am finally upgrading my rig and I am moving into the Fractal Design R6 Black Tempered Glass with a full watercooling loop!

The move it's fairly expensive and since it's not something happening so often for me I decided to take out the camera and log everything!

Stay tuned because I will have several pictures and videos for you guys!

 

 

 

 

Here is the part list

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Jcf34q

 

 

All the big boxes are finally here! Let's start!

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And here are the parts out of the boxes...

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Oh yeah... I forgot the to unbox the case! That looks better...

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The big players of the system...

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A couple of details of the case: the front panel and the side tempered glass (the plastic film is going to stay there until the build is completed!)

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CPU: Intel Core i7-8700k (in the background is an old ROYAL typewriter, I thought it looked nice!)

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Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero. Unfortunately I couldn't manage to get the full board into 16:9...

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Memory: 2x8GB of G.Skill Trident Z RGB DDR4-3000MHz. As you know RAM prices are crazy at the moment so I could only afford to buy 16GB, but I am planning to fill my DIMM slots with two other modules in the near future! Also: I am not a big fan of RGB... I was tempted to get the Corsair Dominator Platinum but the G.Skill had a better performance/price ratio (at least for the stock of my vendor) and they will provide some white light inside the case!

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Graphics Card: Gigabyte AORUS GTX 1080 Ti 11G Waterforce WB Xtreme Edition (such a long name...). I got this card USED from a guy who used it as the bottom card in an SLI setup. It was in really good shape, it even still had the protective plastic film on the front plate! GPU prices are also crazy at the moment and in the end this was a good deal since I have a watercooled card for half of the price of a new card plus new waterblock! In one picture you can see a droplet of red coolant from the former owner! No worries, I will be flushing the card together with my radiator...

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Power supply: Corsair RM750i. A fully modular, 750W power supply! I also shot an unboxing video and I may do a review of this PSU in the future...

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Watercooling parts from EKWB. I am going with flexible 10/16mm tubing, separate pump and reservoir, a 360mm radiator and blue coolant! I will also have a drain port for easie maintenance!

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Storage... maybe a little bit disappointing - I am just going to swap the drives from my old build. A 250GB Samsung 840 Evo SSD and a Seagate 3TB HDD! Good to spare some money on this side but looking forward to buy an nVME drive soon!

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Finally, a little bonus: thermal compound and liquid metal from Thermal Grizzly together with the Delid-Die-Mate 2 from Der8auer. I am not sure yet whether I am going to delid or not my new CPU! It's quite scary to delid an expensive processor but it may be worth it!

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To finish off the unboxing day here is a video-showcase of the parts featuring also a self-unbox of the case, hope you like it!

 

 

 

 

Stay tuned for more updates!

Mamonos

 

[Guest]

So much goodness! Love these builds that go into Fractal products. Tell us your camera settings too if you could, would love to steal them from you for when I upgrade my build.

[Mamonos]

4 hours ago, cartdog said:

So much goodness! Love these builds that go into Fractal products. Tell us your camera settings too if you could, would love to steal them from you for when I upgrade my build.

 

Thanks for the feedback!

In the past months Fractal has been my go-to case manufacturer for the systems I built. I think the product are great and also at a nice price point!

 

Regarding the camera it's really nothing special: it's a Nikon D5300 with the standard 18-35mm AF-S Nikkor lens. I always shot in manual mode with manual focus, I use a tripod so that the camera is not moving and I can set low shutter speed (60 to 100) and try to keep the ISO as low as possible. If you have decent lighting the pictures come out pretty good... to light the scene I use some 40x40cm softbox I got from internet for cheap, they are not the best but they do their job and they are small so quite easy to move around! Of course you need time and patience.. just to give an idea it was more than 3 hours of work to get these first pictures and video done!

 

 

[Mamonos]

So here is a small video update - preparing the case for the assembly.

 

-Removing side, front and top panel

-Removing the top support for the radiator

-Removing HDD cages and converting to alternative layout: moving the panel back in line with the motherboard (need to remove front fan for this).

-Removing the 5.25" optical drive bay support.

-Changing the front door orientation.

 

Here is the final result.

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For those wondering, I will probably drill the panel on the right to attach the reservoir.

 

 

I also have a small video!

 

 

 

As you can see from some small hints on the video, I already managed to put in the first parts but I am still editing video and pics and therefore these will probably be ready tomorrow!

 

Stay tuned!

[mikeeginger]

Looking good hyped to see what you do

[Kalm_Traveler]

Looks great! I just ordered everything to do a build in one of these myself, can't wait to see your finished results! 

[Mamonos]

Thank you guys!

 

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New update: finally the first parts are inside the case!

 

CPU, Waterblock and RAM are installed - Motherboard is ready!

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And the motherboard is in!

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Preparing and installing the top 360mm radiator.

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So for those interested in building with the Define R6, from the last picture you can see that on the top the space is not that big as you may think: the radiator is the SE from EKWB so it's only 28mm think but it's already covering part of the motherboard! Also if you mount a 360 radiator on top there is basically no way to utilize the 5.25 bay on the front of the case, so bear that in mind!

 

Speaking of this, I removed the front 5.25 bay support and lowered the back 140mm fan to gain a bit of headroom for the position of the rad (this will allow me to move it back and forward to possibly have the most direct connection with the reservoir.

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Another picture with the build laying on the side - the graphics card is ready to go in! Originally I wanted to mount the card vertically to expose it's beautiful design and the liquid flowing in it! Unfortunately the riser cable from Fractal Design is impossible to find in my country at the moment, so that might be a future upgrade for when I will be bored of this arrangment!

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And here we are!

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So now I was ready to move on and build the loop but I had to stop at the first step! Here is the story: after receiving the big EKWB package and inspecting the pump and the case I decided to order the EK-UNI Pump Bracket (140mm)! The goal is to place it in the bottom of the case, without a fan, and to mount the pump vertically so I get input from the top and output to the left, towards the graphics card! I ordered the item from my local shop since they had it in stock and I was able to get it overnight.

 

BUT unfortunately the pump bracket is defective! It looks like during the manufacturing process one of the feet has been bent incorrectly! The result is that one feet is approx 5mm shorter than the others and cannot align properly with the 140mm screw holes. Also the feet is taller than the others and this makes the pump not level and unstable!

 

Here are some pictures with measurement and also a test with a spare fan.

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Luckily my local shop had another one in stock (hopefully this will be ok) and they already shipped it so it should be here tomorrow! They service was also great since they gave me back the money and they said it's not needed that I send it back as they will probably just throw it away!

 

 

 

 

Ok enough with that, here is today's video about the first parts going into the case!

 

Towards the end of the video you can also see how I managed to cable-manage the rear 140mm fan: I removed the motherboard's heatshrink close to the I/O shield and layed the cable below it!

 

 

Stay tuned as in the next day I will assembly the loop: definitely the most interesting part!

[Mamonos]

OK, this looks much better...

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Some work to do now! I'll get back to you soon guys!

 

[Mamonos]

Finally the loop is done!

 

First of all I had to change my initial plan and switch from a 250mm to a 150mm reservoir. The first was way too big for the Define R6 with the separate D5 pump.

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Here is the reservoir attached to the case's panel. It's mounted upside down to have shorter connection to the radiator and direct connection to the pump. I decided to try this way but I am concerned about air remaining in the loop. The "how to drill" is in the video below. As you can see from the second picture the screw and nuts fits perfectly and will allow for 3.5" drives to be mounted on the back without any issues.

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Exiting the pump, at the lowest point of the loop you find the T splitter that will lead to the GPU and to the ball valve, accessible from the back of the case.

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Fittings installed

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The first tube looks pretty clean!

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On with the rest of the tubing

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And that's it!

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Filling and several hours of leak test

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After adding blue coolant, this is the final result! Amazing!

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And here is the VIDEO - it gives better idea of the construction process. Please watch it and tell me what you think as it helps me to improve.. I feel I improved in my shooting planning/execution and I am very happy about the video editing result, especially the final part!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know the great part was this one, but next on schedule is storage install and cable management! Stay tuned.

 

 

[Mamonos]

Time to install the storage drives.

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Tools out, ready for some cable management

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Result

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Not super clean as I hoped to but everything is in place. But that's just the starting point... Supplies are on their way and I will be sleeving my own cables soon - I am a fan of DIY despite this tempting offer I got by buying an ASUS Motherboard

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And here is the video of the day

 

 

 

Stay tuned

 

[Mamonos]

Update... the build is basically completed!

 

Glass on!

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A detail of the "moduvent" top cover

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Power on!

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All the badges found in the assembly process..

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And today's video: final assembly, boot, BIOS update, Windows install and of course a final showdown of the finished build!

 

 

 

Sadly, next up is... swapping the reservoir

 

I love this configuration with the reservoir upside-down and the look of the moving fluid you can see in the video but the "pastel look" is given by the fact that there is a lot of air in the loop and therefore the liquid is "foamy" and this is noisy and in the long term is not good for the loop (especially for the pump). This is because the radiator-to-reservoir connection is on the top of the reservoir and therefore everytime the liquid comes  back on the res there is this kind of "waterfall effect" where the incoming liquid is "grabbing air" and pushing it back into the liquid (harder to explain than to understand what it actually is).

 

Also, as previously stated goods for custom cable sleeving are on order together with some Mayhem pastel fluid. After having the build in front of me up and running I realized a bit more where I want to go... the lights will always be white and so will be the custom cables. It may be boring for someone but this gives me more possibilities if I get tired with the fluid color, which will give the accent to the build.

 

Cheers!

[Mamonos]

Update: flipping the reservoir upside down...

 

Here is how it looks

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As you can see the tube between the reservoir and the pump is now much shorter and does not allow for a tight bend. Therefore I needed to distance the reservoir from the panel using some spacers:

 

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Used some 90 and 45 degrees adapters for the inlets from the fill port and the reservoir

 

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And the new fill port on top of the case (the R6 has an included hole and that's great!)...

 

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Supplies for custom sleeves are on their way!

 

Cheers

[Mamonos]

So guys sorry for this month of inactivity but... Creating custom cables takes a long time! I also went on holiday abroad and, honestly speaking, used my time to finally play around with the new PC!

 

But here we are: 24-pin ATX, 2x8pin PCIe and the CPU power cables are now done.

 

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A detail of the 8 pin EPS connector for the CPU: is almost invisible, but I did it to allow better cable management at the back of the build: in fact with the original cable (65 cm) it was not possible to go along the side of the case. Now that is possible thanks to a 20 cm longer cable.

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Looks like I was not the only one interested...

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Comparison before / after

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