DescentBB

Look what arrived today...


This case is gigantic.



The Hyper212 is a stop gap CPU cooler, obviously such a huge case is going to get the water cooling treatment once I validate the rest of the system.
Keeping from my existing machine: MSI Geforce 1080 Sea Hawk video card, Samsung 850 Pro 1 TB SSD, EVGA 850w PSU.
New for this PC: i7-7700K CPU, 32 GB G.Skill DDR4 RAM, Asus Z270 motherboard, Corsair Obsidian 750D case, Logitech mouse because my g500 is wearing out, USB adapters are for the various SSDs and laptop drives I am constantly shuffling around.

Wow, I think that even out-gargantuans my Rosewill Thor.

Good God! Are you also going to build a special room just to house that beast?

By the way, how do you keep the dust, or your next spilled coffee, from getting into those top fan vents? And what's that stray dollar bill sitting on top of the case for? Forgot to tip the delivery guy for all that extra shipping weight? (I know it was for scale. Just kidding.)

I think my Rocketfish case would match yours in size
Edit: Hmmm, another amazon link not posting. Try this:

https://www.rocketfishproducts.com/pdp/ ... WR/8428604

FYI on the Amazon links, they get automatically converted into an actual image of the product by the forum software and you have an ad blocker or something that is blocking it on your end most likely.

I thought small was the new big when it comes to computers.

Installing windows on an old SSD for testing, yes the drives are just hanging out the side of the case:

Memtest is on its way to a passing grade from the looks of it.

Spidey wrote:I thought small was the new big when it comes to computers.

It is, but some things you can only do in an actual big case:
https://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-coolstream-ce-420-triple

EKWB parts sure are super nice compared to what we used to cobble together for water cooling, but wow is this going to be expensive...

Tunnelcat wrote:Good God! Are you also going to build a special room just to house that beast?

By the way, how do you keep the dust, or your next spilled coffee, from getting into those top fan vents? And what's that stray dollar bill sitting on top of the case for? Forgot to tip the delivery guy for all that extra shipping weight? (I know it was for scale. Just kidding.)

Hehe, this case is shockingly light weight. I was expecting way more heft when I picked it up, it may even be lighter than my 300R. Of course once it is filled up it will be heavier because of all the radiator volume I'll be mounting in it.

Can't wait for some stress test results on the final build. As for the size, it's the footprint that counts. That monster would take up most of my current desk's real estate and leave amost nothing for the keyboard and mouse.

Old case (left) next to the new case:

Yay! More goodies (and justifying why this case is so big).

I was nervous enough building a conventional system. Water-cooling scares the hell out of me.

My first water cooler was home built out of an aquarium pump, tubing, calk and a 4" PVC pipe cap that I glued to the top of an AMD heat spreader in like 1998. I have water cooled way more of my computers than I have air cooled, although my previous i7-3770k system I almost don't count because closed loop coolers are cheating.

It is going to take me all day to clean my room tomorrow, too tired to do it today...

So here it is:




And retired from service, with gratitude for a job well done:

Also if you ever need an air cooler on a budget, it is worth mentioning that this $25 Cooler Master Hyper 212 variant only loses to a $650 dollar custom loop by about 10C (granted, at the expense of a significantly higher noise level at load, and a bit of an unfair comparison because the custom loop is dissipating over double the TDP since it is also cooling a GPU).

Oooooooooo! Cool. You gonna put some lighting bling inside too? By the way, you ever have a liquid cooling setup leak, in a not so good way either? That's the only thing that gives me the heebee jeebees with a computer. Liquid and electricity don't play nice.

The motherboard has some RGB lights on it and a couple RGBLED headers, but no; it is a very anti-bling system, all the lights are disabled (even the ones on the mouse). I even used a sharpy marker to dim the power LED because it was too bright. It is a thoroughbred stealth system in pretty much every way.

I've never lost a component to leaks, but I've had leaks before. Epic failures are increasingly difficult to come by with modern components and fittings outside of user error. These types of compression fittings are absurdly strong, the amount of force it takes to rip the tubing out of one that has been properly assembled is all but impossible to do by accident, even if you were falling over and grabbed a water line as your hand hold, it would just bring the whole computer with it before it would rip the line out unless the machine weighs 150 pounds or is literally bolted down.

Since my motherboard has a decent fan controller built in, I decided to tweak the fan curves to get the best balance out of the cooler.
I have 3 case fans, 3 radiator fans and 1 pump:
The 3 case fans are connected to a fan hub which is controlled from the case1 fan header.
The 3 radiator fans are connected to a fan hub which is controlled from the CPU fan header.
The pump is controlled from the case2 fan header.

Speedfan is awesome for this kind of work, because I can control the pump, case fans, and radiator fans independently and have them all react to multiple thermal sensors both on and off the motherboard.
So the way I have it set is the case fans react to the CPU, GPU, System and hard drive temps and can shut off entirely at idle. The radiator fans respond early but gradually to CPU and GPU temps and otherwise hold a 45% minimum (~600 RPM) at idle. The pump responds to the CPU and GPU temps, but much later (hotter) than the radiator fans, otherwise it holds 35% minimum. All 3 groups hit 100% throttle at the same temperatures, which are higher than I've ever seen the any of the parts reach under load so far but still well below the thermal limits of the hardware.

Realized I never posted an updated image after I remounted the pump a few weekends ago. Case has two sets of mounting holes for 140mm fans on the front, a higher set and a lower set, pump was mounted on the lower set while the fans were on a higher set, the tubing was bending a bit against the hard drive cage so I decided to mount the pump a bit higher. I didn't want to move the fan down to the lower set to free up the mounts for the pump, so instead I used some longer bolts I had to hold the fan on and go all the way through to the other side and secured the pump bracket with some wing nuts.

Krom wrote:My first water cooler was home built out of an aquarium pump, tubing, calk and a 4" PVC pipe cap that I glued to the top of an AMD heat spreader in like 1998. I have water cooled way more of my computers than I have air cooled, although my previous i7-3770k system I almost don't count because closed loop coolers are cheating.

I seem to remember decades ago how someone named Jim? (can't remember his screen name) epoxied coated the whole inside of his computer just so he could submerse the whole computer just so he could and keep the heat down. Back then it was all about seeing how fast you could get Descent to play.

Full immersion cooling has come a long way since coating the system with epoxy:

It's amazing what they have . I was reading my Nat.Sci. journal from my Alma mater about how they are patenting a way to use bacteria to generate electricity while eating waste:

http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2016/paten ... for-waste/

Krom wrote:Also if you ever need an air cooler on a budget, it is worth mentioning that this $25 Cooler Master Hyper 212 variant only loses to a $650 dollar custom loop by about 10C (granted, at the expense of a significantly higher noise level at load, and a bit of an unfair comparison because the custom loop is dissipating over double the TDP since it is also cooling a GPU).

When I built my current PC, I started with a closed loop water cooler for the CPU, but actually returned it for the Hyper 212. The water cooler was quite a bit noisier than I expected. I absolutely concur that the Hyper 212 is a great cooler.

Krom wrote:Full immersion cooling has come a long way since coating the system with epoxy...

That looks like the improved version of this messy solution.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Mineral ... merged-PC/

Vander wrote:

Krom wrote:Also if you ever need an air cooler on a budget, it is worth mentioning that this $25 Cooler Master Hyper 212 variant only loses to a $650 dollar custom loop by about 10C (granted, at the expense of a significantly higher noise level at load, and a bit of an unfair comparison because the custom loop is dissipating over double the TDP since it is also cooling a GPU).

When I built my current PC, I started with a closed loop water cooler for the CPU, but actually returned it for the Hyper 212. The water cooler was quite a bit noisier than I expected. I absolutely concur that the Hyper 212 is a great cooler.

I toyed with one of those for my build two years ago, and I still could I guess, but I wound up sticking with the stock Intel cooler. Dealing with thermal paste still scares the hell out of me. Even then, I didn't properly lock in the heatsink the firs time through, and during my initial POST attempt the thing ran at max speed and freaked me out something fierce until I figured out that it was loose.

So, with the rather expensive and exotic cooling solution I have for this PC, I was quite irritated at Intel for their continued neglect of any sort of high quality thermal transfer compound between the CPU and the heat spreader. Finally I grabbed a tool to delid the CPU and applied some Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut to the die and the heat spreader. Running a copy of prime95 v2.85 (AKA AVX CPU thermal hell on digital earth)...

Before:

After:

That made quite a bit of difference I see. How do you know how much to use? Is there a good rule of thumb? I'm always worried that I'm going to either put on too much or not enough when doing that little job.

I used the excess from the top of the die to coat the matching side of the heat spreader and made it a bit bigger so it would overlap for sure and thin it out. I used a more conventional thermal grease between the heat spreader and the water block, because it is a much larger surface area and because the liquid metal is conductive and dangerous to be messing with where it could drip on to the motherboard.

The goal is always to use as little as possible to fill in the air gap between the two pieces you are bonding. You can put too much on, but you would literally have to empty like half a tube of the stuff on to it and have it dripping off when you stuck the heat sink on. The main thing to avoid is using too little and having air gaps, otherwise having just a bit more than needed for full coverage doesn't hurt the performance, it just makes it a bit harder to clean up if you ever remove or remount the cooler because the excess will squeeze out of the edges.

Good to know. However, I'd be far more hesitant about unseating the CPU to even re-coat things. One static zap (I do own a grounding strap) or really bent pin and bye, bye CPU chip.

Intel chips haven't had any pins in over 10 years now, the pins are in the motherboard socket instead.

Shows you how long it's been since I've done something like that. I've even been risk adverse to redoing the thermal paste in my 7 year old gaming system and it probably needs to be redone by now, although I don't overclock the CPU and the temps are still running good under load. My philosophy is, if it ain't broke and it's working, leave it alone because I'll probably break it in the process of fixing it.

Just swapped my BenQ XL2420G monitor for an Asus PG258Q. Wanted it for the better gamma/contrast, but the jump from 144 Hz to 240 Hz didn't hurt either. Played through a couple levels of Doom 2016 and it looks amazing when it is pretty much stuck at its 200 FPS engine cap constantly and you are actually seeing all 200 frames. Though Doom is kind of the exception, most of the other newer games I have were running into their performance limits at or near 144 Hz so they aren't running much faster, but they still look better because of the higher contrast panel.

Krom wrote: ↑Sun Jan 14, 2018 2:13 pm Just swapped my BenQ XL2420G monitor for an Asus PG258Q. Wanted it for the better gamma/contrast, but the jump from 144 Hz to 240 Hz didn't hurt either. Played through a couple levels of Doom 2016 and it looks amazing when it is pretty much stuck at its 200 FPS engine cap constantly and you are actually seeing all 200 frames. Though Doom is kind of the exception, most of the other newer games I have were running into their performance limits at or near 144 Hz so they aren't running much faster, but they still look better because of the higher contrast panel.

Why'd you pick a TN panel over an IPS panel? Light bleeding around the edges issue? I also would've thought that with your new system, you'd at least go with a 27 inch monitor.

Nobody makes an IPS or VA that can push 240 Hz, in fact this panel is literally the only 240 Hz panel on the market. There are a couple other monitors (Acers I think) that match the 240 Hz refresh but they are using the exact same panel. And my previous monitor was also a TN so I'm used to it anyway.

Still...a 24 inch, and 1080 at that? Got any recommendations for a 27 inch?

Rumor has it some time this year the 27" 3840x2160 @ 144 Hz gsync HDR monitors will finally hit the market, though the same rumors also claim they will go for a cool $1800-2000 a piece...

Just about any modern gaming grade monitor can be made to work reasonably well as long as you have an X-Rite i1Display Pro like I do.

I'd settle for 2560X1440. I just don't want 1920X1080 and I think 1920X1200 is non-existent for a current G-Sync monitor. And yeah, 2 grand is a little steep for a monitor and besides, my eyesight isn't as good as it used to be. I wouldn't be able to appreciate 3840X2160.