Watercooled PC build

[Addicted]

Looking good, and as above that's why I go for coloured tubing, I found the coloured liquid tends to either stain stuff or seperate and gunk up!

The Mayhems is meant to be quite good though, can't remember what I used before but it's a while ago now. I just stick to EK Koolant clear now, easy


So what's next, braid the rest of the cables and ur good to go?

 

[richy22]

My mate has this red Mayhem s**t, said it f**ked his pipes up good and proper so they were all stained.

Looking good, and as above that's why I go for coloured tubing, I found the coloured liquid tends to either stain stuff or seperate and gunk up!

The Mayhems is meant to be quite good though, can't remember what I used before but it's a while ago now. I just stick to EK Koolant clear now, easy


So what's next, braid the rest of the cables and ur good to go?

Well im not really surprised the Aurora stuff clogged things up.. ITs not intended for everyday only show use and is not like the normal Distilled versions (X1) which I have used (distilled water and a bit of colouring)

In fact on the Mayhems site in big red letters is..

"Aurora is "NOT" made for use in a home system. It has been developed for show System's (modding) and Photo work. If looking for a fluid for a Home system / Gaming system please use Mayhems X1 or Mayhems Pastel range of fluids there are fully tested and working in any kind of loop.
"

So he kinda fcuked up there...hence why I did a LOT of research and although the Aurora looks cool I would never use it in a cooling loop. I would be inclined to use a loop that is their just for "show" and seperate from the cooling loop if I ever decided to want more "bling"

YEah pretty much finish all the sleeving and tidy things up and im good to go.

Not gonna lie I did have a tiny spill of liquid down onto my HDD cage whilst filling..dammed airblock! but it wasn't powered and I have cleaned and dried that...will have to see if I have fubar'd them when everything is together.

Check the rad operations using the temp sensor and basically ran the pump for an hour or so and the loop warmed upto about 23 degrees...whacked on the front rad on low and dropped it down to 17.7 (its kinda cold in my spare room) so was good to see the effect that has on cooling the loop. Did have a slight issue with Fan 6 on my fan controller not being turned down by the controller (led would dim but fan kept at full speed) but checked it again this morning and all of a sudden it works :s Bloody electronics.

Il keep my eye on the bottom of the res for a while and check for leaks..worst case I will drain everything out, take out the res and tighten that f**ker up even more or maybe add some clear sealant along that join. It was only a tiny tiny trickle.

 

[Silent_Scone]

I just use the Phobia clear mix. without the dye the stuff lasts so much longer. Just get coloured tubing

 

[richy22]

Yeah that may well be a future "upgrade" so to speak. Just thought it would be nice to see the bubbles in the tubing (making it easier to bleed) and to watch the coolant flow through the system. It is my first water loop afterall

 

[Gareth]

I'm the same, it's nice to see the flow and any blockages, but now I'm experienced with it I'll be changing for solid tubing once my clear has discoloured (probably within the next 12 months)

 

[Silent_Scone]

Not changed mine in just under a year and it's still clear. Planned to do it couple weeks ago but might leave it till after Christmas. It's really not that big a deal unless you're anal about these things. Still looks clear as mineral water

 

[richy22]

Grrrr. Corsair SP120 "quiet" edition fans are not quiet at all!

It appears that these fans don't like certain fan controllers. Basically out of the 4 sp120's I currently have rigged up, 2 of them make a horrible clicking noise at random voltages/rpm and 2 of them are pretty much silent.

Appears to be caused by how fan controllers work (they are not just voltage adjusters they switch on/off really quickly)

Now that I have noticed that noise its pissing me right off. Can't decide what to do, try different fans on the fan controller and see if they still "click" or send this fan controller back as it actually does have another fault.

(Remember my post yesterday about one of the channels being on all the time??) By pressing on the top case fan 6 would randomly come on, first thought that the wire was trapped so took it out of the case and whenever I tilted the case forward the fan came on...WTF!?! Traced this to the fan controller itself and by touching anything on the back of the PCB, with little force, causes fan 6 to come on. Cnut. So fan controller is faulty which I can fix actually or RMA it back to overclockers but for what it cost can't be arsed. Plus if they send a replacement the clicking noise may well still be apparent.

The sickleflow fans don't make no noise whatsoever so could use them maybe or try another fan controller but as 2 of the corsair sp120's make a click and the others are fins I also fear it will not go away.

So yeah don't buy an akasa fc.six as they are s**t and be wary of sp120's (3 pin version) as don't like being controlled from a fan controller. Fcuking electronics

 

[richy22]

We have boot Water Temp on first boot

Just installed windows 7, all MSI drivers, AMD catalyst. Have a few ? under device manager that im unsure of..il install my wireless adaptor in a bit and check wtf is going on.

Just downloading Afterburner, Kombustor, Core Temp, CPU ID and Prime 95 for some stress testing.

Still got to sleeve 1 of the PCI cables and waiting on some slightly longer sata cables as they were a bit short so are routed across the case....I couldnt wait any longer to boot and see what was what!!!!!

So mainly cable tidying left and tweaking left really.

 

[richy22]

Sooo temps when idle.. (variance on the last core quite a bit :S)

And during Prime 95

And did some unique heaven tests straight out of the bag (so to speak)

On HIGH

ON ULTRA

And GPU temp never above 41 degress

Although water temp did rise to around 25 but I do need to tweak with fans and pump speed (currently set on 1 as anything between 1.5-3 is a god awful noise).

Also I have AMD's lovely coil whine I can live with it I reckon as il have headphones on most of the time

 

[Addicted]

Sounds good so far, yeah Coil Whine seems to be a common thing on the 7990's or so I've read, it's a shame really.

Nice temps, your ambient temp must be low to keep those temps, and you need some overclocks

 

[richy22]

My "spare" room is probably 18-19 degrees at best! (dont have the heating on in there yet.

To be honest even my 7850 whined when quitting heaven benchmark and during it...but this is more noticeable whilst running the benchmark. Seen some instances where running heaven or a stress test overnight can make it quieter so may do that.

Il overclock in the next few days..wanted to make sure everything was alright before overclocking everything. Only 1 hiccup so far in that Windows 7 cannot connect to the internet, does the home network ok but not the access to net. Was ok for about an hour then started fcuking me around.

Probably internet adaptor as ever since first boot that has had a yellow exclamation mark in device manager despite drivers being installed. Il uninstall and re-install them me thinks and see how that goes.

 

[Addicted]

Yeah that sounds odd, installed all the other chipset drivers etc?

Could be a slightly wrong LAN driver or something that causes it, I've had a similar issue before.


Yep, I hear the whine reduces with use!

Btw not sure how it is on the 3570k's, but on the Haswell, using Prime95 with "adaptive" voltage is a nogo as the voltage increases by 0.1v over your set input, so if you set 1.25v for 4.5Ghz, you can easily go to 1.35v which will give you pretty insane temps. Again, not sure if it's on that series too, but something to watch for. They recommend Aida64 for CPU stress testing as it does it all, apparently prime95 misses some instruction sets which are pretty important when testing stability.

 

[richy22]

With regards to temps should I be concerned what my loop temperature is? Or as long as each component, CPU and GPU are OK then all is good?

When running heaven I'm seeing my loop warm up to about 26 wish and then goes back down after 10-15 mins to around 20. I am running the fans slow just to get a feel for things mind.

 

[richy22]

Only 1 hiccup so far in that Windows 7 cannot connect to the internet, does the home network ok but not the access to net. Was ok for about an hour then started fcuking me around.

Probably internet adaptor as ever since first boot that has had a yellow exclamation mark in device manager despite drivers being installed. Il uninstall and re-install them me thinks and see how that goes.

Ermm yeah found the issue

Did some googling and found others had the same issue and mentioned the mobo standoffs. I was admant all mine were correct....oh how wrong was I! Xigmatek in their wisdow pre-install all the ATX standoffs but then installed 2 further down to accomodate the larger ATX size (canny remember the name) That was fine and I counted all the others twice (OH NO I DIDNT!!)

Found one Standoff just below where the ATX one is and holds just above the PCI connectors and guess where that fcuker sits underneth...the Ethernet Controller/connector!!!

This was the culprit underneath the one installed...GRRRRRR. Bascially had to tip the case on a angle slightly, without spilling any water, undo all the mobo standoffs and just had enough slack in the tubing from the top rad to CPU to shift it across to access the standoff...whilst trying to also hold the hefty 7990! I pooped my pants not gonna lie...had visions of that snapping and pulling all the tubing off. Also cut my finger big time on the back I/O panel getting that fcuker off. The best bt is I took it out...got it all back together and came to do that last screw/standoff that you see in place above (PCI connector one I call it)...its not there WTF....Yeah I took the wrong one out so had to do balancing all over again!

FML!!!!!!!

And the 2 bottom ones they leave in to Which I was happy with as I can remove them easy

But unistalled everything, re-installed drivers and jobs a good-un Im definatly checking standoffs 12 times next time.

 

[Addicted]

Lucky you didn't kill the board with the standoffs!

With regards to temps should I be concerned what my loop temperature is? Or as long as each component, CPU and GPU are OK then all is good?

When running heaven I'm seeing my loop warm up to about 26 wish and then goes back down after 10-15 mins to around 20. I am running the fans slow just to get a feel for things mind.

Nah loop temps aren't too much of an issue, wouldn't want to go over 50c on the water personally though.

Max I've seen my water was 37c, but that was with real low RPM fan profile when gaming on bf4, so I wasn't exactly trying to cool it.

 

[richy22]

Lucky you didn't kill the board with the standoffs!



Nah loop temps aren't too much of an issue, wouldn't want to go over 50c on the water personally though.

Max I've seen my water was 37c, but that was with real low RPM fan profile when gaming on bf4, so I wasn't exactly trying to cool it.

Yeah very Lucky. God knows what they are thing fitting the atx standoffs then 3 random ones. The bottom ones yeah okay they are out of the way but that other one is right in the way. f*****s. Oh well lesson learned!

I played skyrim last night and just activated my 8 free games..although crysis 3 and thief codes ain't showed up yet

 

[Addicted]

Thief isn't out til Feb

 

[richy22]

Huh so it is!!

 

[Gareth]

lol, I had some issues due to standoffs years ago, its drilled into me these days to check, check and re-check.

 

[richy22]

Pretty much done. Just some tidying to do with wires behind mobo tray and sleeve one more PCIE connector to the GPU.

Put the side panel on as well but not screwed in place just incase I need quick access for the next few weeks...its huuuggge

Made my own "Fan splitters" on a piece of PCB breadboard so that I am controlling 7 fans off just 4 of the dials on the fan controller.

1 = Front 120mm for hdd
2 = Front RADS
3 = Top RADS
4 = Rear 120mm input.


Im probably doing things bit naughty as im exhausting through the top rad, but I have cool air coming in from the rear fan and front fan supplying that. I may well change that in in the future but I do have more intake then out at the minute.

GPU maxed at 50 degrees earlier and the fans were on low...Water temp was 36 ish. hacked fans up and that decreased to 31 water and 42 degrees on GPU.

 

[richy22]

So Ive "finished" and said I wouldnt spend any more monies apart from a few things like headset and a decent keyboard...

Well I was playing with hte eyefinity stuff at the weekend with 3 different monitors (2 the same size and 1 larger) and really liked that.

So yeah now on the look out for 3 decent sized screens with thin bezels that I can use for eyefinity setup :0

Any recommendations? Thinking 22" due to space

 

[ThomasBrentnall]

LG 21.5" mate (I wouldn't touch any other brand except LG)

 

[Wilkeh]

LG 21.5" mate (I wouldn't touch any other brand except LG)

Lol why not? There's plenty of better brands out there than LG

Rich, Steelseries are doing a Mousepad, Headset and Mouse for £99.99.

http://www.shop.bt.com/products/ste...use--mousepad-91N6.html?q=steelseries siberia

http://www.shop.bt.com/products/ste...use--mousepad-8YG9.html?q=steelseries siberia

Bargains!

I've currently got the Siberia V2's as above, they're absolutely brilliant. Although I am going to invest in the Siberia Elites eventually but they're £170! http://steelseries.com/products/audio/steelseries-siberia-elite

 

[richy22]

I guess 200 fps is okay on battlefield 3 (free key from a friend) on ultra??

 

[Addicted]

Get on BF4 and get back to me

 

[richy22]

It took long enough to download bf3....and then I realized how s**t I am on shooters on a PC in comparison to others!!!

I do have a weird issue though with regards graphics. When I run 2 monitors and have my syncmaster displaying MSI kombustor on a stress test and nothing apart from gpu-z on the other screen my GPU useage is all over the shop on both cores of the 7990. I even see that within kombustor itself. Then if I go back to one screen GPU useage is 99% and stable.

Wonder if it was due to using one of the eyefinity outputs and the dvi output ( had to do it that way as my other screen is a dvi-d and don't fit in the dvi-i of the GPU

 

[Silent_Scone]

Is it just in MSI Kombustor? I'd just use the machine, all this stress testing is stupid. See if it does it in Battlefield.

 

[Addicted]

MSI Kombustor isn't recommended to use really, it stress tests in a way which is bad for the GPU.

It's the same thing with Intel Burn Test and Prime95 on Haswell+ - not recommended either

 

[Silent_Scone]

Yeah it's like furmark, it's known as a GPU killer as AMD cards do not throttle when using it. Honestly don't bother with stress testing it's a mugs game. Just use the machine...

 

[richy22]

Is it just in MSI Kombustor? I'd just use the machine, all this stress testing is stupid. See if it does it in Battlefield.

MSI Kombustor isn't recommended to use really, it stress tests in a way which is bad for the GPU.

It's the same thing with Intel Burn Test and Prime95 on Haswell+ - not recommended either

Yeah it's like furmark, it's known as a GPU killer as AMD cards do not throttle when using it. Honestly don't bother with stress testing it's a mugs game. Just use the machine...

NO it happens in Heaven too.

Using GPU-Z to monitor the memory usage of the card. Both cores act the same way (constantly up and down). But only when a second screen was on.

Meh I was just curious as to why it was doing it was all.

 

[Addicted]

It's to do with frame pacing and stuff - have a google around and ull find it - I can't remember what it is but you have to turn something on in CCC.

 

[Silent_Scone]

Ah, yeah frame pacing wasn't fixed on Tahiti cards was it.

 

[richy22]

Think I found what you are on about. Il have a play later.

Overclocked the CPU to 4.5 Ghz easily last night. Voltage was 1.285 and stable so room to drop that and increase that speed too. Temps were around 55 on load.

Had an issue with Tomb Raider not starting last night...found the issue to be FRAPS. Closed that down and bosh Tomb Raider starts fine.

Are there any other programs like fraps that can monitor FPS/Temp and overlay that onto games? More out of curiosity for the time being and to check things dont get too hot.

 

[Addicted]

Do you not have a 2nd monitor?

Most games have an FPS counter, otherwise I just rely on Xfire (I use it as an app anyway).

 

[richy22]

Yeah I have a second monitor but the issues happen with a second monitor so want to be able to see whats going on with one screen and then compare with 2 screens.

I did find about turning frame pacing off but found that out late last night and couldnt be arsed to go do it/get out of bed. So il try that later and maybe that sorts it.

 

[richy22]

So been a bit quiet as I have been using the machine rather then "fiddling"

Few random things I want to sort out...

Noisy as fcuk D5 pump...probably buy a replacement for that in the next few weeks or contact XSPC and get them to replace it (been reading how the XSPC d5's might not be that reliable)

Changing the 2 fans I use for "intakes" which are LED ones (one in front of the drive bays and one where the rear exhaust would normally be). Going to fit some 140mm of the AF series corsairs

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FG-023-CS&groupid=701&catid=2331&subcat=1816

to replace the 120mm versions

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FG-019-CS&groupid=701&catid=2331&subcat=4

Then im torn between what to do next re Rads..

I have corsair 120mm "quiet edition fans on all the rads" These are the 1100 rpm versions and have 39.88 CFM.

I can either replace these for the 2350rpm versions that push 62.74CFM through them to help with temps in the summer/hotter days

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FG-008-CS&groupid=701&catid=2331&subcat=4

Or fit wider rads so 280mm at the front and 420mm up the top with 140mm fans to match.

I have a fairly good delta at the minute at idle of around 6-8 degrees over ambient room temp and idle load temp, then around 15 degrees delta between ambient and full CPU load, GPU delta on full whack is around 20 ish degrees. I feel this could be improved just by fitting better/quicker fans on the rads but then as said I could fit wider rads...Im more inclined to just get faster 120mm fans for now and when I do a loop clean later on in the year maybe look at changing the rad size and cleaning up my loop wiring (was my first loop and I can see how I could make things a bit neater)

Part of me says Meh don't worry about it as I said I was finished but there is always something you can improve on

 

[Silent_Scone]

Well that's annoying as I've got two XSPC D5s. I can't see how that's true though as I'm fairly certain they're all built the same.