Back On-line & New Case

[goobee]

I decided I needed a change and tore everything out of my old case and reinstalled them into a new case. I wanted to upgrade the CPU to a Ryzen 9 3900X and x570 motherboard but couldn't justify the cost vs what I have now, a Ryzen 7 2700.

Because I cheap out on the case, it wound up not exactly what I wonted. Still, it came out pretty nice. (I ran out of patience with cable management so it looks a bit messy)




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[lonewolfz28]

If that's messy cable management then I'm a slob.

Of course, we both remember building before cable management was even a thing.

Nice big fans. Though, I've never been a fan of a bunch of lights in a computer. Too distracting and I prefer the dark when I'm playing on the computer.
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Socially distancing since 1970.

[goobee]

They include little snap brackets to line up the cables so that they look straight and organized. Sort of like the plastic snap brackets to line up spark plug cables under the hood of your car. You have to figure out the best order and then snap them together one at a time. I don't have the patience for that so I left them like folded over spaghetti.

I've always liked the lite fans in the past. Now, they have RGB fans that change colors randomly and in patterns.
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[lonewolfz28]

Just ordered a new case for my watercooling rebuild: https://www.coolermaster.com/catalog/cases/full-tower/haf-700/#specifications

I bought 360mm x 120mm (CPU cooling) and 120mm x 120mm radiators (GPU cooling) thinking they would fit in my current case with no problem. Not so much. There are protrusions and routing issues that would make it a mess and hard to work on, much less fit all the SSD's (5) I have installed. Then there are a bunch of water connections sitting directly over a very expensive PSU. Not to mention trying to squeeze in a reservoir/pump unit. It just didn't give me a warm fuzzy having water connections under side-load and thus more prone to leakage over the PSU and video card.

This case was designed for quiet water cooling and isolates the PSU and SSD's from the rest of the system. And, since it is designed to accommodate even larger radiators than I'm using, there shouldn't be any stuff in the way of pump/reservoir mounting and straight tubing runs.

That'll be one of my big projects after I finish with work again,

I thought about trying my hand at the hard, clear tubing for clean routing of the coolant, but I already have the flex tubing and connectors for it. I'll see how it turns out. Worse comes to worst, I'll splurge on the hard tubing and redo it.

I'm also completely rearranging my bedroom/living room/office/home gym with this rebuild to make everything more efficient. I'm also adding a 1500VA UPS because the last several days have been a nightmare with the power going out every 15-30 mins because of the heavy snow. Just get everything restarted and set back up and BANG, there goes the power again. It was out for a total of 16 hours on Fri and about 4 more on Saturday.
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Socially distancing since 1970.

[goobee]

Yep, if I were to do again, I would go with something nice and airy like that Cooler Master case. The one I have now, while it looks nice, air flow leaves much to be desired. I like cases that isolate the drives and power supply from the rest of the system. One of the cases I originally considered had that feature but I couldn't justify spending almost $300 for a case.

https://www.microcenter.com/product/602058/corsair-crystal-series-680x-rgb-tempered-glass-atx-mid-tower-computer-case-white

Hard tubing is the way to go for the best looking custom loops. It does require a lot of patience, something of which you appear to have lots of.

I'm looking forward to seeing your finished product.
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[lonewolfz28]

Patience? Patience? I know not what this patience thing is.

I have very good attention to detail. I have no patience.
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Socially distancing since 1970.

[goobee]

Well, you have just enough patience then.
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[goobee]

What do you think, quad radiators with copper piping.

What started out as a humongous case seems overly crowded now. Not really a fan of the black/copper treatment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edmA6P9eu2c
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[lonewolfz28]

I like the black/copper treatment. However, 4 radiators are extreme overkill. I water cool for quiet. That many fans (18 plus the one in the PSU), even "silent" ones, is still going to add up to louder than it needs to be. Copper piping looks nice and is sturdy. However, copper conducts heat VERY easily. So, as soon as it leaves the big radiator in the bottom, it's rapidly transferring that heat in the case from the big 8 fan (4 pushing, 4 pulling) radiator in the front. That kind of defeats the purpose if he's going for "extreme cooling". He also never shows the pump or how it is plumbed behind the bottom radiator. He has to have a manifold of some type hidden behind the bottom radiator. He also doesn't really show how the top radiator with it's 4 fans is plumbed into the system. If I had to guess, he's got more lines run down behind the motherboard tray to the pump/manifold behind the bottom radiator. The same goes for the GPU cooling. The lines must be hidden behind the card as all you can see is the round black backside "plugs". The manifold and pump probably aren't shown because they're probably plumbed with clear tubing and don't fit the "all copper" theme. It looks like this build was an exercise in aesthetics, which showing how much cooling stuff you can cram into a case.

Copper is extremely difficult to run/work with in tight, short runs. Believe me, I've had too much experience with it the past few weeks, fabricating air manifolds for our spray booths. Could have just used the aluminum 3-way adapters or premade manifold, but the boss wasn't springing for a premade manifold and both booths needed 4 hoses, so it would've meant adding tee's and having a mishmash of single couplings and 3-ways. Plus, 3-ways can be hard for the users to get hoses on and off of. So, I built the manifolds by hand using copper tee's, 90° elbows and cut short pieces of 1/2" copper pipe for spacers. Came out looking sharp and being rock solid and easy to use. But, it was a pain in the ass and cut the crap out of my hands trying to hold such small pieces while deburring them. I also burned the crap out of my right thumb and index finger trying to quickly torch left-handed to get the right angles on some of the fittings while applying solder with my right. Ended up finishing it holding the torch with three fingers on my right hand and applying the solder left-handed. That led to some messy soldering, but none of them leak.
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Socially distancing since 1970.

[goobee]

Yep, he doesn't really show a lot of the inner details at all, just the assembly. It would be interesting to see some of the behind the scenes as you indicated. The measuring, cutting, bending, running wires etc.

And the terrible thing is, once you're gone, all of your handy work is going to be destroyed by the dimwits.
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[lonewolfz28]

Not as much as when the other two idiots were still there. They would have destroyed the physical work. The maintenance guy that replaced me won't purposely change all that much of the physical work unless he has to. What he destroys are the computer programs for tracking projects and maintenance, but that's just due to him being so computer illiterate. I can show him half a dozen times how to do things in Word and Excel and then walk him through it a few more times for good measure, and he'll still screw it up. But, he's much better working a cell phone than I ever will be. His mind just doesn't seem to grasp organization and how to use right-click on a mouse. But, he can whip out the cell phone, take a clear picture or video of a problem and send it off to a tech rep before I can even get mine turned on.
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Socially distancing since 1970.

[goobee]

Back in the mid 90's, before the company had a real IT support department, I was made the laptop resources coordinator for the division I was in at that time. I put together all the laptop images (Windows 95 back in the day), distributed them to about 100 employees, conducted all the training and provided support. There were some old timers who refused to learn and just retired. Some people just don't have the mindset for using computers.

My dad was one of them. Before he passed away, I offered to build him a PC and run Chinese Windows on it so that he could understand. Nope, never wanted to do it. I got him a simple flip cell phone to have for emergencies. Nope, didn't use it.
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[lonewolfz28]

Phones are harder for me because: 1) I hate phones and always have, 2) even larger phone screens are hard for me to navigate because of failing eyesight and fat thumbs. I have a stylus, but that only helps so much, 3) There's no cell reception at the house, so why torture myself on a small screen and home network when I have a full computer and big monitor at my disposal? I can go months without recharging my cell phone, it is used so infrequently. It's for emergency calls, work use, only.

The maintenance guy has a son who texts and calls him constantly, so it figures he's much more adept on a phone. Unfortunately, nothing he does on the phone really translates to using right-click, Excel or Word on a PC.
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Socially distancing since 1970.

[lonewolfz28]

Holy crap, this case is freakin' HUGE! It makes my old Cooler Master Stacker full tower case look like a midi-tower. It's bigger than the roll around tool boxes we used to use on the flightline and which doubled as stools when working under the aircraft or doing paperwork.

Each of the two fans in the front are bigger than the fan on my desk at work during the summer.

You know, I was beginning to worry that I bought a pump/reservoir comb that was going to be too big, so I ordered a second pump reservoir in a different configuration, so I could at least tuck in into the bottom bay if needed. I needn't have bothered. I could easily fit four of my original pump/reservoirs in this thing...along with the 3-fan and 2-fan radiators.
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Socially distancing since 1970.

[goobee]

Nah, Cooler Master has always made nice and roomy cases. You made a good choice. Now for the fun part, building.
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