One of my early builds is actually a Mac, I used to use Mac Mini in the home cinema setups I build, so it was natural to try and re-think them a little
It’s not a black/white picture, it’s me who made it black/white
You can see I even changed the white LED to blue
I can’t find all the pictures because it’s so long ago, but here is a few
I made the whole buttom one big thermal pad, with this powder mixture than turns into the same kinda material as thermal pads are made out of. It looked like baking a cake, but it spread the heat evenly all over the buttom
I also upgraded the wifi, as I remember it the wifi in the iMac at the time was faster, so I switched it out with one of those cards and the antennas.
it was supported in the OS as it was original parts, just not parts you usually find in this model.
also upgraded the harddrive to max capacity, dont remember what it was at the time.
and i upgraded the RAM to the fastest speed in max capacity, also dont remember anymore
it ended up looking like this when assembled and everything just plain worked
oh, btw you might notice, but I also switched the heatsink of aluminum to one of cobber instead, I found out that one SuperMicro made at the time for one of their servers, had the exact dimensions.
just had to shorten the height a little and it fit perfectly
in the end the machine was faster, had more storage space and was cooler than a regular mac mini at the time (less fan noise) - it was a big success, and I ended up getting a pretty good price for it when I sold it later on
I also had this this machine for a while, never took any real good pictures of it.
It was my home server sort of, in a Fractal Design Node 304
I used a fanless power supply, but added very silent fans throughout the case, even souped up the Noctua cooler with even more silent fans than stock
It sat under our couch, in the corner. Super cool, super quiet. wife never thought about it
Next on the list of note worty builds I made, was this
Kinda a mix of the mac and the server, some of the parts from the server was used here, and made it run OSX
I think I had a GTX660 in this thing and absolute loved it, it was again super quiet and kinda stylish.
Case was a modded SilverStone case, someone called NoFan made this version of it
WOW, Sweet builds sir. Yeah I’m parsing through my builds a bit at a time the photos are everywhere so I’m consolidating. Thanks for contributing! Good inspiration. Love the Mac Mods.
Well on to the next evolution. I had worked on watercooling, using hardline, overclocking, under-volting, I delided and applied liquid metal. I was happy with that build for a Intel Machine for gaming. The i7-8086k with only 6 cores, but 12 threads at 5.0Ghz (I could go more but on only 1.26-8 mv it runs so cool) was a consideration for upgrade. I’ve decided it not needed as of yet with the RTX 2080Ti.
So then I turned away from team Blue (Due to their lack of innovation or serious improvement over my current CPU), and decided I would try team Red. I had never built or used a AMD system. I decided I wanted to build one, but not ONLY that I wanted to build a ITX or Small Form Factor SFF build…AND make it liquid cooled. This is what drove my next series of builds.
First on the list. The Phanteks Evolv Shift. Notorious for being a heat box especially with more powerful components I wanted to see if I could tame it with watercooling.
The first attempt was with AIO cooling.
-Ryzen 5 3600
-NZXT 120mm AIO/ ASUS ROG RYUO 120mm AIO
-AORUS 1080Ti Extreme Waterforce
-ASUS ROG X470-i
-G.Skill Ripjaws V 3600/ G.Skill Trident Z Neo Series 32GB 3600C16
-Corsair SF 600
-Corsair ML Pro 120 or 140mm
I guess I didnt save any of those pictures weren’t saved or I don’t have them. Ill keep looking and edit when I find them. Needless to say this set up was problematic. The only way either of the two 120mm AIO rads were effective was was a intake…BUT that would lead to an eventual overheating and shut down. With one in and one out was stable but very warm…and with both on the bottom as exhaust the one that exhausted to the solid front panel had heat soak issues because flow was so restricted.
So my next step was a custom loop with some left over parts I had and new blocks for these components. I also wanted to try using ONE 120mm radiator for both components. That being said I decided to go for a push pull on a thick 120mm radiator, so I picked a Hardware Labs GTX 120mm. Here was how it came out with a legacy EK Pump/Res combo. I also upgraded the front fans to ML140Pro’s. One as a intake and other as exhaust.
It actually worked. Even with a overclocked 1080Ti.
One take away was that the “seal” between the upper and lower fans on the front of the case is just a little bit of plastic. This caused a lot of hot air to be recycled into the case. I managed to get a better seal and lower internal temps close to 3 to 5c with a well placed piece of adhesive foam rubber. Photo to follow…
I then moved on to the next build I will outline tomorrow taking what I learned from this build which I will return to later for a second custom loop that involved a case modification to allow for 120mm AND a 240mm radiator in this case.
@SgtAwesomesauce They do seem to run warm. Some updates have allowed me to run better at idle, but any background task does make them shoot up. ICUE changes idle temp from 34 to 38c up to almost 43 to 45c. It’s not that intensive as its not controlling no LEDS. Especially coming from Intel (Delided, liquid metal and undervolted). Overclocking these chips has eluded me. I always go back to stock…even when I got the XT version.
Yeah, overclocking 3000 series seems like a lost cause.
I can get 4.3GHz on 4 cores of my 3900x but that’s about as far as it’ll go. It’s more reliable with the stock overclocking, so I just leave it at that.
@SgtAwesomesauce I tried really hard, but the internal management is like a black box. With Intel I can do A LOT… IE set lower power for idle reliably, and peak power. The management of that chip eludes me. I always get better peaks clocks from single to dual core loads way above any all core I set. I read up on all the settings etc and still no real progress sadly. Still the chips perform theres no denying that but do run warmer than older intel CPU’s with higher TDP’s. I’m happy with stock and just doing a memory OC to up performance a little.
I was thinking of doing some videos, but I haven’t tackled that beast yet. I’m not sure anyone would be interested anyways because it’s all been done before so nothing really original I guess.
So because I am a cooling madman, ahem…enthusiast Thought I’d put this up in place of a build for those who want to know more than you ever wanted to about fans and what all those fun numbers mean…in real life application vs just on a box. I came across this today…
Time for today’s build I made. I had forgotten the AIO build I did in the Thermaltake G3.
Almost all the same parts here, but I had the AIO on the 1080Ti Aorus Extreme.
With this build I ended up being able to fit a “top/side” 120mm NF-A12x15 fan and NF-S12 Chromax. I also cut down the front facing drive cage to add in a NF-S12 Chromax in the bottom, all as intakes. I did end up using some electrical tape to seal up some airflow through both the 120mm radiators that exhaust out the front of the case.
It was effective, but at this point the 120mm AIO didn’t seem to be enough for the Ryzen 5 3600… BUT I was also getting used to AMD. Looking back the temps were probably fine for me to use. I however was still thinking it was too BIG…I wanted SMALLER… SO thats when I moved to the above set up in the Phanteks Evolv Shift.
I still thought I could improve and have better air flow than the Shift Project, so I got a Cougar QBX. I changed over to the custom look for this one. I had purchased a Phanteks Glacier Reservoir and put a DDC pump in it. I used the Barrow cpu block for AMD and Threadripper. I also had a 240mm Hardwarelabs GTS radiator. This one had a total of 7 Fans. 2 of the NF-a12x15 inakes on the bottom, Side intake with 2 NF-a12’s on the radiator, and 2 NF-S12’s exhausting out the top. Overclocking the 1080Ti was a bit much for this 240mm rad and set up. It worked, but I wanted it cooler. Here it is below…
I did have to remove the front Drive cage and slim disk drive tray, but not too much case modification.
I think this case would be great for a air cooling build, I didnt have the parts for it, but I bet it would work great with how open it is. The build itself is a little flimsy, and the hinged side panel is great for space economy, BUT… it says it can fit a standard ATX PSU, but I think airflow and cable management would become an issue with this setup.
So next we have the livingroom gaming solution. I had taken what I have learned from previous ITX builds, and knew roughly how much performance I wanted for gaming in the livingroom. I wanted either 1080p with sustained 60fps (TV does not have Variable Refresh Rate VRR like the one in my office with the 2080Ti), or 4k gaming with maybe some slightly lowered settings. This lead me to some newer components from what I’ve been using (and it was before the pandemic scarcity). For this build I will be using:
-ASUS ROG X570-i
-Ryzen 5 3600XT (EK waterblock)
-ASUS Dual 2070 Super (EK waterblock)
-G.Skill Trident Z Neo Series 32GB DDR4 3600 CL16
-Corsair SF750 Platinum
-Cooling:
Hardwarelabs GTX 280mm (54mm) Radiator
EK Waterblocks
EK Zero Maintenance Tubing
Swiftech MCRES Micro Rev2 Reservoir
EK DDC pump top and pump with cooling case
4 Corsair ML-140 Pro 140mm fans
2 NF-A12x15 Chromax fans.
All stuffed into a Phanteks Evolv Shift X (the big boy)
This build also gives credit to ModMyMods.com for their machining of the front case panel.
I give you project “BLACKOUT”- Not using any of the RGB because it sits under the TV.
Here is the bare bones case with all the panels off making it very easy to build in and do cable routing that’s hidden. The “Phanteks” panel in the middle is magnetic to help keep motherboard connections clean.
Here are the two 120mm fans helping to remove heat from the radiator. I had to do 120mmx15mm fans because nothing else would fit between the frame and the cover as you will see.
This is the cover from ModMyMods, they did a great job. The material they use for a filter was very dense and i wanted something finer that breathed better so I used a stocking to create a nylon filter. I streched the material around the inner plastic frame, cut it to fit and used hot glue to hold it in place. See below.
This is it assembled for testing minus the glass top panel.
All in all really enjoy this machine. It was used for Plex for a while till I built the server I’m using now. It was significant overkill for that purpose but my shield was a bit lacking.
Thermals perform very well. I keep the 120mm outter fans going faster than the inner 140mm fans to keep the air flow even. Heres a picture of the airflow I found worked best.
Well I have more yet. Sorry for the delay for all the people who enjoy these.
I have another build I believe I have shown before, but I’ll go more into detail. This build I wanted to try to find something thinner maybe more console like.
For this build I decided to go with the Silverstone Raven RVZ03 as the base for this build. I was going to try the Fractal Node but I wanted to try this one for a few different reasons. I had seen a few water-cooling solutions people had done, but they all usually involved a single radiator, external reservoir or some other solution I wasn’t keen on because I wanted to have it all contained in the case.
The first problem to overcome was how to have a 120mm radiator and a 240mm radiator BOTH inside the unit. The 240mm shares space with the GPU and solutions I had seen had next to no clearance between the radiator, fans and waterblocks. I managed to solve this by utilizing the XSPC thin radiator.
Then to add more space between the waterblock for the GPU and radiator I went with the Noctua NF-A12x15 fans. This created a fan and radiator solution that is only 35mm total thickness!
I also went with a XSPC TX120 for the radiator that sits above the CPU but a full sized NF-A12 fan. To create room here I used a special waterblock with side connections to allow room for the radiator and fan.
This allowed me to have a total of 360mm of Radiator in the small thin package. The next problem was a small enough water-pump/reservoir combination to fit into the case.
My first solution was Alphacool.
I paired this with a Alphacool DC-LT 3600rpm pump, which is the slightly more powerful pump. Here are some pictures of how this developed.
It came together well. I used a line to the pump reservoir connected to a external reservoir to bleed and fill the system because the reservoir is soooooo small. The downside that took me away from this configuration is the pump noise. You can limit it some by using DC power to cut down its speed some, but the operational range is really small. The noise is mostly undetectable if there is music or a game going but just computing it’s a bit grading. With a 1080Ti and ryzen 3600 under stress testing it worked but did run a bit warm with both overclocked and being stressed at the same time with OCC and Furmark.
I then stepped away from this case for a while. After I purchased my 1660Ti and found a waterblock for it I took interest again. The shorter card left some space open in the case where the 240mm radiator was. I came up with a plan to mount the Phanteks Glacier with a DDC pump in that open space. Thsi would allow me to drill holes to mount it with rubber insulators to the front of the case under the cover, AND make a fill port go through the case on the “Top” narrow side of the case. I also decided I was going to cut a hole in the side panel to see the reservoir, flow meter and possibly drill holes to vent some heat from the inside of the case easier. (the panel, never was completed with the proper material/ I tested with arylic but it was too brittle and I didn’t have the proper tools to work with it without causing cracks… I have the PETG sheet and screws and mounts so I may try it again at some point)
Here are some images.
This was the test material. It did not work at all without the proper bits.
This was a excellent solution and ran very cool. I was very pleased, but I would be limited to a small ITX version of a GPU. They are out there, but then finding a waterblock is the other issue. Luckily there are companies out there that make them. The GTX 1660Ti doesn’t need a waterblock even OCed.
It was a significant amount of work modifying the case but I was able to fit it all inside. The Phanteks Glacier was flipped so the motor was towards the top of the case when on its side to allow water to flow into the motor without taking in air .
I had fun with this build. I liked solving the problems that came with it and making things fit.
