Open air builds with AIOs?

One of my 980’s has tendered it’s resignation, and my guess is the other one is not far behind. My plan was to start a new build next year, but I figure now is a good time to start on some planning.

The TL;DR in front: If I am not too heavy handed with my overclocking, would a wall mounted setup with AIO’s on the CPUs and GPUs be viable and sustainable?

The thinking is that everything is more serviceable, and easier to clean. The concern is that open air might reduce the effectivity of the cooling, and the nature of an open build might open me up to possible short circuiting or other accidental damage.

The plan would be to set up a vesa mount on the wall and build something by way of carving up my old antec 300 plus some 3d printed parts where necessary. I am thinking maybe a PVC panel as a backer with the vesa mounting bolted right through. I would then use pieces of the antec for atx form factoring wherever it’s necessary- probably just the motherboard’s bed.

In AutoCAD I would basically set up the layout of everything and probably build some custom standoffs to hold the radiators well off the wall- enough to ensure airflow without taxing the length of the plumbing, which I figure will be shorter than I want in this scenario.

The pup in my avatar is a furball generating machine, so my thinking is to get this thing pretty high off the ground. Ideally, the custom made standoffs can be designed in a way that I can power the machine down, and lift the radiators away to de-fur them quickly and painlessly.

That’s the theory, anyway. Is there anything I should consider before I bust out my dremel and calipers?

There are a few issues with open air.

  1. It’s dusty and counting the dog on the profile pic - it could be hairy.
  2. There are already some motherboards, that need extra airflow on the VRM components to not throttle and keep the OC… Open air kills any attempt at directing airflow.

Other than that it’s all fine and dandy.

PS: Core P3/P5?

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Have you considered how you will clean these? Because in the event you need to dismount them, well, its just going to make things more difficult. I’m not a fan of open air in general, but with pets, you’re going to be cleaning that very regularly .

I agree.

Plus AIO isn’t the kind of setup you want to leave standing forever. I’ve seen plenty leak because of this.
Also, while the Vesa mount sounds cool, its not really practical if you need to do servicing and cleaning.

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Thanks for the input!

PS: Core P3/P5?

I didn’t realize thermaltake was doing this- thanks for pointing it out. I still plan to custom build some mounts for radiators, but their models will definitely be a welcome addition.

Plus AIO isn’t the kind of setup you want to leave standing forever. I’ve seen plenty leak because of this.
Also, while the Vesa mount sounds cool, its not really practical if you need to do servicing and cleaning.

Interesting- so what has your experience been with the AIOs failing? Is it related to weight of the tubing on the joints? I figured AIOs would be a good start both as budgeting goes, and that they seem to be an all enclosed “factory” approach. The long game is to set up some custom loops that will also address vrm/mosfet cooling with a monoblock or whatever the situation dictates- it all depends on which motherboard I go for.

Regarding overall approach, my thinking is to design this wall mount functionally- most of the applications I see are more of a PCMR vibe, and that’s not what I am thinking. Given the dust/fur issues I have, I want the design to accommodate easier cleaning, as well as future expansion. With the vesa mount, I am hoping to find something with some degree of articulation that will support the weight of this build. For the rads, I want to design a cantilevered bracket with some kind of pivoting function that allows me to rotate the rads and unlock them for cleaning. I also plan to hold the GPUs away from the board though they will remain fixed.

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i love the idea but how well it translates into real life is the real question. if you can get things that make servicing easier then it should not be to bad.

the AIO shelf life is roughly 3-4 years. the shelf life of a hard tube custom loop (glass and other nonstaining materials) that is properly maintained is 10-15 years. now for the issue of cooling vrm’s most boards do not have full cover blocks made for them. in that case you will need to think about making custom fan brackets with your 3d printer to suspend a 80mm- 120mm fan over the vrm area.

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the AIO shelf life is roughly 3-4 years. the shelf life of a hard tube custom loop (glass and other nonstaining materials) that is properly maintained is 10-15 years.

This is super helpful. Unfortunate. But helpful :slight_smile: I think the service life of the AIO would work fine given I would upgrade later on, but I definitely did not count on such a disparity between hard and soft tube. Hard tubing seems out of the question, so perhaps when I build the custom loops I just need to figure on a plumbing switchover every 2-3 years. Presumably there will be other failures along the way to keep things lively in any case…

As I start developing things, I can share some screen grabs and other media.

yes please share any progress that you make. petg hard tube is not that hard to manage so give it a thought and it does not stain easy. more than likely the only thing you will have to worry about is managing any bio growth and not using mixed metals. if you use copper any where dont use aluminum for anything.

Main thing is to make sure you have air blowing over the “hot” parts of the motherboard. On mine the two “hottest” sections are the Northbridge and the VRM’s. On mine I took the small fan of the stock cooler and put it right over the VRM heatsink