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Corsair 1000D build/log with vertical GPU mount


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Hi all,

 

I like to share my Corsair 1000D build with you guys. I learned a lot from the kind folks on this forum. So I like to share my experience as well, since I ran in some trouble along the way. Note that it is still work in progress since currently I'm awaiting parts. For my main system I even have to wait until September/October.

 

I bought the case in May 2019 when I saw a build being done on Paul's Hardware (youtube). I fell in love with it in an instance, since I really dig the glass and brushed alu.

 

My previous case was a Phanteks Enthoo Primo, so the size of the Corsair didn't scare me that much. But I never really used the space of that case. But holly, the size of the box it came in was huge :eek:

 

Initially I had no clue what to do with it, I wanted a water cooled system for a very long time and as this case being way oversized, I now definitly needed something to fill up all that space :-)

 

Thanks to Zotty I knew what to do with the RGB lightning and how to connect all the stuff. So I ordered 8 ML120 pro's for the front, 3 ML140 pro's for the top, and a Corsair RGB LED Lightning PRO expansion kit. Although I'm not so sure where to put the LED strips yet. I think I'll use only three, bottom, top, and in the back of the case.

 

Currently the only system that is in there to stay is a my FreeNAS consisting of:

  • ASRock Gaming-ITX/ac
  • AMD Ryzen 5 1400
  • Corsair 16GB Vengeance LPX DDR4
  • Corsair SF Series SF450
  • SSD PM961 128GB NVMe 2
  • 3x WD Red 3TB

My main workstation/gaming rig (which is old):

  • Asus MAXIMUS VII RANGER
  • Intel Core i7-4790K, 4GHz
  • Corsair 16GB Vengeance DDR3
  • 1TB Samsung 950 pro
  • Nvidia 2080 ti (recently added)

 

I will replace this system with an AMD build in September/October when the 3950X 16-core comes out. What I will buy (I think):

  • Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Formula (with EKWB waterblock integrated)
  • AMD 3950X 16-core
  • Corsair 32GB Vengeance RGB PRO DDR4
  • Samsung NVMe SSD 970 Evo 1TB M.2

 

The memory I have already bought, since it seems the prices will start to climb again, so I got these cheap (I hope).

 

Maybe the system is a bit overkill, but since my current system is 5 years old, I plan to use this for a long time as well. I mainly use the rig for gaming, but when working from home, I use it as a workstation.

 

For the water cooling I have ordered:

  • two EK-CoolStream PE 480 Radiator (front mounted)
  • one EK-CoolStream SE 420 (top mounted)
  • two EK-D5 PWM G2 pumps
  • EK-ACF Black Nickel fittings/splitter/ball valves/extenders
  • two Heatkiller Tube 200 D5
  • A Heatkiller RTX 2080 TI acryl Ni RGB GPU block
  • A Heatkiller RTX 2080 TI backplate
  • A Heatkiller IV Pro Copper Ni CPU block

 

Since this will be my first custom water loop build I will start with soft tubing. I like the looks of hard tubing, but I'm not ready yet :confused: So maybe in a couple of years I will redo the loop in hard tubing. But I must say that I have seen plenty of soft tubing loops which are very nice. I will use clear liquid, so no pastels or color additions, and clear tubing.

 

I will go for a dual loop, one for the CPU (top radiator) and one for the GPU two front radiators.

 

So far I have mounted the radiators and the fans. but I'm waiting on the non EK parts which will arrive at Thuesday hopefully. Before mounting the radiators I had the fans hooked up and running on the Light Nodes with help of a Thermaltake 10-way PWM splitter. It looked really good when all fans are hooked up. Running the silent profile and it is really quiet. My 2080 ti and Noctua block are way more noissy.

 

The biggest problem I have had so far was mounting the GPU vertically, I use a Phanteks 220mm premium shielded high speed PCI-E X16 riser cable b.t.w. I really think that Corsair could have tested this a bit more and use the ample space available a bit better to give it a bit more wiggle room.

 

The first thing I ran into was the clearance you have available between a vertical mounted PCI card and the ITX system. I used the default AMD cooler, a Wraith Stealth. But this cooler, although not very large, just was about 2 cm's (or about an inch) too high. After some measurements the clearance seems to be about 35mm. So initially my thoughts where to have two CPU's in my CPU loop. But I instead decided to buy a Corsair H100i RGB platinum. After some Googling I found that it was about 32mm high (why Corsair, do you not mention this on your site :confused:, so it was a bit of a gamble buying the H100i.

 

Well, now the clearance between riser cable/GPU and pump block was fine, but how the heck does a Corsair product not fit a Corsair product! What ever I tried, I could not for the live of me fit the radiator at the back. The PCI slots are just about 1mm to high. So the radiator just won't fit between the top rail for the tray and the PCI brackets. The way I have solved it now is putting the fans at the back so they provide enough to offset the radiator. But of coarse I wanted to have the fans on the inside since I now don't see the pretty RGB lights from those fans, and instead could have bought a non-RGB h100 :S

 

Maybe I will come up with another way to mount the GPU vertically. I'm thinking on buying either a vertical mount GPU kit and with a dremel remove some material to redo the mount. I really want the GPU to be a bit more to the front any way. But that will be somewhere in September then when I put the new stuff in.

 

Currently, I have the following list of things I would like to do:

  • Create sleeved extensions for the fans (RBG and PWM)
  • Reconnect all fans and RGB lightning
  • Create sleeved ATX-24/8/4 pin power supply cables for both systems
  • Create sleeved PCI-E 8 pin cables for the GPU
  • Sleeve the front pannel cables. Maybe I will take out the front panel for this (any one know how to do this?)
  • Sleeve my SATA data cables
  • Install the CPU water cooling loop
  • Install the GPU water cooling loop
  • Maybe move the vertically mounted GPU a bit more to the front and thus redo the bracket system some how.
  • Clean up the messy cable management, thank God for the French doors at the back
  • and probably more as I go

 

The sleeving I will do myself with MDPC-X sleeving and will be a combination of carbon-bti and blue-carbon sleeves since my main RGB color will be blue. Never done this before, so I'm the most woried about this part. But I really like to do this myself to have the correct lenghts and color combinations I want. I figure it is about or less expensive than buying them, and half the fun (frustration :-).

 

This will all take me some time since I can only spend a few hours a week on this stuff due to work/kids/wife/etc. needing my attention as well (no I don't mind any of these :-).

 

When I start sleeving the PSU cables I might replace my 6-year old Seasonic 850W PSU with a Corsair HXi850. This also allows me to keep the old system running while I make the sleeved cables and test them before connecting them to my system.

 

I'll keep posting when I get more done.

 

Some pictures as of what I got at the moment (open heart surgery here). Don't mind the kid's toys.

 

itx-system.jpg itx-system-h100i.jpg main-system-gpu-vertical-mount-clearance.jpg

 

gpu-loop-front-rads-wip.jpg main-system-gpu-vertical-mount.jpg full-view-chaos.jpg

Edited by Robostyle
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Again, analog RGB, ah well...

 

The RGB led strip:

install-rgb-led.jpg

 

A glass tube, scary. Kid stuff in the background:

 

install-res-glass-tube.jpg

 

Tear down, a moved some of the beams to get rid of the logo (at the back now) and one of the beams has a cavity for the RGB strip. So had to have it in the right corner before mounting them inside my case:

 

teardown-res.jpg

Edited by Robostyle
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The next action will be sleeving the fan cables and the fan RGB cables. Thanks to DevBiker I know how to create the RGB extensions. Now I need to order the plugs.

 

Finding the part numbers for the FAN power connectors has been a 2 day search without avail. But I see they can be order from moddiy.

 

Does any know what the part numbers are for the power connectors for a 4-pin extension cable? Every where there is molex #2510 mentioned, but searching does show up a zillion other plugs. The part number for the female connector can be found on wikipedia, but that is for a white one. And I have now clue what the part numbers for the male connector and pins are. Someone?

 

Coming week I'll order the sleeving and wires. When test fitting I need some more 90 degree fittings and some more compressions fittings. So these have to be ordered as well.

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With these female fan connectors:

https://www.cable-sleeving.com/4-pin-fan-connector

https://www.cable-sleeving.com/crimp-terminal-fan-female

I found one of the tabs is in a different place to other 4 pin fan connectors. A few seconds modification with a box cutter knife removes this tab and then I can plug it in.

The male connectors I bought from here:

https://www.singularitycomputers.com/shop/cables/custom-wiring/4-pin-fan-male/

And the pins:

https://www.singularitycomputers.com/shop/cables/custom-wiring/pins/fan-pins-male/

Your build is looking good, I like the way you mounted the reservoirs.

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  • 2 weeks later...
With these female fan connectors:

https://www.cable-sleeving.com/4-pin-fan-connector

https://www.cable-sleeving.com/crimp-terminal-fan-female

I found one of the tabs is in a different place to other 4 pin fan connectors. A few seconds modification with a box cutter knife removes this tab and then I can plug it in.

The male connectors I bought from here:

https://www.singularitycomputers.com/shop/cables/custom-wiring/4-pin-fan-male/

And the pins:

https://www.singularitycomputers.com/shop/cables/custom-wiring/pins/fan-pins-male/

Your build is looking good, I like the way you mounted the reservoirs.

 

Sorry for the lack of updates, but holiday happened.

 

Thanks for the info, but I think I will order them from moddiy. I rather would have ordered them from farnell, RS, or mouser since that is easier from Europe than ordering them from overseas. Singularity computers have made some incredible builds, but a bit to expensive for just parts.

 

Thanks for the kind words about the reservoirs, I like it how they are placed as well :biggrin:

 

This is one of the things with this case, ample space in this case, but the grommets makes it hard to place two next to each other and the mounting plate would have some custom bracket for them to be next to each other.

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Just want to share a thing how I setup the Corsair H100i.

 

Since this cooler is mounted to my mini itx system which I’d running a variant of FreeBSD (FreeNAS), there is no software to control the RGB lightning for this cooler.

 

So I connected the USB cable to a free motherboard USB header of my main system. This allows me to control the cooler from iCUE. I also programmed the hardware lightning when my main system is off to have a blue tint. This is something I really like with the Corsair RGB lightning. If iCUE is not running you can have a preconfigured sequence.

 

Initially this gave me some issues: turning my main system off would spin the fans up to 100%. Quite loud to be honest, why was the “zero RPM” mode not working? After some fiddling I fixed it with a custom fan profile that keeps the fan at zero RPM unless the water temperature goes above a certain temp. This never happens since the radiator is sufficient to keep my mostly idle NAS around 37 degrees Celsius.

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By the way, I found a neat little detail in the 1000D yesterday. On the top tray there is a rubber ending at the rear so you do not smash you glass side panel. I too eagerly pulled the top tray, and heard a soft boing. Thank you for that Corsair, but I promise I will be a bit more careful next time
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Re: 1000D and mounting in the ITX location: I have chosen not to do so for airflow purposes, as my Aorus RTX 2080 is still fan-cooled (and Corsair apparently isn't going to make a waterblock for it), and the ITX location would have completely smothered it against the glass door.

 

If Corsair ever change their mind and offer a version of the XG7 that'll fit, I decide to go with the other big name who does make a block for it, or I upgrade to a 2080TI that's water-blockable and avoid the whole problem, at that time I might reconsider since airflow would no longer be the concern it currently is.

 

Also keep in mind you'll need a particularly long PCIE extender to reach that far. A typical 30cm PCIE extender only just *barely* reaches the provided 1000D vertical adapter, and that was a little hairy. You'd want probably at bare minimum a 45cm/450mm cable, and don't take my word for it that's enough. Also think about the fact the PCIE extender is naturally gonna lay right across those other "unused" PCIE slots, so one way or the other you're losing the use of them if you cable from the typical 1st PCIE slot, nearest the CPU to get full 16x.

 

I suppose you could do some cable-bending wizardry with a super-long extender to save on that, but that makes me queasy. These PCIE extenders are pretty stiff and I can't imagine signal integrity wouldn't be impacted by too much folding and bending to route it in funky ways.

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Re: 1000D and mounting in the ITX location: I have chosen not to do so for airflow purposes, as my Aorus RTX 2080 is still fan-cooled (and Corsair apparently isn't going to make a waterblock for it), and the ITX location would have completely smothered it against the glass door.

 

If Corsair ever change their mind and offer a version of the XG7 that'll fit, I decide to go with the other big name who does make a block for it, or I upgrade to a 2080TI that's water-blockable and avoid the whole problem, at that time I might reconsider since airflow would no longer be the concern it currently is.

 

Also keep in mind you'll need a particularly long PCIE extender to reach that far. A typical 30cm PCIE extender only just *barely* reaches the provided 1000D vertical adapter, and that was a little hairy. You'd want probably at bare minimum a 45cm/450mm cable, and don't take my word for it that's enough. Also think about the fact the PCIE extender is naturally gonna lay right across those other "unused" PCIE slots, so one way or the other you're losing the use of them if you cable from the typical 1st PCIE slot, nearest the CPU to get full 16x.

 

I suppose you could do some cable-bending wizardry with a super-long extender to save on that, but that makes me queasy. These PCIE extenders are pretty stiff and I can't imagine signal integrity wouldn't be impacted by too much folding and bending to route it in funky ways.

 

will run Riser cable from The Rampage VI extreme Third Slot down with is 16x which should give me enough length

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Has anyone mounted the GPU vertically at the location for the mini-ITX graphics card location, as want to use other PCIe lanes for Intel Optane PCIe 480Gb , Asus Hyper 16 raid etc

 

Vertical mounted GPU at the ITX location

 

zlhZGvV.jpg?1

Edited by Bogartz
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Vertical mounted GPU at the ITX location

 

zlhZGvV.jpg?1

 

 

 

That answers the question I think. Looks very good. Nice to see there is even room for tubes running along the front of the card.

 

But like Zone55555 mentioned: use water-cooling since airflow would be non existing blowing against the glass panel.

Edited by Robostyle
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A little update on the progress so far. I clipped all my fan cables, sleeved them and crimped new pins/connectors to them.

 

Clipped the cables, and marked them where pin one was. The first one modding took me one and a half hour. Later fans took me 20 min. while watching Netflix.

 

IMG-1150.jpg

 

Also my way of doing this later on was split the first wire (pin 1) of the ribbon cable, cut it to the correct length and crimp a pin to it. Do the same for for both RGB/fan. Then remove the connector, put the sleeve on and the heatshrink. Than the cable tie. Then one by one add the cables with crimp back in to the housing.

 

I was scared that I would mess up (especially the RGB cable), but with some patience non of the fans ended up in the trash.

 

Still waiting for my bigger heatshrink to arrive so I can heatshrink the connector/wires.

 

Saying so myself, not bad for a first time :biggrin:

 

IMG-1152.jpg

 

Had one oops with the sticker that didn't manage the heat from my heatgun when shrinking the heatshrink :[pouts:

 

IMG-1154.jpg

 

And the final result. Removed the stickers on the hub, since I can't stand them being not perfectly center and they wobble all the time.

 

IMG-1191.jpg

 

IMG-1192.jpg

 

And covered the oopsed sticker with one of the removed hub stickers. But this will be a temporary solution since I can now see the logo's through the glass panels and the are up side down. So I will grab some black sticky folly and cut some circles.

 

IMG-1195.jpg

 

 

Next is making the RGB/fan cable extensions and route them through the case where my LNP and copro are. I really liked how zotty put them behind the radiator, but the EK radiators do not have a recess, so there is no room for them.

 

The idea now is to put them next to the existing copro. To hide the wires I''ll have to come up with a cover plate in the top/back of the case to hide them, although most of the cable will run behind my top rad.

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To connect the fan/RGB I came up with the following battle plan:

 

for the front front 8 ML120 pro fans:

IMG-0116.png

 

and the top 3 ML140 pro's:

IMG-0120.png

 

The idea is to get a 12Volt rail directly from the PSU (PCIe or SATA). Connect all fans to this rail. Then connect all PWM pins, and have one fan output the tachometer signal. I then connect one cable to the PSU, and one to the CoPro.

 

Does any one know up to how many PWM signals can be connected to one another?

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