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Therapy Build - 1st custom loop


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So with purchasing in a bit of a lull at the moment as I scour the planet for some White QL fans, I'm turning my attention to the significant tube bending task I have ahead of me that I have been avoiding for ages.

 

I found this nice little tube bending jig online today, but seems its not actually available to buy anymore.

 

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So I've decided to make my own, in a far more amateurish fashion. My thinking is to knock up a very simple piece of wood with a couple of appropriate width "channels" on it that are at a very close to perfect 90 degree angle. Hopefully this will help me get some consistency around my bends. My guess is that the majority that I will want are going to be 90 degrees. Any variances from that I can deal with at the end.

 

This will help me fill in the time while I source QL fans. I have also realised that once I have built this thing, "simply swapping" the 3 front fans from LL to QL will be anything but "simple". I will have to drain and disassemble the majority of my loop to do that so I am going to wait until I've sourced the QLs from somewhere.

Edited by Salsiccia
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Excitement :-)

 

Just sourced a couple of radiators that I think will suit better than what I currently have.

 

Slim profile (30mm) and White.

 

The slim profile will help me with what is going to be a very tight build and the white is going to sit much better inside the case.

 

Obviously there will be a slight cooling hit going with a slimmer rad, but I am pretty sure I have capacity to cover that and the small space I will get should more than make up for it.

 

I hope !

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OK, So.............

 

This build just went in a whole different direction, and this will no doubt polarise my followers, and so I apologise to those who do not approve.

 

I have just ordered this......

 

VoOUlxA.png

 

My issue with my current plan is that it has stalled. I have been wracking my brain for the last few weeks trying to find a way forward that doesn't involve getting QL fans in White, and I just can't do it. The 500D case that I have lovingly painted White looks really good, I am extremely happy with it. I seriously believe that it needs white QLs on the inside in order to give it the lighting that I think it deserves. And try as I might I cannot source white QLs from anywhere due firstly to me being in Australia where we are at the bottom of Corsair's supply chain anyway and always weeks, sometime months behind when everyone else can get stock. Plus, with the current COVID nonsense going on that has absolutely dried up supply of all kind of product. I spent hours this afternoon visiting every store, in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore that are listed on Corsair's European site as being approved resellers for the Oceania part of the world and not one single store had any stock of white QL fans.

 

Getting desperate last week I approached Corsair US directly asking if me using a US based drop shipment middle man would allow them to effectively deliver me stock from their US stockpile, but all I got here was "Please try your local resellers", anything else would be cost prohibitive for you.

 

Ironically, it was while visiting one of the suppliers on Corsair's approved resellers list trying to find white QLs that I caught a glimpse of this radical case from Cougar - and it caught my eye. It is so out there that I love it, in a totally different way to the way I love my beautifully painted 500D which I find very elegant, this Cougar case is like a smack in the face.

 

The second thing about my 500D build that has been quietly niggling away at me is that I am finding it very very tight to get the look I am after in that case. I have spent the last 6 - 8 weeks going through compromises to try to fit what what I want to into the very tight space in that case. The cold hard reality is that there just isn't room to fit the components that I want to give me the look that I am after.

 

This new case can easily accommodate an EATX board and it even talks about another size called CUB I think, that I've never heard of, and I assume it is even bigger than EATX, which the case can apparently accommodate.

 

Now I have to decide what to do with my 500D. I will keep it, since I've spent a lot of effort on it so far, and when this current Supply Chain crisis is over and I can readily source white QLs I will return to that plan - my partner should be ready for a new PC by that time, or I might make it the world's prettiest NAS box. Or it becomes something else. Don't know. Maybe the Cougar case doesn't work out either and I return to my original plan - time will tell !

 

At least for now, my stall is over, and my design compromises have been addressed and so I can crack on.

 

This has been a really long road !!

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OK, So my new monster case arrived today and - Holy Smoke.

 

Trying to show a sense of scale in the photo so included is my Office chair (A very comfortable Aeron by Herman Miller - gratuitous plug!!). And the measuring tape in front of the box records the box height as 730 cm, or around 29 inches for those of you left on the old money :-)

 

https://i.imgur.com/ViECVys.jpg[/img]"]ViECVys.jpg

 

The "smaller" box on top that was delivered with it is 2 triple packs of QL120 fans so I finally get the QL glory I have been chasing for so long. (I still can't source the white ones I wanted for the 500D case, so that case is gonna sit back in its box now until the white QLs become generally available again.

 

I now have a veritable library of fans to choose from for this build and I will assemble a shot of them next.

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Here's the selection of fans I now have to pick from after trying different options for the 500D.

 

https://i.imgur.com/YftxVtm.jpg[/img]"]YftxVtm.jpg

 

6 x QL120 (possibly on the 360 rad in push/pull at the top of the case).

3 x LL120 (unboxed in the photo because they came already mounted in the 500D)

3 x White LL120 (bought to do push/pull on the 500D on the inside before I realised they don't light the back of the fan!!)

3 x ML120 - can't remember why I bought them !

2 x LL140 - bought to go on the outside of the 280 rad on the top of the 500D. Probably won't use them now as there's apparently no room for a 280 rad on the Conquer-2, only a 240 up front, but I doubt very much I will use that as it will be completely hidden.

And the Lighting Node Pro pack with the 4 strips. Not sure if I will use them.

 

Will almost certainly put 1 fan at the front of the case, but not sure which one yet - maybe one of the QLs for best effect.

 

Need to unbox the case now and plan what's gonna go where.

 

I get the feeling the fans will be less about cooling and more about RGB bling on this case. The open design of the case should make cooling pretty straightforward, but I'm still gonna persist with my liquid solution, but obviously back to the drawing board now re laying it all out.

 

Am now also planning a small display to go somewhere on the outside of the case showing key cooling measures. I saw a review of this case online where the guy put that in the window at the front of the case and that looked good, but I think I still want an RGB fan there, but as I said, need to get the case out and walk around it for a day or so and plan the next steps.

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It really does look very Transformers-ish doesn't it !!!

 

I'm still getting my head around the efficiency of the design.

 

On the surface, its actually really smart. It has a complete "inner chassis" that you pull out via a big handle on the back and you do your assembly in that. Here's a photo showing the inner chassis pulled out, with my mobo freshly installed.

 

nBRIQfG.jpg

 

I say "on the surface" because my interest now is how practical is this going to be from an ongoing maintenance point of view.

 

Its super easy right now to just pull the inner chassis out and away I go installing mobo, PSU, cooling loop, etc. When I'm done I just roll it back in and do the connections to hook the internal chassis to the main case, which is a set of wires left in the outer chassis at the moment, with things like the connections for the RGB on the front of the case, the power and USB panel on the top, etc - basically this stuff here (looking in through the back of the outer chassis, where the inner chassis will roll back in once fully assembled.

 

ccWbReJ.jpg

 

It would be really nice if I could get all those half dozen cables all into one combined connector, something like the ATX 24 pin plug and just snap them all in and out in one hit......., that would really simplify maintenance.

 

(Thinking now...)

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Damn. Now I'm thinking how cool would a nice distro plate be for cooling instead of my XD5 Pump/Res?

 

There is a really nice mounting plate on the floor at the front of the inner chassis that the XD5 should mount on quite easily, or I can use the 120mm mounting plate that came with it and mount it in the fan bays on the right, as I am pretty sure there won't be a rad or fans there. But I kind of like the idea of the distro plate now - I've seen folks do that in the Lian Li PC-011, and also the Corsair 1000D I think.

 

Damn this build keeps changing .......

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Your new build is coming right along.

 

That case design is really neat with the way they designed the pull-out interior chassis and the fact that it allows for conventional layout and parts install.

 

My first impression at seeing the case fresh out of the box, was that they had created a monster where the parts installs were going to be at all kinds of crazy angles...lol

 

Mat

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Here's the first test look at the RGBz on the new Conquer case.

 

Nywe3GL.jpg

 

The fan down the bottom is a QL. I took out the Conquest one that came with the case - it has a proprietary 5 pin connector that does both power and RGB that connects to the control box that also comes with the case. That ain't gonna play well with my Corsair solution so out the door that went !!

 

Cooling value on that fan installed as it is will be almost zero. There is a glass panel right in front of it. There is an air gap around the side so there will be air movement, but its not on a rad and is there purely for bling - and I like it :-)

 

At this stage the power is just coming from a jumpered PSU, there is no controlled effect, this is just to get an idea of the look.

 

The case lighting strips above the fan are also directly controllable via an ARGB connector which my ASUS Crosshair Formula board has. My cunning plan is to employ the iCue integration with the onboard ASUS lighting that Corsair recently implemented.

 

You can't really see from this photo, but directly behind the lower QL fan, are 2 more QL fans, mounted in reverse providing lighting for the case interior. The jury is still out here on how successfull this is going to be. One option I have is to get a 240 rad and mount it behind the front fan you see here which will stop the light bleed to the front and provide a better directed cooling flow to the interior of the case. Another option is to take the 2 x QL fans that I would put on the 240 rad and move them to the top where I have a 360 with 3 more QLs. This will give me less lighting on the interior of the case, but more up top. I don't know which is more important yet.

 

Decisions decisions :-)

 

P.S. I have been chatting to a company who are based here in Australia who do some really nice custom liquid cooling projects for high end clients who told me that ASUS actually implement the "RGB" on their motherboard headers as "GRB". I imagine that could have some interesting and unwanted side effects :-)

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Radiator options are:

- 360 up top

- 240 at the front

 

Push/Pull on the top 360 would be challenging, but not impossible. Main problem is with the 3 fans on the top of the rad. With the inner chassis sliding in and out, and at an angle, you can't prefit the 3 fans on the top of the radiator as the inner chassis won't slide back in with the 3 fans mounted. You can cut out a bit at the back of the case to make room so you could slide the inner chassis in and out with the top fans attached, or you could remove the top part of the frame and attach the fans to the top of the rad once the inner chassis is inserted. I favour neither of those options so I will just be having 3 fans on the bottom of the top rad.

 

I currently have a 280 rad I bought for the top of the 500D when this build started, but the space at the front of the inner chassis here only fits a 240, not a 280. You can just mount the fans without a rad at the front, and I tried that in the shot above, but I don't like the colour that bleeds through from the fans behind. You could go with non-RGB fans there if you wanted, as that front rad is buried behind the front fascia anyway and not too visible so the RGB effect isn't huge there anyway - horses for courses !!

 

The case design is essentially open anyway so the need to be pedantic about precise airflow probably isn't as great as on other closed cases, but again, you can take it as far as you like, and it will depend on what visibility you will have to the innards of the case once its assembled and sitting in your room.

 

I can tell you its a heavy beast though - as I'm sure the 1000D is too !! I'm already struggling to lift the whole thing onto the box I have it sitting on at the moment - and there's still no tubing or fluid in it ! Or CPU. Or RAM. Or PSU (PSU will actually make a noticeable difference I suspect!)

Edited by Salsiccia
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Afterthought: You/I *could*, possibly, also add a rad to the side of the mobo on the inner chassis, in the photo above, behind where I have propped the XD5 res. Similar to what you see on the Lian Li - 011, and also the 1000D if I'm not mistaken. I actually contemplated putting a distro plate there, but decided against that in the end - that might be a V2 upgrade down the track :-)
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I looked at that case and it's little brother when I was thinking about moving from the 500d. Just wasn't enough of a change in radiator performance for me to switch to it. I do like the unique look.

 

That's a fair call. From what I can tell I think you have to understand that this is essentially an "open" case and so your thinking about airflow has to change a bit. Its the first case like this I've ever worked in so I'm making it up as I go along, and it is definitely challenging everything I've learned about airflow management over the years.

 

I think I just need to complete the build and get it up and running, then I can post the numbers and we can start drawing some conclusions. I do like that its just a bit different.

 

What I can say already is that it seems Cougar's support is not good. Certainly nowhere near Corsair's. I've already struck some issues/questions with the case and been pretty much left on my own to figure them out - which I've done. I guess this is something you need to bear in mind when you select a boutique manufacturer over an established brand. Don't get me wrong, I think the build quality is very good, and the design is definitely out there, but I did have a couple of questions and getting help has been challenging. There isn't the user community that we have here for the Corsair brand that's for sure.

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So, we are finally getting towards build point now :-)

 

Have now decided that I do want/need a 240mm rad to go in the front of the case as well as the 360mm up top. Initially, due to this case being an open design I was thinking I might be able to survive with just the 360mm rad for cooling and fans at the front for additional lighting, but then I realised that since I do actually plan to spend some time playing with overclocking both the CPU and the GPU once this is assembled, that really means I should be looking at at least 4 120mm fan/rads (using the very general 2 x 120mm fan/rads per component you plan to overclock rule). Either way, I have the room, and before I start the tubing, now is the easy time to add a second rad.

 

I then found a couple of slightly better specced rads than what I already had, so they are now in a package making their way from the US to Australia :-)

 

Coolant has now been decided on and ordered, that's in a different box heading from a few kilometeres away to my house.

 

And the good news is that the CPU I really wanted, the 3950X has now started dropping in price after the evil and artificially inflated COVID-inspired price hike it has suffered from over the last month, so I am monitoring that now and once it drops into my preferred price bracket again I will be snaffling one of those as well.

 

I had previously decided that an AX1200i PSU was more than ample for my needs, but since then I have found a local retailer with some AX1500i units at a lower price, so I have my eye on one of those too.

 

1TB PCIE 4 NVMe stick arrived this week too, so now the last remaining item I need is RAM. I have my eye on what I want there too, just need to sleep on that for a day or two.

 

Am also planning to send PirateDog a few sovereigns as well and load up on some RGB and Fan extensions so I can make my cabling as tidy as possible. The downside of an open framed case such as the Conquer 2 is that there is nowhere to hide the cables so I will need to be clever there.

 

Its all starting to come together :-)

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Latest care package arrived this morning - Mayhems stuff.

 

3ZYDQew.jpg

 

I know there is almost religious debate here and in many other forums about the pros and cons of using coloured coolant, and I agonised over this decision for ages. My original plan was to go with clear, but once the new Conquer case became the feature, I decided that the Orange panels it came with weren't terrible. When I first saw the case online I hated the Orange and my plan was to paint those couple of panels out to a different colour. I had seen a couple of online build reports using this case where they painted them and their result was amazing. After unpacking the case though, my partner and I both agreed that it doesn't actually look that awful after all in real life. Its a little bit different (and the whole case is actually a LOT different) so that kind of fits.

 

With the way I think the end look is going to be, especially with the smoked glass, the interior won't be clearly visible, its going to be visible, but not overpowering. So my hope is that the pastel orange coolant, which will be vaguely apparent, from some angles, without being completely "in your face" might actually be an effective balance to the outer panels.

 

If its not, then I have a draining, cleaning and refilling event on my horizon - luckily I have a good rad cleaning kit now for that !!! I'm actually very happy that I managed to find a Mayhems supplier here in Melbourne and their costs are extremely reasonable.

 

(Not much else about this build has been "reasonable" costs !!!!!)

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Latest round of orders dispatched to the ether :-)

 

A new pack of cables just ordered from Cablemod more in line with the emerging Orange / Black theme of the Conquer case.

 

These are now being made for me:

 

WLlHbS8.jpg

 

And a couple of packs of their Orange anodized thumbscrews are on the way as well. Not sure exactly what their ultimate purpose in life will be, but I would rather have them on hand for when I decide that that's the missing link that I simply cannot live without :-)

 

Also have some White Mayhems Pastel coolant on its way as I'm currently undecided between the Orange and the White. Will make up a couple of "display" tubes so I can have a look, because I have zero ability to picture anything in my very simple "man brain".

 

"Man see, Man like" - that's the sophistication of the "design" process for me :-)

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Next care package arrived today, my seriously overspecced PSU.

 

kfcGuFP.jpg

 

I had originally settled on the HX1200i. I have an HX1000i in my current daily drive and I really like the "i" letting me interface to iCue and see some stats so I wanted to stick with that. I also wanted to step up a little from the 1000 to give me extra headroom to play with overclocking, plus to drive all the cooling gear (Yes, I'm quite sure 1000w would have been more than adequate as I am not planning a second GPU or LNO2, but I am also a firm believer in not underspeccing the PSU. Inadequate other devices are manageable - inadequate power is a recipe for disaster.

 

Once I was ready to shop for the PSU (one of the last components I need) of course I found that you could no longer get 1000i or 1200i anywhere. Then I stumbled upon a local retailer who had some 1500is on Sale - so I jumped ! Maybe they are running them out, I don't know and I don't care - I have one now !! Warranty is obviously still good, but I know I won't need that !

 

Now - CPU and RAM to go and we can put this puppy together :-) Just in time for Zen 3 to arrive and rain on my parade !!

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  • 1 month later...

Hi again folks,

 

Once more, an apology for the slackness on my part. A combination of another unexpected hospital trip, plus delays with parts delivery have added to the perpetual stall that seems to define this project !

 

Latest photo below. Notable points:

- Cablemod cables have arrived and are installed below. I'm happy with the colour scheme.

- iCue "propaganda" which came with my cable order from Pirate Dog Tech - really high quality cable extensions, I thoroughly recommend them for those needed custom cables for their builds - really nice work. You can find PDT lurking around these forums ! Gonna set off the build really nicely.

 

What's next?

 

- RAM. After months of agonising I have finally decided on a 128G kit of Vengeance Pro RGB. I really wanted the Dominator Platinum, but at the end of the day my thinking re RAM is it is more important that it just do its job. I have boatloads of bling on this build already and I was prepared to go for RAM with no RGB, just grunt, but I couldn't find anything readily available in 3600MHz. Then I stumbled on a 4x32G Vengeance RGB Pro kit for not ridiculous money and I have now bitten that bullet.

 

- CPU. Again, after months of procrastination the 3950X that I always wanted is finally in stock and coming down in price so I'm gonna lock that puppy in with my next pay cheque (we have pay "cheques" in Australia not pay "checks" - in case anyone thinks I am miss-spelling !!) Given how long this build has taken me so far, and the imminent release of next gen Ryzen 4000 I had contemplated waiting for the next round, but knowing how slowly new products take to become readily available here in Australia I decided I didn't want to wait another year. I can always get one of those in 12 months time when my loop will need to go up on the hoist for maintenance anyway !

 

So here's what my baby looks like now:

 

xc55Lvn.jpg

 

 

I am now also contemplating buying a low-end AMD AM4 CPU complete with its boxed air cooler so I can get my build going in 2 stages.

 

Stage 1: Temp CPU with stock air cooler, and a spare GPU I have lying around. This way I can address updating motherboard BIOS (which is 12 months out of date now) and checking fan and lighting connectivity.

 

Stage 2: Add in the liquid cooling loop. Since this is my first custom cooling loop I am well aware that I am likely to get a lot wrong with it and I think it might make sense for me to partition the build into 2 discrete stages.

 

I will be ordering my RAM from Newegg who I have never used before because I didn't realise that they ship to Australia - so that's my next learning - how long will that take ? They had a great deal on the RAM, but their CPU price for the 3950X was more expensive than I can get locally. So it just pays to shop around kids !!!

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