External twin MO-RA 360 planning and setup

[Railgun]

For some time, I've been eyeballing the Aquacomputer Gigant. Not to go passive per se, but with the general intent to shrink my case, which is currently what's in my sig. Of course, I'd go with the big boy, which is a pretty chunky proposition.

I'd completely forgotten, however, that I have a second MO-RA 360 that's never been out of its box. It's performed well, but I think I can do better.

Currently, the setup is giving me an 18°C water/ambient Δ with fans at 50% with near full CPU and GPU load after a couple days. At full tilt, unrestricted fans, <1°C Δ. Running 9 GT AP-15 (3 for the UT60) in pull with DEMC filters, so slightly less air flow.

I'll be looking to stack these vertically, and have just ordered a pair of Fractal Prisma AL-18s to somewhat test with. Opting for 180mm fans in this setup to minimize the cluster of wiring that will otherwise result.

Because these fans are a little deeper than normal, 38mm, it doesn't look like I can use the Watercool grill as-is and will need to rig some custom job up. The good news is that they still have a relatively good static pressure. I'm not a fabricator, but, perhaps a couple of spacers and a nice gasket will work well with the grill. I'd just need to sort out some feet to better stabilize the overall height, and figure out how to actually mount the two together. It also looks, unfortunately, like the external pump setup specifically for these is designed for the 420 version, not the 360. It also looks as though the 360 version is just flat out not sold anymore other than the core itself.

This will be a slowly updated thread as the old system is very much in use. I still need to acquire appropriate RAM for the new setup as well as a couple other pieces before I start to strip down the current. Assuming I also stay with this case in the immediate term, ordering parts from Mountain Mods for import here is another lengthy and expensive process. I'd thought about doing a custom, vertical stack, modular chassis, but that's just too time intensive. So, an out-of-the-box chassis it will be.

Since I'm at the infancy of this project, for those that have more experience playing around with the MO-RA, happy to take some suggestions.

 

[Railgun]

So I'm still undecided on the case. It will either be the Phanteks NV9 or the Lian Li O11D XL EVO. Both have their aesthetic plusses and minuses. I like the latter as it looks as though I have more room in the back side to stuff pumps in there, pulling them out/making distro plate selection a bit easier, but, and I'm not an RGB nut, the NV9 has better potential there. I've been eyeballing the Hyte Y70 as that display has some nice utility to it too. I like the potential to use half height AOCs, which for my purposes could work out well if doing a vertical GPU mount, but the O11 has more positioning flexibility with that. This is why brick and mortar stores should stick around. Seeing these in person would help a lot.

I'm currently using some CF 12/10mm tubing with Phanteks Glacier fittings, the latter of which I'm going to look to recycle. Corsair has some, on paper, nice looking matte black tubing. I'm not bothering with bending, I'll use whatever fittings are required.

I'm being stupid with my planned loop, but I don't particularly care.

The case will have a relatively minimal number of fans. As such, things that are normally air cooled will be water cooled, namely the RAM and SSDs. Because of the apparent heat with some of the DDR5 variants, and some of the newer G5 SSDs, cooling will need to be taking into consideration.

The pumps will sit after a split in front of the loops. Because of the restrictive nature ram blocks are, splitting them in parallel to keep flow up for that loop. Quick disconnects at whatever egress/ingress point of the chassis works, and some flexible tubing to the rads. Depending on where that ends up being, may have a reservoir off to the side on the radiators. The image suggests integrated pumps in each of the distro blocks.

With the NV9, I like it's D140 distro for the CPU/GPU, obviously without an integrated pump. I'd like to find something suitable for a middle position on the front side of the case for the RAM/SSD. I could leverage the floor for pumps there, but that complicates things. I do like the idea of the Granzon DDC pump with its display for in-case views of what's going on. So the image is just a possible at the end of the day. Yes, yes, I'm well aware about the non benefits of splitting the loop. I'm just doing something differently here.



The other thing is finding ram blocks that will work with RDIMMs. Some modification will be necessary to notch out for the central ICs. This is a half workstation/gaming/normal rig, just happens to be a new Threadripper build.

Ideally, I'd love a waterblock for the VRMs. I've reached out to @Al_bundy and I may just take him up on his suggestion on how to get that accomplished. It's an ASRock TRX50 WS, along with its potentially annoying fans.

MO-RA fans are 180mm Fractal Prismas. Because of the obscene amount of radiator I'll have, I can run these at stupidly low RPM all the time and get more than suitable temps. With the current setup, at full fan speed, I can get less than 1 degC delta from ambient. But it's loud.

I've got some v-color 24G 7200 CL34 modules on the way. I'll be doing some memory bandwidth testing on air as soon as I get them to compare with some others. Odd suggestions as to the throughput differences between the lower and higher core count chips as it relates to each CCDs link(s) to the IOD.

Looking to round out storage with a Crucial T705...but man that's pricey. I'll wait 'til I hit the US again to pick one of those up. Fortunately I can use two gen5 SSDs, one M.2 and one MCIO port, which will be leveraged with an M.2 adapter if I don't go U.2.