Cosmos 2 Build log - [In Progress] ...continued

[nicej]

Firstly I would like to thank all of those who took the time to reply to my "feedback" thread (http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=1016239) which got almost 90 replies; all of your suggestions has been considered in the finalisation of my watercooling orders.

FrozenCPU package contents:
-Black Ice GTX Extreme 240
-Black Ice GT Stealth 360
-Alphacool VPP655 pump + Bitspower pump mod kit (Chrome)
-Koolance 370 cpu block
-Koolance R4E mobo block
-Koolance TNK-501 single bay reservoir
-Primochill PRO LRT 3/8" - 5/8" tubing
-IandH Dead Water Copper Sulfate Biocidal additive
-ModRight Mod Mat

So my package from FrozenCPU arrived Thursday arvo and I thought I should get the ball rolling and start the installation of key components. I spent the afternoon and early Friday morning+evening installing the Koolance mobo water block, CPU, RAM, CPU waterblock, 6x 45degree compression fittings onto the blocks, motherboard into the case, bottom Black Ice GTX Extreme 240 rad in the bottom, PSU, GPU, and soundcard.

Came across some issues, and worked around them, further issues came up and I am yet to get around to them and I am willing to take on-board the suggestions, solutions and possibly hands-on help from the community (anyone around Riverton-Perth? haha).

So, it all began with the ModRight mat, which I do recommend for anyone.



First things first, I had to remove the stock heatsinks and replace them with the Koolance blocks:




Next, installed the CPU, CPU block and then the RAM:




Now, get the compressions onto these blocks:


Now to get the board into the case:


GPU into first 16x PCIe3:


Installing the X-Fi Titanium; now the instruction manual says that you can plug it into a full length PCIe slot, but the card only has these two plug-in points:

I wasn't sure if I could just plug it into the next PCIe3 8x slot here(yellow) or here(blue):

I was thinking if I had been running dual-GPU I would have to plug it into the "yellow" socket otherwise the 2nd GPU wouldn't fit into the second 16x PCIe3 slot; but seeing as it fit the PCIe2.0 x1_1 slot perfectly I decided to leave it there...can someone shed some insight into this? Is it normal to plug it into a full length PCIe 3.0 slot or would it only work where I currently have it installed? Currently it is in here:

Also you might not notice in this picture but when the computer is placed upright the GPU seems to be so heavy that the card is actually on a slight slant towards the back..is this normal? I don't remember any other GPUs I've installed to have such a bend near the back of the card; then again I've always used reference cards up until this point, maybe the non-reference Gigabyte cards are not as rigid??

Next came the Black Ice GTX Extreme 240 radiator for the bottom mount:

Now this is where the next issue came up due to me not using normal 25mm thickness fans. The Ultra Kaze's are 38mm thick, and the screws provided with the rad is catered for 25mm fans so I had to go to Searle Fastenings in Riverton to get 40mm versions of the exact same threaded screws:

So this proved to be the exact length I needed to mount my 2 push Ultra Kaze's, but proved to be too short for the 2 pull Ultra Kazes at the other side, because there was an additional layer (rad bracket) of a couple of millimetres the screw had to go through.

So back to Searle Fastenings it was to get 8 of the same screws but this time 50mm lengths. Now you might start to say "err 50mm is way too long it will hit the fins", I knew this so I also purchased about 80 plastic washers to match the screws. Fitting 10 washers each screw compensated for about 9mm of excess length I had to get rid of which meant I didn't have to hacksaw them off. I might add it doesn't actually look as bad as I imaged it to either.

Here's a shot of the rad installed with the two 90degree rotary compression fittings:


At this point I was well tired and about ready to call it a day, but I thought I should investigate the roof of the case to see how I would go about installing my Black Ice GT Stealth 360 radiator. I was under suspicion that the "hooks" on the inside of the case (that hold up the front-most top fan in junction with 2 screws) will be in the way of mounting the rad, and after investigating I realised that was the case. So I just got a nice robust pair of pliers and bent those "hooks" flat into the roof seamlessly:

The "hooks" are those two front bits that are slightly scratched up. The scratches don't bother me as the front sliding mechanism covers that area completely anyway.

After dealing with those "hooks" I could line up the radiator to get a ball-park idea of where it will go, and upon doing so I realised another problem:
(might not be visible in pictures)


Basically what is happening here is (I know it's hard to see in these pics), after I line up the first two thread holes of the rad, there is a gradual misplacement of the bracket mounting holes on the Cosmos 2. I don't know how to describe it but what I'm trying to say is, if I line up the first two holes, then the last 2 holes are too far along to be able to mount all of the fans in their corresponding 4-hole configs. Does that make sense?

So what I was thinking is that I need to extend the mounting holes on the Cosmos 2 to be able to mount the radiator, but I don't know how...
First thing that came to my mind is filing the holes across to allow access to the thread holes, or using a Dremel but I don't have such a tool, and I don't really feel like removing the motherboard, but I will if I have to.

I've ordered 3x Gentle Typhoon 3000's to go with the rad. These are the standard 25mm thick fans...because I don't want to deal with custom screws and washers again lol.

After examining the rest of the stuff from FrozenCPU, I had a look at the tubing. I got the Primoflex PRO LRT 3/8" - 5/8", and corresponding Bitspower compression fittings. I got one of the fittings and tried to fit it onto the tubing, but for the life of my I couldn't get the tube to go over the inner barb. The tube is massively thick walled... I don't think it can physically fit the fittings that I have...or am I just weak? lol

Here's a shot of the tube and the compression fitting:
Judging by the looks of it it's supposed to fit... but I can't get it on for the life of me and I promise I'm not weak! haha



I will be sure to update the log as I get more stuff done.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

Can you please upload your images here? Imageshack has a bad habit of deleting pictures, then in a year or two a cool thread like this is destroyed... Images uploaded here 12 years ago are still all accessible.

Thank you for sharing, and its looking great!

 

[nicej]

I uploaded almost all of the pics onto my profile here. How do I edit my sig, I can't find the option to provide a link to my public album on my sig like you have?

 

[Pvt.Dancer]

Looking good so far keep it up!

 

[I.M.O.G.]

You should have sig options now! It requires 2 posts, which prevents spammers from sign spamming backlinks and never posting.

 

[nicej]

Cool got it!

 

[Ironsmack]

That hook your talking about was cumbersome and really in the way when installing a rad. What i did was, bought 6/32 screws that are about 1 1/2" long. I bent a little so it doesnt pinch my rad.

I had my rad sitting on top of those hooks, fans outside the case and use the 1 1/2" screws for the rad.

I have the same tubing on my case and it takes a bit of effort to screw the fitting once the tube over.

 

[nicej]

{UPDATE 2}
I've decided to move all my work-log updates into my initial post, so that people can read one consolidated post rather than fishing through the different pages.

My GT3000's finally arrived today!! Along with my second Kingston HyperX 120GB SSD, and additional compression fittings for the Koolance drain valve

So with the fans in my possession I was able to size up the top radiator, and file down the mounting holes to accommodate for all the fan bracket. Here's some shots of the top mount fitted on.




For everything to fit smoothly I had to remove the top sliding mechanism that houses the native fan controller which wasn't hard. So here's a shot with the top sliding part back on, and it's looking very sleek. I quite like how the part flows over the fans to make it seem more mysterious haha probably just looks like that to me


Now with both rad+fan combinations installed, time has come to figure out where to place my pump. I am considering removing the middle HDD cage, and putting my HDD in one of the hotswap bays at the front and just mounting the two SSD's to the case itself using high quality Velcro... What are your guys' suggestions on that? I have concerns that I might have heat problems if I have no air blowing directly onto the SSD's which will be ran in RAID0.

After I did the filing...holey crap there was so much metal dust everywhere. I blew it out as much as I could and wiped it up with a damp cloth but I cannot be certain it's all gone and if it might be displaced from the corners they are stuck in once all the fans are running. I might actually bring my old man's air compressor from his place to make sure there is no metal fragments left in the case before putting the mobo back in..

Thoughts?


{UPDATE 3}
I have finally decided to take some time off playing DotA2 and finish the tubing and complete my water loop. All that remains now is to leak test the system for some (undetermined) amount of time to see if there is any problems before boot up. I've taken a plethora of images, so I will try to caption them appropriately.

There were a few things I decided to do during the construction of the loop which I think you guys might appreciate. You may be able to spot these in the pictures.

Here's a shot of the front and back of the single-bay reservoir, you can see the direction of the tubing.


As you can see I've routed the res>pump through the back of the case, and positioned the pump accordingly (see below). I think this configuration makes the loop look much more neat and tidy. This is the part where I really started to appreciate the sheer width of the Cosmos II, it is an absolute breeze to work with, much recommended.

Here's a shot of the back showing the way I've routed the res>pump and pump>bottom-rad, also you can see where I've positioned the Koolance drain valve with the drain hose fixed into place via small strips of the industrial strength Velcro that I used to mount the pump and ssd's with.


What do you think about this config?

Here's a shot of the side showing the bottom rad connections and the first QDC going up to the mobo block. Pay no attention to the voluminous amount of front IO cables, these will be managed later on.


Sorry about the glare of the flash.

Here's a couple of shots showing the nitty-gritty of the loop.


At this point you're probably thinking the bottom QDC is going to be in the way of the GPU.. stay tuned..

Here are some close-up shots of the intricate mobo and cpu connections. My phone's camera isn't great but you can clearly see that there are no kinks. The tube I bought turned out to possess excellent flexing characteristics (thanks Creekin for recommending Primoflex among other things).






Finally here are a few shots with the GPU installed and you can clearly see that the way I've routed the bottom QDC naturally clears the GPU easily.




That is all for now, I will keep this space updates as I do the leak test. If there turns out to be problems in the leak test you will surely hear about it!

 

[nicej]

I've done a leak test for about 12 hours and absolutely 0 leaks!!! Not bad for my first waterloop!

So I went ahead and did a boot test this morning, as reluctant as I was.

I plugged in the speaker that the CosmosII comes with, and only used the 8pin top instead of 8pin AND 4pin.

Boots up, bunch of numbers flash on the thing on the mobo, the speak beeps once, then a few more times, and then a screen comes on with some info such as my cpu and ram etc. it recognises my 3930K and 32gb of ram so i'm assuming everything is a great success?





Once it's on this screen, the "number" it displays is A0 or AO at the top right.

I plugged in two of my Ultra Kaze's on the bottom rad for good measure (into the mobo), they work fine it seems, their speed changes through the boot (yes they sound like a Hoover but I quite like it).
I gotta figure out how to manage all my fans in this case, the 4 fans on the bottom rad will not reach the mobo, and the 3 top fans (gt3000s) come with some weird connector, it has the regular 4pin fan connector but additionally 2 molex (1male and 1female)..
Do you think it's worth getting one of these: http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=9_866

edit: so after looking at the mobo manual I realised the code is A0, and it means "IDE initialization started".. whatever that means. I also noticed the RAM clock is displaying 1333, but the ram I have is supposed to be 1600, is this normal?

 

[nicej]

Guys my BitFenix Alchemy individually sleeved cables arrived today along with my optical drive, fan grills, and internal powerboard.

The build is almost complete, I will be spending most of tonight wiring everything up, cable management, installing windows and if I have any time left working in the bios. I'm planning to overclock and bench very soon too.

I equipped my self with a 7.1MP camera so I will be taking high quality photos and posting them on my Blog so you can follow me there!

 

[Modz 4 Higher]

Looks great nicej. Just to go back on what they asked you a while ago about uploading all of your pictures on here. They do not mean to put them on your profile. Here is what they mean, when you are in the screen to post a reply to the thread(not quick reply at the bottom) at the top of the message box will be all of your tools. There will be one image that resembles a paper clip. If you click on it, it will open up a new window for uploading files. Then you can either upload them from a URL(image shack) or straight from your computer, and they will get saved on this sites database. This will help and prevent dead links. If you browse around here, you will sees threads that the pictures no longer display in. Usually shows a little "x" where the picture used to be, or some error code etc. It would just really help

 

[QBobWatson]

Boots up, bunch of numbers flash on the thing on the mobo, the speak beeps once, then a few more times, and then a screen comes on with some info such as my cpu and ram etc. it recognises my 3930K and 32gb of ram so i'm assuming everything is a great success?

Congrats! The first boot is always nerve-wracking after you've spent hours or days voiding all of your warranties and installing things that are a pain to uninstall.

I gotta figure out how to manage all my fans in this case, the 4 fans on the bottom rad will not reach the mobo, and the 3 top fans (gt3000s) come with some weird connector, it has the regular 4pin fan connector but additionally 2 molex (1male and 1female)..
Do you think it's worth getting one of these: http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=9_866

That just means you can either power the fan by plugging it into a 3/4-pin PWM header or by leeching power from a line off the PSU. I think fan power distributors are great -- they have ones with 3 or 4-pin headers too.

edit: so after looking at the mobo manual I realised the code is A0, and it means "IDE initialization started".. whatever that means. I also noticed the RAM clock is displaying 1333, but the ram I have is supposed to be 1600, is this normal?

The A0 code probably just means you haven't plugged in any hard drives yet. You'll have to enable your RAM's XMP profile in the BIOS -- Intel specs limit RAM to 1333, so technically 1600 is (factory) overclocked.

 

[nicej]

Looks great nicej. Just to go back on what they asked you a while ago about uploading all of your pictures on here. They do not mean to put them on your profile. Here is what they mean, when you are in the screen to post a reply to the thread(not quick reply at the bottom) at the top of the message box will be all of your tools. There will be one image that resembles a paper clip. If you click on it, it will open up a new window for uploading files. Then you can either upload them from a URL(image shack) or straight from your computer, and they will get saved on this sites database. This will help and prevent dead links. If you browse around here, you will sees threads that the pictures no longer display in. Usually shows a little "x" where the picture used to be, or some error code etc. It would just really help

Ok I'm gonna update now by trying to do it that way. However, I still have pictures on imageshack from like 10 years ago tbh.

 

[nicej]

Yea what I ended up doing was daisy chaining the top GT3000's and using just 1 molex for it. They run at full sleep at all times on the 360rad. The rest are on the case's native fan controller.

Incoming massive post with pics...but from imageshack...sorry broseph it's just so easy from there. I update multiple forums at a time so its way helpful from there, I just copy paste and the whole code works perfectly.

And i duno why but imageshack has never deleted my pics.

 

[nicej]

finished the wiring, and "cable management". Booted it up and it's sweet!! Got to BIOS, checked it out a bit.

I actually loaded Extreme OC "High Current" Profile, saved and reboot; and it wouldn't boot, it said "Overclock failed!" and it just kept turning on, and turning off forever. So I cut the power, and switched BIOS haha.

After I got back into BIOS i loaded the same profile just to see the profile details and realised it set cpu voltage to 1.6, and a whole bunch of other stuff overvolted..LOL.

Pretty sure im not gonna use any of those profiles again, I'm just going to try an overclock my self.

If only there was a Rampage 4 Extreme OC Guide, to just get close as I can to 5ghz @ 1.45V.

Here are some pictures of the BIOS:




What's weird is that in "SATA Configuration" page, it only "detects" my two Kingston ssds and my WD 2TB in the hotswap bay.

However I have my Intel ssd connected aswell, but it doesnt show it on this page, but if I go to the "Boot" page then I can see my Intel ssd and optical drive as detected.

How does it KNOW that I want to use my intel as boot and doesnt detect it as a "SATA" in the sata page???

 

[nicej]

Here are some more pictures of the finished product.

Bowl of Spaghetti!



Now the business end!






God damn these SSD's are hawt


Like where I hid the 520?


Yea it's about 50KG now. I hadn't tried lifting it off the table since I built it. I actually can't lift it... I'm not even kidding... And I'm not even small... Gotta call a friend to carry it to my room...


It's a bird!.. It's a plane!..


It's a Cosmos II!..


I wish I had a white background so you don't have to see my crappy house.

 

[QBobWatson]

Looks great man -- especially the modded mcp655. It looks like you have enough rads for the gpu too -- are you going to add that to the loop?

I like how you hid the SSD's all over the case Some of them are pretty attractive to look at though -- I've been trying to think of a way to show mine off.

 

[nicej]

I am planning to add a GPU near the end of the year when the "real" 680's come out. As you know the 680 that was released recently is a relabelled/renamed 670Ti.

So my single 7970 will act as a push-over card until Q4 this year when I will buy 2x 680's which I believe are going to be called GTX685.

What are your thoguhts on the tubing and the way it looks? Some people have said that the tubing looks terrible. I've tried to make it as "one-way" as possible where it starts at the bottom and ends at the top so the 2 QDC's can easily pop out and I have full access to my mobo if i need to work on it..

 

[QBobWatson]

What are your thoguhts on the tubing and the way it looks? Some people have said that the tubing looks terrible. I've tried to make it as "one-way" as possible where it starts at the bottom and ends at the top so the 2 QDC's can easily pop out and I have full access to my mobo if i need to work on it..

I don't think the tubing looks bad. You could clean it up by adding some 90 degree fittings (with extenders if necessary for height differences) to connect the cpu block to the mobo blocks. You could also spruce it up a bit -- at very little expense or effort -- with some accent color anti-kink coils, like Primochill whites or reds.

 

[Ironsmack]

+1 on the 45/90, ext fittings. Helps out a lot on difficult angles.

Whats your load temp?