[PROJECT LOG] ROG/Ryzen/Nvidia

[Scu84St3v3420]

[PROJECT LOG] Gears of War

UPDATED 11/21/18: So the entire plan has changed from what it was this summer.

So originally I was going to mod my Meshify C with my current hardware listed in my signature. But as time went on, I kept finding myself looking at custom loops and day dreaming. Needless to say, the decision to create a loop has changed the entire concept from what it was this summer.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 2600X 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor (Purchased For $229.99)
Thermal Compound: Thermal Grizzly - Hydronaut 3.9 g Thermal Paste ($14.29 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus - ROG STRIX X470-F Gaming ATX AM4 Motherboard (Purchased For $214.99)
Memory: G.Skill - Trident Z RGB 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (Purchased For $216.99)
Storage: Patriot - Burst 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Purchased For $35.99)
Storage: Samsung - 970 Evo 250 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (Purchased For $106.99)
Video Card: Asus - GeForce GTX 1080 8 GB ROG STRIX Video Card (Purchased For $669.99)
Case: Fractal Design - Define S2 Blackout – TG ATX Mid Tower Case ($165.46 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA - SuperNOVA G3 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $109.99)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Home Full - USB 32/64-bit (Purchased For $119.99)
Monitor: Asus - ROG SWIFT PG278QR 27.0" 2560x1440 165 Hz Monitor (Purchased For $613.66)
Keyboard: Asus - ROG Claymore Core Wired Gaming Keyboard (Purchased For $159.99)
Mouse: Asus - ROG Gladius II Wired Optical Mouse (Purchased For $94.69)
Other: Bitspower G1/4" Mini Valve with Black Handle, Matte Black, Body ($32.99 @ Amazon)
Other: EKWB EK-CoolStream XE 360 (Triple) Liquid Cooling Radiator (Purchased For $120.99)
Other: EKWB EK-CoolStream XE 360 (Triple) Liquid Cooling Radiator (Purchased For $120.99)
Other: Bitspower G1/4" to Enhance Multi-Link Fitting for 12mm OD Tubing, Matte Black, 4-pack ($33.99 @ Amazon)
Other: Bitspower G1/4" to Enhance Multi-Link Fitting for 12mm OD Tubing, Matte Black, 4-pack ($33.99 @ Amazon)
Other: Bitspower G1/4" to Enhance Multi-Link Fitting for 12mm OD Tubing, Matte Black, 4-pack ($33.99 @ Amazon)
Other: Bitspower None Chamfer PETG Link Tube, 12mm OD, 1000mm, Clear, 4-pack ($34.99 @ Amazon)
Other: Bitspower None Chamfer PETG Link Tube, 12mm OD, 1000mm, Clear, 4-pack ($34.99 @ Amazon)
Other: EK Water Blocks EK-FC1080/ 1070/ 1060 GTX Strix Backplate - Black (Purchased For $24.94)
Other: Bitspower T-Block Fitting with Triple G1/4" Female, Matte Black ($14.99 @ Amazon)
Other: Bitspower G1/4" Temperature Sensor Stop Fitting, Matte Black ($15.99 @ Amazon)
Other: Bitspower G1/4" Temperature Sensor Stop Fitting, Matte Black ($15.99 @ Amazon)
Other: Bitspower G1/4" to Enhance Multi-Link Adapter Fitting, 90° Rotary, Matte Black, 4-pack ($72.99 @ Amazon)
Other: Bitspower Flow Sensor, Matte Black ($46.99)
Other: Bitspower G1/4" 5mm Male to Male Fitting, Matte Black, 4-pack ($25.99 @ Amazon)
Other: PrimoChill Liquid Filling Bottle - 1000mL ($9.99 @ Amazon)
Other: Klipsch R-15PM Powered Monitor - Cherry (Pair) (Purchased For $279.00)
Other: Thermaltake CL-W153-AL00BU-A ID 10mm x OD 12mm hard tube Pacific Hard Tube Bending Kit ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Other: EKWB EK-CSQ G1/4" Plug with EK Logo, Black, 4-pack ($24.99 @ Amazon)
Other: EKWB EK-Vardar EVO 120ER PWM 120mm Fan, 2200 RPM, Black, 2-pack ($54.99 @ Amazon)
Other: EKWB EK-Vardar EVO 120ER PWM 120mm Fan, 2200 RPM, Black, 2-pack ($54.99 @ Amazon)
Other: EKWB EK-Vardar EVO 120ER PWM 120mm Fan, 2200 RPM, Black, 2-pack ($54.99 @ Amazon)
Other: EKWB EK-AF G1/4" FillPort, Black ($14.99 @ Amazon)
Other: EKWB EK-Velocity CPU Waterblock, AMD CPU, Nickel/Plexi (Purchased For $93.95)
Other: EKWB EK-CryoFuel Solid Premix Coolant, 1000mL, Electric Purple ($36.39 @ Amazon)
Other: EKWB EK-CryoFuel Solid Premix Coolant, 1000mL, Electric Purple ($36.39 @ Amazon)
Other: EKWB EK-CryoFuel Solid Premix Coolant, 1000mL, Electric Purple ($36.39 @ Amazon)
Other: EKWB EK-CryoFuel Solid Premix Coolant, 1000mL, Electric Purple ($36.39 @ Amazon)
Other: Swiftech Maelstrom D5 Reservoir Pump Combo - 200mm ($159.95)
Other: EK-FC1080 GTX Strix - Nickel (Purchased For $167.47)
Total: $4548.67
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-11-21 22:39 EST-0500

New Case: Fractal Design Define S2 White

So I am going with this case for two reasons, one obviously being that it is far more suited to a custom loop than my Meshify C and two because there will be painting to do this time and starting white will make that far easier. And with that comes a completely different theme (I know, LMFAO!). No more lack luster brand whoring, real theme this time... I have chose to go with a Gears of War theme and for paint, Nvidia green with purple (as close to the coolant color as possible) accents.

Here is the plan for MODS:


1) Custom Loop Liquid Cooling Electric Purple (UV Reactive) Coolant/Nvidia Green Accent Fittings

2) Custom Cables Nvidia Green/Purple

3) Paint Case Nvidia Green

4) Paint Fractal Design Logo on PSU Shroud Purple

5) Purple Thumb Screws

6) Paint Purple Gear Logo on Front Panel (Large top center)

7) Paint Purple xXSCU84ST3V3420Xx on side of PSU Shroud

8) Etch TG Panel: Gears Logo Large Center

9) Cut removed portion of PSU Shroud to accomidate Radiator/Fans

10) Paint Purple EK, Ryzen, Nvidia and ROG Logos small on bottom edge of Front Panel

11) Paint SSDs Purple

12) Custom Plexi rear panel cover (Nvidia Green)

13) Paint Radiator Fins Purple and Perimeter Nvidia Green

14) Gears of War Ticker Figures

15) UV Lighting

Here are images that I will be converting into Vinyl Graphics for Paint and Etching Stencils: (Image 1: Paint Stencil for PSU Shroud) (Image 2: Paint and Etch Stencil for Front Panel and Glass Panel, though it will be larger than displayed)





Similar Stencils will be made up for the small font panel logos.

 

[Scu84St3v3420]

Alright I have pics working, had issues uploading before. It was sizing turns out. Here are some pics of where I am at so far without any mods.






Let me know what you think.

 

[Blaylock]

I'll sub for more.

 

[Scu84St3v3420]

I'll sub for more.

Hey thanks man, I appreciate the company on this journey. Though it is still in it's infancy, this was to get it all down on paper so to speak. I will do my best to keep this log up to date, but it will be taking place over the next couple of month's. I had to cancel my M.2 SSD order from amazon for this week and will be placing it in about another week or so. Then I need to purchase the 2.5" SDD's over the next month from there and then I will begin getting ready to mod the case. This is my first case mod, so I want to take my time and make sure it goes smoothly.

Custom PSU cables should be here about this time next week, will take a pic then to show before and after of the look and cable management.

 

[Blaylock]

Lol I'll still be here in a few weeks/months, the good Lord willing.

 

[Scu84St3v3420]

Lol I'll still be he in a few weeks/months, the good Lord willing.

Fair enough my man, fair enough... lol

 

[Scu84St3v3420]

Time for show and tell children, gather round'...

So new toys coming via snail-mail from the good ole' interwebs. Monday my final case fan arrived, nothing overly exciting there, but no more needed now... Today my custom ATX, 8 Pin and 6 Pin cables from CableMod came, the SATA power and 8 Pin EPS cables will be ordered at a later date. And tomorrow my new boot drive in the form of a 250 GB Samsung EVO 970 NVMe is arriving, so all in all it's a good week.

Excited for tomorrow's package, much need storage space and (somehow) even faster boot time (didn't think it possible)...

Cables were an exciting install, in that really it the first step towards the actual case mod. First impression, they look spectacular, exactly the compliment I was hoping for with this build. Very professional construction wise, I can't find a real fault in this department either, other than to say they are a little stiff which means they need a little working to get them as I wanted, but hey at least they aren't cheap and falling apart as I have seen from other companies in some reviews.

As stated above, it's a fan... It works as intended.

Now onto the show portion of this segment

Before:





After:






Once I get the rest of the cables in the cased and redo the cable management in the back I will snap and shot for a before and after... And as always feel free to comment or just sit back and

 

[Blaylock]

Very clean build Steve. I was waiting until there was an illuminated pic to comment. Now that I can see the whole thing I like it. The lighting is subtle but does add that bling factor, not gaudy at all.

Well done sir.

 

[Scu84St3v3420]

Very clean build Steve. I was waiting until there was an illuminated pic to comment. Now that I can see the whole thing I like it. The lighting is subtle but does add that bling factor, not gaudy at all.

Well done sir.

Thanks man! Yea I didn't really don't care much for the typical over the top rgb rainbow lighting, nor did I want the lighting to detract from the components rather compliment them. I have watched plenty of clips on youtube of competition builders custom work for customers and noticed the builds I appreciated the most weren't crazy overtop, rather they flowed like a cohesive piece of art... Hoping to finish this build by the end of September or October at the latest.

Additionally I have decided to opt to make custom SSD covers rather than painting the drives and each will container a different logo for each of the three companies involved in my theme (purple with green logos), though not to be seen by anyone as they are behind MB, I want the build to feel complete when I'm done for personal satisfaction... lol Additionally I am going to purchase a custom made RGB GPU bracket displaying my in game handle, as I find the current one is kinda cheap and have found a far superior product and gives my build a personal touch.

More to come in another few weeks.

 

[Scu84St3v3420]

*MINOR UPDATE*

Alright, so nothing overly exciting, but my new boot drive arrived today. Got that installed in the rig and my old boot drive migrated to the new one and the old one wiped clean. I can say having not moved from a mechanical drive to the m.2 drive there isn't some massive difference between this and my old drive involving boot times that is obvious. However it's really hard to make a difference, when my previous boot times were like 10 seconds flat... lol

The old boot drive will become purely a backup drive sitting in a drawer if needed once I get more storage drives. for now this is doable for my game library for the next month or so...

Also used Samsung Magician to do a benchmark test of the new drive and low and behold it operates as advertised... read: 3500+ MB/s and write: 1500+ MB/s

 

[Scu84St3v3420]

Hi guys,

I don't want to let this log get stagnant, however I won't be able to purchase any materials and such for mods until next week some time at best.

In the mean time I decided to give overclocking this thing another shot, previous attempts didn't go as hoped. I had been able to reach 4.15 GHz @ 1.4 V stable, but I felt I could go a little higher, but 4.25 on all cores wasn't achievable on 1.45 V or 4.2 or 4.17 either for that matter. Again I know this chip will hit 4.2 in most any game at stock, but only 4.0 or lower in multi threaded benchmarks. And Performance Enhancer LvL 3 would push all cores to 4.25 with stock auto settings, but no matter how I adjusted power options as suggested in other information I read it wasn't stable either and worse more if using the recommended OS Balance power plan, it would throttle back to 4.0 or lower during multi-threaded tests and benchmarks. And where is the fun in that?!

I wanted to push this systems performance to the max, so I got some advice (Thanks for the help @Johan) on how I might achieve better results. With said guidance I started from the beginning with stock settings, worked at the CPU OC from there and am happy to report that I was indeed able to achieve a stable CPU OC of 4.2 GHz @ 1.45 V LLC 4. Now I have begun to continue on (with guidance and patience of course) with overclocking the RAM kit. I only started tweaking the RAM this evening and after the first wave of testing I made it 3400 MHz with stock XMP timings and voltage, I will begin push further on this tomorrow.

After I've finished tweaking the RAM I will set my sights on the GPU.

Additionally I will hopefully have an actual update to this build next week or the week after that.

 

[Blaylock]

Take your time Steve. We'll be here waiting patiently.

 

[Scu84St3v3420]

Take your time Steve. We'll be here waiting patiently.

I know, but the anticipation lol... I'm just excited to see it all finished. Funnier note is I'm already planning out a next case with the intent of a custom loop for next year lmfao... This project is already giving me ideas!

 

[Scu84St3v3420]

And place this project on hold, sadly... Foolishly tossed my keys on desk when I got home from work tonight. Hit the monitor apparently... There go $800, so I had to order a new one tonight and I am going to be feeling broke for the next few weeks... lol Adulting hurts lmfao...

 

[Blaylock]

Jesus dude. How many keys do you keep on your key ring? LOL

 

[Scu84St3v3420]

like 8 keys probably, but the key chain is a heavy metal bottle opener... And it hit the screen, still usable for most things. But very obvious cracked screen when gaming.

 

[Mandrake4565]

Okay stop throwing your keys at the monitor and oc the gpu will ya

 

[Scu84St3v3420]

Okay stop throwing your keys at the monitor and oc the gpu will ya

Gotta finish the RAM OC first. Found my frequency and going to work with Womack yo tighten my timings and sub timings and what not. Then onto the GPU... new monitor will arrives Thursday

 

[Scu84St3v3420]

Alright, the replacement monitor arrived today! Sadly no more curved monitor for me, couldn't quite afford to splurge on a second 1440p 165hz g-sync curved monitor. But it is still a 1440p 165hz g-sync monitor and more than acceptable for my gaming purposes, just missing some of unnecessary flair of my previous monitor. I won't even set my keys on the desk now lol, let alone toss them (to F'N expensive, nearly have as much into monitors as my tower).

Still trying to finish up working on the RAM OC, after some extensive testing last night, I was able to tighten my main-timings just a little. Started at 3400 MHz 16-18-18-38 1.35V and ended up finding 3400 MHz 16-17-17-36 1.35V, I ran 12 (1000 MB) iterations of MemTest for 6 full loops (4 hrs) with zero errors. Trying to work on the sub-timings, but running into difficulty (code for IDKWTF I'm doing). I got some suggestions from Woomack on how to proceed from where I am now and will be looking into those when I get home later today.

The GPU OC coming after should be the easy part, previously I had it at 2.1 GHz/11.4 GHz. I wasn't able to get above 2.1 GHz on the GPU core on my own, but perhaps with some help there is a little more juice left in the tank. I actually never tried above 11.4 on the VRAM, this is a setting seen in a video on overclocking my particular card and I never tried further. Now that we are back at stock, we will find the maximum performance that can be dragged out of this GTX 1080 right after I'm finished working on the RAM (hopefully tonight).

Hopefully I will recover from replacing my monitor financially by this time next month and will be able to proceed with modding the case and I will already have my overclocking settings in place and rock solid stable.

No more broken monitor!

 

[Scu84St3v3420]

I think I'm starting to finally round out my overclock settings for this system, I've been stuck on the RAM overclocks sub-timings without much of an idea what I am doing there. So I put that on the back burner for now and moved onto the GPU overclock and am quite pleased with the results of my efforts all around.

Here are my results from UserBenchmark:

UserBenchmarks: Game 119%, Desk 129%, Work 116%
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X - 101.7%
GPU: Nvidia GTX 1080 - 132%
SSD: Samsung 970 Evo NVMe PCIe M.2 250GB - 249.6%
SSD: Patriot Burst 240GB - 105.3%
RAM: G.SKILL Trident Z RGB DDR4 3200 C16 2x8GB - 116.3%
MBD: Asus ROG STRIX X470-F GAMING



Seems all that is left is to pick Woomack's brain on the sub-timings at some point and then we're right as rain on all OC settings for this system. I have enjoyed learning more about the process of overclocking and the relationships between the components.