Time.Sync.

[ALXAndy]

Whilst it was apart for the upgrade I decided to splash somewhat.



I don't dislike the Byski block. I just don't like the gold accents around the G 1/4, or the way it fits (it's a sod) or the way it cools. That said at less than £30 inc it got me what I needed then. I also spotted these.



So I grabbed four. Look at the CPU block in this pic, you can see where two are going.



When I changed from the old X99 set up I could have done with more fittings tbf.

I have also ordered a proper DRGB adapter for Gigabyte's quite frankly stupid connector.



So the rig may finally have a working RGB GPU block in it !

 

[logz83]

@ALXAndy the build is looking absolutely mint, just been reading through the whole logs, very informative, sorry about your 2080ti but at least you got the refund.

 

[ALXAndy]

Thanks man. The seller had an AIO on it and apparently put new pads on etc. I reckon he bought the wrong thickness pads and cracked the solder.

Thankfully I have the money back in my account, so nothing lost (apart from time. hah !)

 

[Cenedd]

...so nothing lost (apart from time. hah !)

....and sanity!
Anyone blessed with lots of spare sanity these days?! Tell me the secret (and booze is no secret!) if you do!

 

[ALXAndy]

....and sanity!
Anyone blessed with lots of spare sanity these days?! Tell me the secret (and booze is no secret!) if you do!

I think the worst part of it was that I had to go around the post office and do the walk of shame with my mother's granny trolley ffs. I packed up the 2070, and its box, and its air cooler, and some other gear I threw in and it wouldn't fit in a bag or even a black sack. So when taking that to the PO for collection (sod's law he lives on the IOW so it's Parcel Farce or GTFO) I had to take a tartan trolley. So not only was I annoyed but I got to do a 1/4 mile walk looking like a total tit.

It's funny but the thing I am most pleased with is those cheap fittings. Tiny things eh? lol.

 

[ALXAndy]

Got a new res. Two reasons. 1. I wanted something slightly larger. 2. I cracked one of the brackets on the other one. It still works fine, it just annoys me.





So same res, just longer.

 

[Jay85]

Got a new res. Two reasons. 1. I wanted something slightly larger. 2. I cracked one of the brackets on the other one. It still works fine, it just annoys me.





So same res, just longer.

Should have bough my Alphacool with 2 size tubes for £40! Comes with the D5 pump mount as well.

Haven't used bitspower res's in a long time after my last one cracked...

 

[ALXAndy]

The res hasn't cracked dude. Just the bracket that goes onto the fan plate thing. It was totally my fault. I over tightened it.

That res was £38.99, and I would hate to use anything Ewwwwfacool in my rig. I've had my 100ml Z multi for 5 years and it still looks amazing.

 

[ALXAndy]

New GPU in. I took the block apart and cleaned it. I thought about polishing the nickel but I would rather leave well alone. I say this because as soon as you add moisture it vanishes.



I gotta say, that is one big heavy friggin card tbh.



I know I know, it's really weird how they did it so you can use the stock back plate. Clever though, as many would be peeved about losing the RGB. Talking of which there is a baggy of cables, adapters and all of the stuff I need to sort out the RGB.

CPU block.





Now I need to make a metal plate (will explain that later). There is *no way* the Phanteks vertical bracket will ever support this bugger on one screw.

 

[ALXAndy]

OK so it's done for the moment. Lots of issues, will run through those.

I got home last night and fitted the new CPU block. Went well. I then drilled the reinforcement plate I made the other week and bolted that in. Which allows me to fit all three nuts and bolts to the vertical riser. The Phanteks riser never fitted very well, as I had basically modded the entire case to take the Cooler Master one, yet the ribbons on those are crap and it failed.

Now I could fit and remove the GPU waaaay easier. It's night and day, with literally no sag at all. Before it had one bolt in the bottom, so it sagged even with a 2070 in there (a literal featherweight).

I then ran into issue number one. The res is huge. How they work it out IDK, but mine was a 100mm and this was supposed to be a 150 yet it is twice as long. This is good, because it means I can have more coolant in there, but the whole loop was not going to work as it was. There was just no room.

I removed a stop plug on the flow meter to move it to the bottom hole (so I could come out at an angle) and it cross threaded. The only way to remove it was to take the flow meter apart. All told it took me about two hours to fix this, and it was leaking afterward. I've also fitted the ceramic pole the wrong way around and thus it won't spin now (but flow is still very good).

Issue two then raised its head. The RGB adapter for Gigabyte's unique 3 pin fan but RGB connector was wired with the black wire as 5v. I have never seen something so idiotic. So of course I fitted it with the blue wire to 5v. Problem is once you put the GPU in you can not get to it without removing the GPU which isn't fun when you have two litres of coolant in your PC. Any way I found a way around it (thanks to the new design of the vertical riser) and got that working.

Issue 3. I thought I had two 8 pin extensions in the rig (black). Turns out I had a 8 pin and 6 pin. That's OK though, thankfully I had a spare 8 pin in grey which looks fantastic in there.

Issue 4. Windows killdate. Windows updated itself. The rig rebooted. I installed the GPU driver, tried to run 3dmark (anything just to test the card) and I installed Precision X1. I went into Precision but I had no clock control, no voltage, no power or thermal limit nothing. It was all greyed out. Then 3dmark would not get past the hardware scan. So I disabled the hardware scan and ran Time Spy, card was not boosting and was sitting at 1350mhz which made it slower than a 2080.

By now it was midnight. I had spent two hours just trying to get something running so I could test the GPU. I conceded that in the end I would need to reinstall Windows.

By this time Windows had died any way, and I was getting "unable to find boot device". This was after the killdate.

Great, only one issue. I took every single USB stick I own over to my mother's for building the NAS. I found a SD card, but I have thrown away all of the readers. In desperation I dug through my crawl space and found my PSone mini and thank the heavens there was a 32gb stick poking out of the front. Took the rig down, moved it, put my other rig in and made a boot stick.

By 2am I had Windows back on, this time in UEFI. How it ended up in Legacy I have absolutely no idea. This time, however, it worked. Seems I did well on the GPU front too.





There is one thing left I want to do. Aquasuite still will not pick up my Farbwerk or LT on their own USB splitters. So I am going to have to connect them directly to the mobo.

Then I can get rid of that god awful bloody pink it has defaulted to and have full control over all of the RGB again. Something lacking since I removed my Intel mobo and AquaComputer blame on Ryzen /rolls eyes.

 

[Cenedd]

It might be that the flow meter is fubar but if it's just a stop plug that leaks, pick yourself up a tube of LS-X from either your local plumbing supply or online (about £7) and that'll seal it for you.

 

[ALXAndy]

It uses these really odd things dude. Maybe to make it look better, IDK. They are not G 1/4 fittings but are in two pieces. There's a metal plate that goes into the hole (just drops in) and fits into a lug. Then you screw the top part into it and it presses against it and crushes out the O ring to seal it. You can use a G 1/4 plug instead, but of course that "looks ugly". I didn't really care, I cared more about their stupid thing getting stuck.

It's deffo not busted. I just put the ceramic spine in the wrong way around. It has a fat end (goes into the back of the meter) and then the thin end goes into the front. I put it in wrong because it fell out and I wasn't sure. Then after I had put it all back together I remembered the fat bit goes in the back.

If when I do a drain it still doesn't behave I will just remove the insides and use it as a glowing hexagon RGB thinger.

Oh and avoid Gigabyte RGB Fusion. It's like ebola for PCs. It actually killed my Windows install stone dead. I ran it earlier and the whole rig was crawling.

 

[Cenedd]

Ah, I seem I thought you knackered the thread and couldn't get anything to seal the hole. LS-X is good for those sort of things where you develop water-cooling incontinence. It's a bit like silicone but will set on a wet surface and you can use it for drinking water....not that that's a concern here hopefully!
Did great on a res I had that was chipped by an inlet/outlet (forget which) meaning the o-ring couldn't seal completely. Lasted as long as the res.

 

[tyler_jrb]

Not looked at this in a while but looking very nice indeed. Sounded an absolute mission by the couple of posts above. I had a task like that with my recent x299 rig myself but it’s very rewarding when all is finished and up and running.

Do really like the look of that case, very futuristic and looks good with the mods etc. The 2080Ti will be well worth the pain. Still very fast cards and considering the 3080 is some 20-30% faster if that. Once overclocked the 2080Ti is still a very relevant card.

 

[ALXAndy]

Thanks dude. I found the bloody culprit of what killed Windows !! Gigabyte RGB Fusion. Blimey, it's truly like infecting your PC with AIDs.

G - nah the weird thing is the hole I was trying to blank with one of the weird two piece blankers (haha) was the one that used to have a fitting in. I have a pic but IMGUR is playing funny buggers atm. I will send it over email. Never seen anything like it, and won't remove any more lmao. It'll end up looking like a WW2 mine.

 

[ALXAndy]

Finally. Finally I fixed the USB problem and could rid myself of the gash pink.

 

[Roadrunner_668]

i quite liked the pink ha ha i love that case do the vents on top open electrically ?

 

[ALXAndy]

Yes. They are software controlled, so you can have them closed, fully open or half cocked. Because of the USB issues I was having they were not closing when the rig shuts down (as they should) and thus dust was settling in the top. not a huge problem because the fans are pushing out, but yeah.....

Any way, once I sorted the USB problems they now work properly again. The front panel is electronic too.

The pink can return now though, now that I have fixed the USB issues. I can have it any colour I want now

 

[Roadrunner_668]

that is really cool ! thanks for the info.