The Z Build 2.0

[Smoked Brisket]

I Other peoples necessities really are more important than my silly hobby parts, so I am not really complaining, but I really wish I could just get this project done already.

I think everyone on this forum has seen what a good guy you are, as a teacher by trade and a builder by hobby I appreciate you vocalizing the fact that there are more important things than our hobby right now. It means a lot when respected members voice that.

 

[Dullard]

$70+ for a four pack of Bitspower bends with prime seems to be pretty common now.

I ordered some of the more reasonably priced ones, but they are going to take their sweet time to get here...

My extra radiator fan screws I ordered are also delayed in shipping. Apparently Amazon is getting overloaded with everyone switching to online ordering due to the COVID19 virus scare.

I get it. Other peoples necessities really are more important than my silly hobby parts, so I am not really complaining, but I really wish I could just get this project done already.

Let me look in my stash, I *might* have some Bitspower swivel elbows left over. Can't promise as I'm not certain, but if I have any you can have them if I can mail them. And what screws? I have a bunch of those things, too.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Let me look in my stash, I *might* have some Bitspower swivel elbows left over. Can't promise as I'm not certain, but if I have any you can have them if I can mail them. And what screws? I have a bunch of those things, too.

I appreciate the offer, but they are already en route at this point, so even if you sent them, the ones I ordered would probably get here first!

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I think everyone on this forum has seen what a good guy you are, as a teacher by trade and a builder by hobby I appreciate you vocalizing the fact that there are more important things than our hobby right now. It means a lot when respected members voice that.

Thank you for that.

Though I have to admit it makes me a little sad that this part of my post stood out enough to warrant a comment.

I feel like it should be common sense that needs should trump wants.

I did some work today, more updates to come in a bit.

 

[pendragon1]

Other peoples necessities really are more important than my silly hobby parts,

no theyre not

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Alrighty,

Made a small amount of progress today. First I decided to connect the radiators to each other in the top corner. Much tighter fit than I anticipated. It might wind up being difficult to connect all the fans now that I've done this, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it...



I installed the reservoir and started planning some of the tube routing and installing some fittings and bends:



The little black box on the back of the pump is the Aquacomputer flow meter. From there the tube will go diagonally up to the GPU inlet.

I had originally planned to use the two end ports on the front radiators as drain ports. Unfortunately it looks like if I connect anything to those ports, it will interfere with the edge of the case, and I will no longer be able to slide out the radiator holding mechanism, so I have had to figure something else out.

I found these two alphacool Y adapters in my water cooling box I apparently bought back in 2016 and then never used.



My plan will be to recombine these with a Y adapter, and then put a valve on the other end of the Y adapter, for my drain port.

The top part of the adapters coming off of the radiators will go up to the reservoir.

This means the pump will have to be more forward in the case than I had planned. Solved this with a 45 degree adapter on the bottom of the reservoir and the top of the case. This is not exactly what I had planned, but not too bad, as moving the pump forward, allows the line to the GPU to align better.

I have not yet drilled the holes for the pump, as I want to install all of the fans and other adapters first to see how everything fits, before I start making irreversible cuts to metal.

At least I found that the foot on the bottom comes off, courtesy of this man who is either an insufferable hipster, or a villain who ties damsels in distress to railroad tracks:

More to come over the weekend, I'm sure.

 

[primetime]

Certainly looks like you could cool a nuclear reactor with some of that equipment. Lets hope you get several years before you have take this one apart, once its up and running.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

So, my bag of 100 radiator screws finally arrived today, so it was time to install some fans!

Another day, more progress and more challenges.

So, those Y fittings on the bottom of the radiators up front wound up interfering a little bit with the fans. So we have a fit problem. And you know what happens whenever there is a fit problem. it's Dremel Time.



That little bit of material removed did the trick, they fit now.



And here are all of them installed:



Hooked them up to a spare PSU and they all spin beautifully.

Now for the challenge:



So, it is a real challenge to route all of these fan cables in a tight space. I tried to organize them in the top corner, attaching my 8 way PWM fan splitters to the top of the radiators using double sided tape, but that failed hard. These cables are a mess, and they are interfering with the sliding mechanism, so right now the fans won't go back in.

I've had a full day of work before spending some time of this though, so I am beat.

I'll have to pull the wires out tomorrow and figure out a better arrangement.

 

[Thunderdolt]

With the radiators in their operating position, there's almost no space between the side of the radiator and the side of the chassis. This really limits cable routing. I ran all of my front rad fan cables down to the bottom since I didn't have room up top. If you loosen the fan screws, you can stuff them in the center gap between the two columns of fans. Then squeeze the fans together and tighten the screws when done.

I'll let you know when my fan crimper gets here. That's going to make a big difference on my build.

 

[Tsumi]

Depending on how amenable you are to cutting up the fan wiring, you can cut the cables and join them up. I did that for my 480 radiator with my Gentle Typhoons so it's just one main cable running along the side of the radiator with each fan splitting off from it, but my Gentle Typhoons only came with loose wires so it was convenient that way.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I am considering using my large half inch drill bit and putting a big cable pass through hole in the ABS bracket I made above that corner with the mess of cables, putting the PWM splitters up top.

Haven't quite decided yet.

 

[VanGoghComplex]

Depending on how amenable you are to cutting up the fan wiring, you can cut the cables and join them up. I did that for my 480 radiator with my Gentle Typhoons so it's just one main cable running along the side of the radiator with each fan splitting off from it, but my Gentle Typhoons only came with loose wires so it was convenient that way.

Amen to this. The JST crimps are finicky, but once you figure them out, being able to make your own cable for fans is a godsend in almost any build.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Oof.

I failed to account for how much space a typical 90 degree bend takes.

With this relatively small bitspower touchaqua 90 degree bend, the fan/radiator sliding mechanism won't close if installed.



I'm thinking there have to be specialty short height 90 degree bends for those tight spots. Does anyone know of any?

As much as I am no stranger to taking my dremel to things, I'm not sure I want to in this situation. This would be a little too apparent externally.

Looks like I have about 22-23mm to work with:



I appreciate any recommendations.

 

[VanGoghComplex]

Oof.

I failed to account for how much space a typical 90 degree bend takes.

With this relatively small bitspower touchaqua 90 degree bend, the fan/radiator sliding mechanism won't close if installed.

View attachment 231928

I'm thinking there have to be specialty short height 90 degree bends for those tight spots. Does anyone know of any?

As much as I am no stranger to taking my dremel to things, I'm not sure I want to in this situation. This would be a little too apparent externally.

Looks like I have about 22-23mm to work with:

View attachment 231934

I appreciate any recommendations.

I've never used them, but have looked at these before:

https://www.performance-pcs.com/wat...ing-low-profile-single-black-nzl-lxg2-bk.html

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Alrighty, we have developments, and I figured out a solution for the fitting not, well, fitting.

It's kind of funny in retrospect how I had thought that having a huge case would mean no more annoying tight tough to reach spots. I guess you can never really avoid those, huh. The fittings between the radiators in that corner are damned near impossible to loosen and tighten.

In my old build I used one of the extra ports on it as a vent port, towards the back of the case. Since in this build the radiator is in the other way around I only have the one port on the back, so I was planning on using a T fitting or Y of some sort with a valve as the vent port in the back. Because of this fit issue it didn't work out.

I stopped by Microcenter to look at what fittings they have, and picked up a non-swiveling 90 degree bed. The type you tighten down until it bottoms out, and it just points in the direction it points. Without the swiveling portion, it will be shorter and fit so that it doesn't interfere with the I figured I could wind up being lucky and it might point in the right direction....



That didn't happen, but by adding additional bends I was able to make it work. It fits, and points sortof in the direction I need it to. Having extra bends will add some back pressure to the loop, but hopefully it won't be too bad.

Now, what to do about the vent port? I guess I am going to need another hole in the bracket.



Problem is it would be kind of difficult to reach there, so I widened the hole a little more, and put a 90 degree bend in there with a cap on the end. At least it will point forward.

Now to tame Medusa's hair:



So, I decided to cut a cable passthrough slot in the fan bracket, so I can have the PWM splitters on top of the bracket, so they are not jamming the sliding mechanism. While I was at it I also drilled the mounting holes and another passthrough hole for the Aquaero which I am planning to have hang underneath the bracket up front.



It helped... A little...



I tied it down a little, but it still isn't perfect:


I had anticipated many challenges, but I didn't realize how much of a challenge it would be to deal with all of the fan cables.

It closes now, but it is a little tight up top.



I may have to work on tying these wires down a little better. I may wind up putting a little cover on the front to hide the wires up there.


Another day, another little bit of progress. I really just want this project to be done now though... I've been at this way longer than anticipated.

 

[Thunderdolt]

If you put a couple of SPLITTY4s on the top rad tray, you could power all 6 from just one channel on a Quadro. That would mean you'd need only that single cable going up to the tray from the back.

I was expecting to have loads of room to play around in this case, too. That's the core of my disappointment with it. The case is gigantic, but there was zero thought put into details like cable allowances and tube routing and fan clearance and the list goes on. This effectively makes the case much smaller than it really is. The failure to fit dual 140mm exhaust fans is a perfect example of this. There are mounting holes that would allow it, but there's a fold in the case that makes the clearance <3mm too short. That fold couldn't have been shifted by 3mm? The feet couldn't have been shortened by 3mm?

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Alright. Today I spent some more time taming Medusa's hair.

I think this is about as clean as I can get it.



I followed this with some door closing tests and powered the fan splitters up to verify that everything spins. It does.

I've been waiting to drill holes and install the pumps until I had the fans and draiun line tubing installed. I was about to install the drain line tubing today, but it turns out the bends are too tight and the tubing kinks, so I am going to need to buy a couple more 45 degree bends. I guess I'll need another ill advised virus trip to MicroCenter (if it is even open) tomorrow.

In the mean time I decided to do an open air install of my motherboard, GPU, and RAM just to make sure it POST's before installing it into the case.

My AMD RMA came back a while back, but I never opened the box, because I wasn't ready yet. Turns out that not only was AMD's RMA process impeccably fast, but they sent me a brand new retail boxed Threadripper. I'm very happy with their RMA. Don't get me wrong, you always hope things don't fail, but even the best have failures. What sets the good companies apart from the shitty ones is how they take care of problems when they arise. AMD truly shone here.

Anyway, here is the CPU installed in my motherboard:



I'ts always nerve wracking to install Threadrippers into their socket. The fancy install mechanism helps, but the thought of dropping something or fat fingering all those little hairlike pins...

And we are successful.



Turns out a Threadripper 3960x sitting in the BIOS with a nickel Heatkiller IV will max out at about 52C in BIOS, even when there is no water in the block.

So that's it for tonight.

Side note:

Does anyone need/want approximately 96 brown Noctua fan corners?



Edit:

Oh, almost forgot. While I fixed my 90 degree bend issue in the back of the case, it looks like I won't be able to fit a standard 25mm thick fan there now.

Does anyone have any recommendation for good slim 140mm fans? I think anything 20mm or slimmer should fit.

They will be exhaust fans, so I don't think static pressure will matter. Airflow should be more important.

These Cryorig XT140's seem to be well regarded on the internet, but these days, who knows, could just be good "influencing".

Appreciate any suggestions.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Looks like Governor Baker has ordered all non-essential businesses closed starting tomorrow. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that MicroCenter is not considered essential.

Either I get my bends before tomorrow, or I am not getting them for a while...

As ill advised as going out is right now, I can't have this project drag on for another month because of this.

I'll combine it with a food/supplies trip (Trader Joes is right next door to MicroCenter) to minimize risk, and grab my bends to keep the ball rolling.

 

[Smoked Brisket]

Safe travels!

 

[Thunderdolt]

Looks like Governor Baker has ordered all non-essential businesses closed starting tomorrow. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that MicrCenter is not considered essential.

Either I get my bends before tomorrow, or I am not getting them for a while...

As ill advised as going out is right now, I can't have this project drag on for another month because of this.

I'll combine it with a food/supplies trip (Trader Joes is right next door to MicroCenter) to minimize risk, and grab my bends to keep the ball rolling.

How many do you need? I might have a couple that I could toss you from 6ft away, depending on how many I end up using my for my own build (which is running into similar delays).

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

How many do you need? I might have a couple that I could toss you from 6ft away, depending on how many I end up using my for my own build (which is running into similar delays).

I do appreciate the offer. It's nice to know we have at least a couple of good H:ers in the area. I am already at MicroCenter.

...or I should say, I'm waiting in the car outside MicroCenter. They are only allowing a limited number of people in at any given time, so you have to register out front, and then they text you when it is your turn...

Anyway, once this whole social distancing thing blows over, first round at the local watering hole of your choice is on me.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Alrighty. Did some work last night.

Here is my stupid drain port. I'm not proud of it, but it will work.



I figure whenever I need to drain I'll hook up a hose out the back of the case, and open the valve, blowing some air in the top using my Datavac if I have to.

Once I had this in place, the plan was to mount the pumps next. Then I realized that I was not going to be able to open the sliding radiator/fan mounts after I mounted the pumps, as they would interfere with the drain assembly :/

This made me hit the pause button. At first this seemed like a big issue, but then I realized with the reservoir, pumps and everything else hooked up, those lines would prevent me from opening the sliding fan/radiator mounts anyway, so not as big of a deal as I had thought. This will mean that I will have to drain the loop if I need to change any of the fans or wiring, which is a major bummer. I guess the QDC's Thunderdolt decided to use in his build were a good idea for this case. Maybe I'll add some the next time I have to break into the loop, but with everything shut down as of today, and Amazon not delivering any PC parts until May 10th, that's not happening in this iteration. I guess I'll ahve to cross the fan/wiring replacement bridge when I get to it.

With that, the next priority was to finish all the wiring up top, especially the wiring for the Aquaero before mounting the pumps.

This brings me to the next issue I should have considered before embarking on this build. All of my goddamned internal wires are too short. Luckily I think I was able to find enough stuff to keep myself going by raiding the old parts bin, but I did have to use some of the old school red, yellow and black (ketchup and mustard) molex extenders. I hate those things, but I think I was able to hide them away pretty well.

Here is how the Aquaero install turned out:



At this point I was getting tired, and decided to leave the mounting of the pumps for another day.

I also realized that after I mounted the pumps, if I had any leaks in the connections between the top and front radiators in that tight corner, I'd have to remove the pump again to fix the leak, so based on this, and on the fact that they were difficult to install due to the tight fit, so I had a higher leak concern in that area as it was, I decided to do an overnight leak test on just the radiator portion of the planned loop.

I grabbed my old XSPC reservoir and pump, hung it from the peg board, connecting it to the radiator portion of the loop with some long lengths of tubing, and proceeded with a distilled water fill.



At the time of writing this it has been going for almost 17 hours without any leaks thus far.

The pump really struggled to fill the loop though. Apparently this radiator configuration traps a lot of air and it took hours of running to get that out, with the pump frequently choking on air bubbles making their way out.

Hopefully this will be easier with the real loop with the more powerful dual pumps, and using a coolant with a surfactant. Eliminating the surface tension should allow the air to get out much more easily.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Aaack.

I'm short one compression fitting.

I ordered more, but underestimated how many I'd need.

MicroCenter is a non-essential business, so they are now closed

Amazon is saying it's a low priority item and not delivering it until mid April to mid May.

I'm trying Newegg. Best case scenario, this stupid oversight set me back a week.

It seems the planets are aligning to delay this build as much as possible...

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Aaack.

I'm short one compression fitting.

I ordered more, but underestimated how many I'd need.

MicroCenter is a non-essential business, so they are now closed

Amazon is saying it's a low priority item and not delivering it until mid April to mid May.

I'm trying Newegg. Best case scenario, this stupid oversight set me back a week.

It seems the planets are aligning to delay this build as much as possible...

Turns out I am not an idiot and do know how to count to 10 after all.

I just forgot I had attached one of my compression fittings to a spare piece of tubing and set it aside for a test.

I do have all the fittings I need and the build is resuming.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

So, last night I did some more work.

I went to start mounting the pumps, but as I was looking at my drain port, I was unhappy with it. I know it is probably not an issue, but I was a little bit concerned with the rejoining of the lines after the radiator. What happens if there is uneven flow over the radiators? Could it get to the point where the higher flow side starts pushing back on the lower flow side, impeding flow? Since I bought a second valve I was planning to use for the vent port (but it didn't fit) I decided to rearrange my drain line so it has two valves, one after each radiator, and rejoins on the other side of the valves:



It's not pretty, but it will be hidden behind the pumps...

Next, time to mount the pumps.

The case has a large metal foot on the bottom that I decided I wanted to remove before drilling the holes This allowed me to put scrap pieces of wood underneath it for drilling purposes, so I don't slam through with the drill and damage the foot underneath. It will also make it easier to tighten the screws for the pump, once the holes are drilled.

So, I put some foam down on the workbench so I wouldn't scratch the thing, and carefully lowered it down on its side. (Damn, it is heavier than it looks)



The four screws, one under each foot pad allows the foot to come off. Then I stood it back up on some pieces of wood.



After that, I placed the assembled pumps in my desired location in the case, and found a nail that would fit through the tiny holes in the feet of the thing, and whacked it with a hammer, to leave a mark where I needed to drill.



The holes did not turn out to be perfect, but they are 5mm holes (widened slightly with the bit) to fit M4 screws, so it should give me enough wiggle room to make everything fit.

In my old build, before I took some extreme anti-vibration measures, I had a constant issue of pump vibration transferring to the case and creating unwanted noise, so I spent some time trying to figure out how to best dampen the noise with this pump install. I bought some Isolate It brand sorbothane vibration dampening rubber washers. I've used different sized parts from this brand before, and have been very happy with them. These were a little softer than the ones I have used in the past though. I hope they don't wind up beeing too soft to the point where the screw pulls through the center hole.



Additionally, I also noted that every box of Noctua rubber corners and extension cables comes with this delightful high density polypropylene sheet in the bottom of the box. Its probably there as packaging material (for which the material is way overkill).



Since the foam is so nice, I decided to trace the feet of the pumps and cut out dampening pads to go under the pumps. I figured two layers should do the trick.



Turns out those sheets are really difficult to make a nice even cut in, so they didn't come out as pretty as I had hoped, but between the very low contrast to the black bottom of the case, and that they will be mostly hidden underneath the pumps, I don't think it really matters, as they won't be that visible.

I decided to put one sorbothane washer on the bottom of the case, two layers of Noctua packaging sheet on the inside of the case, and a final sorbothane washer on top, before the pumps.



Once tightened in place (but not too tightly, as I don't want to defeat the vibration dampening effect of the soft materials), I screwed the foot back on, and stood the case up.

Here is the final result of the pump mounting:



I'll be doing more work tonight!

 

[pendragon1]

that plug in properly?
btw, impressed with the effort your going through, truly [H]ard

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

View attachment 233078
that plug in properly?

Thanks for noticing.

That's just a temporary plug to prevent debris from my drilling from getting inside the lines.

I can't remember if I tightened it down properly or not, but I do recall having a couple of plugs that look weird like that when you close them.

Before this system sees any fluid, that is where one of the two return lines from the front radiators to the reservoir will be connected, so no chance of leaks!

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

btw, impressed with the effort your going through, truly [H]ard

Thank you sir.

As a younger man I was impatient, and wanted my builds together quickly so I get up and running.

As I have gotten older I appreciate a job well done, so I am going to get this build right. Don't get me wrong. I still want it done at some point, but I'm OK with it taking a little longer in order to get the build right.

Besides, it's not as if I am going anywhere right now, so I have a lot of time on my hands.

I'm getting closer to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Tonight I am going to try to get all the actual computer components (motherboard, GPU, expansion cards, etc) mounted in the case.

I might get to assembling the rest of the loop tonight, not sure. If I do I may get to actually doing a leak test.

I haven't decided whether or not I want to run the PrimoChill Sysprep stuff they send you for free with the tubing through the loop. I still for th elife of me cant find any thorough engineering/scientific description of what the hell it is, what the hell it is supposed to do, and how the hell it does it. The marketing descriptions on their webpage might as well not be there at all. They are completely uninformative.

There is a real chance - however - that I might be up and running as soon as tomorrow.

That is, if I can still carry this thing up the stairs from the basement after mounting everything and filling it with coolant. It's already getting heavy!

 

[pendragon1]

Thank you sir.

As a younger man I was impatient, and wanted my builds together quickly so I get up and running.

As I have gotten older I appreciate a job well done, so I am going to get this build right. Don't get me wrong. I still want it done at some point, but I'm OK with it taking a little longer in order to get the build right.

Besides, it's not as if I am going anywhere right now, so I have a lot of time on my hands.

I'm getting closer to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Tonight I am going to try to get all the actual computer components (motherboard, GPU, expansion cards, etc) mounted in the case.

I might get to assembling the rest of the loop tonight, not sure. If I do I may get to actually doing a leak test.

I haven't decided whether or not I want to run the PrimoChill Sysprep stuff they send you for free with the tubing through the loop. I still for th elife of me cant find any thorough engineering/scientific description of what the hell it is, what the hell it is supposed to do, and how the hell it does it. The marketing descriptions on their webpage might as well not be there at all. They are completely uninformative.

There is a real chance - however - that I might be up and running as soon as tomorrow.

That is, if I can still carry this thing up the stairs from the basement after mounting everything and filling it with coolant. It's already getting heavy!

dont forget to bench test everything first, if you havent already.
me, i would have been playing on it already, all spread out on my desk while i build the case.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

dont forget to bench test everything first, if you havent already.
me, i would have been playing on it already, all spread out on my desk while i build the case.

I've gone through POST on the bench, and played around in the BIOS, but I haven't booted anything up.

I didn't want to go through the trouble of building a cooling loop just for much bench test, and I don't have any non-waterblock CPU cooler that will actually fit on this gargantuan CPU.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Oh, I almost forgot..

It's not exactly a secret that I am not a huge fan of LED lighting in my case. I find it kind of tacky, and it can be distracting in a dark room.

The exception is that I do like a little light in my reservoir. It makes it easier to monitor water levels, and such.

EK Shipped an LED strip in the box with my huge reservoir. Apparently you are supposed to unscrew the bottom and install it on the inside of the bezel:



Before deciding whether or not to disassemble the reservoir and install the LED strip, I decided to hold it on the outside of the reservoir, and do a test lighting.



I hate it. Firstly, it is way too bright. I could resolve that by using it with a molex to sata adapter, and reversing the 12v and 5v connectors, feeding it less power and dimming it down to ~40% brightness, but the uneven dots of light are kind of an eye sore to me, especially sinc eth espacing is slightly off such that for the last ones in the back, the spacing will be different than all the rest. I don't really care about case lighting, but having uneven spacing would drive me nuts. So, we are not using this.

Then I remembered that at some point I had wound up with these EK plexi G1/4 plugs. Not quite sure if I accidentally ordered them at some point, or what happened, but I have them. Turns out the slot in the center is for a 6mm allen wrench, but when it is tightened in place, you can shove an old school 5mm bulb shaped LED in the middle and it stays just by interference.

I happen to have a white (well, mostly, it is one of those older blue hue "white" models) 5mm LED that came with my old XSPC reservoir, so I decided to try that.



Here it is installed in the bottom of the reservoir.


There is no way that LED is coming out after being shoved in there. At least not without wrecking it with a pair of pliers. I decided to cover the LED with black electric tape though to avoid light bleed below the reservoir. It looks a little crappy looking at it straight on, but once installed in the case it is towards the back, so it is not visible.

It looks a little underwhelming when I light it up, but I know that the coolant usually helps diffuse the light a little bit, so I am hoping for an improvement once it is filled up.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Oh, I almost forgot..

It's not exactly a secret that I am not a huge fan of LED lighting in my case. I find it kind of tacky, and it can be distracting in a dark room.

The exception is that I do like a little light in my reservoir. It makes it easier to monitor water levels, and such.

EK Shipped an LED strip in the box with my huge reservoir. Apparently you are supposed to unscrew the bottom and install it on the inside of the bezel:

View attachment 233122

Before deciding whether or not to disassemble the reservoir and install the LED strip, I decided to hold it on the outside of the reservoir, and do a test lighting.

View attachment 233123 View attachment 233124 View attachment 233125

I hate it. Firstly, it is way too bright. I could resolve that by using it with a molex to sata adapter, and reversing the 12v and 5v connectors, feeding it less power and dimming it down to ~40% brightness, but the uneven dots of light are kind of an eye sore to me, especially sinc eth espacing is slightly off such that for the last ones in the back, the spacing will be different than all the rest. I don't really care about case lighting, but having uneven spacing would drive me nuts. So, we are not using this.

Then I remembered that at some point I had wound up with these EK plexi G1/4 plugs. Not quite sure if I accidentally ordered them at some point, or what happened, but I have them. Turns out the slot in the center is for a 6mm allen wrench, but when it is tightened in place, you can shove an old school 5mm bulb shaped LED in the middle and it stays just by interference.

I happen to have a white (well, mostly, it is one of those older blue hue "white" models) 5mm LED that came with my old XSPC reservoir, so I decided to try that.

View attachment 233127

Here it is installed in the bottom of the reservoir.
View attachment 233128

There is no way that LED is coming out after being shoved in there. At least not without wrecking it with a pair of pliers. I decided to cover the LED with black electric tape though to avoid light bleed below the reservoir. It looks a little crappy looking at it straight on, but once installed in the case it is towards the back, so it is not visible.

It looks a little underwhelming when I light it up, but I know that the coolant usually helps diffuse the light a little bit, so I am hoping for an improvement once it is filled up.

View attachment 233130 View attachment 233131 View attachment 233132

Actually, never mind. Had to pull the plug on this one for now. There is something wrong with this LED. It started to flicker and smell burnt. I suspect a shirt.

I had to yank it out. And yes, it did take a pair of pliers.

I am going to leave the plexi plug in there and go lightless for now until I figure out something else.

I can probably get plenty of 5mm LED's to shove in there , but it might take a while to get here with the virys slowing everything down, and all local stores being closed.

 

[Thunderdolt]

Depending on the coolant you run, you may find that the strip lighting is much more even once there is coolant in the res. Plain DI will likely be as bad as what you saw empty, but a dyed coolant is probably going to diffuse the light pretty well.

FWIW, I like to use RGB that is tied to coolant or component temp myself. It will be dark under normal operating conditions and then go red once the threshold has been crossed.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Depending on the coolant you run, you may find that the strip lighting is much more even once there is coolant in the res. Plain DI will likely be as bad as what you saw empty, but a dyed coolant is probably going to diffuse the light pretty well.

FWIW, I like to use RGB that is tied to coolant or component temp myself. It will be dark under normal operating conditions and then go red once the threshold has been crossed.

I usually run EK's concentrated coolants. They are very protective of my blocks and keep everything squeaky clean.

I have been running 25% blue, 75% clear recently, because the all blue uses an uncomfortably large amount of colorant. I can flush my loop many times after and it still comes out partially blue.

The RGB thing is just not something I am into. This system will not have any RGB controller in it. The only intentional light I am installing is this one in the reservoir. if not for the fact that the motherboard came with a stupid RGB light, the reservoir would be the only light in the entire system.

Sadly the stupid light on the motherboard is orange by default. In the BIOS I can turn it off and on, but I can't change its color without installing Gigabytes spyware on my machine, which I am not going to do, so I'll probably just disable it in BIOS.

I also ripped out the Corsair commander that came with the case as I have no use for it, and have removed the lit up Corsair logo thing in the middle of the front panel

I am just looking for a low key functional light so I can see the fluid level.

Ideally it would be dim enough you can't even tell it is there during daylight, only light enough in the dark to let me see my fluid levels.

I don't mind the functional lighting around the front panel ports, provided I can figure out a way to dim it, and keep it a nice neutral color without installing any RGB controllers or software.

I liked where the setup was going two posts back, until I started smelling smoke.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Depending on the coolant you run, you may find that the strip lighting is much more even once there is coolant in the res. Plain DI will likely be as bad as what you saw empty, but a dyed coolant is probably going to diffuse the light pretty well.

FWIW, I like to use RGB that is tied to coolant or component temp myself. It will be dark under normal operating conditions and then go red once the threshold has been crossed.

Lol. I may have ruined the case RGB lights now anyway.

I found an RGB plug to sata adapter in the box the case came in, so I hooked up the prewired line that goes to the Corsair logo and the front panel lights.

It shone in a neutral white and actually wasn't too bad. It was a little bright though, so I figured I'd see what would happen if I reversed the power giving it 5v instead of 12v to dim it a bit using a doctored molex adapter. That didn't work at all. I may have fried something in the lights, because now when I hook them back up to the regular sata adapter, instead of a nice white light across everything, most things are dark, except for the rightmost USB c plug which is green.



So whatever it was that made them white by default? Well, I wrecked that.

If rainbow RGB disco lights are your thing, I can still get them to cycle the rainbow by plugging them into the Commander Pro (but the one on the far right still seems a little greener than the rest)




I don't care for that at all though, so I'll probably just leave them unplugged like I had originally planned

For a brief moment I considered keeping them just plugged in to the sata power adapter in white, but I probably would have wound up hating it as they were about 10x brighter than I would have oreferred., And then I wrecked them.

Looks like spare parts are available on Corsairs site of I ever change my mind though.

 

[Thunderdolt]

I have completely dumped Corsair's controls, finally. They're probably fine for a simple 3 fan build, but it's a real flushable turd at this scale.

If the chassis lights are still controllable via the Commander Pro, then that means you can control them via the aquaero via a farbwerk 360. That would give you full RGB control in a completely rules-based manner.

Actually, now that I think about it, if you put an RGB LED into that drain plug, you could control it via your aquaero. If you did that, you could then set it for alarm lighting so it would flash a specific color in the event of a cooling system fault, for example.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I have completely dumped Corsair's controls, finally. They're probably fine for a simple 3 fan build, but it's a real flushable turd at this scale.

If the chassis lights are still controllable via the Commander Pro, then that means you can control them via the aquaero via a farbwerk 360. That would give you full RGB control in a completely rules-based manner.

Actually, now that I think about it, if you put an RGB LED into that drain plug, you could control it via your aquaero. If you did that, you could then set it for alarm lighting so it would flash a specific color in the event of a cooling system fault, for example.

Yeah, I found this reverse engineered pinout.



My mistake seems to have been that I assumed they operated at 12v, so when ai reversed the connectors, instead of feeding the 12v lights, 5v as intended, I was actually feeding the 5v system 12v.

In the little sata to RGB adapter I used there is a small circuit. This must be what sends the signal to keep them white.

Seeing that they cycle all colors of the rainbow when connected to the Commander Pro (except for the far right side) but do noting whne connected to the adapter now, I'm guessing I fried the adapter, and maybe did a slight amount of damage to the rightmost led in the I/O panel which is a hynit looks greener than everything else.

I'm serious though. I really don't care for the RGB stuff. If I can order another Corsair RGB to sata adapter than just keeps them white from Corsairs spare parts catalog I may try that, but if that doesn't work, I really don't care.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Wow, this is hilarious.

My relatively large motherboard looks TINY in this case...



This is apparently what an EATX board looks like in the 1000D

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

And the expansion cards are in....

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Alright.

The wires aren't hooked up yet, but is anyone ready for a test fill and flush?




I'm going to try to flush with the sysprep and see what if anything happens. Might as well, the stuff was free....