Phanteks Enthoo Primo, ASUS Rampage iv Black Edition build

BIG$pender

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 12, 2007
Messages
98
2014!
New year new build. Here is my current build from Dec. 2009. This will be my first attempt at "real" watercooling, I've used the Corsair H50 on my current rig, And want more stable temps at higher overclocks. My plans for the 2014 build are:

Case: Phanteks Enthoo Primo Link
M/B: ASUS Rampage iv Black Edition Link
CPU: Intel i7 4960x socket 2011 Link
RAM: GSkill 4x4GB F3-2800C11Q-16GTXDG Link
PSU: EVGA 1000 P2 Link
Video: Sapphire VAPOR-X R9 280x Link (had this for a while, Will be using it until I can afford a watercooled 290x)
Radiator: Hardware Labs, Black Ice GT Xtreme 480 Link
Reservoir & Pump: XSPC Photon 170 Reservoir & D5 Pump combo Link
Fans: Corsair SP 120 PWM X8 for radiator push/pull configuration. Corsair AF 140 X5 case fans. Link
CPU block: XSPC RayStorm copper Link
Audio: will be using onboard ROG SupremeFX (Good enough for me can do everything I need).
Monitors: I'll be keeping my 3 Planar PX2611w monitors for eyefinity Link

Here's the first case Newegg sent me. This is how it sat on my deck when I got home. Where you see the dent in the cardboard there is no protection for the case except for a thin sheet of plastic, Needless to say there was a fist sized dent with a 1 inch scratch down to the bare metal right in the center. Needless to say I sent that shit right back!
9.jpg


Finally got the replacement plus a few other goodies!
10.jpg


IMG_20131218_162200_260.jpg


Those Trident heat spreaders are sexy! And that's one damn expensive CPU!
IMG_20131218_162439_004.jpg


And my shipment from FrozenCPU.com A gallon of deionized water, Copper sulfate (dead water), More fans, TIM, XSPC fittings, And some ext. cables and fan connectors.
12.jpg


apparently 1 gram of shin-etsu x23-7783D is 7 bucks.
13.jpg


Will be installing the MB and PSU tonight.
11-1.jpg


Like I said this is my first experience with water cooling, So im going to start out just cooling the CPU for now. I may do a video card or 2 and chipset blocks in the future, Which is why i am going with such a large radiator. I will be testing how far i can go with the 4960x overclock. I'm hoping for 4.8 - 5 Ghz.
I don't think i want to go with 2 R9 290x's because of the microstutter thing which AMD still hasn't fixed yet. I cant see buying 3 or 4, which I've heard reduces microstutter. Anybody have an opinion on this?
 
A shot of the board before it goes in
2.jpg


Studs were already mounted in the case for an E-ATX motherboard. Just snugged them down and got it in there in minutes. The bottom right hand side of the board did have some flex when I tightened down the mounting screw. It must have been the board that was warped slightly because after mounting everything looked flat. Nothing cracked so.....good to go.
1.jpg


Everything stripped down, And ready for install. I wont be using any of the pre-installed Phanteks fans, Though they do seem to be nice quality, And they have loooooong cables.
As you can see theres plenty of room in the cutout to access the back of the socket.
7.jpg


8.jpg


I'll be using the included fan hub behind the motherboard tray to control the 140mm case fans.
Be careful with this thing if you lay the case on its side, I bent the prongs on the capacitor a bit. It bent right back without snapping though.

6.jpg


Installing the RAM, CPU, and XSPC copper block.
9-1.jpg


10.jpg


I usually do the rice sized line of TIM spread it thin, And put one more small dot in the center.
11.jpg


The RayStorm block is a beast, It's huge, And heavy. Also has a nice mirror finish on the bottom. It did have one small blemish, But I couldn't feel it with my fingernail so no big deal.
13.jpg


The hold down studs didn't line up very well and had to squeeze them together as I lowered the hold down onto the block. It was probably the threaded holes on the back plate causing this.
14.jpg


Also did some test fitting with the XSPC photon 170 I received today. Looks like the best mounting position is going to be in front of the motherboard slots.
I'll be dressing up the pump with the bitspower D5 mod kit. This will also allow the pump to fit in this location and still allow the side panel to be installed, Because the diameter is smaller than the stock compression ring which seals the pump to the pump top.
I was only able to use 2 of the 4 mounting screws using the stock holes in the back of the case. It feels plenty sturdy though even using just 2 screws.
15.jpg


I'll be receiving the radiator tomorrow. I'll be working on that and the fittings. Also im planning on changing out the stock led's and led strips to red, And white for the HDD activity light. There are 2 3 mm blue led's behind the power button, and also a 3 mm blue led for the HDD light. The 2 led strips are about 22" long. I'm tired of blue lights on everything, So they gotta go. I also have a 5 mm red led for the photon 170, Which lights up the tube inside of the reservoir.
 
Last edited:
The radiator looks damn nice! Paint job is perfect. The fins are pretty close together.
1-1.jpg


2-1.jpg


Not even close to fitting in the bottom of the case. Top mount it is.
9-2.jpg


I have one of these to control the 8 radiator fans with one header on the motherboard.

The Photon with the BitsPower mod on the pump. Its a pain in the ass to tighten and keep the pump speed knob lined up with one of the holes.
4.jpg


There were some burrs inside a couple of the pump top holes left over from the thread cutting. Used a pair of tweezers to pull them out.
5.jpg


Theres enough clearance for the side panel now.
6-1.jpg
 
Worked on soldering in the new LED's

The LED strips along the top and front are taped down with a thin strip of masking tape, and are connected with a small 2 prong connector. They project backwards onto a light diffuser, Which has a thin strip which is what you see through the plastic lens on the outside.
1-2.jpg


Turn it over and you can see the wires for the HDD light and power button. They are hot glued in place. They come out easy after cutting the glue and pulling on the wires. There are 2 daisychained led's in the power switch and a single for the HDD light.
9-3.jpg


I would suggest removing the panels before attempting to remove the lenses so you can release the catches from the back side. they have a tendancy to break off. I had to epoxy 2 of them back on.
2-2.jpg


I used these side emitting LED strips. Anything more than 5 mm width wont fit into the channel they are taped into. You can cut every third led to trim them to length, It works out to about every inch or so.
4-1.jpg


I'm definitely not a pro at soldering but it got the job done
5-1.jpg


Testing out the LED strips.
6-2.jpg
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
I've gone with the black chrome XSPC fittings. They look damn sharp against the black.
14.jpg


The radiator, Radiator fans, and fittings installed. I had to be careful tightening down the screws with these corsair fans, The soft noise dampening rubber will let you tighten them down until they hit the radiator fins.
8-1.jpg


I installed a valved quick release drain port on the output of the pump, So that the pump can assist in draining the system. I got the idea from this guy.
10-1.jpg


12-1.jpg


The tip came with a dried glob o shit on it, Free of charge.
13-1.jpg


Temperature probe installed on pump intake to monitor the temp of the water just after it passes the CPU.
11-2.jpg


Tubing was cake to put in. I was expecting it to be a P.I.T.A.
DSC01521.jpg


I'm considering going with dual EVGA GTX 780 Hydro Copper video cards. Anybody have experience with these? do they have microstutter? Would the performance be similar to dual 290x's?
 
How does the build quality compare with the Lian Li?
Almost as good I think, Though they do use some plastic parts that you have to be a little easier on unlike the Lian Li. The brushed aluminum on this case is fantastic! Also the painted interior is a plus. I almost went with the Lian Li PC-A76 because of the painted interior, But the layout didn't suit my needs, I didn't plan on installing 12 HDD's lol.
 
Big update! Lots of photos, And I have it up and running.

Leak testing, I couldn't help but hook up the Photons LED during the process. Probably should have jammed it full of towels, But I was pretty confident i had secured all the fittings.
1-3.jpg


There were tons of micro bubbles in the reservoir after leak testing, But no bubbles anywhere else in the loop.
3-2.jpg


Front intake fans look wicked!
4-2.jpg


Old beast, Meet the new beast! Working on stripping out some parts to reuse.
5-2.jpg


Pulled out the Sapphire Vapor-X R9 280x
6-3.jpg


7-2.jpg


280x cooler was a really tight fit behind the reservoir. It had maybe 1/4 inch clearance. Also i had to unmount the reservoir to get the card installed, And reach the PCI slot screws.
8-2.jpg


Cleaned up the 2 mechanical drives i'll be reusing, And mounted them in the Phanteks brackets.
9-4.jpg


I had to use the screws in the brackets because the quick releases allow the drives to rattle around quite a bit without them.
10-2.jpg


And the 1 TB Samsung 840 EVO SSD for the OS and everything else except for backup, And games.
11-3.jpg


A look down the length of the radiator.
13-2.jpg


2 bottom 140 fans installed, And cables cleaned up.
14-1.jpg


13 fans in total.
15-1.jpg


AAAAAAND i screwed up the top LED strip. They are side emitting LED's, And they were facing the wrong direction. I was getting nothing through the top lens. SOOOO another quick soldering session. Notice my ghetto soldering iron holder in the background.
16.jpg


The power company called, They want their power back.
17.jpg


A clip of me filing the reservoir and starting the pump. Was way loud to begin with, It now just has a quiet hum, Not annoying at all. Hardly notice it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SVElNW0dCo

I really wish i could embed videos here :/
 
I ordered a couple of those 12" CCFL light bars from Frozencpu. They seem to be real nice quality.
1-4.jpg


Installed one along the right side of the opening and one in the top next to the radiator shining down.
2-3.jpg


The ROG connect panel comes with a bay adapter that allows you to mount it in the front. Looks pretty damn sweet, And allows you to do small overclocks on the fly. The readout shows CPU temp, Base clock, CPU multiplier, And CPU fan speed, Which in my case is the 8 push/pull radiator fans.
3-3.jpg


I decided to use the bracket that sits next to the motherboard tray to hide the wiring. The plastic bit that screws onto the bracket was rectangular, And would not allow massive video cards to fit with it installed, So I had to cut out a notch to match the metal bracket. After sanding the edge smooth, It came out perfect.
4-3.jpg


Here it is installed in the case. I slapped the ROG case badge on there just to see if I liked it...I didn't. I'm looking around for a red reflective logo that just sais ASUS. Any suggestions on this? dosent have to be ASUS. Maybe you guys name the build? Is it worthy of a name? lol.
6-4.jpg


The red LED strips came out nice after the fix. Best of all they're not BLUE!
5-3.jpg


Benchmarks later tonight for those that are interested.
 
There seems to be a boundary around 4.6 GHz! It's not necessarily a temperature boundary either. Temperature does play a part because you have to bump the voltage up so high.

Initially getting to 4.5 Ghz was quite easy. It's stable as a rock when running Prime 95.


Moving up past 4.6, It gets unstable, And hot quick.


The only reason it gets so hot is because you have to bump up the voltage to 1.5v to get any kind of stability. Less than a minute after Prime 95 starts it gets to within 9 degrees of the TJ max. Anything over this frequency crashes almost immediately, regardless of voltage, Or temperature.
There is only one BIOS for this board out atm, so I'm hoping it gets better with the next revision.
The settings I used for the 4.5 Ghz Oc were:

  • BCLK = 101
  • CPU multiplier = 45
  • VCORE = 1.40v
  • CPU LLC = Ultra High
  • CPU current capability = 180%
  • CPU power phase control = Extreme

the VTT and PLL voltages didn't make any difference in stability @ 4.5 or 4.6 GHz, So I put them back on auto.
All the other settings I left alone after trying them out.

I ran Cinebench R15 while testing out the CPU strap @ 125 Freq. was 4551 GHz


I couldn't get 7.9 on the WEI Processor test even @ 4.6 Ghz.....WTF!!!!! I'm calling Steve Ballmer!
4.jpg~original


Onto the video card.
This little beast was quite the overclocker. I ran it at 1200 MHz on the core clock, and 6400 effective on the memory without any glitches, Sapphire makes a damn nice card.

Unigine Heaven


Unigine Valley


3D Mark Vantage, 3D Mark 11, And the new 3D Mark


It appears people are cheating on 3D Mark these days. because they are getting better results than me with lower clock, And ram settings both on the CPU and GPU. I have done everything I can think of short of messing with 3D Mark. Apparently this is accepted practice, Because I have read where even the leaderboard top 10 do this. That's nothing to be proud of if your PC can run 1000 FPS while displaying a black screen. Some argue this is OK because it's all part of knowing how to tweak the settings...That's crap, Because there is no control in this experiment. If one thing does not remain the same, Then you are comparing the results to .....what?

Still though, These results are nice, But I want more from such an expensive build. So I have some things ordered that should be here Monday hopefully. Though this wont help with the cheaters, It will make this a no compromise build. Which is what I've wanted since I Assembled my first custom pc back in 95, Before that I had a OEM intel P100 me and my dad both paid for from one of those huge generic pc catalogs back in the day, We paid like $1500 for it I think D: Pretty sure it had a 4 MB video card 0_o
 
I like your case and the red LED idea. Nice.

I shudder at the thought of buying deionized water from FrozenCPU......when distilled water is 2 bucks at my local chain drug store. I think they also sell deionized.:eek:
 
looks good man... i think that score is pretty right for the processor and clock speed that its at... I get 7250 in firestrike with a amd fx 6300 @ 4.73ghz and a powercolor 280x, what are your videocard clock speeds?
 
I wanted to mention, I use the Rampage IV Formula....same X79 chipset and a SB-E CPU........a 3930K.....and 4.5 GHz was about it. I reached 4.5 with little or no adjustments, but anything beyond that was either impossible or took way too much VCore.

My computer has run at 4.5 very stable, for over 2 years.:D
 
My 3930K is almost exactly the same. It does 4.4 at stock. Takes a medium voltage adjustment to hit 4.5 and anything beyond that is not really feasible for everyday usage.
 
looks good man... i think that score is pretty right for the processor and clock speed that its at... I get 7250 in firestrike with a amd fx 6300 @ 4.73ghz and a powercolor 280x, what are your videocard clock speeds?
I was running the core clock @ 1200 and the ram @ 1600 or 6400MHz effective. Any more on the core would cause artifacts, And I was afraid to push the ram any more. I also had my CPU @ 4.6 GHz to help with the physics tests.



I wanted to mention, I use the Rampage IV Formula....same X79 chipset and a SB-E CPU........a 3930K.....and 4.5 GHz was about it. I reached 4.5 with little or no adjustments, but anything beyond that was either impossible or took way too much VCore.

My computer has run at 4.5 very stable, for over 2 years.:D
Does your overclock run @ 4.5 constantly? I leave speedstep enabled, But it never wants to back off of the maximum clock speed, Even though CPU-Z shows that it has a range of multipliers to use.
 
I was running the core clock @ 1200 and the ram @ 1600 or 6400MHz effective. Any more on the core would cause artifacts, And I was afraid to push the ram any more. I also had my CPU @ 4.6 GHz to help with the physics tests.




Does your overclock run @ 4.5 constantly? I leave speedstep enabled, But it never wants to back off of the maximum clock speed, Even though CPU-Z shows that it has a range of multipliers to use.

That's under Windows Power Options. Processor power management -> Min Processor State.
 
So, I got this package Monday.
DSC01609.jpg


It contained this.
DSC01611.jpg


Apparently she scratched the boxes while she was in there! look at the claw marks ffs!
I've been messing with these cards for a couple days now, And ill post some pictures of them tomorrow, Also I'm working on a video to demonstrate the sound of the fans for those interested. Let me tell you right now these things are beasts. If you're on the fence about buying one, Or two, Or more, Get off the fence. Of course the 780 Ti is marginally faster, But not always.
ASUS is apparently really, Really excited about their GPU Tweak utility, It's on the box like 12 times :D
 
Nice build. Mine is very similar (same mobo, ram, 4930k, 480 rads, red led's, etc). Enthoo Primo FTW!
 
So heres what came in each box, Nothing terribly exciting.
1-6.jpg


Side by side.
3-5.jpg


The PCB.
2-5.jpg


I also received these Heat Killer water blocks from FrozenCPU Monday, Got the last 2 they had in stock D:
4-1-1.jpg


But before these go on I tested each of them individually, And was able to get a 10475 in 3D Mark FireStrike, Using a healthy overclock of 1090 MHz on the core, And 5800 MHz on the RAM.
5-5.jpg


The GPU once idled at 88 degrees while watching Youtube, And can run as hot as 94 degrees before they are throttled down, If the load is high enough. I made a video demonstrating the various fan speeds. Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCgt0mGqq4w&feature=youtu.be
 
The HeatKiller GPU block for my 290x's
1.jpg


These things are damn heavy, And awesome build quality too.
3.jpg


The back side shows some fine German mill work, And some standoffs.
4.jpg


The finish on the contact surfaces does have a reflection, But its not a mirror finish.
6.jpg


5.jpg


Ready to get to work on removing those stock coolers.
2.jpg


Had to remove 18 screws in total to disconnect the reference cooler. 16 on the PCB and 2 on the bracket.
7.jpg


Some gentle prying by hand and they popped right off.
8.jpg


Quite a hefty portion of TIM on the GPU. It had ran off the sides, And caked up all around the perimeter.
9.jpg


10.jpg


A few drops of Arctic Silver remover turned it into sludge, And was easily wiped off. I had to use a toothbrush to get it out of the tight areas.
11.jpg


12.jpg


Reapplied some Shin Etsu TIM to the GPU, and placed all of the thermal pads, This is a very time consuming process. 18 pads in total, And each has a clear protective film on each side.
13.jpg


Ugh the TIM looks like crap close up, But its as thin as I could make it.
14.jpg


Had to prep the backplate with these plastic standoffs before attaching the block because the screws run through the plate all the way into the block.
15.jpg


Though I did have to run this one screw into the block beforehand. The plate has no hole for this one.
16.jpg


The backplate dosent provide any cooling whatsoever, As a matter of fact it probably traps the heat between the PCB and itself, But this thing is pretty sweet looking, So it's staying put.
17.jpg


18.jpg


Install complete.
19.jpg


I thought it was pretty neat how the block conforms to the PCB components with little cutouts here and there.
20.jpg


21.jpg


I was able to finish the 2nd one much quicker, It only took just over an hour. imo these are the best looking blocks on the market.
23.jpg


22.jpg


I'll be running the tubing for these in parallel to keep the flow rate up, And to get even temps across both cards. The instructions say that for better temps to make the side nearest the back of the case your inlet, So i'll be doing that as well. All this will force me to change almost the entire water loop. I didn't like the way it looked anyway with those big sloppy hoops going up and down.
Update on that tomorrow probably.
 
Nice setup you got there:)
Thanks :D

Whats your firestrike score with 2 cards?
coming right up :D

Had to drain the loop to get the cards in. I put them in after the RayStorm block. After hooking up the drain hose with the quick release, Opening the valve, And taking the fill cap off of the res. the whole system drained in like 20 seconds. There was some residual water of course. Some tilting of the case drained it off quickly.
1-1.jpg


Plumbed the cards in parallel before installing to avoid having to fit the short length tubes while the cards were immobile.
2-1.jpg


3-1.jpg


Cut the tube around here to feed the cards.
4-1.jpg


5-1.jpg


Did a quick check of the inside of the tubes for gunk buildup. They looked nice and clean.
6-1.jpg


7-1.jpg


Relocated the temperature sensor to the second input on the res. to simplify the loop.
8-1.jpg


I used 2 45 degree rotary fittings to mate with the res.
9-2.jpg


Finished off the loop with a 90 degree rotary fitting and the Koolance quick disconnect on the res. output, For draining the system. The whole setup looks much better now.
These pictures don't do the tubing justice, They look opaque orange, When in reality, They are Translucent red.

10-1.jpg


Another 2 cables add to the back.
11-1.jpg


This bundle is getting quite thick.
12-1.jpg


I've used almost every available socket on the PSU.
13-1.jpg


My best Fire Strike score. It was a dead heat with #100 on the 2 card leaderboards for a day or 2, I'm pretty proud of that.
14-1.jpg


Temperature is no longer an issue with these cards, The hottest they get with 100% load is around 55 degrees C, Even with an extreme overclock.
I think I'm running into vdroop, Because of the load on the PSU. if I go over 1.3v the scores start getting worse. This of course limits how high I can go with my clock speeds. This benchmark was done with artifacts present. The CPU, and GPU were stressed to the max, It was unstable to say the least.

The settings for the benchmark;
CPU@ 4675 Mhz
RAM@ 2800 Mhz
GPU@ 1150 Mhz
Memory bus clock@ 5700 Mhz
 
How's that PSU working for you? Like it?
Yeah, I love it, The only reason im getting vdroop is that im stressing it to the max with 13 case fans 2 HDD's 1 SSD, An overclocked 4960x, 1.65v RAM, 2 overclocked 290x's, Case lighting, And a pump. It's super quiet, And also has a mode where the fan will not even spin up until it's put under load. The build quality is also nice. I just wish somebody sold individually sleeved cables for it like these.
 
We all know what a phenomenal piece of garbage COD Ghosts is, And to add to the heap of garbage, Today I found that crossfire is almost impossible in Ghosts.
Tried it out, And for the first 30 seconds or so with everything maxed out, Everything seemed to be going fine. Then came the massive frame skipping, Followed shortly by the game crashing with an error message.

codg4.jpg


I wasn't sure what the hell it was talking about since I have 16 gigs of RAM. Then I began to wonder if it was referring to the video memory. So I fired up 2 GPUZ's and started playing again. The crash happened again after the video memory went past 7700 MB. Apparently what happened was Ghosts gobbled up all 8 GB of video memory and ran out...Were talking 1920 x 1200 here not 4k resolution.
So I did some digging and found that the ingame anti aliasing + crossfire = crash. Then I made the following changes.

codg2.jpg


And...

codg3.jpg


After the changes I found that the game was now stable at around 5800 MB of video memory. I was then curious what kind of frame rates I was getting, So I fired up Fraps and got some surprising results.

Results with CrossfireX on:
2014-01-24 23:01:10 - iw6mp64_ship
Frames: 42617 - Time: 613490ms - Avg: 69.466 - Min: 43 - Max: 93


Results with CrossfireX off:
2014-01-24 23:14:27 - iw6mp64_ship
Frames: 54356 - Time: 623677ms - Avg: 87.154 - Min: 67 - Max: 94


I played 2 matches against 10 enemy bots on the same map with the same settings for both results. The Optimize 1x1 setting was mandatory for crossfire, Anything else crashed shortly after starting the match.

Also as a side note Crysis 3, and Farcry 3 have issues with Crossfire, Farcry 3 crashes almost immediately. Also Hitman Absolution will run fine for 10 min. or so then crash out with a 0x00000061 error. I ran all 3 in eyefinity @ 6048 x 1200. I was getting a bit worried that there may be something wrong with one of my cards or GSkill RAM, Until I did some more digging and found that other people are having similar problems with these games, Especially Farcry 3, regardless of SLI or Crossfire.

So if the most graphics intensive games on the market wont run with SLI/Crossfire what's the point? This is getting aggravating :mad:
 
Did some testing with Metro Last Light this morning. Massive microstutter with crossfire enabled, Though it did not crash. Decided to run some benchmarks @ 1920 x 1200, Here are the results.

CrossfireX disabled; core @ 1090 memory @ 5400.
111.jpg


Average framerate
222.jpg


CrossfireX enabled; cores @ 1090 memory @ 5400.
333.jpg


Average framerate
444.jpg


Clearly Metro LL + CrossfireX have issues with frame pacing, Just look at that staggering. For those who haven't experienced it, Microstutter feels like extreme motion blur mixed with lag. Apparently Fraps can't capture the effect or I would make a video.
 
i thought the latest drivers fixed this
I'm using the latest 13.12 whql driver from AMD's website, And frame pacing is turned on in CCC.

Just did a quick test on Hitman Absolution.
Settings:
  • CrossfireX: On
  • Core clocks: 1090
  • Memory: 5400
  • Resolution: 6048 x 1200
  • Quality: Ultra
  • Vsync: Off
  • MSAA: 8x
BTW this looks amazing on 3 26" monitors. Link to original here.
1-2.jpg


Playable average framerate. I guess that lowest framerate was just a blip. Everything was nice and smooth :D
2-2.jpg


I'm noticing a trend here. Seems the games are trying to use more memory than what is available for whatever reason. Shouldn't the frames take a nosedive instead?
3-2.jpg


Testing with one card.
Settings:
  • CrossfireX: Off
  • Core clock: 1090
  • Memory: 5400
  • Resolution: 6048 x 1200
  • Quality: Medium
  • Vsync: Off
  • MSAA: 4x
4-2.jpg


memory usage. Now that's more like it.
5-2.jpg


There were no crashes during benchmarking, And everything played smooth. I probably could have pushed the single card test a little bit more, And still had playable settings.
 
Very nicely done! and great writeup too!

Have a EP myself. Found putting on a castor base makes it much easier to deal with.. also greatly improves airflow to multi-fan radiator in bottom. ;) Would be no problem to tell you how I do it.
Was wondering where you got the side-view led strips and what their technical name is. I'm trying to find some myself on the cheap. They look like a good way to light up the inside of case too. Don't suppose they do a RGB version.. 5x5mm is size of RGB led :(

Congrats on a very nice build!
 
Very nicely done! and great writeup too!

Have a EP myself. Found putting on a castor base makes it much easier to deal with.. also greatly improves airflow to multi-fan radiator in bottom. ;) Would be no problem to tell you how I do it.
Was wondering where you got the side-view led strips and what their technical name is. I'm trying to find some myself on the cheap. They look like a good way to light up the inside of case too. Don't suppose they do a RGB version.. 5x5mm is size of RGB led :(

Congrats on a very nice build!
Thx mate :D
HERE are the led strips i used. There doesn't seem to be any more available from the U.S. but there are from China. Make sure you get the 60 SMD version, because i tried the 30 SMD's and there are not enough LED's to light up the diffuser. It was so dim you could barely see it even with the lights off. Also get the 24" ones so you can trim them to length.
Unfortunately the RGB 5050 led's are too wide for this application, At least the ones i found, And i scoured the interwebs :/ Maybe with some careful modifications you would be able to make them work...shave a little here and there.
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
Wow this build is so cool. I recently got a Phanteks Enthoo Primo but I was also going for the black and red look. Was it hard changing the LED strip from blue to red?
 
I plan to follow your footstep with 280mm monsta on the bottom. I also plan to get the photon res w/ pump attached but going to mount it on the res bracket. I'm not sure if the photon is too thick and won't fit with my two 290x.
 
Wow this build is so cool. I recently got a Phanteks Enthoo Primo but I was also going for the black and red look. Was it hard changing the LED strip from blue to red?

If you know how to solder it's easy. Just use the 2 prong connectors from the original strips, Solder and sleeve the black wire to black, And red to red. Theres 2 3 mm LED's inside of the power switch as well. The hardest part was taking the lenses off without breaking the tabs off.
 
Good to see you upgraded the 280x. I saw the 4960x and was a bit confused by the "280x until I can afford a 290x" comment lol.
 
Back
Top