Project H20-Micro a Watercooled 3 Liter system with GTX970

A while back I mentioned some results I had gotten with my setup but I've decided to do a quick run with some games included so here we go.

Firstly I ran an Idle test, nothing spectacular, I was streaming Youtube at the same time.

Ambient was 21C, with the radiator temperature being 30C so about 9C higher than ambient. Fans where at their minimum speed.
Power draw at the wall was about 48 Watts.

Next up we have Prime95 on 3 Cores with Furmark on 1 Core, this proved to be the most stressfull scenario I could create and is by no means even remotely comparable to a normal load.

Ambient was 21C, with the radiator temperature being 40C so about 19C higher than ambient, Fans where at full blast.
Power draw at the wall was about 285 Watts.
HWInfo64 results seem a little vague, de maximums for CPU temperature are hitting 99C, but the average is 88C, and looking at the current temperatures it jumps from 88C to 97C for 1 second and goes back down.
I this image you can also see how I had my probes for measuring temperatures arranged.

Next up I tested 2 games, Skyrim with +- 200 mods and Far Cry 3.

Ambient was 21C, with the radiator temperature being 47C so about 26C higher than ambient, fans where around 70%. Here can see that H2O-Micro can be small and quiet when playing games.
Power draw at the wall was about 233 Watts.
So with only 50 Watts less power consumed than the Prime95/Furmark run and the radiator being 5C hotter, temperatures are excellent on both the CPU(76C MAX) and GPU(73C MAX)



Ambient was 20C, with the radiator temperature being 46C so about 26C higher than ambient. Fans where at around 70% speed.
Power draw at the wall was about 207 Watts.
Again excellent temperatures and fan speeds while playing a game.


I've also received some samples this week for the kit to check out and test.
Among them a set of fans most of you will recognize instantly.

But first! I orderded some Anti-vandal switches, Both are the same model and have a white led but 1 is a Dot and the other a Ring, let me know which you prefer. I already have a preference, can you tell? :p

Switches in Off state


Switches in On state



I modeled the switch in CAD and pooped out a render.


And finally I was sent 2 Noctua NF-A9x14 PWM fans by Noctua. These are actually my first Noctua's and I'm looking forward to testing them. I will be comparing them to some other manufacturers but they haven't arrived yet.






Some of my models I download from a website called www.grabcad.com and someone on there already made some Noctua models, but not of the Noctua NF-A9x14 PWM.
So I went ahead and made a CAD model and gave it a lick of paint in 3dsmax. I have to say I'm pretty proud of this model, it's 99% accurate.


That was it for now.
 
Wow you made a really good job with the CAD drawing of the Noctua A9x14. Looks very realistic.
 
dondan said:
Wow you made a really good job with the CAD drawing of the Noctua A9x14. Looks very realistic.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I also made a short GIF today.
OSWFSXh.gif


Lakai129 said:
That new render looks fantastic with the power button.
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Starting to look good right? :p
 
Hmmmm, perhaps there is going to be a possibilty to support a 390X in H2O-Micro?
How extreme would it be to have the highest end single GPU be 17cm in length.
Should be possible in theory, there is no space need for all the VRAM so the VRM can be more optimally placed.
2000609593.jpeg


I'm really curious about the 390X now and it should be launched this quarter.
 
Well that entirely depends on the power consumption of the card. The higher the power consumption, the beefier the voltage regulators need to be and the bigger the heatsink.
But man I'm loving that I/O panel, could that be standard for every GPU from now on, please?
 
That would be perfect if amd made the 390x 17cm. But right now all we can do is hope.
 
iFreilicht said:
Well that entirely depends on the power consumption of the card. The higher the power consumption, the beefier the voltage regulators need to be and the bigger the heatsink.
But man I'm loving that I/O panel, could that be standard for every GPU from now on, please?
Click to expand...

True but most reference design tend to skimp a little on the VRM side, so I really am curious if they have managed to squeeze it into 17cm, or rather like the GTX970 reference have the extended bracket for the fan assembly and have the actual PCB only be 17cm.

Yeah either full HDMI and DP or mini HDMI + mini DP + DVI.
 
Well part of my design was based on the fact that you don't need a lot of Rad to cool something. In fact the R295x has a board power of 500W, say 400W of GPU Heat and they only used a 120mm rad to get it all out.

12*12= 144cm^2*3.8= 561cm^3 of radiator volume for a 400W to 500W load
9.2*18.4= 169cm^2*2.8= 473cm^3 of radiator volume for a 250W(GTX970 + 4790K) to 350W ("390X" + 4790K).

Of course there are differences, such as fans, material and FPI.
Asetek build aluminum rads, mine will be copper. They have Push & Pull with 120mm fans I have 2x92mm fan in Push OR Pull.
So maybe it can work ;)
 
This is also quite a nice image to see the overall length more clearly.

27a.jpg


It's pretty nice looking honestly. It's the ideal length at 17cm too.
 
rawrr said:
This is also quite a nice image to see the overall length more clearly.

27a.jpg


It's pretty nice looking honestly. It's the ideal length at 17cm too.
Click to expand...

Man if this thing turns out to be 17cm in length. I might just order it and make it fit in my prototype. though my 2x80mm rad might be to small for this.
 
rawrr said:
It's the ideal length at 17cm too.
Click to expand...
It's obviously a few centimeters longer than 17cm, if the Chiphell pic indicates the true size at all.

The "leaked pic" of 390X provided by wccftech and this one by chiphell show different number of dots on the black plate, different spacing between the red RADEON printing and the bracket, what else. Whoever rendered/photoshopped any of these didn't take anything seriously.
 
Hey QinX, I was wondering if there are any new updates on this project. Thanks!
 
Bet Qinx is waiting for the Fury to be officially announced to update this thread! XD

Also have you finally solved the "wake from sleep mode no signal" issue after switching to the on-board sata power? I'm still really interested to know how you'll be solving this ;ppp
 
Thanks for showing interest!
Unfortunately I've had the project on the back-burner the past month or so. There is some stuff on the way that needs to be sorted out and tested. Expect some more news in about 2 weeks.
 
In the final build, the GTX 970 is powered through the extra 8 pins by an external power supply...

If a card (say the 750Ti) doesn't have extra 6 pin ports, is it possible to just wire directly to the 12V lines on the PCIE pins and power that way?
 
perpension said:
In the final build, the GTX 970 is powered through the extra 8 pins by an external power supply...

If a card (say the 750Ti) doesn't have extra 6 pin ports, is it possible to just wire directly to the 12V lines on the PCIE pins and power that way?
Click to expand...

That is a good question, and it seems like that depends on the implementation of the power circuit inside the case. Because the PCIex4 slot supplies only 25W, not the 75W a 750Ti needs to operate, the custom riser used in this build had an input for 12V power from the HD-Plex PSU.
But, as I have found out by testing and mentioned above, a GPU that does have 6- or 8-pin inputs doesn't seem to require a high current from the PCIe connector, it's just important that the circuit as a whole is able to supply enough power.

So, if QinX decides to make his life easier by using a riser that doesn't have an additional power input from now on, a 750Ti wouldn't work in the H2O-micro. If he wanted to retain that functionality to comply with the PCIe Standard, then a 750Ti would work without the second PSU, if the first PSU is strong enough to power all components.

EDIT: it seems I may have misunderstood your question. If you were talking about the second PSU supplying the additional power to the PCIe slot, that's something that would theoretically be possible, but it depends on whether the riser will have inputs for that.
 
Since H2O-micro got custom waterblock for GTX 970 and custom cutouts for video outputs on back, it's impossible to fit graphics card with another PCB and outputs.
 
Hi everyone. Inspired by the OPs awesome work, i've decided to do some testing myself, just for my home sys. Right now, I don't fully get how pci-e works. For an instance, why THIS ? Why do we even have such large pci-e slots, if only the first 32 pins are used ? Perhaps QinX (or someone else reading this) can point me towards a clear article - better than wiki :(, this would indeed provide very helpfull. I hope this doesn't reach too far outside the topic; qwerkus
 
qwerkus said:
Hi everyone. Inspired by the OPs awesome work, i've decided to do some testing myself, just for my home sys. Right now, I don't fully get how pci-e works. For an instance, why THIS ? Why do we even have such large pci-e slots, if only the first 32 pins are used ? Perhaps QinX (or someone else reading this) can point me towards a clear article - better than wiki :(, this would indeed provide very helpfull. I hope this doesn't reach too far outside the topic; qwerkus
Click to expand...

It actually depends on the application, some might need the bandwidth provided by a 3.0 x16. Most games don't need all the lanes to run perfectly. There are many articles about it (which include benchmarks):

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI-Express_Scaling/
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Ivy_Bridge_PCI-Express_Scaling/

There is also an interesting build by Eddie666 with some great results:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1835501

:p
 
kooki said:
It actually depends on the application, some might need the bandwidth provided by a 3.0 x16. Most games don't need all the lanes to run perfectly. There are many articles about it (which include benchmarks):

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI-Express_Scaling/
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Ivy_Bridge_PCI-Express_Scaling/

There is also an interesting build by Eddie666 with some great results:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1835501

:p
Click to expand...
Awesome reply: thanks a lot; the latter build is approximately what I'm try to emulate ! So with a gtx 750 ti, 4x will be totally fine. Will try to post some pics once it's done :) I found a french site dealing with pci-e 3.0, and they found a difference of about 1-2% only with gtx 980 cards. So cards are slowly pushing towards the maximum capacity of x4 lanes, but nowhere to the x8 lanes. So x16 is only useful for professional cards ? Now I understand why QinX isn't worried at all plugging his 970 onto a 4x riser...
 
Hey eveyone,

Just letting you know I'm not dead or anything, some personal stuff has happened that I had to address. I'm working on some stuff and I hope to have some more information in the future for you.
 
That's okay QinX as this is an impressive and ambitious project to undertake by yourself. If you don't mind me asking, what's the power solution you decided on?
 
CknSalad said:
That's okay QinX as this is an impressive and ambitious project to undertake by yourself. If you don't mind me asking, what's the power solution you decided on?
Click to expand...

I've decided on the dual adapter solution, eventhough you would have 2 adapters, it gives more options for the future then relying on 1 big adapter.
 
rawrr said:
What are these options that you talk about?
Click to expand...
I think he means more external power brick choices to choose from. There's only one high wattage power brick by Dell/Alienware that is 330W, but it's not widely available and there's often a shortage of supply, which drives up cost. Personally I like having just one brick instead of having two bricks, especially when moving this DIY PC around, but unfortunately there's only one high wattage power brick.

QinX, is it possible to have just an open-space I/O slot for the GPU, so the user can use any reference single/slot ports GPU instead of just the GTX 970?
 
CknSalad said:
I think he means more external power brick choices to choose from. There's only one high wattage power brick by Dell/Alienware that is 330W, but it's not widely available and there's often a shortage of supply, which drives up cost. Personally I like having just one brick instead of having two bricks, especially when moving this DIY PC around, but unfortunately there's only one high wattage power brick.

QinX, is it possible to have just an open-space I/O slot for the GPU, so the user can use any reference single/slot ports GPU instead of just the GTX 970?
Click to expand...

I'm evaluating what future support for different GPUs is going to require.
Right now I would have the following requirements.
1) 17cm in length
2) Single Slot I/O
3) Standard PCIe PCB heigth (no ASUS or Gigabyte GTX970 Mini cards)

What I would have to do in order to support a new GPU:
1) Design a custom GPU block for said GPU
2) Replacement backpanel for the case to support different I/O layout

I'm looking to remove the 17cm PCB length limit to allow between 15cm(Fury Nano) up to 22cm (8.5 inch) long cards.

Because of the limited height of the case it would be hard for me to support the default PCIe bracket, also with cards such as the GTX970 that have a dual width bracket it can not be secured.

Perhaps an option would be to have GPU specific backpanels and 1 generic backpanel for people who don't care, but to be honest the costs of fabrication for 1 backpanel aren't interesting, it 1 single sheets with no bends, so it only needs lasercutting, countersinking and anodizing/powdercoating.

But as mentioned, I'm still evaluating possibilities.
 
Hey QinX, any new updates to this project? I understand that you must be busy and it's hard to progress much in a short amount of time for an ambitious pc case project as a one-man team.
 
I'm working on a bunch of things at the moment I will be doing 1 major update hopefully somewhere in August. Apologies for the lack of updates but the next one is going to be the biggest one yet.
 
No rush, no need to feel pressure.

Btw thanks for the great post on the bifurcation thread. Always learning a lot from you.
 
As veryrarium said, no rush as you're a one man team doing a very ambitious project. If you can support any reference gpu, this would sell very well as it would be the smallest case with watercooling capabilities.
 
Hi everyone,

Sorry about the lack of updates, I've been busy with the new design and getting my BOM and pricing complete.
I'm close to final but you will have the bear with me for a little longer ;)

For now all I can show you is a small teaser of the new design.

full.jpg
 
Looks interesting but also like something hard to make. is it plastic or CNC milled body?
 
The intentionally blurry image is hyyyype. Also, milled out of a single piece of aluminum sounds like it's gonna be amazing.
 
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