A couple of weeks ago, I found myself needing a new 'puter, due to my idiot cousin accidentally spilling his beer into my case - he managed to actually get about half of the beer inside where it made its way into the power supply and fried it. Well this was the PERFECT opportunity to do a new build. It's all stock stuff, and my first liquid cooled build and I'm extremely happy with it.
Details of all this water cooled AMD goodness follows;
All parts purchased from www.newegg.com unless otherwise noted.
Case - NZXT Source 210-002 White - $39.99 ( Roomy ATX mid tower with lots of fan holes, 20mm space behind main plate for wiring)
Mobo - ASRock 880GM-LE - $54.99 ( AM3, hybrid crossfire, overclocks very nicely, but doesnt unlock cores)
CPU - AMD Phenom II x4 980 BE - $149.99 ( Not Thuban, but the fastest (3.7ghz stock), most stable chunk o' Deneb on the planet)
Mem - G-Skill Ripjaws 2x4gb/1600 - $39.99 ( Red & shiny, loves overclocking)
Grfx - Gigavyte GTX460OC V2 1gb - $139.99 ( Dual fans, dual DVI output, mini HDMI output)
H2O - Corsair CWCH60 Liquid cooler - $69.99 ( Complete, self-contained liquid CPU cooling system - installs in under 10 minutes)
Fans - 2x Vantec Stealth 120mm DBB - $30.00 ( Quiet 78cfm fans from my local computer repair store)
HDD - 2x 500gb Sata 3 HDD's - $180.00 ( RAID arrayed, nothing special)
DVD - Asus DVD/RW drive SATA - $18.99 ( cheap, but does it's job as designed)
Pwr - Antec NEO-He 550watt - $60.00 ( Modular SLI ready, I bought this for a client repair a couple of years ago & never used it)
Total invested = $784.00
Comments;
For a case that's only 40 bucks, its surprisingly well designed and well built, It's powder coated outside AND inside and it can accept up to 6 additional fans (max; 3x140mm fans - 120mm fans will mount where 140mm's go if desired), I broke a blade on the included NZXT 120mm case fan by ever so slightly coming into contact with the fan blades with my finger while moving cables around. This fan was noisy and vibrated to begin with so out it went. 20mm of space behind the main plate and back plate provide ample space for cable routing. And,.... this thing is as white as the driven snow and makes the interior bright and very clean looking.
The Corsair CWCH60 high perfomance hydro cooling loop is AWESOME !! - it installed easily and perfectly within 10 minutes !! - I WILL NEVER air cool a CPU again, EVER !!! It went into the rear fan port where the included case fan went. I installed one 120mm fan in one of the top fan ports to pull air up and out, and the other in the side panel to push air in - This fan port conveniently, and I'm assuming by design, sits right over my vid card. I'll add more fans IF the need presents itself, but for now under load and OC'd - the case feels cool, almost cold even, to the touch.
The Gigabyte GTX460OC V2 video card takes 2- 6 pin power leads - I'm assuming because of overclockability and its two cooling fans.
Based on ambient temp of 21C(70F), my CPU idles at 28-30C (82-85F) at stock speeds - thats only 8-10C (15-17F) above ambient. Under load (BF3, ultra settings for 4-5 hours) the CPU has just topped 46C(115F)
OC'd to 4.2ghz, idle sits at 32-34C (90-93F) and under the same load as above, has hit 50C (122F) I've yet to see it go higher than that and am very happy that this build keeps below the 50c plateau w/o having to resort to stronger measures.
The Mobo was amazingly inexpensive for it's capabilities but sometime in the future I plan on swapping it out for a board that has 2 or more PCIE slots, a better south-bridge chipset, and can unlock cores.
I still have some cable management to do as you will see in the pics,...
Comments welcome & Peace Out Y'all =8)
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