Overclock.net banner

[Build Log] White Water - Lian Li PC-O11, R6E

14K views 173 replies 11 participants last post by  Mat_UK 
#1 ·
Hi Everyone,

So I am starting a new build. I have built my own custom PCs from the days when the cases only came in beige (remember them days?) times have, thankfully, moved on. I think my first build was a 386 and it was so long ago when I first bought a hard drive it was £1 (GBP) per Mb.... so that 300Mb drive cost me a stonking £300 !!

This will be my 3rd water cooled build - although the first two were in the same case so I am not sure that really counts...

Anyway, I have done one build with soft tubing and recently swapped that out for hard line and a few new components (twin GTX 1080s, second rad and a monster res). Now I have decided to rebuild the whole lot into a new case, this time in WHITE. My PCs for the last howevermany years have all been in black cases, so this time I'm going for a complete change with the Lian Li PC-O11 WW. It will of course be water cooled and, perhaps a bit predictably, this build is call White Water.

My current build is in a pretty ancient Corsair Obsidian 800D - it's been a great case but it is truly massive and takes up half the room. Great for building a water PC and tinkering with but I have decided smaller is better for this time around.

The 800D is a bit battered and I have modded it to drill out the drive cages and modded the front panel to fit a second 360 rad. It works really well but it's time to retire the old beast.

First up, I will post some pictures of the current build to show you what I am starting from.

Hope you enjoy !

Mat
 
See less See more
#2 ·
Ok as promised here's the pictures of where I am starting from, this is the donor PC and I'll keep some of the components for the new build and Ebay the rest...
 
#3 ·
Ok as promised here's the pictures of where I am starting from. It works well enough but I have to admit it's pretty ugly. This is the donor PC and I'll keep some of the components for the new build and Ebay the rest...
 

Attachments

#4 ·
The build has started!

Ok so I now have quite a few of the components to start the build.

These are the new parts:

Lian Li PC-O11WW Midi Tower case - White Window
Intel Core i9 7900x
ASUS Rampage VI Extreme X299
Samsung 970 EVO 1TB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD
Black Ice Nemesis GTS 360 mm radiator - White
G.Skill Trident Z RGB 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 3600MHz Quad Channel Kit
EK-FB ASUS ROG R6E RGB Monoblock - Acetal+Nickel


These parts will be salvage from my current build and moved into the new one:

EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 SC GAMING ACX 3.0 - EK-FC1080 GTX Backplate - ek-fc1080 GTX Water Block, Black Acetal
EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 SC GAMING ACX 3.0 - EK-FC1080 GTX Backplate -
XSPC EX360 Slim Line 360mm radiator - White
XSPC Photon 270 Tube Reservoir with X4 Pump
BitFenix Spectre PRO PWM 120mm Fan – White x6 of
Dell U2715H 27" Widescreen LCD Monitor - x3 of in SLI surround
Corsair HX 1000W ATX Modular SLI Compliant Power Supply
Corsair Gaming M65 PRO RGB Mouse
Corsair K70 LUX RGB MX Red Keyboard

Most of this should go in pretty sweet but my main concern is whether or not I can fit the two rads top and bottom of the case and still fit that HUGE res/pump combo in the main compartment of the PC-011. On paper, it seems to fit but it’s tight and I might not have enough room to get everything connected up. Possible I could drop one fan off one of the rads and run the 2 360s with 5 fans or swap one out for a 240 rad….
 
#6 ·
Hi, yes that's part of the plan. The R6E board comes with a 20% off voucher for Cablemods so I will be giving them a try. Not sure yet what colours to go for though, I think I need to get the build further along and give that some thought, I started the build proper today so I'll post an update here.

Cheers
 
#7 ·
Prepping the mobo!

Ok, so today I started the build proper, beginning with prepping the motherboard.

First off, removing the stock heatsink for the VRM and the 10Gb ethernet chip. Pretty simple process although the passive that comes with the EK monoblock for the Aquantia chip looks pretty basic to me… we will see, I don’t have any plans for a 10Gb network any time soon anyway so that’s a problem for another day.

Next, installing the CPU. Man those sockets look delicate with that many pins in there, I prefer the old approach of having the pins on the CPU but I suppose you could bork those too if you aren’t careful. Anyway that was no problem, I followed the advice on the socket cover and installed the CPU before removing the cover from the socket clamp, I’d recommend this as removing the plastic cover from the clamp requires a bit of force.

Finally the monoblock goes on…
 

Attachments

#8 ·
I'm not quite sure what this is for? The EK block comes with the RGB leds pre-installed with a long cable to connect to the motherboard header but this also came in the box. What is it? A spare, an option for using a shorter cable? Anyone know?
 

Attachments

#11 ·
One LED strip is 4-pins 12V non-addressable and the other is 5V (3-pins) Addressable. You can use whatever you want with the R6E but careful to plug it to the apprpriate header. Read the manuals.
 
#9 · (Edited)
So now for the NVMe SSD. There are a couple of options for installing these but if you only need one then the obvious approach is to use the socket under the 'armour'.

Remove the screw in the picture between the 4th and 5th PCIe slots and then basically yank the armour off. It took me a minute or two to figure this out as I wasn't sure if there were other screws to remove... but no, one screw and a simple yank and it was off.

One thing to note. Leave the armour off as it also covers 2 mounting holes for attaching the mobo to the case, if you put it back on now you'll only have to remove it again later.
 

Attachments

#10 ·
Into the case

The case arrived as well, for now I have stuck a nice but ugly (well the cables are anyway) Enermax 650w PSU in there until I get the Corsair HX 1000w out of my old build. Pictures below with the case empty and then with the prepared motherboard mounted. At the moment it looks like there is tons of free space in the main case chamber but I am pretty sure that will fill up quick!
 

Attachments

#13 ·
Damn, that monoblock looks like a factory part! Cleaning looking! Looking good.


Jake
 
#14 ·
Thanks Jake. The build has come on quite a bit but I haven’t had time to update this build log. I’ll get it up to date and be interested in what everyone thinks.
 
#15 ·
Ok so a few updates on the buildhere...

First off I have my order in for somecustom cables from Cable Mod, the R6E comes with a 20% discount voucher (whichworked!) but still about $100 on cables in total. They will be white and darkgrey, hopefully they’ll look great but I don’t expect them to arrive for awhile yet.

Also, I've had HUGE problems gettingstability on the R6E with my ram at any sort of overclock. The kit I was tryingis this one:

G.Skill’s Trident Z RGB DDR4-3600 32GB F4-3600C16Q-32GTZR

This kit is on the ASUS QVL for thisboard but trying to boot with XMP was a complete non-starter. The most commonissue was that the board gets stuck at ‘Detect Memory’ during POST, that andthe error ‘AF’ showing on the OLED.

Even at stock 2133Mhz I wasn’t alwaysable to POST the board.

Looking at what this could be, I guessit’s the motherboard, the RAM or the CPU… or a combination problem with thisconfiguration not working together.

I’ve gone with RMA on the RAM as I was almost out of time to return this kit.It’s being replaced with a lower clocked version with faster timings so I doubtthere is any real world performance difference between the two kits and thelower clock speed might help if it’s CPU/mobo related…


Trident Z RGB 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4PC4-25600C14 3200MHz Quad Channel Kit (F4-3200C14Q-32GTZR)

This is arriving today so I will letyou know how that goes. I have read a bunch of people having RAM stabilityissues with this platform…perhaps I got unlucky with the silicon lottery somewhere…
 
#16 ·
Wow! Two bits of good news, first off the Cable Mods custom cables just arrived in the post! That was pretty fast work as they shipped from the US (I'm in the UK) and I only ordered them on 5th July - so 8 days from ordering and they are here, great work Cable Mod!


The other bit of good news is that the 3200Mhz kit from G Skill also arrived and this is showing much more success than the 3600Mhz kit.


I can boot with XMP profile with all 4 sticks in quad channel mode running at 3200Mhz and timings of 14-14-14-34 - exactly what it says on the box!


I noticed that although the XMP profile sets these to run at 1.35v they were actually running at 1.36v - bit odd, power supply maybe? - anyway I manually set these down to 1.34v and the BOIS tells me they are running at 1.344v ... happy with that for now :)


Also, I did a quick OC on the CPU. All cores at 4,400Mhz at stock (auto) voltage. This looks on average about 1.1v across all cores. Fantastic! I haven't had long to tweak with this but as an initial test that's pretty good and great news compared to the problems I was having even booting up with the other DRAM kit.
 
#17 ·
Some eye candy for you :)


I can't wait to get these in the case and see how they look.
 

Attachments

#18 ·
Hmm so my excitement over the 3200 RAM booting in XMP was a bit premature :(

It ran for a while and then the dreaded 'Code AF Memory Detect' errors came back while trying to POST … just with XMP enabled and everything else on Auto. Very annoying.

However, the interesting thing here is I swapped out the Corsair HX1000 PSU - which I haven't had any problems with before but it is about 8 years old now - for a brand new Corsair AX1500i

I was kind of hoping this would help but I really wasn't expecting the PSU to be part of the issue... well I was wrong! With the AX1500i installed I haven't seen a single POST failure and the 'Code AF Memory Detect' hasn't appeared once!

This board/chipset/CPU/RAM or some combination of them does seem pretty tricky to get stable. I've built a load of systems and this one has been the biggest pig by far to get running. I am thinking maybe it is especially sensitive to the quality of power supply - given the high clocks (ram/cpu) and huge wattage drawn by the i7900x processor, that could be where my problem was. I will have to see how stable it is over a few days but so far it's looking good.

I had a bit of a play with the CPU clocks, leaving the RAM at 3200 14-14-14-34 (basically left at XMP settings). With everything on Auto I got to 4.6Ghz OC on all cores without any trouble at all (again running with the new PSU).

With a bit more tweaking I got to 5Ghz on my best core with the rest at 4.5Ghz. This took 1.325v on the 5Ghz core with the rest at Auto. The temps though are scary! I hit 102c on that core before I got scared and dialled it back - interesting it didn't throttle due to thermals, at least HW64 didn't report it if it did.
 

Attachments

#19 ·
I am now running at 4.9Ghz 1.26v on one core with the rest at 4.5Ghz on Auto. RAM still on XMP settings at 3200 14-14-14-34

The temps are still pretty hot - around 90c on full loads. This is with the custom water loop in too. I suspect this may need delidding at some point but that is not something I've done before so I will wait to get everything stable and fully tested before I start hacking the lid off my chip!

I am going to leave it at that for OCing for a while to let it settle in and see if I get any errors or crashing while I finish off the build and I'll keep an eye on those temps too - not sure what will happen after an hour or two of gaming...


Here's the current numbers...
 

Attachments

#20 ·
Do yourself a favor and do a delid, it's not that difficult.

I have been doing a bunch of testing on a similar setup, using an i9 7900x and R6E with a Bitspower monoblock and 2x 360mm rads. Delidding dropped temps for me 15 deg C on average for the hottest cores under load, and the temperature spread between cores decreased by a few degrees as well. Before delid the hottest cores could get to 90 deg C on a 1.2v/4.5 GHz all core overclock pretty easily. After delid same testing the hottest cores get to 75-75 deg C.

Good luck with your build. I was originally planning on housing mine in an NZXT H700i, but after testing with panels on my temps were not where I wanted them. So I'm moving my build into a PC-o11 dynamic as well, lol. Just waiting for it to not be backordered any more.
 
#21 ·
Thanks for the advice. I think I will end up delidding this thing as it runs so damn hot, I could make tea with it! Apart from removing the IHS, which I guess is either buying a tool or just going at it with a knife, what I am unsure of is how or if you need to make up for the extra space this creates between the chip and the waterblock? Or does the waterblock simply tighten down further so it's tight up against the chip?

I originally was going to go with the o-11 dynamic too, I had it on back order for about 3 weeks but got bored of waiting and cancelled it when I saw this case was in stock. As it turned out I think this case fits by build pretty well so I am happy enough I ended up with this. Let me get some pictures up and you can let me know what you think.
 
#22 ·
Back to the build... one worry I had about this case being a lot smaller than my old 600D case was how (or if) I could get the huge xspc Photon 270 res/pump combo fitted. The size of this thing is 327.6 x 87 x 92mm


It also comes with an integrated mount which runs the whole length of the tube and I assume is geared up to mount along a run of fans. I though I could keep this and just drill some holes in the case for the screws but it didn't really fit anywhere and looked a bit out of place for my build. In the end I removed the long mount and just kept the two brackets top and bottom of the res. This meant drilling 4 mouting holes in the backplate of the case and there was no tolerance for getting this wrong...

One good thing about this mouning position was that I coud run the pump inlet through the backplate and into the rear chamber of the case. I wanted to put the drain round the back to keep the main chamber as clean as possible. A 30mm extender screwed into the pump just happened to fit perfectly through one of the premade cable holes that came with the case so the only mod at this point was to drill the four screw holes for mounting the res.
 

Attachments

#23 ·
Here it is from the front mounted in position...
 

Attachments

#24 ·
Not much clearance to the bottom rad, I allowed about 3mm. The top rad isn't in yet but I need room up there for filling the loop from the fillport at the top of the res.
 

Attachments

#25 ·
Getting on with putting in a temporary loop so I can fire this thing up and see what it can do... As it happens, what it can do is drive you mad with POST failures as you'll see from my posts above...
 

Attachments

#26 ·
Almost there with the hardline tubing in the front chamber. I went with 14mm PETG for this build, personally I think the 16mm looks a little heavy for this case but that's just me :)
 

Attachments

#27 ·
And here it is running!

I still have only one rad in. The soft tubing that runs outside of the case is to get my loop completed with a connection round the back so I can try starting this thing. I'm waiting for a pass through fitting to arrive so I can run the hardline to that and tidy things up. As I said this is a temporary loop to get me going.


I am not sure about the blue coolant, it was recycled from my old build but I am thinking opaque white would look brilliant in here. At least for the final photoshoot, I've read some horror stories about these opaque coolants when used for a while.
 

Attachments

#28 ·
Now for the pass through between the two chambers. Where I wanted this was right over part of the grill between the chambers, not ideal but it did make filing out the hole fairly easy. Pictures from front and back.
 

Attachments

#29 ·
With the pass through in and the hardline loop completed you can see what's going on around the back. I've cable tied the drain to the bottom of the case but ideally I want to bolt it down somehow so there's no chance of pulling it loose while draining down the system...
 

Attachments

#30 ·
A bigger view from round the back. Yes I know I have some cable management issues going on here! The big AX1500i PSU is in and so are the Cable Mod sleeved cables. When I ordered them, I bought cable extenders rather than cables for the Corsair - I wasn't sure about compatibility in future with different PSUs, lucky I did really as I ordered the cables before I bought the upgraded PSU. It does make cable management harder though as the cables are longer and you have more connectors to hide. Also the cables with the AX1500i are really long to begin with...
 

Attachments

This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top