Powder coated modified Fractal north build.

[Peter_Brosdahl]

I have to admit that I'm in awe of how clean and classy this build looks.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/11db8v2

 

[Grimlakin]

That is VERY clean I love it.

Only thing I'd want to see is water cooling of the CPU but that looks pretty good.

 

[Ditchinit]

Yup. Looks great. The cherry on top would be if the side cover was a panel that incorporates that black cloth material that is or was used to cover speaker fronts.

 

[Grimlakin]

Yup. Looks great. The cherry on top would be if the side cover was a panel that incorporates that black cloth material that is or was used to cover speaker fronts.

Oh my god with a velvet looking Elvis on the side in black and gold!!!

 

[Niner51]

Noctua is probably like: "Finally the PC world has fully embraced our awesome brown and beige fans, and are making cases to match!"

 

[Zarathustra]

I like that we are starting to get options other than "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" UFO light builds lately. The fact that the North has been sold out almost everywhere indicates that I am not the only one, and maybe the pendulum is about to swing in the opposite direction.

I am also very impressed with that coating. Are you sure it is powder coating? I'm used to powder coating just being a flat color. I didn't know one could do this. I would have guessed it was some sort of wood patterned vinyl wrap or something.

That said, while this work is of impeccable quality, I think the case worked better stock for me. And I'm still not a Noctua beige fan. (no pun intended)

I think I would like the stock case even better without the brass colored trim pieces. That was just a little bit too much for me.

 

[Dan_D]

I wouldn't do air cooling these days but its a pretty clean build.

 

[Zarathustra]

I wouldn't do air cooling these days but its a pretty clean build.

I'm still in this camp. I have my water cooling parts, and I'll likely continue to use them, but I have been thinking lately.

With how quiet the massive 4090 coolers have been even on the ridiculously power hungry 4090's, I'm wondering how much longer it makes sense to build custom water loops.

They aren't necessarily cheap (and the parts vendors are seriously increasing pricing, way faster than inflation.) and I can't help but wonder what the benefit is in a world where overclocking is slowly shrinking from relevance, with single digit percentages being all the performance boost you get from it these days.

I'm either going to double down, and go all in and build a separate room loop for complete silence (maybe even with a water chiller) OR I'm just going to throw in the towel and go air cooled in the future.

Not sure which it is yet, but if I go with the former, I'll definitely start a work log

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

I'm either going to double down, and go all in and build a separate room loop for complete silence (maybe even with a water chiller)

I forget his name and the exact details, but there was a hardware reviewer over at Tom's that did something like that. I do remember seeing it around 5+ years ago.

 

[Zarathustra]

I forget his name and the exact details, but there was a hardware reviewer over at Tom's that did something like that. I do remember seeing it around 5+ years ago.

I hadn't heard of this one, but I did review Linus "whole room water loop" from ~8 years ago, and **** if he didn't do so many things that I thought were plain wrong.
My main reason for looking at what he did was to see which pump he used, as I don't think typical D5 pumps will be quite sufficient.

He used some large looking garden fountain / drainage pump type of thing, which is probably more than I am going to do.

I want to retain some PWM speed control on the pump so it doesn't have to go 100% whenever the system is running, which will just waste power.

If I actually do this route, I am going to do some testing and see if I can make dual D5's work for me.

The loop would start at low table height in my server room, go up to the ceiling, maybe 5 ft, run 50ft above the the drop ceiling tiles, then down in my office, through the two blocks, up to the ceiling height again and back.

I expect the fill to be the most challenging from a head pressure perspective, as it has to go "uphill", but then it will go down again on the other side which - since the loop is air tight - will negate the ups and downs. Since a single D5 has a head pressure of 3.9m (~12' 10") one should be sufficient for the fill, so I think it should work, but the question is what kind of flow I'll be able to achieve with a LONG loop with two blocks, a few tight bends and some QDC's to allow easily disconnecting the pc.

(I just looked up the spec for the dual D5's, and head pressure is apparently 7m, so we are talking ~23ft)

There would be a separate local loop from the reservoir to the cooling solution (be it chiller or external radiator) on a separate pump, l keeping the coolant in the res cool, so I don't have to worry about that contributing to the main loop load.

Once filled I should only have to overcome friction, tight turns and block restriction, so I'm hoping two D5's will be enough. I expect it will have a slower response time though, as a loop this big will have a good deal of inertia due to the weight of the fluid, not present in a smaller loop.

I'm hoping, since most of the loop would be a straight line, it will be less restrictive than one might think.

In Linus whole room build he was cooling 5 pc's, at least one of them had two GPU blocks, so a minimum of 11 blocks,and there were several radiators. That would certainly require more pump power than my long straight line approach.


Anyway, this is way way way off topic

If I do start the project, I'll create a build thread.

 

[Brian_B]

I've always thought about a geosink and not have to worry about fans/radiators, but I've never really got enough motication to go really dig a hole or run tubing through the walls.

Although it would be pretty darn easy with Pex to run through the walls, use some standard flared connections (like on your toilet or under your sink), use some stainless flex line to come up to the computer to connect up to some QDCs and have the plumbing come out looking professional. People would just wonder why there are hot and cold taps in the middle of a bedroom.

 

[Ditchinit]

People would just wonder why there are hot and cold taps in the middle of a bedroom.

Add a stripper pole and no one will even give the hot and cold taps a second look.

 

[Brian_B]

Add a stripper pole and no one will even give the hot and cold taps a second look.

I keep bugging my wife about this but can't get her to buy off on it ... yet.

 

[Space_Ranger]

I keep bugging my wife about this but can't get her to buy off on it ... yet.

But you're saying there's a chance??

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

I hadn't heard of this one,

I see if I can find it at some point. I'm pretty sure it was back when I was running either 970s, 1080s, or a 1080 Ti and I was getting curious about custom loops and just randomly came across it. Here's hoping the pages are still out there.