Building A Liquid-Cooled MicroATX Gaming Monster

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]Kaldor[/nom]And here I thought you guys were going to do some proper watercooling. Take that PNY crap and toss it. Christ, dont advertise that s__t as real watercooling....[/citation]Ah yes, the haters. Your fake concerns were addressed in the article, this type of hardware is for people who don't like cleaning algae out of their systems once a year, cleaning up spilled coolant and trying to figure out how all that water spilled all over their now-fried electronics. Yes, this article is targeted towards the general performance user rather than the water-cooling enthusiasts.[citation][nom]dark_lord69[/nom]Yeah, WTF are you thinking?![/citation]The expensive RAM was already in-hand and pretty close to the best, so it was used. It certainly wouldn't appear in the budget-constrained SBMs but then again, neither would the high-end SSD.

 

[dangolo]

I'll be going to liquid cooling when the quad-channel ram, USB3, sata6, PCI Express 3 platform(s) come out at the end of the year. Till then i'm sticking with my measly i5, Thanks for this article though TH!

 

[serendipiti]

4.77 Ghz would be a nice number

 

[alchemy69]

What, no giveaway?

 

[Proximon]

I would not be comfortable with 47C over ambient CPU temps, but I have to admit I'm surprised you got that much cooling performance out of it.

I would like to see some real world temps though. How about an hour of Total War or Starcraft in a 27C room?

 

[cobra5000]

My hat is off to Tom's for this build! I am often quick to call Tom's on some of their builds or the way the article was presented. Not this time, the build was well thought out, nicely presented and the conclusion actually answered the few nitpicks that, may, have been there.
Great work guys! Heck, I would LOVE to see more pictures.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]Proximon[/nom]I would not be comfortable with 47C over ambient CPU temps, but I have to admit I'm surprised you got that much cooling performance out of it.I would like to see some real world temps though. How about an hour of Total War or Starcraft in a 27C room?[/citation]How about an hour of Prime 95 at seven threads Small FFT's while running 3DMark 7 test 1 at extreme preset in looping mode?

 

[pull]

I have been looking around and searching for the perfect PC build for so long.... and now I'm just going to copy this build, it just looks so perfect.... but if I changed the RAMs to a $60 (one of those 2x4g 1600 with cl9 or cl8) would that affect the OC of the system ?

 

[alkybird]

I have a similar build for the PC in my basement (attached to a 1080p projector mind you). It uses an i5-2500k, 1866 ram, a pair of 6950s (flashed to 6970), and dual 64 bg crucial C300s in RAID 0. All this with a microATX board in a tiny case (coolermaster elite 360) using the corsair H70 watercooler for the CPU and dual Bluray drives for playing movies. What can I say, I like to indulge?

 

[RedJaron]

I like the final blurb on the PSU. I'm constantly telling people they don't need as big or expensive PSUs as they think they do. Granted if you can afford the power headroom, it's nice, but definitely not required. I'd love some articles on actual power needs, recommended headrooms, loads, etc.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]pull[/nom]I have been looking around and searching for the perfect PC build for so long.... and now I'm just going to copy this build, it just looks so perfect.... but if I changed the RAMs to a $60 (one of those 2x4g 1600 with cl9 or cl8) would that affect the OC of the system ?[/citation]Not by much, because the base clock is low you can run the DDR3-1600 ratio without problems. You won't lose much performance either. Tom's did a DDR3 roundup recently and crowed Corsair the best value in performance RAM, you should check it to see which model.[citation][nom]RedJaron[/nom]I like the final blurb on the PSU. I'm constantly telling people they don't need as big or expensive PSUs as they think they do. Granted if you can afford the power headroom, it's nice, but definitely not required. I'd love some articles on actual power needs, recommended headrooms, loads, etc.[/citation]A couple of the guys at Tom's Hardware are the only people I know who actually think about this stuff in an objective manner, it seems that everyone else gravitates either towards insufficient or overkill.

 

[Inferno1217]

One of the coolest builds I've seen. It's like a Pinto with an 5000hp alcohol motor.

 

[KenZen2B]

My questions are about shared liquid coolers.
1. If you use a larger case, should you use separate liquid coolers for the cpu and each video card ?

2. If you take this build and bump it up to a larger case would you use a combination of air and liquid coolers, OR just air coolers, OR stick with just liquid coolers ? (to reduce noise and help with OC)

 

[cmadrid]

I've been trying to get people to take notice of the Arc Midi (slightly larger version of this case.. same price on Newegg) on the forums for a while now!

 

[richgoose]

The write-up seemed like you are really holding a grudge against the 2k SBM.

[citation][nom]tacoslave[/nom]i hope they give it away .[/citation]

I also missed the link for the giveaway form on this small beast.

Also curious about noise as gti88, mkrijt and frostweaver inquired?

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]richgoose[/nom]I also missed the link for the giveaway form on this small beast.Also curious about noise as gti88, mkrijt and frostweaver inquired?[/citation]Mine, all mine! There's a response to the noise question...I believe on page 2 of this thread.

 

[CaedenV]

Wow, great build! I thought you would need a 1000+W PSU for that much hardware, it is encouraging to know that it is unnecessary.
I'm looking at doing my rebuild in the spring/summer of next year. The plan is a IB processor with a 670 GPU, and 2x8GB of ram with a mid-sized SSD (120GBish), and lots of bulk HDD space for HD video projects. Then as prices go down I'll add the other 670, and another 2x8GB of ram (RAM drive for rendering! Woot!) to really make things fly. It will be a big step up from the C2D I am running now!

With the water cooling; I have never really seen a water cooled rig, but have always wanted to try it. If one had the space (like a mid or full tower) would you be able to make the system next to silent while still delivering that kind of horsepower? I currently am running a C2D and a 9800GT both with passive cooling quite successfully (pushing the system I get 30c on the proc and 50c on the GPU). I just have 2 quiet case fans and HDD noise and still think it loud in my echoey basement. It was discouraging to hear that the noise was about the same (though much more OCing being done) as the air cooled build. Would I run into the noise issue? Or would the hardware be sufficiently less in the TDP department to keep the noise down?

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]CaedenV[/nom]Wow, great build! I thought you would need a 1000+W PSU for that much hardware, it is encouraging to know that it is unnecessary.I'm looking at doing my rebuild in the spring/summer of next year. The plan is a IB processor with a 670 GPU, and 2x8GB of ram with a mid-sized SSD (120GBish), and lots of bulk HDD space for HD video projects. Then as prices go down I'll add the other 670, and another 2x8GB of ram (RAM drive for rendering! Woot!) to really make things fly. It will be a big step up from the C2D I am running now!With the water cooling; I have never really seen a water cooled rig, but have always wanted to try it. If one had the space (like a mid or full tower) would you be able to make the system next to silent while still delivering that kind of horsepower? I currently am running a C2D and a 9800GT both with passive cooling quite successfully (pushing the system I get 30c on the proc and 50c on the GPU). I just have 2 quiet case fans and HDD noise and still think it loud in my echoey basement. It was discouraging to hear that the noise was about the same (though much more OCing being done) as the air cooled build. Would I run into the noise issue? Or would the hardware be sufficiently less in the TDP department to keep the noise down?[/citation]If you want to get down to the low-to-mid 20's (decibels) with this level of hardware, you'll probably want at least a triple-fan radiator.

 

[CaedenV]

[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]If you want to get down to the low-to-mid 20's (decibels) with this level of hardware, you'll probably want at least a triple-fan radiator.[/citation]
Thanks. Perhaps some water cooling articles in the future?

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]CaedenV[/nom]Thanks. Perhaps some water cooling articles in the future?[/citation]We were actually thinking about trying a new LC configuration in this same case, using a custom loop. This first article targets the "general" audience by using low-maintenance, but Tom's isn't adverse to ALSO doing a more LC-enthusiast oriented article.

As for the triple-fan radiator, that's a pretty small market. If the site does a dual-fan radiator custom loop, just imagine that you'll be able to slow the fans down even more

 

[CaedenV]

Cant wait!

 

[clonazepam]

[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]We were actually thinking about trying a new LC configuration in this same case, using a custom loop. This first article targets the "general" audience by using low-maintenance, but Tom's isn't adverse to ALSO doing a more LC-enthusiast oriented article.As for the triple-fan radiator, that's a pretty small market. If the site does a dual-fan radiator custom loop, just imagine that you'll be able to slow the fans down even more[/citation]

Just keep working toward that eventual Summer Giveaway of a wc system (that I suggested previously). Work on smooth-talking those parts sponsors.

 

[Guest]

This is an awesome build! That will be a case for my next build, I have Antec Mini P180 now, with Gigabyte M-ATX mobo, Phenom 1100T Oc'd to 4.0GHz, Radeon 5780 @ 950/1300, 8GB OCZ RAM @ 1600 8-8-8-19, 128GB Crucial C300 SSD, Antec Signature 650W PSU, but will be looking to upgrade it some time soon, and this article inspired me a lot! It only prooves the fact that you don't need an E-ATX mobo and a full tower case to have a high performance build!

 

[mjmjpfaff]

300$ for ram. man what a waste. get some 1866mhz ram and call it a day all any application needs if you wanted to get more preformance out of productivity get 16gb's. 895w power consumption. wow i thought the psu was 850w. that means that baby isnt running at silver or maybe even bronze. the pc power and cooling silencer mkII 950w is 150$ at newegg. maybe you can waste the money on extra watts instead of ram. wow a 256gb ssd. now why would you need a momentus if you have that much space on the ssd. the hdd would really be a storage drive and we all know they dont need to be fast.
Great article though. none out there like it.

 

[g-unit1111]

That is one sweet build, but that case looks amazing. I'd make my next build micro-ATX just so I could get that case!