Thinking of building a new rig...

[Grall]

Ok, good news, everyone! You CAN fit a wide 140mm cooler like the NH-U14 plus top case fans, plus Corsair RX1000 PSU into the Fractal Design Define C chassis, along with just about a full set of cable harnesses attached to it AND still keep the 3.5" drive cage in place. It's tight as all f--k (and dusting this rig out is gonna be a bitch), but it works.

I got:
2x EPS CPU power cables
4x PCIe Aux power cables
2x SATA power cables
1x Molex power cable
+Corsair Smart thingy USB data cable

Shoving in 4 PCIe cables is overkill I suppose; these are actually dual 8-pin plug cables I noticed after grabbing one out of the box, but I thought, what the hell. I've paid for these bastards, I'm gonna use 'em! Also, separate cables means lower ampearage through each cable, so lower transmission losses and resulting voltage drop. Of course, I havent' tried to fit the rear side panel yet! So it might end up with a "bad news everyone! Everything is bad, and the cover won't fit!"

...But there's room inside the chassis for cable overflow if push comes to shove. It'll look awful, but what can you do? Another small issue is that the magnetic top dust filter doesn't fit properly if you use rubber grommets to mount the top case fans. We'll see what I can do about that, if anything... I'd rather avoid gouging out slits in the flexible magnetic strips (because I'm all thumbs when it comes to doing practical shit like that and I don't have good tools to work with), but it's a solution I'm considering. Anyway, perhaps you're not supposed to use the top filter if the fans are turned to exhaust air (like I've configured them). The holes are tiny tiny, that filter would be a big flow impediment.

Still need to pull the GPUs out of my old rigs, install SATA cables, as well as move over my Raptor drives, which I like to keep just for fun. They're basically paperweights these days, but I like them. They're nice, well-built pieces of engineering, and the built-in heatsinks are solid chunks of metal.

Oh, and attach power cable and turn the damn thing on. It might all go up in smoke, I really have no idea. (Ugh, what a nightmare that'd be...)

 

[Malo]

You spend large amounts on the system yet keep Raptor drives?? Low capacity losing the only advantage spindle drives have but much slower than SSD's.

 

[Grall]

You spend large amounts on the system yet keep Raptor drives??

I have a chewing gum stick SSD in there. No worries. The Raptors are just for, you know, in case of a rainy day. Right now they hold my Steam game collection.

 

[Mize]

I built two identical servers (one mirror backup) where both were RAID 5 arrays of raptors with their heat sinks removed.

Never had a drive fall after 5 years or so.

 

[Grall]

Ittt lliivvvsssss.... Muuuwwwaaahhhahahaaa!

First impressions:
FUCK! That noise!!!

Co-opting the pump headers as fan headers was no good. There doesn't seem to be any speed control for these headers, the fans run 100% full tilt duty cycle, so I pulled those cables for now until I can think up a more permanent solution. Unfortunately, one of the affected fans is the intake fan right next to the GPUs. I need that fan if I'm to be able to do anything fun with this rig!

Have to wait until tomorrow. It's already past 3AM.

There's also something else making a godfucking awful racket, but more subtle. It's not the power supply, I'm pretty sure of that; I can't feel any exhaust coming out of it. Gotta be the GPUs, but I never really heard those before when they just idled. Of course, I never ran two at once in the same chassis before either, so... Might also be turbulence in the doublestacked CPU cooler, but sounds too high pitched to be caused by 140mm fans.

Right now all it is doing is glowing and running Memtest86, because I thought I might just as well run it through a cycle first with 100% stock settings everything, to check that things seem okay. So far so good, it's over 75% done with zero errors so far. Then when it is done, I can bump mem speed and see if this mobo can handle 8 DIMMs at 3.6GT data rate... If not, I'll be a sad pony.

Also, speaking of sad ponies, I have to reshuffle and probably also cut down on all that cabling, because DAMN, this is gonna be too tight to fit the rear cover! Jesus friggin christ. But it's a REALLY small chassis too. It's way smaller than my now ancient Antec P180 Mini - which despite its name has to be one of the largest uATX chassis ever built actually hehe, but still! This one is smaller in every dimension too - height as well. I took a comparison pic with them side by side and it's freaky.

Oh and by the way, SATA connectors have to be the most monstrously inhumane design ever. Try to fit a matte black connector into a matte black socket which is oriented parallel to the motherboard inside a matte black chassis, with a matte black rubber grommet cramping your style not even 20mm away, and another nearby SATA connector messing you up just as much! Ghahh! I fucking hated inserting SATA cables in my previous rig, and it's no easier in this one either.

 

[Mize]

Are your fans 4-wire, PWM fans? You need 4-wire fans to control the speed using motherboard headers. Otherwise you're going to need a fan controller that varies output voltage.

 

[entity279]

Noctua also provides adapters (donno anybody else who does) i.e. a cable with higher rezistance, which thus reduces the fan speed by a fixed ammount. Poor man's fan controllers (but then again fan controllers are a poor man's solution as well - they fail so often - so such adapters are better in a way)

 

[Grall]

Are your fans 4-wire, PWM fans?

Yes. The BIOS simply doesn't allow PWM adjustment on the pump headers at all, annoyingly. It seems at least some pumps behave erratically at lower power settings, but why not put a software toggle there, switching from default, 100% pump mode, to variable fan mode, if a user specifically chooses to? *sigh*

There aren't that many fan headers on this board sadly, even though it is ATX and supports Intel's biggest fattest thirstiest consumer CPUs. The Strix Vega card has two fan headers, but those cards are still friggin MIA!!

Noctua also provides adapters

Yes, but they only pull down RPM marginally. It would still be a fast-spinning fan stuck at near top RPM...

It seems that maybe the windows version of ASUS fan controller software might support RPM adjustment on fan headers. It does on some other board than mine, so not 100% it would work, but there's a chance at least. It would still mean that working in the BIOS would be awful tho, unless the BIOS update I've downloaded but not flashed yet can fix this deficiency...

 

[entity279]

Yes, but they only pull down RPM marginally. It would still be a fast-spinning fan stuck at near top RPM...

It seems that maybe the windows version of ASUS fan controller software might support RPM adjustment on fan headers. It does on some other board than mine, so not 100% it would work, but there's a chance at least. It would still mean that working in the BIOS would be awful tho, unless the BIOS update I've downloaded but not flashed yet can fix this deficiency...

My experience had been quite contrary to yours. Noctua's ULNAs make my fans close to inaudible (beside hearing the air movement itself)

Additionally, to the best of my knowledge Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, Asrock all have most of their 3 pin fan headers able to reduce voltage from within the BIOS. This is a common feature these last few years (granted, haven't tried/heard of low end MBs supporting or not supporting this)

 

[Grall]

My experience had been quite contrary to yours. Noctua's ULNAs make my fans close to inaudible (beside hearing the air movement itself)

Yes - if your fan is already PWM or voltage-controlled. But the adaptor only chops about 40% or so off input volts, so I'd still be stuck with a fast-spinning, constantly spinning fan even with the adaptor.

Additionally, to the best of my knowledge Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, Asrock all have most of their 3 pin fan headers able to reduce voltage from within the BIOS.

Mine does too - for the fan headers. Not the pump headers tho, that's the issue. Now I've flashed the BIOS, but since I pulled the fan power cables I can't test to see if BIOS fan controller allows speed adjustment for the pump headers. I'd have to pull the GPUs out to put the connectors back in and the thought makes me shiver right now. Lol.

 

[entity279]

I'd have to pull the GPUs out to put the connectors back in and the thought makes me shiver right now. Lol.

That's the price you chose to pay for liking small cases. I feel some empathy (I also have a NAS I've built in a Lian Li PC08), but for my main rig I'd always choose roomy cases that allow E-ATX and plenty of cooling.

Granted, with de dissapearence of 5.25, 3.x drives and the possibility to mount some 2.5 drives behind the mb (or replace everything with M2), cases should start to get smaller

 

[Grall]

That's the price you chose to pay for liking small cases.

Indeed! This is so true.

Btw, rig is now done with the windows installation step for updates for Win10, and is asking me to create a windows account... *sigh* Do I really want to go through with making one? Decisions, decisions...

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Enjoy the process, always nice to build a new rig. I just have to say that putting two aircooled Vega 64s in a case is asking too much trouble imo. Haven't you been in trouble with these mGPU setups previously? and Vega 64s are going to be even worse in that regard. I guess you are going to undervolt the F out of them The AIO liquid cooled Vega 64, even one out of two, would help a lot.

 

[Grall]

Enjoy the process, always nice to build a new rig.

I used to feel that way too, but with age and my personal issues, it's taking me longer and longer for each PC I build to get everything done, unfortunately. Cabling is a mess, and fixing it up is going to take a lot of work which I have trouble gathering the strength for, seeing as I don't even have my final GPUs yet.

I just have to say that putting two aircooled Vega 64s in a case is asking too much trouble imo. Haven't you been in trouble with these mGPU setups previously?

Yes, in small case with much poorer ventilation. I have 4 140mm fans and 1 120mm now, which I think will suffice. The fan header issue have been dealt with; I got advice on how to set the pump headers as PWM adjustable in UEFI. Just gotta plug the connectors back in again.

I guess you are going to undervolt the F out of them

First I have to check how hot they'll run! Then we'll see. I'll do what I can of course, nobody likes unnecessary waste heat... (Well, someone might, I dunno. Not me tho. Heh.)

Btw, I REALLY MUST SAY THIS:

Dammit, Corsair, but you really know how to build nice PSUs! Or your OEM does anyhow, haha. I just hooked my RM1000i up to the mobo with the accompanying micro USB to mobo header cable and was going to install the thrice-damned Corsair Link software which I don't like but then forgot all about it. Was on VOIP with my mate who recently also built a new rig (based on last year's socket 2011 revision) when he asked how hot something of mine was running. I fired up HWMonitor, and as I scrolled around I noticed mains volts figures and promptly did a double-take. Wait, what? How would HWInfo know my MAINS VOLTS???

Turns out HWMonitor can read my power supply's health data! I don't NEED the friggin Corsair Link utility! It's got like, total information control on the PSU, just by hooking it up to the mobo! Input and output watts and volts for all the various rails, temp, fan revs and everything; it even calculates PSU efficiency for me automatically. Friggin schweet!

I can't recommend this PSU enough. It's awesome. Solidly well built, large high quality fan with RPM monitoring and PWM speed regulation (which doesn't even spin until unit hits like 60C), good-looking, nice powder-coated steel case. Real heft to it, and even at 1000W it's still a reasonably long unit at 18cm, and it's got enormous bulk caps, so hold-up time is excellent in case of mains supply dips. I turn off the power switch with the system powered off, and all those RGB mobo LEDs (and the graphics card power indicators) keep glowing for almost 20 seconds! Very efficient also, I ran the CPU full tilt with a Prime95 maximum burn stress test, and HWM claimed 93% efficiency at 330W peak output (large majority of that going through the CPU; dammit, it is a beast). I know this isn't going to be professional digital oscilloscope quality readings, but still! Even idling at low power consumption levels I got 86+ percent efficiency readings. That's not bad!

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Yes, in small case with much poorer ventilation. I have 4 140mm fans and 1 120mm now, which I think will suffice. The fan header issue have been dealt with; I got advice on how to set the pump headers as PWM adjustable in UEFI. Just gotta plug the connectors back in again.

Let us know how things are running and it would be nice to see some pics along the way as well.

In mGPU with non exhausting cards it's really hard to get the hot air out without it first polluting the GPUs with hot air and the heat load out of those is immense! I'm very curious about how things will go.

 

[Mize]

Definitely post some photos as they will help you with motivation when it comes to wire hygiene. ;-P

 

[Grall]

@Mize

I took pics, but iOS 11 turned on Apple's shitty live photo feature automatically for me (ghaacckk), and the photos after I turned that off got saved in Apple's proprietary high compression format so I fuggin can't post anything!

 

[Mize]

@Mize

I took pics, but iOS 11 turned on Apple's shitty live photo feature automatically for me (ghaacckk), and the photos after I turned that off got saved in Apple's proprietary high compression format so I fuggin can't post anything!

Email a photo to yourself, save to Dropbox or whichever cloud account you have then upload from there!

I'm beginning to think Grall made this whole new rig thing up!

 

[Grall]

I'm beginning to think Grall made this whole new rig thing up!

Ruh-roh! Now you've done it, chexx dis out!

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1...?key=Mms3S1NfOGxTU3l1VHlQZ3dheXlxd1prUTdkNHhR

Btw, thanks for the email tip. Thanks Apple, for making it so magically "easy" just to show a friggin picture I took on the interwebs!

 

[Grall]

Btw, note house key added in one of pictures for scale. (Not sure it really helps... lol) This chassis is SMALL! The pic with the side by side PCs - the other one is my old Antec P180 mini uATX chassis! It is LARGER in all dimensions than this one, which is full ATX!

Bonus photo: I stopped by Gwyneth Paltrow's new PC sub-section of goop.com and picked up RFI-dampening ferrite beads for all internal power cables. These can reduce harmful interference, software bugs, hangs, crashes, headaches, sore throats, bunions, and also helps against vaginal dryness.