Trackers Eventual build post

[Tracker]

ooookay

decided
meshify 2 Compact
vertical GPU mount with a 4.0 riser cable
top mounted 240 (i would love something bigger, but case says no & front mount doesnt look good..)



so something like this with a clown show of RGB on a vertically mounted graphics card, and some RGB fans of some type, and most likely, RGB ram as well, which will probably upset my ability to run the top radiator "quite" like how i wanted in regards to fans, but 🤷♂️

anyways, should have everything within a week or two depending on when some things get in and through the mail

[Tracker]

today is test fit day, the ram touches the AIO fan (but barely), a different (thinner) AIO, a thinner fan, or a fan with a less square shape (method im testing next) is how you get around that

[Seajay]

Picture didn't load.

When the RAM is seated and you add the fan is it pressing on the ram or it's just a paper width apart? Technically... you could just remove the heat-spreader if it has one, you don't actually need them. I'm very curious what that looks like, if it's a DDR4 design not working with DDR5, or just a bad design, or obnoxious ram heatspreaders.

[Tracker]

okay reloading picture, give me a few, thats what i get for playing fast and loose with copy paste

as far as the ram goes, its all the heatspreaders fault, if i really wanted i could have just notched the plastic out of the fan housing and moved on, but i was planning on swapping to a specific fan anyways, which happened to also have a shape that "looks like that will work" turns out, it did..

heres how little it was touching, but the perspective is hard to see, but you can see in the next pic. problem solved



using the thickest possible AIO radiator will be an issue for any 25mm fans, if i used 15mm wide fans it would have been the same dims as every other off the shelf AIO, as you can see, that would have worked without issue. i wanted those fans anyways.. i hate myself for what i spent today.. and i managed to finagle 20% off (their fans are very, very overpriced)

[Tracker]

Stuck waiting on parts... This how it "sorta" sits,


I suppose I should use this extra time to plan out the wiring.. but I'm not sure how much I really need to pre plan and segment, if I need to change something that requires me to pull a fan, the ARGB wires will make it an event regardless. Thinking I might just creatively hide the excess round back..

[Seajay]

HAha ya, route it as best you can and zip tie the mass in the back so the backdoor closes

Also... that is a thick radiator. I'm impressed you were able to fit it up top. I think most would install it to the front, or have a larger case.

[Tracker]

HAha ya, route it as best you can and zip tie the mass in the back so the backdoor closes

Also... that is a thick radiator. I'm impressed you were able to fit it up top. I think most would install it to the front, or have a larger case.

but what fun is it of it do it the easy way 😁? (the other build option was gonna use that bracket in a case it was never meant to go in...)
front mounting is what the case manufacturer recommended as well, problem is, it will put the fans RIGHT up against the back of the card, makes the case look crowded with a big open space at the top

i totally would have used a different brand of AIO which would have cleared me of any ram fitment issues, but i really like this design, also the block has a little fan on it to move a little bit of air around the VRM's which is an advantage that aircooling provides by default

but the AIO market is weird, theres a not terribly dissimilar to the paintball SP patent infringement case going on in the AIO industry, one company is claiming to own the rights to integrating the pump motor into the waterblock.. and they have cease and desisted almost everyone.. so now theres corsair (which stacks their pump assembly), arctic (which offsets theirs) and the rest of the AIO industry coming from one company (asetek brand portfolio includes Razer, Fractal, Asus ROG, EVGA, MSI, NZXT, Phanteks, and XPG ) so many of them look the same, because they are.

[Tracker]

PSU @ 50% scale looks cute,

a modular ATX cable at similar scale, decidedly less cute.. really shoulda looked at that one ahead of time 🤦♂️.


ordered replacement cables from EVGA, those should be here tomorrow if they hit the mail correctly today (they are only about 250mi away) crossing my fingers that they are the correct length, cause they were less than forthcoming about what i was buying on their site

Due to the variety of power supplies and the stock power cables provided, these EVGA single power supply cables may feature a different color, different length, different sleeving, and/or different number of connectors than the cables you received with your power supply. NOTE - The images provided are representative of the type of cable and connectors customers can expect to purchase, but actual cables shipped may vary over time.

also for this very circus, i decided to bite the bullet and get a fully custom cable setup from cablemod. for that i fitted the gfx card into place so i could eyeball my measurements with a usb c cable and repeated a few times to find an average, holy moly is that a whole lotta card, enough to make the bracket feel a little flimsy.

[Tracker]

today was almost the day... got almost everything done, i guessed correctly in that they would send me the adult sized cables. and they were true to their word by sending me a 600 and 700mm version of IDENTICAL cable part numbers

but i was able to get finished, as apparently i always assume, i have something that will convert sata power to molex. i dont..

the lighting controller i got uses the old school molex 4 pin.... because 🤷♂️

i refuse to run a second Aux line off my PSU if i can avoid it (the space is tight, and thats a lot of wire to commit for one single plug). im down to one spinner, and im really proud of myself for that accomplishment, so i want to use one of the un-used sata power connectors, amazon is fixing that tomorrow. all i have left is to swap over one of my 2 spinners and mount the CPU cooler.

this is where we are at


im even not ashamed to show off the back, even with wrestling these chunky things around, its not bad the singe argb wire coming down from the AIO is what i ended up with, i took a moment and bundled all the extra wires to the AIO radiator side, yeah theres one errant sata cable sitcking out, but thats for the drive i have installed yet, its way too long, i cant find anything shorter...


also, i want to applaud gigbyte, this solid hunk of metal for an auxiliary heatsink was a surprize. but a really welcome one. this also integrates with the NB heatsink, good thing i got the fans up front, also thats a solid milled aluminum heatsink for the main boot drive. im quite impressed
..and yeah, i realize thats overkill on a couple of levels.. i couldnt help myself

[chrislognshot]

tracker how much ram do you have. do not include the graphics card. and how much ram does graphics card have. if i do not get desktop or laptop with 32gb or more of ram i can not use it. also need at least 3tb on main drive. as for graphics card does not matter in till start to do video editing then good graphics card for video edit and not one with low ram

[Tracker]

2 16 gig sticks of DDR5
im a bigger fan of giving windows its own small drive to destroy, and keeping everything important elsewhere
theres 2 2tb drives in there, and 2 500 gb drives (one is to hold windows, and to hold games that i will benefit from pcie4x4 speeds)

[Seajay]

I'd advise when first boot and installing windows to only have the Windows drive installed. Windows like to do strange things by placing critical folders in weird locations. This has a huge affect when trying to change drives or migrate things when you find out windows is technically installed over 3 different drives. Giving it only access to 1 drive solves this completely.

[Tracker]

so the stock bios would error out with my RAM

internet says "flash the bios"

motherboard has a feature called Q-flash + which lets you flash the bios with a thumbdrive and a bare motherboard.. which is what I need cause I cant POST..

so i grab the file,
put it on the correct type of USB drive (2.0, sub 8 gig formatted AT16/32)
in the correct spot (root)
with the correct name (GIGABYTE.bin)
in the correct USB port (qflash port)
and follow the correct steps
nothing

the internet says you insert drive, turn on PSU and press the qflash button and its supposed to turn on, poll the drive and flash..

i figured out that if i get it to soft power by pressing an holding the power button, the Qflash button turns the computer on and will flash the USB, but then nothing

i then proceed to spend the next day or so freaking out because im worried that my computer thats made out of unobtanium parts needs stuff RMA'd

i type out the whole problem to reddit, detailing what i have tried, and what the results were, even took some videos to show what its not doing

some wonderful soul tells me "hey, if your trying to flash the F5c bios, that file is corrupt, and wont work, use F5b instead

and it worked, q-flash literally requires a 24 pin connector and a USB drive.. you dont need a CPU, RAM, Drives, graphics.. or 12v 4/8 pin CPU connectors

apparently gigabyte is having some specific issues with my ram seeing as how 2 of their 4 bios updates have been relating to beyond stock intel XMP speed DDR5

so, without further ado.. the almost (i have custom PSU cables coming) completion of months of planning, and a lot of luck

layer 1


layer 2


layer 3


and then some proof of life





and one from this AM, not that ive figured out how to sync the ram with the fans


the video card will always be off doing its own thing until EVGA wants to play nice with razer and the rest of the industry.. so ill just have to be satisfied with 90% of my lights synced

[the_matrix_guy]

Sweet system. I built a similar system in a Maingear Vybe chassis about a year ago. Gigabyte Aourus mobo, AMD CPU, 32 gigs of Corsair RAM, 2 2tb nvme drives, Asus 1080ti (recycled from my previous build), Corsair 850w psi, and it’s been ultra stable, zero issues. I’ve been meaning to add water cooling using their proprietary Apex pump/reservoir but I haven’t taken the plunge. I’ve never done water cooling before…lol

[the_matrix_guy]

I’ll take better pics later. I have a mess right now. But I want to add a riser for the gpu and the Maingear Apex acrylic reservoir/ pump it’s hella nice. Still waiting to get a 3080ti at a decent price, hence why I havent done the water cooling. I dont feel like buying a block for the 1080ti and then re-purchasing another block for a 3080 or 3080ti and having to drain it and re-pipe it. But the Maingear cases and dedicated water cooling kits are hella nice. Their complete systems cost 5k+ withthe water cooling kits, they can easily go for as much as 8-9k with the full towers, the cases are painted with automobile grade paint, etc etc but you can obviously re create it for a fraction of the cost. They only just started offering their mid-tower cases as stand alone. I dont think they sell the F1 full towers though which is a shame.

[Tracker]

its glad to see some companies are still trying to keep the custom built gaming PC idea alive