Lil' bit

[10e]

So lil' bit got a sidegrade this weekend. I was originally going to drain the loop and replace the r9 270 with a GTX 970, but due to my burgeoning dislike of the Cooler Master Elite 110 case I decided to go a different path.

This is a great little case, but the motherboard and hard disk cooling are main weaknesses to this case. In addition it's tough to properly dust filter it, and I hate having to blow dust out of my PC every month.

The P8Z77-I Deluxe W/D motherboard and I7 3770K processor are going back to Frosty-G. The video card will get re-assembled and sold.

I found that NCIX had a sale on a case I was dying to get: http://www.raijintek.com/en/products...p?ProductID=17

In fact Frosty-G was loosely based on this design aesthetic even though it is mostly acrylic (yes Frosty-G is still alive) because I love the cool, clean look.

It has the amazing ability to store up to 4 2.5" drives or 2x2.5" drives and one 3.5" HD, and with the "old" Silverstone SFX 450W psu it can hold an even longer than 170mm video card. Another advantage is that the case can be completely disassembled because it is only held together by countersunk 6-32 screws. Mobo tray, side panels, front panel, bottom/top can all be removed making the build process much easier for such a small case. German Engineering YO!

So here is the list of components:

Core i5 4670T 45w processor
PNY GTX 970
Gigabyte GA-Z87N-WiFi (my favorite GB motherboard because it can voltage control fans like the GT AP-15)
1 500GB SSD (from DiscoSteele)
1 1TB Seagate SSHD (originally from Lil' bit)
16GB of 7-8-7-24 DDR3 1600mhz RAM (no heatsinks)
Silverstone SST-45SF-G SFX 450W PSU with mix-and-match short cable set PP05-E (no sleeving left black colored due to space constraints)

Cooling/WC:

1 XSPC RX120 V3 radiator
1 Gentle Typhoon AP-15 fan in push, but aimed towards the back exhaust
1 DDC PWM Pump
1 Mini Micro Reservoir (Watercool DDC-Tank LT)
1 Alphacool GTX 670 Water block copper/black stainless steel
1 Dazmode 2013 Maple Leaf Edition EK Supreme LT water block

EK-HD acrylic tubing (some recycled from Arc Mini R2 DiscoSteele that suffered a motherboard death)
5 x Bitspower BP-BSE90RML
Matte black and Black Chrome EK-HD fittings (I hate these things because of their stupid double o-ring setup, but I bought them and needed to use them SOMEWHERE). You'll find out in my pix why I hate these things. They work, but I absolutely hate them. Sorry Akira, but I HATE them, and for acrylic tubing it's Bitspower for me in the future only.
Mayhem Pastel White
Some Darkside white LEDs 3mm

Everything watercooling, except the radiator and pump (which was originally bought here) is bought from everyone's favorite watercooling stud, Daz.


This is a study in space optimization, and really there are no mods, but it's my super-mega-tiny space optimized watercooled build.


Most of it is done, has been leak tested, and I just need to drain the loop for a reason I'll explain soon

[10e]

Here are some shots.

Initial 24 hour leak testing accomplished. Unfortunately I have to drain and remove two pieces of pipe and then the CPU block. It seems like even though I tapered/chamfered the ends of each pipe very carefully, as well as smooth sanded them, they still frayed some of the too-tight o-rings in the EK HD fittings. The o-ring pieces ended up in the CPU block



Doesn't affect CPU temps though.

Here's a shot with top/bottom and both side panels removed. At some point during the build I had the front panel removed too. Love the modular nature of this teeny tiny case.



And one with the bottom panel re-installed to help hold up the free-floating (for now) rez/pump:



I got up early and jury rigged an XSPC temp gauge with a plug and stuck it in the top of the reservoir to test water temps during full 100% CPU load via Prime95 and 100% GPU load on Furmark. I'll be soldering the temp plug into the gauge tonight and put the gauge in the window.

At start the water temperature was in the 26.5 celsius range, and after fifteen minutes of Prime95 and Furmark water temperature only went up by 10 celsius with the fan at around 1500 RPM. This fan/rad combo works very well and is definitely quieter than the old RX120 V2/Corsair SP120 PWM version I had used in the old Lil' bit. I can feel air through the back grill over 2 feet away with the fan only at 1300-1500 RPM.

CPU temps went up to 52 celsius on the hottest core, and GPU temps never exceeded 45 celsius.

CPU won't be OC'd but GPU has gone up to 1480 mhz with GDDR5 running at 1950/7800 using MSI afterburner and since it seems stable at keeping between 1.45 and 1.5 ghz GPU clock, I'll check out Delta-T again when the whole case is closed up. I have two PNY GTX 970s and both reach 1.48Ghz or higher even with stock cooling.

[10e]

Update. Changed one fitting and made a new hard tube going from the right port on the CPU water block to the radiator.

I had a BP right angle fitting on this port and it was scratching the frame of the fan, so to get another 1-2 mm of clearance and not have the fan pushing the fitting, I made a new dual 90 degree hard tube.

Here is the new configuration with no coolant and missing the tubes to the GPU. Hairy hand at bottom left, please ignore hehe:



Here's with Pastel Ice White, and fan changed to my nB-eLoop B12-P PWM (800-2000RPM). It's not quite as good as the AP-15 but it fits the build better and there seems to be a fair bit of headroom in this build, so why not?



Now to just change one of the DarkSide LEDs from 3mm to 5mm for the reservoir, as there is one on the Waterblock already, re-add all the panels and close it all up. Cable management is all basically done and whatever isn't neat is hidden behind the rad and fan combo.

[bungwirez]

what's preventing you from lining up that 90 on the pump outlet with the rad?

[10e]

what's preventing you from lining up that 90 on the pump outlet with the rad?

The pump is sitting right on the floor panel of the case, which you don't see here, but is in my previous post. So my only option would be to cut a big hole into the bottom of the case, or using a hard tube to "line 'em up". I could have just made the tube straight and then put an angle right before it entered the pump, and angled the 90 degree fitting slightly downwards, but that would be difficult if the angle is too close to the end of the tube, so I did it this way.

I find with any curves near the end of the tube it becomes either difficult to insert it into the fitting as it presses too much on one side of one o-ring, and the other side of the second/outer o-ring in the fitting, so while it would probably look a bit neater, it might have been a more possible leak point.

The little "S" curve works better in this case, and was easier to measure for too. The other issue is with the extra tight o-rings on the EK HD fittings (like the one on the right of this run) they are extremely sensitive to not having an absolutely straight 8-10mm length of pipe going in, and the S-curve worked better for that.

[Grinder]

Good job squeezing it all in there. And nice catch on the O-ring pieces

[Joeonepack]

Looking forward to seeing the finished product.

You mentioned that this Gigabyte motherboard was able to voltage control your fan. Why does this board differ to others? Can't you control fan speed through CHA fan headers on other mobo's?

[10e]

Looking forward to seeing the finished product.

You mentioned that this Gigabyte motherboard was able to voltage control your fan. Why does this board differ to others? Can't you control fan speed through CHA fan headers on other mobo's?

I find Asus boards until the Z97 series always had problems with non-PWM fans on the CPU headers, often on the Chassis headers. Apparently Asus left out a certain ITE control chip to do voltage on the chassis fans. Silly of them.

The only fan controllers I like are ones that have USB or interfaces that allows monitoring of fan speeds and such. I don't like them in general and stay away from them as much as I can. I prefer using SpeedFan even though it is a pain in the @$$ to get working on boot-up with Windows 7/8/8.1 because I can use a certain temperature to modify fan speeds.

For Lil' bit I'm using the GPU temperature as the main monitored temp for the back fan, which is now, thanks to Daz, an AP-45 fan up to 2150 RPM. The GT AP-29 (up to 3000 RPM and modified for PWM) is a great fan but it is a bit louder at 1400-1800 RPM which is where I'm mostly using it.

I did the motherboard cut-out and it lowered water temperature by 2 celsius with the case closed BTW. You can laugh at my crappy Dremel cut when I post some photos soon

Now that I have a scroll saw I don't personally like the Dremel that much anymore.

[10e]

Build is completely complete except for repainting of cut motherboard tray. Not the most exciting build, more of a showcase on what can be done in a teeny, tiny case.

I've also added a filter mesh to the back panel for filtration. Even after 2-3 weeks of use, the unfiltered area by the fan holes was already getting dust patterns.

Here's the right side:



And the left side with the cut mobo tray. I was able to remove it for cutting without having to actually disassemble the build, which was kinda funny. I'll sand/repaint it in the spring. Looks ghetto for now, but there is only a vented side panel here with a filter in it, so you can't see the issue. The cut is filed down to avoid scraping/chafing the darkside lighting cables in the velcro strap. Not too concerned about this look, you can't see it anyway.

On the left you can see one of the Sata cables peeking through the CPU cut out as the 500GB SSD and 1TB SSHD are up top in a 3.5>2.5 dual SSD bracket.



A few lessons learned here:

- With Mini ITX, if you can't build in a case that is easy to disassemble, it generally sucks. I have normal sized hands and had I not been able to do this build with just a mobo tray and back panel, I think I would have given up. That being said because everything came apart, it was actually easy, and easier than any Mini ITX and most Micro ATX cases I've worked on.

- Should have rotated the CPU block. The one pipe is too close to the AP-45 fan. Had I also done that, maybe would have been able to fit an Alphacool Monsta in here hehe.

That being said a resting/idle water temperature of 27.8 celsius, and a load of 10 celsius higher is nothing too shabby, and it is still quieter than 75% of the video cards out there at load, custom or reference.

[Father Fuzzy]

nice work cramming all that in there

[Bartacus]

Great work! I would not have had the patience for that! I have a small system in a Bitfenix Prodigy and I find THAT too small!

[10e]

This puts it into perspective. That's a PSB Image B4 speaker next to it. It's just over 9" tall. The speaker is as tall as the top of the side panel where it meets the curved top.

This is a temporary home, it will be moving to the left once I finish the "big" pc. Or it may move into the basement family room as my high powered HTPC/Steam big picture gaming PC for the plasma. I have consoles but there is something about PC gaming at full 1080p and 60fps on a big screen that lowers consoles to "ok" status.