INFRARED Build Log

[Pri]

Been a month, time for an update.

I have got all my fittings, the res, a vertical GPU mount from cable mod. Pretty much all my bits and bobs. But there is one thing missing, the graphics card. Like everyone I know acquiring one of these has been extremely difficult. I've even spoken to people I know who work at e-tailers and they're getting literally 30 cards at a time on some days. Pretty crap.

So anyway I decided to get in the queue and I've pre-ordered an RTX 3090 Strix OC from Overclockers. I have no idea when it'll arrive but it is what it is. Here is the one I purchased: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus-gef ... 4j-as.html



I chose this card for a few reasons. Firstly it is an RTX 3090 and I was on the fence about getting a 3080 or a 3090 but I decided to just get the more powerful card because I simply wanted it.

This 3090 differs from the founders edition in that it has a 480 Watt power limit instead of 350 watts. This allows the card to be 19% faster than the RTX 3080 instead of only 9% faster like the founders edition. This is without overclocking it's just the GPU is constrained by that power budget and giving it more energy lets it boost higher and for longer. This card also has a 200MHz overclock from the factory (it's a binned chip) over the Founders Edition. Which is quite significant.

Finally this card uses three 8-pin power connectors instead of two or that new-fangled 12-pin connector NVIDIA put on their cards. I think this will look really nice in my build, my current card uses an 8-pin and a 6-pin by comparison.

This card does have available a waterblock from EK which I still need to purchase, I'll probably wait until I actually have the card in my possession to order this as there may be other blocks from other watercooling companies I like the look of more by then.

So the build is coming along nicely. I think I will buy a new CPU waterblock. As much as I like the one I have now it won't look that great with pastal coolant which I'm using this time around. So I'm going to instead go with probably a Phanteks waterblock like this one:



As I think the really large "viewing" window for the fluid will look nice. Obviously I'll get the black version that is intended for Socket 2066, this is an image of the AM4 version I believe.

I also purchased an EK leak tester:



Which lets you fill your loop with compressed air (0.65 bar or so) so you can be certain if your build has a leak or not before you fill it with any coolant. In the past I've always used wet testing which takes hours and if there's a leak it can be quite annoying. So £30 investment for peace of mind, quite worth it. I already received this and it feels quite nice being made out of a solid block of brass.

Once the GPU arrives I'll run it on air for a week or so to make sure it's working properly before I install any waterblock on it, something you should always do and I've always done as GPU blocks are quite an involved thing to install on your card taking care and time.

So that's the update hopefully next one will be with the GPU in my hands!

[Pri]

As more reviews of the RTX 3090 Strix OC have come out and its very large power consumption I've decided to swap out the 480mm XSPC radiator I have in the top of my case which is a 35mm thick model with an EK-XE480 which is still a 480mm long radiator but it's 60mm thick giving me a lot more surface area for heat absorption and dissipation.

With this new build my reservoir is going to fill almost the entire height of the central chamber of my case so I did some measuring and even with this new thicker radiator at the top I'll have more than an inch of room around the reservoir so it should fit even more snug into the space and fill the "void" nicer than originally anticipated.

My case does currently have two 480mm radiators, both the same XSPC 480mm long by 35mm thick models. The bottom one can't be made any thicker due to the space constraints in the basement. The power supply, the tubing I have going through the lightbox etc all mean there are mere millimetres of clearance so I'm only going to be changing the top radiator.

I think by doing this it will be as-if I have three of my current radiators in capacity and that should be more than enough to cool my new parts. I am in the future intending to upgrade to the AMD Threadripper platform but as no Zen 3 based Threadripper parts were announced at AMD's recent event I'll stick with my 7900X for the time being.

I had earlier thought about upgrading to a 10980 XE which is an 18 Core CPU that is a drop-in replacement for the chip I have currently but at £950 for equal single-threaded performance to what I have now (which is what games most benefit from) I didn't feel it offered me enough of an upgrade. The eight extra cores it has would be nice for productivity usage but not enough to justify the price. It's really more of a side-grade than an upgrade.

I'm quite looking forward to the new Threadripper stuff next year and I can only hope AMD gets on that quickly!

[Pri]

Some updates today. I received my EK XE480 radiator today. This is the 480mm long by 60mm thick radiator I mentioned above.

I also received my CPU waterblock. I ended up going with the EK Magnitude in black and I contacted EK to get a custom transparent plexi piece for the front which they're sending to me.

The combination should look like this:



Except mine will not have that golden ring around the edge of the main part as I'm using a black ring. It will still glow in the middle though so the coolant will shine nicely through the front. I really like the look of this block and most importantly for my build it is symmetrical where the inlet and outlet are so the symmetry of my tube runs can be maintained.

I was quite surprised by the weight of the XE 480. Will definitely add a few pounds to the builds overall weight but man does it look amazing. Machined perfection. Every fin is perfect and a big step up from the XSPC radiators I'm using currently which looked a little worn from the manufacturing process even after first opening them.

[Pri]

Still in queue for my RTX 3090 Strix OC. I am now under 100 in queue though so that's good. Maybe next month I'll finally have it.

In the meantime I purchased a Core i9 10980XE which I installed today just to add some extra CPU performance. I've been really surprised by the performance of this CPU I appear to have gotten a really good chip it OC's very high. I did run 4.8 GHz on all cores to test things and got some insane Cinebench R23 numbers.

I've gone from 15,177 on my 7900X (4.7GHz all-cores with 3GHz cache). To 26,248 on my 10980XE (4.5GHz all-cores and 3GHz cache.



Since it has so many cores (18) I've decided to run it with a stepped ratio.

4.8 GHz: 1-4 Cores Active
4.7 GHz: 5-6 Cores Active
4.6 GHz: 7-8 Cores Active
4.5 GHz: 9-18 Cores Active

I'm also running the Cache at 3 GHz instead of 2.4 GHz as this really helps with multithreaded workloads.

This gives me a nice happy medium between power consumption, heat and performance. The chip consumes 350 Watts with this spec with all 18 cores under 100% load which is quite a lot of power, my 7900X at 4.7GHz on all 10 cores consumed 300 Watts by comparison.

When I ran this chip with all 18 cores at 4.8GHz it consumed just over 400 Watts and that's way too high for day to day use. I could probably get that down a bit with tweaking but honestly I'd rather have a rock solid stable system day to day so I'm not going to do much overclocking beyond what I've setup today. Having four cores turbo to 4.8 GHz is going to be more than enough for me in the apps that use such few threads and for the software I use that needs all the cores (mostly my machine learning workloads and video encoding) the 4.5GHz all-core turbo will be more than adequate.

I'm really happy with this upgrade, got the CPU for a steal. It's crazy to think only a year ago these were £2,000 (9980XE). AMD really hurt Intels margins and I'm very happy for it!

[Pri]

This build is really taking forever. I'm still waiting on the graphics card and the graphics card block to become available. I've literally got everything else at this point. I just ordered some custom cables from Cablemod that look like this:



Their lead time is quite high right now due to a factory upgrade but I'm not concerned since I likely wont have my GPU until the end of April. If I get it by then it would have been over 6 months since I placed my order.

I did make a short video of my CPU block (I've leak tested and also checked the RGB works on all of the parts I've received so far)

https://i.pixita.com/GddEdPkzT.mp4

It's quite frustrating waiting for ya know, 1 major part. I can't really do much. I've been overclocking my 10980XE some more and by undervolting it I've managed to obtain 4.8GHz on 2 cores and 4.7GHz on 2-18 cores. So the CPU is now surpassing my 7900X in single-core workloads and smashing it in multi-core, really happy with this upgrade it has saved me a lot of time already.

I also have an Aquero Octo on its way which looks like this:



This will be replacing my current Aquero Quadro which has half the fan headers and half the RGB compared to the Octo. That's the only difference. I'm doing this change because I'm adding two more fans to the case as intakes (80mm Black Noctuas) and I'm also having 4 components that use D-RGB (Distro plate, Res, CPU Block and GPU block) and so with two D-RGB channels instead of only one I can run the Distro Plate and Res on one header and the CPU + GPU on another.

Quite a neat little product, I've been very impressed with the Aquero Quadro, perhaps I'll use it somewhere else in the future. Perhaps in my home server as I am intending to upgrade that later this year when EPYC3 becomes available though might be overkill in the server we'll see what happens.

The wait continues...

[Pri]

I forgot to update this thread last year. I did complete this build in June 2021. Here is the final thing:



Been running it since last year, works great. The only things I've changed since, the fans at the front I swapped out the EK fans for black Noctuas. All the ones seen in this image are the same, the two I switched are out of frame right at the front of the case.

Been an incredible build. The RTX 3090 is unbelievably fast and even more so on water. Going with the Phanteks G30 waterblock for the graphics card was totally the right move, I would buy Phanteks stuff again.