Three new (well two new and one serious upgrade) builds

**Gumby** · 01-12-14, 02:51 AM

So here it is with just the CPU water cooled. The Radeon R290 will get the water treatment next weekend.
Holy crap is this thing fast. Going from an Phenom II X4 3200 to the i7 4770k is a huge upgrade. Still downloading and installing my apps. Can't wait to really put this thing through it's paces. Since this picture was taken I have added back my sound card. The onboard sound, even with the Soundblaster and boost just wasn't nearly as good as my old X-Fi. The Killer NIC on the board, on the other hand, is pretty cool. Not cool enough to pay what people were paying for them back in the day, but pretty neat. I will post another pic once I get the water on the Radeon.

**RhysJD3** · 01-12-14, 09:27 AM

Looks like a closed loop system. How are you watercooling the GPU?

**Gumby** · 01-12-14, 10:05 AM

A separate closed loop just for the GPU

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**HeavyG** · 01-12-14, 10:17 PM

The Cooler Master closed loop systems may not be the prettiest things to look at, but they are getting great reviews. Looks great, Gumbinator!

**Gumby** · 01-13-14, 09:15 AM

Originally Posted by HeavyG

The Cooler Master closed loop systems may not be the prettiest things to look at, but they are getting great reviews. Looks great, Gumbinator!

Thanks!

My review of it is good too. The pump is completely silent. The installation was pretty simple. My case made that harder than it had to be. My only complaint is that the fans are too loud. I ran them to the fan controller instead of to the mobo. Even turned down all the way they are too loud for me. I may try the fan header rout and see if it helps. More likely I will just replace them. I like the manual control. Four hours of Prime95 got me 39C No idea what ambient was but it was comfortable in the room. Your mileage may vary.

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**Gumby** · 01-16-14, 02:49 AM

an update:
Since it was going to be a few days before I could get to the electronic store and buy some quieter 120mm fans I decided to run them to the mobo's headers and set them to auto to see how they did. Color me impressed. Under zero to minimum load it is now inaudible and sits a 30C. Under a prime95 max torture test the fans run up to 75% and sound just like they did on minimum through the fan controller. The CPU temp on a long run of Prime95 never went above 57C. As soon as I cut Prme95 off the fans immediately went back to silent and the temps dropped rapidly back to 30C. Water is awesome.

**RhysJD3** · 01-16-14, 06:08 PM

Originally Posted by Gumby

an update:
I decided to run them to the mobo's headers and set them to auto to see how they did.

Did the same thing with my corsair H80. One of the fan headers on the pump stopped working so I had to move it and I'm like, well hell's bells, might as well move both and control the fan speed/noise though a sensor! Much quieter!

**Gumby** · 01-18-14, 03:53 PM

Put the Arctic Accelero Hybrid in today. Man what a pain in the ass! Totally worth it though. My computer is now silent.

Anyway, on to the pics!

An R290 Peepshow!

Gave her a bath

New heatsinks for the video ram and voltage regulators

Added this waterblock with a fan and shroud to keep those new heatsinks aired

Put it all together

And put it back in the case with the fan for the radiator too.

Now no more noise and it's still very fast. Best of all, no voided warranty since XFX does not void your warranty if you replace the cooler.
I will do some overclocking in a few days and see how that goes. But for $400 for the card and $100 for the water/air cooler kit I am sitting at a $500 card that should outperform pretty much any single GPU on air.