My fellow AW brothers a look into my current addiction

If this is in the wrong thread I am sorry. I do not look anywhere else on the forums but in the AW18 section.

So this will be my first water cooled systems with some custom work. I have been building PC's a longtime just never custom or water. I fell in love with Case Labs Mercury S8 and that started the downward spiral of my checking account, thanks a lot Case Labs!

I will update this post with the stuff in the bags and more shots. I want to try to do a detailed log with photos and possibly video along the way. I am in my final stages o deciding on the fan controlling. I originally wanted to use the ROG Front Base as you see in the picture but i don't think that is going to work with the 22 fans ill be using. So any suggestions on fan control for 21 sp120 quiet edition fans and one 140mm corsair quiet fan feel free to post up any suggestions. I am also currently going to initially guid with Corsair Vengeance
Pro 4x4gb 1600 ram. I think before it is said and done I will obtain Corsair Dominator GT ram and use some EK blocks for the ram.

Here is the first list of main components and will update the fittings and other stuff later.

SPECS
Case Labs Mercury s8 (will update and show config)
Asus Rampage IV Black
Intel i7-4960x
EVGA K|ngP|n 780ti TRI-SLI
Corsair Vengeance Pro 4 x 4gb 1600 ram (probably corsair dominator gt 32gn kit soon 1866)
Samsung 840 Pro 2 x 512gb Raid 0
Corsair AX1500i
Asus ROG Front Base
Corsair sp120 quiet edition x 21
Corsair af140 quiet x 1

Water Parts
EK-CoolStream PE 360 (Triple) x 3
EK-CoolStream PE 240 (Dual) (might be adding another 240)
EK-FC Terminal Triple Parallel - Acetal
EK-FB ASUS R4BE Monoblock - Nickel
EK-FC780 GTX Classy - Nickel x 3
EK EKoolant Premium Liquid Cooling Premix Coolant - 1000ml - Blood Red x 6 (just in case )
EK Dual DDC 3.2 PWM X-TOP w/ Pumps (EK-Dual DDC 3.2 PWM X-TOP (incl. pump))
EK Dual DDC X-RES Link Adapter CSQ (EK-Dual DDC X-RES Link CSQ - Add-on)
EK DDC / MCP35x Pump Heatsink Housing Assembly - Black (EK-DDC Heatsink Housing - Black) x 2
Redharbinger FMJ Series Stainless Steel Reservoir Cover - 250e Black w/ EK-MultiOption RES X3 250 x 2
PrimoChill PrimoFlex Advanced LRT Tubing 3/8"ID x 1/2" OD - 10ft Retail Pack - Clear (PFLEXA10-12) x 2




Will update with pics and maybe video if I can as i start the build over the next few days.

Thanks for looking!

A link to where Ill be updating a lot with pics and videos and logs. i will update here also if you guys want to see it here.

[Build Log] Case Labs Mercury S8 - Will update with a name soon (big build for me)

 

Awesome stuff... now I feel more compelled to do something similar. Thank you for sharing. +1 Rep

We can leave this here as far as I am concerned. It is something all of us Alienware nuts are interested in, so it is fitting in that respect.

Excellent choices on the specs. What you have selected will utterly destroy any of the newer "more efficient" platforms that have performance that truly sucks in comparison. Nice job!

 

Corsair Dominator GT is great memory. I had it on my previously owned Alienware Aurora. Hope you get it together soon. Would love to see some game-play videos on Youtube, as well as benchmarks. This system will blow any game out of the water... By the way, is there any reason in particular as to why you chose the Samsung 840 Pro over the Samsung 840 EVO? Just curious.

 

Very nice some benchmarks actually put the 840 pro at being slightly faster than the 840 EVO plus 840 pro uses MLC nand not TLC nand like the EVO,i have had Corsair Dominator GT on a previous build (X79) excellent RAM but i dont think it performed any better than higher clocked Vengeance Pro,should a great build with those Kingpin cards.

 

I've always thought MLC is better than TLC.

 

very nice!
Excellent choices on the specs.

 

Wow. That's a lot of money

Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

 

Dreaming for a day when all of that will fit in a laptop.. water cooling included

I'll just..leave this here

 

Is that 3 x 780ti kingpins!? You're an animal that things going to smash. There's not many machines I'd say are truly 4k ready.. but I'd say this'll likely be.
Yeah I think this is very in topic. We'll all have a thread like this if AW keep gimping.

 

Those are 6GB 780 Ti Kingpins, right?

 

Brother Pathfinder,

That is going to be one beastly machine! I am also following this over on OCN. I can't wait to see the entire log!

 

Thank you brothers! nice to wake up and see the encouragement from everyone.

J.Dre - The 840 pro uses the better MLC nand. I have evos in my aw14 and in my recent aw17 that is no longer in my stable. I have 840 pros in my current two desktop and my aw18. The evos are great for normal use and game loads. But I do a lot of photography and my lightroom catalogue is HUGE (has over 6tb of photo edites stored in the catalogue). I noticed when trying to edit on my 14/17 when loading and working with the catalogue file the EVO's get pretty slow. The 840 pros don't skip a beat when I am working in lightroom, my sql databses I do and video editing. So for my "power house" machines I will stick with 840 pros till something better comes out. The evo's are GREAT in my 14 and serve there purpose well.

I will post as much as I can as I go in the build.

 

Hey Pathfindercod, your leading the path creating a "power house" fire breathing dragon monster, have you decided on a "nickname" for your project? I just downloaded Adobe Photoshop, wow 1.1 GB size, I'm pushing 105 Mbps, need Google fiber to run at 722 Mbps, but not available in my area yet. And wow, you have a lot of storage to maintain on those collection of photos "~Superbike" so I see your need for speed with your triple Raid0 SSD's on the AW18.

 

Sounds like you might benefit from the very consistent performance of the SanDisk Extreme II. Basically this SSD can handle hundreds of GB of data at a time without breaking a sweat or slowing to a craw like the 840 Evo after the SLC cache is exhausted. I'll be honest and say all this I read second hand, but if consistency and write performance are important to you, seems like the Extreme II will be a better choice.

 

Thank you Traderjo! Yeah my Lightroom database is huge that keeps all my edits in the database.

Thanks for the info n=1, my 840 pros are handling the job very well. If and when I wear them out I'll look at options.

 

You wont wear out the pros for some time

 

An update from last night and today.

The Mercury S8 unpacked





The bottom unpacked.:


Robogrip pliers and got this. I did not realize till later in the build just straightening was not enough as there bend tab was pushed back about 5-8mm. I had to wiggle and pull to get the screw hold to line up:
[

AH, now we are talking:




C R A P ! ! ! !


another bend and pull and it came together. A few small scare under the scenes that aren't visible when the skin is on.





The case is VERY nice and amazing how quickly and easily it comes together to make a EXTREMELY sturdy design. I will write up more of my thoughts on Caselabs as i go and more thoughts on the case and features soon.

 

Ok so my D800e is at Nikon getting its annual clean, adjust and tuneup. So i am using my d600 and it is riddled with sensor spots from the shutter recall. So i cleaned up these the best i could and will reshoot some better high res shots when he my d800e gets back.

Many shots of the parts before installation.

My new pr0n:

The Mercury s8





EK

 

Simply awesome, Brother......and I just love the photography, too

If I could rep you twice in quick succession, I would. Once for the build and once for the coverage/pics of it! - keep it up, I'm looking forward to seeing more of this!!

+1rep (2 if I coulda LOL)

 

Thank you brother steviejones133! I'm having fun and excited to finish it. I had high hope this week but my wife honey do list has been to long.

 

Dear Lord that's gonna be epic! Must have cost you a mint for all that kit, especially as you have all 3 Alienware systems! good on ya!!!!

 

Some people have too much money to burn but if I had that much, I would burn it on this stuff

 

Nice build man (and you're local )

I ended up getting into custom liquid cooling after my M18x as well. If you ever decide to go acrylic let me know. I've got a ton of extra BP fittings I'm looking to sell.

 

Funny you mention it, I have been on the fence of just going petg or acrylic before I start the actual build. I tried om'ing you back but your inbox is fiull.

 

Does the copper panel serve any purpose?

 

Copper panel?

 

Can't wait to see this put together! I really want to build a rig with 2 x 780 Ti in SLI, but I still have some time to hold off. By the time I'm ready the next refresh will probably be around.

Curious to see what you think of the WRT1900AC as well, that's what I'm using right now. Still hoping Linksys/Belkin can get a hold of a good driver for the Marvell chip. Really want to see some third party firmware for it.

Edit: What display(s) are you pairing that beast up with?

 

On the side of the case is a square of copper coloured material.

 

I think that is the side panel window you are seeing. It does have a copper tone in the photos. Looking at the parts laid out on the table prior to assembly, it appears to be covered with a protective paper, probably to avoid scratching.

 

That's what I thought it was, too - protective covering for the clear panel/window...

 

Oh.. Yeah that's the protective cover.

- spent approx 6 hours flushing the 4 rads yesterday. Hope to start on mounting stuff tonight.

 

Ah I see, a case with a large external heatsink would be interesting.... But that's just my musings

 

Thank you everyone.

After some more test fitting some stuff today I determined I need the extended top .. So I placed a order for another top today .. Now the wait again.

I also have changed plans part of tfe way through and have decided to do acrylic. So ordered crap load more stuff for acrylic tubing, fittings and acrylic tools. Good thing it only takes two days for stuff to get here from fl. I hope to make serious headroom this week.

Pics and updates to follow soon.

 

More rambling and mumbling till other stuff gets here.

After much debate and test fitting and as much as I didn't want to I had to order a extended top and standard size motherboard tray from caselabs. So hopefully by the end of next week I can start the installation of parts.

Other updates/changes:

After ordering tons of compression fittings, primo chill advanced tube I decided to do acrylic. I really tried visualizing this build in my head and started ordering stuff couple weeks before my case made it here. So after my test fitting and analyzing (over analyzing at that) the tubing runs would be to long and droopy in the s8. That and I figured a build like this deserves me trying to do acrylic.

So my monsoon heat gun and monsoon acrylic bending kit, many many tubes of acrylic, 36 acrylic ek fittings, more 90 fittings came in today. But can't do much till the new motherboard tray gets here.

AND after hours of research and pulling my hair out I decided to bite the bullet and order the ek monarch ram coolers and clean tops. I'm replacing the vengeance pro ram with some corsair gt ram.

AND many more hours of research I finally decided on the Aquaero 6xt fan controller, flow meter, temp sensor, black heatsink and black face plate.

Ugh

 

If you are going that route you might want to go with PETG versus acrylic tubing. The July CPU Magazine has the first of a series on custom liquid cooling using rigid tubing. It is a good article with useful information for first-timers. It starts on page 42. The article explains the reasons for choosing PETG tubing, and as a plus is it less expensive.

You can view the online version here: Computer Power User | Power User Project | Bend Acrylic Pipes Like a Pro

 

Awesome, thanks Brother Fox. Excellent read! I did some reading before deciding and wish I went with PETG. I ultimately decided to do as much EK as I could. I went with half mile of EK tubes haha. I'm working on more product shots of lots of EK stuff. I've exchanged a few PMs on OC.net with Derick. Hoping for some good new in exchange for photo work on a couple future builds

 

Really nice build pathfindercod just curious how are you putting 4xSamsung 840 Pro's in Raid 0 when the Intel chipset on X79 only supports 2x Sata 3 ports? Are you using a Raid Controller?

 

The delicious E-ATX X79 motherboard he is using has 6 SATA 6GB/s ports and 4 SATA 3GB/s ports... RAMPAGE IV BLACK EDITION - if I am not mistaken, same board Brother Johnksss uses and the one I would use if I were going to build a new desktop. I think this is probably the best extreme OC motherboard that money can buy.

 

That means using the Asmedia ports not sure how they perform relative to the Intel sata 3 ports. I know in my case the marvel ports are relatively slow I would be interested to see what sort of disk speed could be achieved with Asmedia ports in Raid 0....

 

Nice build I myself run the Asus rampage iv extreme great board I even got 2 of them. Only problem is there is only 2 x 6.0gb ports per controller so 4 in total and you are not able 2 span your raid to 3 or 4 hdd. I ran 2 titan's a 3930k and corsair dominator platinum ram haven't had time or money to change over to watercooling yet

 

Well, I guess you can't have your cake and eat it, too. So, are two of the six advertised 6.0GBs eSATA ports?

 

yep correct the 4 Intel 6.0GBs ports for internal hdd and asmedia has 2 for eSATA

 

Sorry guys been busy. I am only running two 512gb samsungs in raid 0. the intel chipset only has two 6g sats ports. Thats all I need for OS and the games i play and applications.

Here is a small update:

Alright after a issue with wrong part/incomplete order I finally got the extra case parts i needed. I got the extended top for the s8 which i just am having a hard time bringing myself to using it. I think the normal height top looks so much better.

I ordered this also (the standard size motherboard tray)..



The bigger tray which I like so much more just closes off the opening to the bottom so much. So i essentially ordered the taller top and the smaller tray to test fit possibly putting my reservoirs on the flex bay side needing the smaller motherboard tray.

Scenarios are:

1 - Fans in pushing air through rads out the top, standard short top. Reservoirs would have to be mounted on flex bay side with shorter motherboard tray.

2 - Fans pulling air mounted on top of rads outside the case with extended top. Allowing reservoirs the be mounted on the left side in front of video cards. Would allow the larger motherboard tray.

3 - Fans in push pull adding 6 more needing the extended top and smaller motherboard tray to allow reservoirs to mount on flex bay side.

I was hoping the rads would have fit on top of the case allowing the extended top to snap down but the rads are jut a couple mm to tall.

I will start working on this over the next coupe days and take some pics with the different options i am trying and to get any ideas my fellow OCD computer guys might have for me.

 

Love the case how much was it ? I would have fans pushing air out of from the top as hot air rises and mr fox the tricky part on rampage iv board is that intel only has 2 sata 6.0gb ports and the other 4 are asmedia controller so make is hard to setup up any decent array

 

Well, unless the asmedia controller is a bad product I would not care that much. I only have 2 SATA3 6.0GB/s ports on the M18xR1/R2 and it has already been enough. I'd much rather have to settle for a 2 drive RAID0 and have a monster overclocker than the opposite. That all ports are 6.0GB/s on Haswell's does not make up for its serious shortcomings in extreme performance options. 3.0GB/s is good enough for my data storage and game drives. I don't notice any difference between the 18 and R2 in this respect. Most of the time I forget the R2 is any different, so the fact that the 18 is all SATA 6.0GB/s is nice, but it is not particularly compelling.

 

I would agree with you but when im buying a 600 buck MB I expect the best

 

The case with the chosen options I made ran just a tad over $600.

 

Might get that case for my next build X99 here I come

 

I haven't even finished this build and im already foaming at the mouth for another case labs case. I have slow myself down. ugh.... These cases are insane. Never thought id be case company loyal, but these cases are nothing but quality with tons of options.

 

Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.....brings a whole new meaning to the term "computer pr0n "...