Hello, Been contemplating a new build for a while now with Star Citizen release around the corner as well as numerous other games to get excited about in Q4. I initially wanted break my cherry and dabble into water cooling, after hearing about having to liquid change every six months alongside disassembling a rig just to clean out the pipes I averted away to trusty hydro coolers as well as not being a big fan of overclocking. ***Parts List*** Case: Corsair 240D Air Mobo: Z97X Gigabyte Matx CPU: Intel 4790K CPU Heatsink: Corsair Hydro H80i GT HDD: Samsung 850Evo 1TB & 840Evo 120GB RAM: Ballistics x2 8GB (1866Mhz) GPU: Evga GTX 980Ti SC PSU: Corsair HX1000i ***Case Mods*** Cables: 24Pin Green Corsair Mobo & Type 3 Green Cable Kit Fans: x2 Corsair Green SP140 Dual Pack Build Issues/Problems Started worrying when the back plate of the H80i GT wasn't sitting flush with the motherboard, one side of it was falling through and wasn't firmly fixed like the otherside. After screwing on the front all seemed well. I read about how 980's spew out allot of heat and wanted to place a fan directly below the GPU for extra cooling. This wasn't achievable due to the USB connectors getting in the way. Overall from start to finish the build took me three hours to complete. Nothing beats listening to heavy metal and assembling a rig with a sippable alcoholic beverage through a straw. Ended up being pretty annoyed at the thought of having to buy an entire cable kit just for an extra two cables which I could have brought of Ebay or directly from the Corsair website. Corsair or Scan need to revamp some of their cable packages. My only other grip was about the Mobo being dual channel rather than quad, I had lengthy discussion with some members on here about how effectively memory speeds are utilized, that being said I couldn't find a single mATX board that was, therefore I settled for the Gigabyte Z97x for it's superior audio quality. Very annoyed at the Corsair Link connector on the heatsink, as you can see it's very noticeable. A little advise for anyone looking to start a new build, it's usually wise to put in the powersupply first. Temps Idle/Load I haven't quite tested this yet, however under load I rarely see the GTX push past 80c, max temp on Witcher III was 81c, normally it runs idle at about 41-50 and the fans don't spin until it hits 60c which is only when I game. The H80i does a fantastic job of cooling a 4790K, highly recommend, temps are always below 40c. Alternative Considerations & Current Specs Was very close to for going 2011/DDR4 architecture, after reading the review and since I don't do overclocks I settled with my current 4790K. I'm happy with my choice on RAM, the timings on these beasts are great, did you know they also light up green too? The original system that I was to build would have been submitted on the G3D rig of the month competition. It was a full watercooling setup with some very nice looking EK cooling blocks in a 240D with Darkside radiators and Mayhem Blood Red Coolant. You can see how awesome this coolant is here. Without further a due, here some pictures.... The last two pictures don't really do much justice to how awesome it looks with the naked eye. Camera glare got the best of those photos. May upload a HD video on youtube sometime soon. - TeKK
Definitely not seated all the way. When his motherboard goes poof he'll know why. *love the new Corsair heatsink style though
An early snapshot, rest assured they are firmly seated. Kinda think this one is a little ugly compared to the previous version, can't argue with the performance however.
The LED on every H100i I installed broke at some point. One of the colors would just die out of nowhere. So I like that it looks slick without the LED's.