Good day fellow Guru's! After what seems an eternity, I have finally decided to do a (mostly) full new build for the first time since 2015! Those of you that remember me hanging around here more often than I do today will know that is a long time compared to a few years back when this was a near yearly occurrence! For those of you that don't, here are a few of my previous builds! Project Fortis: https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/guru3d-rig-of-the-month-december-2015,1.html Micro but Mighty: https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/guru3d_rig_of_the_month_april_2014,1.html Mini but Mighty: https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/mini-but-mighty-sponsored-parvum-itx-build.391454/ So, welcome to... Inflecto Latin for Curve, Bow or Bend... As usual, I have been looking for something a little different, or a bit more unusual than most builds, and after much searching I decided on the Thermaltake Core P3 Curve: I love the stripped back "open" look, and the single piece curved tempered glass looks really quite stunning. For the first time since the Athlon 64 days, I'll be basing this rig on an AMD CPU: One Ryzen 9 3950x: To be twinned with: The Gigabyte Auros Master looks like a great board, with a great layout, 3x M.2 slots & decent power delivery system from the VRM's plus the understated grey/black/silver look will really suit what I have planned for this build: Rest of the core hardware will be from my current rig: GPU: 2080Ti Memory: 32gb G-Skill Trident Z 3200mhz C14 Memory. We'll be hardline watercooling this one again with a few bits arriving over the next couple of days!
I remember you and will be following this build as previous ones have been very good! Good luck with this one.
A quick update as various bits and pieces arrive. I have plans for how to use the reservoir in this build, and this EK flat reservoir should work very nicely for what I want it for: On the subject of watercooling, I was a little worried about the VRM's on the motherboard with this case. Even though the Aurus master is well equipped with VRM cooling, the lack of case airflow in the Core 3 bothered me so I decided to grab a full board block to solve a potential issue: So, for my last 3 builds I have painstakingly braided all my own cables - and I've been really pleased with the results of my efforts. However, each time it takes an INCREDIBLE amount of time, and having done it 3 times already, I decided to "cheat" this time. Luckily there are quality solutions available on the market these days, and so I grabbed a set of CableMod Carbon Black cables for my Corsair PSU: I have to say, I was a little concerned as doing it yourself you can make sure the standard is as you expect but these are fantastic quality - really thick cables and a wonderful job on the braid: That's it for now, I'm just starting to mock up the hardware and get an idea of how it will all go together, so I'll try and post a few pics of that too!
Quick progress update! So yesterday was spent mostly tearing down my old system, and cleaning waterblocks, radiators & fittings to get them nice and clean for the new build... This lot took forever to clean! A mixture of Bitspower, Barrow & Corsair fittings here that ive collected over the years - and this excludes the soft tube fittings I have! My plan for this case is to mount the reservoir so its suspended in front of the powersupply, which I thought would look pretty cool, but also aid with hiding cables etc coming from the powersupply. A few minor problems needed solving, mostly involving creating suitably spaced brackets to mount the res on the underside of the PCI tray: A fair amount of dremmeling and filing later, and I had a pair of these! I would have painted these before installation to get rid of the scratch marks. Sadly I had no black spray paint here, and with lock-down it'll be a few days until I can get some delivered so they may have to come out again! Here it is in place, Pretty happy with the result - although filling is going to be fun as I had to mount it upside down to avoid the pump hitting the PSU - its a shame EK didn't add another port on the top right corner of the res for this eventuality - would have made it even more flexible:
Only now realized that the case has a glass panel with 90 degree curve. So that covers side + top or side + front. How are you planning to keep the dust out?
Yes, its a completely open air case! I liked it as its something quite different, but yes dust could be an issue, although its not directly drawing air over the components as the rad is off to one size. Really, the only way to solve it is to have a duster near to hand!
Right, time for an update of last nights progress... which was not very much! I decided to mount the monoblock onto the motherboard, but this ended up taking far longer than I had anticipated... cue a rant at EK Waterblocks and their useless instructions! I've been purchasing EK stuff since they started in the mid 2000's and in the beginning their instructions were ropey (often badly translated) but I let it slide as they were a small start-up just getting to grips with things and their products were great. However, the instructions for this monoblock were just pain wrong - see here: As you can see, the layout on the instructions does not match the actual board layout! More detailed pic below: This has a direct impact on knowing where to place the right thickness of thermal pads, and meant a number of test fittings, and looking at the rear of the water block (as the contact plates have different heights in different places) to ensure the right amount of contact. Now, EK these days markets itself as the watercooling leader, and their prices keep going up and up (CPU blocks for £200 anyone!) surely its not too much to ask for: 1) clear, correct instructions for your product. 2) please EK label the thickness of the thermal pads included - especially when there is only 0.5mm difference in height between them! once they have been squished a little in transit it can be quite hard to determine between them! 3) and surely it wouldn't hurt to include paper instructions with your very expensive kit! This is especially important when your products can directly contribute to damaging a system if not installed correctly! Luckily I am an experienced user, and have been through this before so I can work my way around it but for someone new I could see how it could be quite daunting! Top tip for those in a similar situation - put a few dots of thermal paste on each of the pads, then when you test fit the block and remove it, its easy to see where contact was made from the paste print on the block! Rant over - the block looks great now its installed:
OK, and update from the last day of the build... There were a few other little bits that needed modding. For example, I wanted the GPU to be as far forward as possible to help align the tubing run, but the screws from the new res mounting brackets conflicted with the riser bracket which therefore needed a little adjustment with a drill! This was a test fit, its now been filed smooth and re-painted to finish it off! Since then, I've wired up and fitted the radiator, taking care to hide all 6 fan cables which also invovled modding a little cable channel and editing one of the fans slightly - I forgot to take pictures of this and its not easy to see now its fitted (which was the whole point!) And then all today, I have been tube bending. Pretty happy with the results, although I might redo a couple of them to get them absolutely straight: Next up is cable management, and I'm also in the process of designing a new facia to hide the rad at the front of the case which I think will look pretty cool.
So, bit of delay with the build - waiting for a couple of bits and pieces to arrive, and the unfortunate necessity of work meaning I havnt had as much time over the last week! Anyway, the paint finally arrived, so I painted the brackets, as well as "edited" them slightly following the previous fitting and noticing a couple bits that could be done better. I also took the opportunity to repaint the IO cover on my essence STX soundcard: Since then, I've finished off the visible cable management, and I actually re-did some of the tubing as I wasn't happy with a couple of the bends. Hardline takes a while and a fair amount of practice to get exactly right, and I hadn't done it in quite a while. Need to tidy up the cables around the back, but I've learnt from experience not to do that until you know the PC will boot, otherwise you have to undo it all over again! Now leak testing is underway, and once that's done I'll update with some more pictures of the final build!
OK - Final Build Pictures are here! This has taken a while because the last week has been a nightmare. I had the rig leak testing, & up and running - 3 days later, the coolant had split and left residue over everything. I am using mayhems pastel white. Now, I've used mayhems pastel coolants for the last 6 or 7 years with no problems whatsoever, and often they have lasted far longer than other coolants I used in the past - so this really surprised me. I had cleaned the loop with their Blitz cleaner before hand too - the only thing I can think is that I did not flush it through completely after using the cleaner, and it reacted with the coolant. Anyway, a full further clean-down, another run with Blitz part 2 and ALOT of flushing through and its back up and running. Lets hope thats solved the problem! Anyway - here are the pics: The curved glass looks awesome in real life, but its VERY difficult to photograph well because soooo reflective!
Ya great job, I luv the curved glass also I seen you can flip the glass too & make curve part on top and front open. I also seen you can lay it down if wanted, cool case. I went to look for price @ amazon for that case and the curved glass is an upgrade kit? Then I checked out on newegg and they sell the case with curved glass ...lmao but there out of stock now ...lol
Somehow missed this, nice build, looks very clean. Can we have a picture of the cable management on the back? Well done
Really nice build. I want to use the same EK reservoir in my P3 too. How did you fill the reservoir in that orientation? It would really help me.
