Thermaltake MODZERO OCTO - Thermaltake UK Modding Trophy powered by SCAN - FINISHED!

UPDATE 6

I'm back from Wales, my issues with Imgur are gone and I've A LOT of new photos to share. It was Sunday night when I posted without images so I'll pickup where I left off.

The external panels went on without any issues. I was fearing my chassis width measurements were going to be wrong and as such the external mounting holes would all be in the wrong place. Each time I put a bolt in place and turn the hex key I got a sensation and joy as the thread caught in the mod cube with no force.


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The top panel connects to the main X31 chassis in two place and doesn't use the mod cubes.


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Instead I made use of an old external RAD mount kit which I cut up into shorter 12mm lengths, a 20mm M3 bolt, a washer and a nut.


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I needed to drill out the mounting holes in the X31, so the mount got wrapped and a small length of masking tape put in place to help protect the X31 paint. The X31 is so thin a light pressure saw the drill do its job with no mess.


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Getting the nuts on the other end of the bolts was a faff but got there in the end. The external panels are solid. bolted to the chassis in eight places their is zero movement or flex.


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I swear making a couple extensions took longer than all the other assembly up to this point. Until I sat down to do it, I still hadn't decided what pattern to make use of the black, carbon and white Teleios braid I bought from E22. In the end I went if the inner row being all white (with white core wire) and the outer row (black core) switching from black to grey from wire to wire (like the DIMM slots on the Hero mobo).


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The loop was a lot of fun, it's the main aspect by which the build takes it's name. As the design phase I envisioned tube runs like tentacles with no way of knowing flow direction, it was meant to resemble more of a chaotic flurry of connections rather then a clean directional loop.


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The ThermalTake V-Tubler 4T surprised me, whilst it's not the clearest of flex it certainly has a good bend radius and is soft enough to push onto the fitting without busting a nut.


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By this point, it was late and yet I really wanted to fill it up. I wanted to see how the white coolant looked and even more I needed to know if my assembly under the shelf would leak. But I thought better of it and went to bed.

MONDAY

I'd done well, considering it all kicked off Friday afternoon by this point it was all but done. I just needed to fill it up, leak test, fit the RGB strips and take final photos. The end was in sight!


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I filled the loop, taking about 1.5ltrs, the D5 mount did not produce any vibrations and not a single drop leaked from the assembly under the shelf. I switch it on, topped it off and it bled with very little effort. So far everything had come together without a hitch.

I spent the next couple hours playing with the fan/RGB controllers and toying with the camera, trying to capture how well the light caught in the frosted inner panels.

I edited a few shots but had to get moving and so left the build sat there on my worktop until I returned.


which I did..



J.
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UPDATE 7


Filled and ready to go! The LED strips work amazingly well with the frosted panels. I really couldnt capture it with my SLT though and my photo just over does it. It's all done now, I spent time this evening installed Windows 10 and running some benchmarks. The loop is doing a great job, maxing out the GPU at 40'c under looping bench.

When I get a moment I'll compare the:

i7 2600k + 980 Strix = MODZERO FORTY
i7 4790k + 980 Ref = MODZERO FOUR

to the

i5 6600k + 970 Strix = MODZERO OCTO

It would be nice if I can push this build to beat out the Sandy rig at stock. I'll leave you guys with a couple shots of the internals.


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J.​

 

Great work bro. I'm very keen on that little hub of tubing and the floppy. Going against the trend with that and looks great !

 

UPDATE 8

Tomorrow (Monday May 2nd) Bit-Tech will present the completed builds and the judges will have their say. Regardless of the result I wanted to state, I've had a blast, and really appreciate having been given the opportunity to compete.

For the last couple days I've been pushing OCTO a little to see how well it fairs against FOUR and FORTY. With a kick up the arse and the other two running stock the i5/970 gets pretty close to it's Sandy and Devils i7/980 cousins.


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I took the i5 6600k up to 4.5ghz pretty simple enough, ran AIDA system stability bench for almost 24 hours with no problems. I'm reading I could get a little more from the CPU but an OC of almost 30% is alright by me.

Cheers buddy. It's weird lookin for sure. Having had it running up on my desk for the last couple days I'm quite taken with it. The 'little hub of tubing' is my attempt at originality. I like that you can't tell which direction the loop is flowing and in what order the components are cooled. I like that each run comes from the same place having no two elements connected by tubing. A massive thankyou to you and the Parvum team! Would have a been a very different build had you boys been come through for me.



MODZERO FOUR - i7 4790K (stock) GTX980 (stock)
MODZERO FORTY - i7 2600K (stock) GTX980 Strix (stock)
MODZERO OCTO - i5 6600K (4.5Ghz) GTX970 (+150 core)

3DMARK FIRESTRIKE

MODZERO FOUR (STOCK) - 11532
MODZERO FORTY (STOCK) - 11078
MODZERO OCTO (STOCK) - 10865


HEAVEN

MODZERO FOUR (STOCK) - 2094
MODZERO FORTY (STOCK) - 2031
MODZERO OCTO (4.5ghz - 1504mhz) - 2000


I think with a little more pushing, I could get the Skylake/970 to match the Sandy/980. Guess it shows a couple things, the 970 is a great GPU and the Sandy Bridge was a great CPU. Granted the 6600k has no HT but it's clocked 4.5ghz compared to the stock 2600K at 3.8ghz. I think if I re-run the same test with my sandy at 5ghz and my +220mhz on the 980 it'll open up the gap.

Overall however, I've found the i5 and the 970 to be a great combination, both have a fair amount of head room for OC'n and price to performance wise they certainly make a lot more sense then my other two. Alot of this ThermalTake WC hardware is really reasonably priced too and seemingly performs great! my CPU never pushed 52'c over the 18 hours I tortured it and that was running the fans at a constant 600-800 RPM (140/120mm).

Anywho, I'm off to bed. Hope you all like the final shots when they land tomorrow, I've got lots more images waiting to go once the article is up.

J.​

 

UPDATE 9



THE COMPLETED BUILD

The competition has been a blast, massive thankyou to Thermaltake, Bit-Tech and Scan. The vote is up, everyone has done a great job. I like how each have presented something fundamentally different.


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THE ARTICLE IS UP, PLEASE VOTE HERE

Still got more to come, I'm going to be trying out the features of the Thermaltake DSP 750Watt PSU over the next few days and thus use it to compare stock vs OC running costs.

Hope you like it. Thanks for checking it out.

J.​

 

LAST UPDATE:

OCTO came third! (did anyone see the results published anywhere?) this isn't news.... but I never did update the thread when I found out.

OCTO went to i59 and looked great on the Tt stand for 3 days. It's sat on a shelf doing nothing since, so I decided to pull it down, clean it up and try out the new background.

I'm gonna be kicking off the logs for the next project pretty soon. It's gonna be called MODZERO JUICE and will be in the NFC S4 Mini chassis... thats 4.3ltrs of SFF goodness.

Anywho... enjoy OCTO one last time.










J.

 

Totally missed this. She came out great. It just needs an anime figurine with a distressed expression tangled up in the tubing...

 

Thanks chap, it turned out okay. A figurine would complement it nicely, you're right. I'll have a look, see what I've got.. haha

J.