5950x and PBO overheated something or busted custom loop?

[Dr. Dro]

It looks good, but I am not fond of distro plates. It kinda is meant to reduce clutter, but it is full of spaghetti tubes. I have used hard extenders on tank and pump sections to get rid of needing to mount it anywhere. And the manometer is actually functional, I have two pumps, other is behind the board, and the main pump is around 20% PWM under no load, totally silent. I need a new main pump either way, it old and and rattling a bit.

View attachment 295704

Your build looks amazing... congrats

 

[A Computer Guy]

I did some prep work with the new rad, some fan mounting tests, and screw fitting tests. Will post pics and commentary later today.

(edit)

Before cleaning the rads I thought to check the xspc thin rad and check the clearances for the screws.
The general ideal I had for the rad mounting is expressed in the side view diagram below... (the distroplate is located and facing in the front)
On the right side the distroplate it obstructs access to the mounting screws and provides limited space for the screwhead.

The screws that came with the xspc rad had really thick heads and might not fit in the gap on one side where the mounting holes are obstructed by the distroplate.
Looked for an alternative screw in my spare parts box.

Found one. This is also important if I need some more room to use spacers so I don't ram the screw into the radiator.

Test fitting

With this my diagram changes slightly to use the small screw to attach the fan to the rad and continue to use the same existing screw to mount the fan.

Checking the ML fan I am using to test with has about a 4mm thickness for mounting.

The stock xspc screw had a diameter that was too large to fit in the space provided by the fan so the smaller head screw again becomes the better candidate for use.
i-fix driver bit barely fit in the fan screw hole. I still needed to use some extension so the drivers magnet wouldn't lift the driver bit out of the hole.
I was also testing fitting the longer stock xspc screws here. I have to cut/grid down the longer screws significantly if I don't want to damage the underlying fins when simply attaching fans to one side.

It's hard to see but the screw length is ok and doesn't protrude into the radiator.

In this example you can see the short stock xspc screw can be too long in the case of thin mounting surfaces and doesn't provide much of any depth for the screw to overshoot.
The fan I was testing with was a ML fan and hopefully the LL fan will have the same thickness near 4mm..

In the case of using the xspc long screw you can see it's a tad to long if only attaching a fan to the rad and also probably in the case of going through thin mounting surfaces to attach fan and rad.

Another perspective

Here is another shot showing the very limited space for screws to overshoot this really thin rad.

On the opposite side of the ports there is a little more space to allow the screw to overshoot.

In the next post I'll cover cleaning of the rads.

I have two rads to clean. A small ek 120 se and the xspc thin 360 that I will try to install.

Sysprep came with my priomchill kit so I decided to give it a try.

Peeking into the ek (top) and xspc (bottom) you can see the copper.

Initial cleaning the ek 120 was tough. Poured some previously boiled water in and shook it around then drained.
Ek's rad was really dirty. Had to repeat 6 to 8 times.

Next was the xspc 360. Only had to go at it 2 times.

Next onto the sysprep


... ran out of attachment space will have to start a new post.

Testing a new post....eh....it's appending to this one.

I need someone to post something so I can continue with a new post.

The next parts
part 2: continuing rad cleaning
part 3: case inspection - rad fitting woes

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

Look amazing man!

 

[A Computer Guy]

... continuing story...

ok where was I... oh yes Sysprep...
( https://www.primochill.com/products/primochill-sysprep-cooling-loop-pre-treatment )

So I thought this time around I was going to be smart and tried to shoehorn in a coffee filter into my loop rather than doing what I typically have done to catch any remaining debris but it didn't take.
( Previously I had filled my loop, drained, then used a coffee filter and funnel when refilling my loop. This technique fixed a bad batch of cryofuel I got when I first started watercooling. )
The d5 was strong enough to suck a hole right into the filter luckily nothing broke off and got jammed into the pump so - bad idea this was - as yoda would say.
Next time I will get an inline filter when preparing rads. Let me know if you have any recommendations.
Before using the sysprep I simply did a trial run with distilled water to make sure I didn't have any leaks.

I removed the coffee filter removed and mixed sysprep with 1 gallon distilled water. Run for 12 hours. I moved the PSU to higher ground for additional safety.

Next day drained into my blue bucket and only saw two minor debris and a chemical sheen on the surface of the water.

After that I did a pump, rinse, drain x3 more times with distilled water to make sure the sysprep was out of the rads. No further debris or chemical sheen was found.

Next, mix EK Cryofuel. This time I simply got the concentrate instead of the premix and used an empty saved 1L bottle from my last refill.
First I rinsed the bottle with distilled then filled 900 mL before adding the concentrate capped and shook it a bit. Now I will let this sit for a week before use.

By this point I lost my funnel somewhere so I poked a pour and air holes into the seal of the cryofuel bottle for a splash and spill free experience into the 1000 mL bottle.
I purposefully filled the bottle a little over 1000 mL as clickbait to trigger internet OCD feedback.

The color of the new cryofuel seemed a bit off so I took some container from my kids Easter egg coloring kit to observe samples of last years unused cryofuel and the new mix.

There is still a bit of a yellow tinge to it in warm colored light.

more difficult to notice in bright white light.

with that comparison complete the rads are cleaned, the cryofuel ready.

Next... looking at the case for potential issues....

Next I took a look at my case it get a refresh on the layout.

The O11D's CPU cutout just isn't big enough with my motherboard. There is no way out of having to pull the board to replace the cooler with the Velocity2.

Next lets measure the mounting plate thickness.

Just as I thought. There is no way I can use those xspc screws as they are for direct mounting or through hole mounting with the fans.
Spacers or grinding down the ends would be needed so not to poke into the fins of that ultra thin radiator.

Looking at the bottom I'm going to have to relocate the unused ends of the RGB splitter cable.

Moving up the side the rgb extension and fan cables will need to be re-routed.
Also using my fans empty screw holes as zip-tie points for cable management will have to go.
I should then have clearance with the front panel i/o which already clear the 120mm fan dimensions.

Now comes the hard part. I remembered the cutout at the top wasn't completely a round rectangle but was shaped like one might have rad fittings poke through into the main chamber.
Possibly I can cut these out with a Dremel but that ****ing distroplate is likely going to be a blocker on one side.

Attempting to place the rad nearly in position for a better perspective.
The xspc thin 360 rad's ports are wide, much wider than I anticipated.

It's looking like it's not going to work this way.

Looking back at the difference compared to EK, port hole distance, xspc really goes wide for some reason.
Humm going to have to give some thought about this.

 

[Ferrum Master]

I kinda hate to get rid of the distroplate since it was fairly expensive. If the pump noise / resonance issue persists I might go back to using my tube pump/res combo and simple tube runs.

That would be sad. But it makes sense as the whole plate needs to lifted and put on some dampers.

Anything is very expensive these days... I've started more than a decades ago and some parts are still being used, like the tank and Typhoons etc... it is like ~100€ on each move you do.

 

[A Computer Guy]

So continuing with my prep work I decided to try and swap my 500GB 970 evo boot drive with the 2TB 980 pro I got on sale recently and what a f***ing nightmare.

I have Acronis True Image so I tried a few things

1. Cloning to my NVMe to USBC adaptor from Windows 10 and swapping it out into the system
   1. Boot failure but I could get Win10 diagnostic menu
2. Cloning from motherboard NVMe slot 1 to mother NVMe slot 3 using Acronis USB recovery image tools.
   1. Clone failed - Acronis reported - unknown reason
3. Cloning from motherboard NVMe slot 3 to mother NVMe slot 1 using Acronis USB recovery image tools.
   1. Clone failed - Acronis reported - unknown reason
4. Cloning from motherboard NVMe slot 2 to mother NVMe slot 1 using Acronis USB recovery image tools.
   1. Clone failed - Acronis reported - unknown reason
5. Image restoration from USB archive using Acronis USB recovery image tools.
   1. Boot failure but I could get Win10 diagnostic menu
6. Image restoration from NAS archive using Acronis USB recovery image tools.
   1. Boot failure but I could get Win10 diagnostic menu

So I decided to pop in my 2TB 970 evo plus that I cloned a few weeks prior with the USBC adaptor that I got at the same time that I was going to test system restores but never got around to it.
That clone to the 970 evo plus worked flawlessly. Booted right up but the 980 pro wasn't recognized even though UEFI/BIOS was able to see it.

Ok so back to the drawing board. Turns out after some research the 980 pro has no Samsung NVMe driver and this what I was suspecting was causing the boot failure.
The clone failure between NVMe slots is probably caused by some Acronis compatibly issue dealing with the hardware.

I found a youtube video suggesting swapping out the Samsung NVMe driver for the standard NVMe driver to get Windows 10 to recognize the 980 Pro so I tried it with the 2TB 970 evo plus that cloned correctly. Turns out I have another suspicious NVMe driver AMD-RAID bottom device too but I don't recall ever messing around with AMD RAID.

So I switched out both drivers for the standard NVMe controller and after reboot the 980 pro was recognized finally by Windows 10.
Then I did a test clone from the 2TB evo plus on NVMe 3 to the 980 pro on NVMe 1 and it worked!

Since the 2TB evo plus is a few weeks out of date I'm going to fix the driver on the original 500GB EVO and redo the clone.

See you soon if it works.

The drive swaps were a success. Going to hold on to that old boot drive for a few weeks just in case something goes wrong.

A minor mishap when removing the motherboard armor to get to the NVMe's was the chipset thermal pad ripped in half.
I ended up squishing it back together on reassembly but that pad will have to be replaced next time.

It's interesting how important the motherboard armor is in keeping the chipset cool on this board and preventing the chipset fan from kicking on.
As annoying as it was to get the single piece armor removed for NVMe replacement, I was getting 68c with only the chipset heatsink and fan, and 54c when it was back on with an ambient around 25c-30c during that time.

Gen4x4 recognized and the drive already had the latest firmware. (I checked firmware on another pc before I started)

Both 970 evo plus from the x570 chipset are doing well although one is slightly underperforming compared to the other.

 

[Mussels]

Sometimes it's as simple as a washer between the case and the radiator, to prevent vibration passing along. Gaskets are super helpful there too, but seemingly harder to find these days.

 

[A Computer Guy]

... trimmed quote ...

Now comes the hard part. I remembered the cutout at the top wasn't completely a round rectangle but was shaped like one might have rad fittings poke through into the main chamber.
Possibly I can cut these out with a Dremel but that ****ing distroplate is likely going to be a blocker on one side.

View attachment 296009

Attempting to place the rad nearly in position for a better perspective.
The xspc thin 360 rad's ports are wide, much wider than I anticipated.

View attachment 296010View attachment 296011

It's looking like it's not going to work this way.

View attachment 296012

Looking back at the difference compared to EK, port hole distance, xspc really goes wide for some reason.
Humm going to have to give some thought about this.

... trimmed quote ...

I found this... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B098VZ22N7?psc=1&smid=A3GO5VFCNOM5I7 it may solve my radiator problem.
Ordered 2 hopefully arrives early next week.

 

[Mussels]

I found this... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B098VZ22N7?psc=1&smid=A3GO5VFCNOM5I7 it may solve my radiator problem.
Ordered 2 hopefully arrives early next week.
View attachment 296891

EK made something like that, they do seem like a really handy design for a lot of uses.
I could honestly use a bunch at various locations in my setups.

(I clicked, it's the EK one. yay me!)

 

[A Computer Guy]

I ordered a lot of stuff the other day including the fittings. Next week my wife is going to be like WTF is all this stuff?
I just need to get the washers and I forgot to order some additional QDC's.

 

[A Computer Guy]

The new fittings arrived. I think this is going to work. I also got some short and medium extenders and but I may not need them after all.

New parts...

I ordered extra fittings since I wasn't sure what was going to arrive before the weekend.

Tools ready...

 

[A Computer Guy]

I started at 6am and ended at 11:30pm with a few breaks in between (lunch, dinner, planting tree in backyard, and kids birthday).

• The ek offset fittings for the rad worked perfectly! The new rad just barely fit into the side compartment and the replacement screws worked to secure the rad though the back of the fan holes except for 1 mount out of 12, it was just too short to latch on, perhaps bad machining on the rad.
• The fans gaskets were a failure. There are a bit off with the screw hole sizing and too flexible to form a seal with the holes around the LL fans. I'll just have to replace the fans or just leave it as-is.
• The CPU swap with my spare machine was completed however it almost didn't work.
  • Admittedly I forgot to reset UEFI/BIOS to defaults before swapping CPU's
  • Initially it would not post the Old CPU until clearing CMOS and a few reboots later. Then it wouldn't boot by shutting down without warning. Then I set the SOC to 1.1v manually. Previously I was doing that on the ITX board because it would do 1.2v by default for no reason at all. After that it would refuse to boot windows (I forget the error message). Windows managed to fix the problem after a few reboots.
  • Ran OCCT tests for 2 hours no failures or WHEA
  • With new thermal paste the OCCT CPU and RAM tests for 1 hr peaked CPU at 79c on the NH-C14S air cooler
  • The old CPU is running my ITX's DDR4-3600 ram no problem (still have to test RAM OC)
• I had an idea about sound damping material for the distroplate but I lost the material.
  • Hopefully the hardware store will have something tomorrow. (discovered today during the teardown I can't use washers for the distroplate so that option is out)
  • I have an alternative very thin packing material I can cut up and use so maybe some double sided sticky tape will be enough with that.
• Took lots of pictures but too tired to upload them tonight.
• Tomorrow I disassemble and clean the distroplate and GPU, replace the pump, and hopefully start reassembly.

 

[A Computer Guy]

It's been an exhausting 3 days. Some things went well, some not so well.
The new rad is in and working. Hopefully tonight I can start posting rebuild photos.
(it's a warm afternoon)

 

[Mussels]

It's been an exhausting 3 days. Some things went well, some not so well.

That is exactly how every loop rebuild goes for me

 

[maxfly]

It's been an exhausting 3 days. Some things went well, some not so well.
The new rad is in and working. Hopefully tonight I can start posting rebuild photos.
(it's a warm afternoon)

View attachment 298407

I feel your pain man. I'm still recovering from my latest wcing build. A week and a half later and the back spasms wont relent. Still haven't been able to fill and bleed the thing.

Word to the wise, never, ever go the lazy route and build your loop on the case box. Bending over for hours on end may not bother you at the time but you WILL regret it the next morning.

-Insert Rockies trainer Mickies voice here-
Just do the right thing and clean off your freakin workbench ya bum!!!

 

[Mussels]

I feel your pain man. I'm still recovering from my latest wcing build. A week and a half later and the back spasms wont relent. Still haven't been able to fill and bleed the thing.

Word to the wise, never, ever go the lazy route and build your loop on the case box. Bending over for hours on end may not bother you at the time but you WILL regret it the next morning.

-Insert Rockies trainer Mickies voice here-
Just do the right thing and clean off your freakin workbench ya bum!!!

I'll sing praises of my alphacool rads on this one for years - the fact they have drain and fill ports on every rad made bleeding and filling insanely easy. Can't have two openings at once unless you like puddles, but it's amazing to fill the rads and res seperately so you can avoid stuck air pockets.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Day 1

Ok so where do we begin. First a snapshot of the PC before hand. ( I'll try to keep the image sizes reasonable. )

I laid down these nice 1/8in firm form mats. I tend to horde and reuse packing materials which comes in handy from time to time.

Let's see my custom form pad to fill the hole and a nice magnetic RGB strip I salvaged from my wife's iBuyPower case.
Starting to take out the internals. Internal display, e-sata connector, and GPU stand.

Breaking out a storage box so not to lose stuff.

Some dirty Artic Slim bottom fans.

Had to use those washers on the fans as spacers because the standard fan screws are too long for slim fans.
Cleaned these out with the blower. Worked pretty well. Put those in the box.

Next... lets drain the system.

Day 1 continued...

First the left side drain. Tilting a handy rotating T fitting and undo the cap and ready to go. Get the system drained to a point but you can see on the right side quite a bit is locked up in there.

Onto draining the right side. Still some liquid left in the CPU block will take care of that later. At this point almost 800mL recovered into an old bottle.

Next unhooking rear panel wiring so I can remove the GPU.

Day 1 continued...

Real panel. You can see where the intake fans pull the air in even when so far from the rear/side panel..

Corsair wiring mess. How did I get into RGB in the first place I don't remember.

I tried but still looks messy.

Let's get that Corsair Commander Pro out. When I had a 2.5in SSD I used a Corsair 2.5in HDD/SDD mount and zip tied the Commander Pro on top of it.

Getting all the wires disconnected and removing the Corsair 2.5in HDD/SDD mount.

Disconnecting the front panel I/O

Undoing my cable tie wizardry to keep the RGB cables from falling apart. This 6 was splitter was pretty good but needed the RGB extension to the motherboard to make it manageable.

All that just so I could get the 2 GPU RGB cables disconnected.

Next let's get that GPU of there.

Day 1 continued...

Got the GPU out. The Koolance quick disconnects worked beautifully. If it wasn't for the RGB cables running on both sides of the card it would be a breeze to remove anytime.

Now for a quick inspection in the sunlight. Everything looks good. I'm really glad I got that backplate. It still has a fair bit of liquid in it which I forgot to drain after I set the card aside. This will come back to bite me later when I reconnect the card and it back fills my distroplate before I had a chance to connect the CPU back onto the distroplate.

For the RGB I got with the card I was able to hide the cable in between the block and PCB. However the flow indicator RGB cable wouldn't fit so I had to run it separately. In the rebuild I'm going to reroute the cable so at least if I need to take out the card temporarily and place it to the side I can.

Next going to finish draining that CPU block.

Day 1 continued...

Now to get that GPU block drained I flipped the case onto the front side. Disconnected the top tube, drained into bottle, disconnected bottom tube, drained into bottle, the removed fittings and capped the ports. I managed only a few drips. Never leave it to chance, gotta use those paper towels whenever disconnecting tubing and plug the tube ends with paper towel too. A bad drip can give you a bad day.

Consulting with my checklist, going to change up the order a bit and get that distroplate plugged first before I remove the motherboard.

Next... plug up the distroplate.

 

[Mussels]

You put more effort into that checklist than i did in assembling my loop

 

[A Computer Guy]

Day 1 continued...

To start plugging up the distroplate first I'll handle the CPU ports. I temporarily routed one of the CPU tubes that would have had the most fluid into the drain port to prevent spills while I worked on the other port and tube with a stuffed paper towel in the end of it to catch any drops. That tube with the paper towel connected to the top port of the CPU so it was fairly dry. Of course when taking the fittings out I put paper towels down to catch any drops because there will always be some in the threads of the fittings. I dried the threads with a paper towel before capping the port.

Now for the other side. I undid my temporary connection and drained the tube into my ek bottle. Disconnected tube, removed fitting, dried threads, and capped. Easy peasy.

Next onto the drain ports. First the far side drain port.

Next the near side drain port.

Next I had to undo some cable management to remove the two temp sensors.

Removing the cold side temp sensor.

Removing the hot side temp sensor.

I've run into my posting quota for today ... story to be continued tomorrow ... hope you are enjoying the show so far. Still not quite 1/2 way through the first day of pictures.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Day 1 continued...
Removing the hot side temp sensor. Then I ran into two problems...

My phone battery was almost dead so I had to hook it up to this handy battery.
I was running out of plugs for the distroplate however I found two stuck in my old ASRock Master SLI/ac monoblock that was used from this original post.

It was still in fairly good shape but you can see there is some kind of corrosion going one on the right side.

Had to drain the liquid I left in there. Boom I got the 4 plugs I needed for the next step. Need to recover that RGB cable later.

Now onto removing the last four distroplate connections. This part I need to be careful because there will be fluid in the tubes.

Removing the tubes with QDC's used for the GPU and draining them into the bottle.

Next the radiator tubes. Most of the radiator was drained but I was taking no chances with it so I used the ends of the QDC's to plug the radiator tubes for now.

With the hardware removed finally I managed to recover a bit over 800 mL of fluid from the system.

Consulting with my checklist the motherboard removal was next before I can remove the rad.

Day 1 continued...

Motherboard removal.

I was fortunate to get the revised Taichi with the reoriented USBC header that didn't conflict with the GPU.
There was a bit of weaving between the power and USB3 header.

Put the board off to the side and checked some more boxes off the list.

Next radiator and distroplate removal but I have run out of time to post tonight.

Day 1 continued...

Lets take a break and look at the clearances. Those 3 top plugs tend to get in the way trying to remove the radiator. You can see in the 2nd screenshot how close the rad is to the distroplate potentially making any surface mounted sound dampening problematic. I found a solution and we will see this later on day 3 reassembly.

Before I remove the radiator I need to disconnect and unbundle the fan wiring and take out those plugs.

I've misplaced the allen key so iFix-IT to the rescue.

I mighty fine zip tie job I think.

Let's take off those fans and see how dirty the rad has gotten.

Got the fans cleaned up with the datavac and set aside. Took a look at the screw clearance of the old rad. Pretty big gap for screws if needed compared to the new rad.

After giving the rad a quick dusting with the datavac lets get those hoses off. I will later wash the rad with a garden hose and let dry.

Next removal of those other fans and I need to undo some more zip ties for the distroplate RGB cable.

With the cables and zip ties out of the way I can take a quick look and dry fit the new rad.

Next preparing to remove the distroplate.

I've already maxed out on posting picture quota for the moment. To be continued...

... continued

Next preparing to remove the distroplate. There are 5 screws to remove and I need to be really careful about the RGB cable because it's in a pinch point with the case.

Popping out the distroplate.

Heavy angle needed. Looks like I missed catching some drops at some point that wicked under the distoplate.

Distroplate is out. It's difficult to see in the photo but there looks to be a chalky white outline around the inside of the gaskets which is the reason I am taking it apart for cleaning.
It appears the RGB cable is a bit squished but not damaged.

With the distroplate removed let's examine the surface area of the case to see what I might be able to do about applying any sound dampening.
On one side there are recessed holes so it will not be possible to use washers here. On the other side it's flat. The top and bottom front mounted surfaces are recessed so there is no contact there. The bottom is flat as well.

Now to finish removing the read/side fans but yet more zip tie work needs to be undone.

Finally teardown is complete

So where was I on the checklist? Still day one and plenty more to do. I decide to call an audible and jump to the CPU swap and combine some tasks.

to be continued...

Day 1 continued...

Now that disassembly is complete I need to swap my CPU's. Going back in time at the start of this thread you will recall my ASRock Master SLI/ac blew up and my 5950x CPU - got twice baked - but not quite fried. So I got the Taichi X570 replacement however I was unable to run 128GB of RAM successfully. More accurately it would run fine even under stress tests it but the system would reboot when idle and reducing frequency, UEFI/BIOS updates, and adjusting voltages didn't seem to help, also ASRock never replied to my support request regarding the RAM I am using. So was my chip damaged? Now we can find out. I have a spare PC that I also use as my gaming PC with a new 5950x from December 2022 so I'm going to swap the CPU's so I can test later if the problem has to do with the CPU.

Enough with the backstory on with the show...

Humm looks like my last pasting job didn't quite work out as I thought. This was Thermal Grizzly paste that came with my EK Velocity block.
Seems a bit thin and at the thinnest part a bit cooked.

backplate removal

Let's get this block cleaned up

Onto the CPU

Next.... Getting the CPU out of my NR200P

 

[A Computer Guy]

Day 1 continued...

NR200P CPU swap (and PCIe cable swap)

A bit dusty. Top exhaust tends to trap dust behind the mesh and you can see where my NH-C14S fan intake is by all the dust in the dust filter.

Unfortunately this case can rattle a bit so I ended up putting some anti-vibration pads in critical areas of the case panels.

Let's see what we've go here. When I replaced my Corsair 600w SFX with 750w SFX PSU it came with sleeved PCIe cables but the pigtail connectors at the end made things difficult with my RX 6700XT so I'll be fixing this while swapping out the CPU's.

Popping off the top panel you can see my zip tie wizardry mounting 2 Artic slim fans. At first I wasn't sure if they would work well but they seem to work well enough.

Paste looks pretty evenly spread a bit light in the center though. Again this was Thermal Grizzly paste that came with my EK Velocity block.

Seems kinda sparse. I don't think I put on enough.

After getting it cleaned up you can see a nice diffraction pattern. Note the cold plate is not smooth and actually has a micro texture of some sort. You can feel it with your fingernail.
I don't particularly like this aspect of the cooler but so far it works ok. When cleaning with paper towels it will rip them up so I end up finishing up with a wet cloth afterward to get the paper towel fibers off the plate. I've debated if I should sand it down or not but I don't know what tools to use exactly to do the job properly.

Let's swap out these GPU cables now.

Comparing the cables. I'm going to revert to using my Corsair cables (type 4) that came with my 600w unit. After consulting with Corsair a week prior, they confirmed they are interchangable.

There, less cable mess. Moving on to the CPU swap.

Getting the systems ready - side by side.

Looking at the CPU's you can see which one was damaged from the ASRock Master SLI/ac PBO experiment and the 1 pin that got the gold stripped of the head of the pin.

Now for some new paste. I decided to try Kryonaut Extreme because why not?

Here we go. After years of dots and X's I have come to realise I really dislike paste spreading.
Kryonaut extreme seems more viscous and perhaps more "stringy" than pastes I have used in the past.
After some frustration I decided to get a little more personal with the paste and use my finger.

Not really satisfied I put enough on last time I thought why not put a little bit on the heat sink too. Especially with that micro-texture on the cold plate I wanted to make sure I was getting enough on this time. At this point I'm using my middle finger to apply the paste. After remounting the heat sink and a difficult camera shot I confirmed I definitely got enough paste on it this time.
Since the paste is non-conductive in the immortal words of Bill O'Reilly "Fuck it, we'll do it live". I'm not going to be repasting 3 times today.

Moving on time to get things back together. The datavac blasted the dust right out of the top, nice!

Here is a photo of the rear for those who like that sort of thing and we are finally at lunch break since starting at 6am. During lunch I fired up OCCT and did some 1hr test runs. While OCCT was running I was eating lunch and cleaning CPU blocks. Unfortunately before the CPU swap I forgot to reset both UEFI/BIOS to defaults and disable the TPM. (I forgot to put that in my checklist!) Initially when starting up my ITX with the original damaged CPU it didn't want to post. I cleared CMOS, then it posted but didn't want to boot and would shutdown automatically when getting to that point. I readjusted the SOC to 1.1v and a few reboots later windows managed to repair the bootup somehow then it was ok. For some reason this B550 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ax wants to shove 1.2v SOC by default. Not sure if this helped fix the problem so further testing will be needed to see if the CPU doesn't like this boards default SOC voltage.

Next up CPU block cleaning and installing the new Velocity2 block on the Taichi.

 

[freeagent]

Dude, that was intense!

 

[A Computer Guy]

Dude, that was intense!

I still have 2 more days of pictures and story to post.

 

[freeagent]

I still have 2 more days of pictures and story to post.

I will be watching, I want to do just a simple CPU only loop, something pretty good.. but right now I am ignorant to the topic, I don’t mean that in a bad way, but I know about air coolers.. just got some learning to do

 

[A Computer Guy]

Day 1 (after lunch) continued...

OCCT after 30 minutes. I guess it's ok. I don't have a screenshot of the test prior but it's doing a bit better with temps I think. The CPU fan sound profile has changed and is not nearly as loud as it was before.

Onto cleaning the old CPU block to put into storage. A small bucket with water and a little dish soap with a clean unused toothbrush.
Unscrewing the cold plate I first gave them all a bit of a turn to loosen them up just a bit then going around giving them all a bit of a turn evenly until they were no longer under tension.
This is to be careful not to break the threads of the acrylic. Once all the tension is gone I finished unscrewing them and removed them one by one.

At this point I'm saying to myself I can't be lazy, must take that gasket out to clean properly. Note this gasket is actually flat on one side.

Scrub a dub dub...

Daylight inspection. You can see the outline of the gaskets there is some whitish buildup of material. This is the same that I see in the distroplate but much more visible in inside of the distroplate gaskets.

I suspect this is gasket oils and plasticizer residue from the EK duraclear tubes I was using before. You can see in this older picture how the tubes are not so clear anymore.
Since this will be the first time I have disassembled and cleaned my distroplate that might explain why it's so much worse in the distroplate.

Everything is washed and rinsed, setting it out to dry. I did hit it with the datavac to blow off much of the water to speed up the drying process.

some close up shots of the jet plate just because I could.

Hit the plex top with a q-tip and some water to be sure the gasket seal will be as clean as possible. Looks like there was some residue.
( A photo I forgot to take was drying of the CPU block top screw holes. The threads will retain a bit of water and using a modified q-tip to wick the water out will help dry them out. I think I have pictures of this technique in the reassembly of the distro plate. )

I could see see the residue on the cold plate outlining where the gasket was. I hit it with some IPA and rubbing with a cloth and it finally started to cleanup nicely but the outline was still faintly there.
( edit: PSA and Reminder for readers: never user Isopropyl alcohol , aka IPA, on Plexi/POM )

Put in the gasket, put the top back on (the top is plastic not nickel), installed the jet plate and mounting bracket.

Screwing the cold plate back on I first got all the screws in until they just barely started to tighten. Then going around giving them all a bit of a turn to reapply even pressure evenly on the gasket as it tightens up. Again to minimize the possibility of cracking the threads of the acrylic. One thing I didn't take a picture of was I wet a q-tip with some of last years unused EK Cryofuel and painted the gasket with it on both sides. I think this should help keep the gasket from drying out and also gives it the wet pressed look when reassembling the block. This helps let you know when you've got it tight enough without over tightening the screws.

Now to repack it for storage. Not bad for a block I got on sale for I think $36 (sadly without the RGB).

I told myself I was only going to do one custom loop build but now I have a spare block it's awfully tempting to do another one and the EKWB EK-Quantum Kinetic FLT 80 exists.
( slap, slap, ok focus... back to the topic at hand )

Checking back on OCCT it finished CPU test and the computer didn't crash. So far so good.

Next we will check out the Velocity2. Teardown, cleaning (just because), and mounting on the X570....