Antec P180 Mini

[Chris1985]

Hello guys.
This'll be my first worklog since i've joined XS in August 2008.
Now, i don't have the experience most of you guys have nor the best photographyskills, but i'll do my best nonetheless.

The idea was to have a case small enough to haul around to LAN's, but still have the ability to put watercooling in.
I currently own a Coolermaster Cosmos S and don't really like it.
it's heavy, has crappy cablemanagement and above all still is noisy (eventhough all fans are replaced by Noctua's).

Anyway, the build consists of:
Antec P180 Mini
Asus Rampage 2 Gene
Intel Core i7 920
Club3D HD4870x2
Corsair Dominator PC3 12800 (DDR3 @ 1600mhz)
Corsair HX620

Watercooling:
CPU: Heatkiller Rev 3.0
Northbridge: Swiftech MCW-NBMax
GPU: EK-FC4870x2
Rad: 2x RX120's with Yate Loon in Push or Push/Pull.
Pump: Laing DDC1+ Ultra 18w with XSPC acrylic top
Reservoir: XSPC 5.25" Bay reservoir.


Furthermore this is probably going to be the toughest build i've made to date, considering the limits this case has in terms of space.

Already had a fair amount of issues in placing the different parts, especially the pump/res/powersupply in the bottem part of the case.
Regardless, i do have all components in the case atm, just need to start tubing it all up and connect all wires.

Pics will follow shortly as i'm uploading them atm.

Stay tuned for more.

[shazza]

Nice component selection, Chris. This is going to be fun to see how you get everything in the 180!

[systemviper]

look forward to the build, i am currently doing 2 of them for for customers.
gene and mini 180
i am just keeping them on air, since it has fantastic air flow and
running the i7's at 3.8ghz. Nice, slick, fast and compact, i love the combo.

can't wait for your pics.
looks like an aggressive build, and should be a real burner!

[pingpong1455]

Nice selection tell us how the gene works out

[Chris1985]

As promised, here's some pics.

Some components:


P180 internals:


Bling bling anyone?:


Northbridge waterblock fitted:


A couple close-ups on how the bottom compartment looks like atm:




One of the rads with push-pull Yate's:


Motherboard prepped:


Graphicscard and stock cooler, laying side by side:


GPU with thermal pads:


GPU with waterblock installed:


General overview on how it looks like now:



That's how far i've come atm.

More to follow soon.

Chris

[pingpong1455]

whoa that's a tight fit in there but great placement of the lc gear

[systemviper]

Top Notch work!
so is that 2 single 120's and 1 loop?
what;s your loop order, is it real tight with that back rad? how close to the components on the
gene is it?

thanks for the post!

[SoulsCollective]

I'm scared to think what your temps will be like with a 4870X2, i7 and mobo all cooled by two 120mm rads. They're good rads, yes, but still...

[Chris1985]

whoa that's a tight fit in there but great placement of the lc gear

thank you
and yeah, it's a very tight fit.

Top Notch work!
so is that 2 single 120's and 1 loop?
what;s your loop order, is it real tight with that back rad? how close to the components on the
gene is it?

thanks for the post!

yep, 2 single 120's in a loop
the loop order will probably be: res - pump - back rad - cpu - northbridge - front rad - gpu - res

but, it's open for discussion as i haven't fully made my mind up on that aspect.

as for how tight of a fit it is:
in the bottom compartment it's VERY tight. it took me basicly 2-3 hours of fitting and re-fitting untill i finally found a proper way of putting it all in there.
the upper compartment should be fine. still have a fair amount of space between the rad at the back and the motherboard (do have to take out the rad if you want to reach the powercable though).

I'm scared to think what your temps will be like with a 4870X2, i7 and mobo all cooled by two 120mm rads. They're good rads, yes, but still...

i know, i'm fearing it aswell, be it slightly.
i'm gonna see how far the temps will bring me.
it should work, considering both rads can dissipate around 300-350 watts of heat.


Chris

[Oskaliber]

Quite nice so far considering size of your case

[atomic ferret]

I'm not really sure about how these cases work, but would it be possible to take out that hard drive cage above the RX120 in order to fit a 120.2 rad in the front instead?

[Chris1985]

Quite nice so far considering size of your case

thank you

I'm not really sure about how these cases work, but would it be possible to take out that hard drive cage above the RX120 in order to fit a 120.2 rad in the front instead?

yeah, i could do that.
The Nemesis has actually done that in his build, i believe. But i'ld like to keep my case as 'original' as possible.
obviousy, if temps would be that bad, i'ld take the second cage out aswell, but for the time being, i'm leaving it as is.

[Angmaar]

Looks like a nice build so far. If you needed extra cooling you could put a 240mm or 280mm rad up at the top.

I'm not really sure about how these cases work, but would it be possible to take out that hard drive cage above the RX120 in order to fit a 120.2 rad in the front instead?

This would be possible but you would need to cut the hard drive cage support.

Good luck on the build Chris!

[Chris1985]

Another update...

Seems this build is doomed to fail
I've had nothing but BSOD's from the minute i installed my motherboard- and graphicsdrivers.
Appeared the Catalyst 9.5-drivers are a load of horse.

I had to go into the safe modus, to manually delete them and then revert back to 9.4's.


Another thing is that the leak that i thought was from the graphics card eventuelly appeared to be from the northbridge block.
There's a tiny little crack in the top of it, which caused a tiny leak, that spilled all across my graphics card.

Luckely the gpu is still working fine, but i had to revert back to the standard heatsink for the northbridge.
RMA it is!

Next thing to do is bleed the loop, get the block out and clean the loop out alltogether, because in one of the blocks there appeared to be some sort of grey residue.
Now, instead of the water being transparant, it's all grey and nasty.
Oh well, guessing that's a lesson for next time. Apart from cleaning out the reservoirs, clean out the blocks aswell.


Other than that, all is fine

Chris

[SoulsCollective]

Another update...

Seems this build is doomed to fail
I've had nothing but BSOD's from the minute i installed my motherboard- and graphicsdrivers.
Appeared the Catalyst 9.5-drivers are a load of horse.

I had to go into the safe modus, to manually delete them and then revert back to 9.4's.

I'd try reinstalling 9.5 before you go blaming them full stop. I've encountered no issues whatsoever on a very similar system (see sig) - sounds like a bad install if anything.

Next thing to do is bleed the loop, get the block out and clean the loop out alltogether, because in one of the blocks there appeared to be some sort of grey residue.
Now, instead of the water being transparant, it's all grey and nasty.
Oh well, guessing that's a lesson for next time. Apart from cleaning out the reservoirs, clean out the blocks aswell.

Nasty. I always disassemble all the blocks and give them a good scrub, and make sure to flush rads out with a weak mixture of heated distilled water and white vinegar, with a final flush of just distilled, before use. Helps avoid those kinds of issues.

As for replacing the NB block, I'd recommend dropping it entirely - it's just going to add in heat-dump to your loop. Try going with an aftermarket air solution - something like an HR-05.

[Oli4v]

hey chris, nice to see you also in here

Lemmy from tonesforum

that's goin' to be great when it's finished

[Brad8988]

Iv heard many many stories of the 9.5's sucking bad.

[SniperXX]

I'm def watching this. I currently have the same mobo, cpu, psu, and have been looking to buy that case but want to WC.

[570091D]

excellent build chris! i'm amazed at how clean you build is considering how little space you have to work with.

As for replacing the NB block, I'd recommend dropping it entirely - it's just going to add in heat-dump to your loop. Try going with an aftermarket air solution - something like an HR-05.

+1

you will probably get better overclocks without the nb block dumping heat on your gpu's/cpu.

[Chris1985]

I'm def watching this. I currently have the same mobo, cpu, psu, and have been looking to buy that case but want to WC.

Yeah, it's a very nice case, even if you don't watercool it.

I'd try reinstalling 9.5 before you go blaming them full stop. I've encountered no issues whatsoever on a very similar system (see sig) - sounds like a bad install if anything.
Nasty. I always disassemble all the blocks and give them a good scrub, and make sure to flush rads out with a weak mixture of heated distilled water and white vinegar, with a final flush of just distilled, before use. Helps avoid those kinds of issues.

As for replacing the NB block, I'd recommend dropping it entirely - it's just going to add in heat-dump to your loop. Try going with an aftermarket air solution - something like an HR-05.

Yeah, i have to admit that it was a bit too much. Temps are ok (around 35C idle and 55C load on the cpu). Just never expected the northbridge and mosfet to dump that much heat in the system.

hey chris, nice to see you also in here

Lemmy from tonesforum

that's goin' to be great when it's finished

hey bud. nice to see you here aswell

Iv heard many many stories of the 9.5's sucking bad.

Yeah, shame on AMD
especially for it sucking on a card that's not even a year old

excellent build chris! i'm amazed at how clean you build is considering how little space you have to work with.

Thank you!
It looks clean at the front (as it should), but a spaghetti has nothing on this if you see the backside of the motherboard tray


On the menu for tomorrow and wednesday:
Tomorrow:
take out the northbridge block, bleed the loop, rinse it with distilled water to get all the junk out (grey residue i mentioned earlier).
Wednesday:
Bring back the northbridgeblock and get a replacement from Eddy over at it-service.be
I'll keep it regardless, if i should ever move over to a bigger case and have more than one loop, i can still use it.
Then fill the loop again with Feser VSC

[shazza]

Any updates, Chris?

[SniperXX]

Cant wait for more updates/

[Chris1985]

Sorry for the long wait guys...
Finally managed to get the pics i shot before uploaded.

Here they are:






And you always need to find a place to put all the cables, so cablemess galore!


Currently the northbridge waterblock is hanging outside the computer, because it has a tiny little crack on the top.
Will have to get that fixed, just need to find the time to do it.

As for temps:
they're not bad.
i reached about 49-50C on full load on the i7 920 (stock) and around 35 idle
obviously they would be a hell of alot better in a big case with 2 360-rads, but i went for small and silent and that's exactly what i got

Hope you guys enjoy the pics

[shazza]

Hi Chris, thanks for the update.

And, just my 2 cents,but I don't think your temps are bad at all. I get 35 at idle, and around 50 at load (ambient 23-24) - and that's with the CPU / GTZ on it's own PA120.3 rad. You may not be able to do crazy overclocking and keep temps in control, but it sounds like you have achieved exactly what you need for your purposes. Great Job!

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

small and silent is nice mate, good work and as long as you met your expectations that is definitely a success -overclocking + wc in a Matx is very hard, trust me I've tried it