Endgame ITX - Dan A4-H2O Liquid PC

[Music] do [Music] so here it is finally finished the den a4 h2o custom loop a powerful liquid cooled gaming machine in a pc case smaller than a shoebox the goal here was to explore what custom ward calling was like in one of the best itx cases at the moment and i thought i'd go the full distance this time with hardline tubing and a full-sized pump res combo and i think on a scale of one to ten of how difficult pc builds can get with 10 being pretty much impossible this is like a solid seven to eight you know it's definitely doable not impossible but will take you a few days to put together especially the hardline tubing and the cable management definitely take your time with those uh in the end though pretty neat uh tiny little package and the performance is actually pretty good too so yeah we'll talk about the thermals and the noise levels in just a minute but first let's take a look at what parts actually went in here and i want to start with the radiator and the fan setup because this is easily one of the most important parts of this entire build in my opinion because you do have a bit of flexibility with what cpu gpu motherboard power supply that sort of stuff but the radiator and the fans really are important the goal here is to extract as much cooling performance from your loop as possible and since you only have room for a 240 rad and two fans you want to make sure that you're using every square millimeter that you have available to you so the setup that i've gone with here is the 240mm se radiator from ek paired with the 30ml thick t30 fans from fantax technically this setup shouldn't fit in this case it's about three millimeters over our thickness limit but by removing the anti-vibration pads from the fans we get a really snug fit you'll also have to make sure that the screws that you're using aren't too thick either otherwise the top panel will have a bit of a bulge if you want a much easier fit you can definitely use your standard 25mm thick fans instead you will be sacrificing a few degrees in terms of temperatures but the fitment will be a lot easier now as usual with your sandwich layout case like the dna 4 h2o the ideal airflow setup is to have your top fan set to exhaust which means that all of the kind of cool air is passing through the side panels and it's getting pulled out the top just like that as opposed to kind of just dumping all of the air you know inside the case and it's kind of getting trapped and you know not really going anywhere another side effect of this exhaust setup is that your interior components stay a lot cooler so power supply which definitely needs to run cool and quiet uh your m.2 drives your vrm that stuff is going to be a lot happier in the airflow setup that we have here and yeah in the end we've got those powerful phantax t30 fans running in a pretty small volume it's actually a really strong airflow setup now for the gpu i've gone with the rtx 37eti mostly because i wanted to play slightly on the conservative side of things when it came to the heat load of our entire loop this is still an itx build after all and you know it's a bit hard to call this a compromise 37 eti still pushes out very decent performance at 1440p and 4k and in the end in terms of power draw we're still looking at around 300 watts one important note here though if you are going with a similar 30 series gpu i'd highly recommend going with one which has a very short pcb design either a founder's edition card like this or a reference model like what i'm using in my own system with those shorter pcbs the water blocks that go with them are also typically pretty short and that means you'll have a bit of extra room when it comes to your water cooling components if you are lucky enough to pick up a founder's edition card i'd highly recommend an ek special edition water block if you have the budget for it i mean the look and build quality of this thing is just totally different especially in the a4 h2o where the block is mounted vertically and so you get to see that thing in full view not to mention the saturn silver water block is a perfect match for the silver den a4 h2o it just looks so so good functionally as well i love that you have a couple of different options when it comes to the ports and for this build it actually worked out perfectly since i ended up using the inlet and outlet ports on different sides now the cpu that i've gone with here is the i7 12700k again same kind of idea here with the 3070 ti looking for something with pretty high performance without pushing the heat load of the loop out of control and honestly if you're focused more on a gaming kind of oriented build you might even want to step down to the i512 600k that thing is still a 10 core cpu with monster performance when it comes to gaming if by any chance you do need the extra cores and power though the i7 12700k is a great fit for what we're doing here then comes the motherboard now we've previously taken a look at the z690 unifi itx from msi and the z690 aorus ultra from gigabyte so for this build i wanted to test out the rog strix from asus by far the chunkiest thickest itx board that i've worked with that's both a good thing and a bad thing on one hand it's absolutely stacked with features but cpu cooler compatibility is going to be a bit of a nightmare it just fits our velocity 2 block from ek and the fitment there is incredibly satisfying you do get a bios flashback and a clear cmos button here as well as a stacked rear i o with two thunderbolt 4 ports and as you can see it also uses an active fan for the vrm in fact the only thing that i can think of that is missing from this build is a two pin temperature sensor something that we've seen on previous itx boards and would have been perfect for this build when it comes to monitoring the temperature of the coolant and using that to set up the fan curves although at this point i'm not even sure if there's any room left for a two pin temperature sensor i mean just take a look at how dense the pcb is on this board then for the memory i've gone with a 32 gigabyte ddr5 6 000 megahertz kit from g-skill with pretty fast timings at just cl 32 this is actually one of the fastest ddr5 memory kits that you can buy at the moment and visually at least in my opinion it is one of the best looking two and i'll also mention compatibility wise between this memory kit and the motherboard that we're using absolutely no problems so you know just enable xmp and you're good to go with six thousand megahertz cl32 which is not always the experience with a z690 and ddr5 sometimes you do have to compromise with the speeds or you know loosening up those timings now spinning the build back around we can see my favorite part about this entire loop which is the ek flt80 this big you know interesting looking tank right here connects everything up powers the entire loop uh it's a ddc pump and a full-sized you know water tank as well filling the loop was an absolute breeze you know noise levels are quite low as well and yeah definitely one of my favorite pieces of watercoloring hardware to date i did also end up swapping to a proper heatsink for the pump as well which kind of matches the saturn gpu water block that was easy enough it is a bit bulkier but it does look miles better now you usually mount this thing to a 120mm fan which you know doesn't really work in this build so a little bit more involved was kind of figuring out a mounting solution but i eventually came up with this it seems to work pretty well it's a 3d printed mount that uses a two and a half inch drive spot below the power supply and there you also get the benefit of the anti-vibration mounting and i will be honest it's far from perfect it does have a bit of flex and a bit of wobble but actually once you hook up the hardline tubing it stays in place pretty well as usual i'll link the 3d model down below for those that want to 3d print it and do the same thing it also uses the same m3 screws that ek include in the box of the flt80 this build also wouldn't have been possible without ek's new micro fittings just take a look at how small these things are compared to your typical hardline fittings they're much shorter and narrower allowing for some super tight tubing runs that just wouldn't have been possible they are a bit trickier to work with though the best way that i found to insert a tube was to wet the inside of the fitting unscrew it only a couple of turns and then insert the tube and then tighten it up all the way that's as opposed to completely unscrewing the fitting as you would you know a regular size fitting these ones on the other hand you only have to loosen up a little bit to get the tube in ek also sent over their new low profile right angle fittings which came in super clutch for this build basically a better version of the cool lens fittings that i've used in a lot of previous ward called pcs these are a lot easier to work with and tighten up they just leave you with the kind of that extra bit of confidence that they're not going to leak and they do look a lot cleaner as well now for the power supply pretty standard pick here we're going with the corsair sf750 platinum i've also installed it flipped so facing the inside of the build otherwise the power cable gets in the way of the radiator fittings and the tubing runs luckily though still seems to be getting plenty of airflow as noise from the power supply just isn't an issue by far the hardest part of this build though is the hardline tubing specifically this tubing run here which goes from the gpu block to the cpu block but has to wrap underneath the power supply i think i attempted this thing like five times before getting it to where it is now and honestly it's still not perfect and also that 180 degree bend that goes from the radiator to the flt80 not perfect and a little tough was able to get this one on the first try though just got to take your time be a little bit conservative on the heat gun temperature and work that bend over a couple of minutes so without a doubt the hardline tubing for this build you know it does look incredible but it was by far the hardest part of this entire experience and again for those wanting to maybe replicate it soft tubing is definitely the way to go especially if you have little to no liquid calling experience you know i get some people contacting me saying they want to do you know the first liquid called build and it'll be something like this and it's like no just don't even bother because it's either going to take you weeks and weeks or you're not going to be happy with the result so again soft tubing it's going to be miles miles better might not look as good but you're going to get the build up and running a lot easier and you also won't be second guessing whether you have your fittings and your tubing you know hooked up 100 tight because you know soft tubing is just a little bit easier in that regard as well now for the coolant i wanted to try something a bit different here and i opted for the neon green cryo fuel from ek and honestly it looks sick then you know combining that with the green leds from the water blocks and the pump res you get this kind of glowing neon effect which just looks super interesting now in terms of temperatures despite only running a 240mm rad thermals just aren't a problem in this build at all as with my own liquid cooled build i'm using the argus monitor software to control the radiator fans based off of the gpu temperature that way as the gpu or the cpu start heating up those radiator fans will start ramping up accordingly as well in the end though pretty happy with this performance after full gaming load for about an hour the 37 etr tops out at about 62 degrees c now that might sound a little bit warm but this was with the radiator fan speed at just 1000 rpm so there's definitely a lot more thermal headroom in the tank here if you want to run things a little bit louder which you know i don't really i prefer my builds to be a little bit on the quieter end but you know the thermal headroom is there if you want it then with a conservative undervolt on the gpu locking it to 1920 megahertz at 920 millivolts we drop about five to six degrees at the same fan speed and performance here's an idea of what that sounds like at full load then as for the cpu at the end of a full cinebench 10 minute loop we get most of the performance cores sitting in the mid 70s and this is with the 12700k running at full power close to 200 watts again fan speed here is just at a thousand rpm pump speed as well pretty conservative at about 2000 rpm so if you wanted to run a 12900k in this build that would honestly be doable with little to no tuning so there it is probably one of my favorite itx builds today just absolutely mental in terms of looks and the performance as well is a lot better than most would expect in this form factor now for those again wanting to replicate something similar definitely go with soft tubing if you don't have much liquid cooling experience and as well for the fitment of the top radiator if you want something just a little bit more flush and less of a hassle there you can go with the 25 mil noctua fans instead of the t30s that i've used here in terms of compact liquid cooling performance though i mean this thing is just really hard to beat realistically you could stretch this up to a 12 900k and a 30 80 if you really wanted to and that's crazy considering the tiny footprint and the volume so as always a huge thanks for watching let me know your thoughts on this one down below and i'll see you all in the next one

Channel: Optimum Tech

Views: 634,079

Keywords: watercooled pc, itx pc, overkill pc build, liquid cooled pc, optimum tech, small form factor pc, gaming pc build, hardline tube itx, ekwb, rtx 3070 ti, dan a4-h20, best itx case

Id: ibBdEFtBvQM

Length: 13min 6sec (786 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 12 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/kuhqu]

As far as I know those Ek quantum fittings also come for soft-tubing. Unfortunately there are no low profile fittings for soft tubing, but the normal ones should just work fine.