So Good I Might Switch - Liquid Cooled 3080 ITX Build

so here it is the meshlicious custom loop with an rtx 3080 and ryzen 5950x and honestly after not touching hardline tubing for a very long time this turned out a lot better than i was expecting especially in such a compact form factor but today we're going to take a look at all the parts that went into this and of course answer the big questions such as how does this actually perform with just a single 280 ml radiator and then of course one of the big questions was how can all of this possibly be powered by just a 600 watt power supply so let's take a look so we have to start with the case first because some of you might not be familiar with it because it hasn't been fully released and shipped yet but it is the subbed meshlicious which i think we can agree is a very fatiguing name for a pc case but at least there is a lot here to get excited about it's a vertically oriented itx case coming in at around 14 and a half liters in volume and with that can support up to a 280 ml radiator and some of the biggest graphics cards on the market not only that but evidently a pretty decent hardline custom loop as well the vertical form factor keeps the footprint on your desk nice and small and the mesh panels allow a ton of air to pass through the case the gpu that we're using here is the rtx 3080 founders edition and installed onto that is the special edition water block from ek that i reviewed in a previous video and it's an absolutely epic looking combination there which is also super compact allowing a full pump res combo to be mounted right above but more on that in just a minute the cpu that i went with here is probably a little bit overkill it's the 16 core ryzen 5950x and i've plugged that into the asus x570i strix with 32 gigabytes of memory and a little over one terabyte of m.2 nvme storage and some of you might have noticed but i did actually have to swap out the memory kit halfway through the build to something that was a little bit shorter than what i was using initially otherwise there just wasn't enough room for the tubing speaking of which is 16 mil petg hardline tubing all throughout and that's connected with ek's torque fittings in the same color as the gpu block overall not too many hassles or mistakes with the tubing and the bends but a few of these runs were really really tricky like the one that connects the cpu outlet to the reservoir and goes up and around the top of the build through three different 90 degree bends in a single run and also the really tight 180 degree bend that connects the pump outlet to the gpu inlet both of these were super tricky to do but i think it really takes this build to the next level my favorite part of the build by far is the top section of the gpu side with this special edition water block and reservoir mounting right above it it really creates this unique section of the loop that i've never seen in any other custom water cooled build i've also used extender fittings on both radiator ports and on one of the gpu ports just to make the tubing runs there a little bit more straightforward overall though really happy with the way that everything has turned out now speaking of that radiator the one i'm using here was a very deliberate choice because it's the biggest one that i could find that fits in this case it's the ex 280 from xspc it comes in at 36 millimeters thick and along with a pair of regular thickness fans it is quite the squeeze to install in this case with barely a couple mils of clearance left over but now let's get to the pump and reservoir mounting that i've mounted at the top of the build here which is the vtx 120 from ek the mounting here is actually completely improvised i basically just opened up two of the existing ventilation holes that were already there with the drill and the screws happen to line up perfectly now personally i would only really recommend this style of pump res mounting in this case as a complete last resort because having it this high in the loop it does cause some problems so again last resort if you can't figure out how to mount at least the pump somewhere lower which there is room down here in front of the gpu block you could do it but i think we can all agree that this looks just so so much better the problem here is that having the pump at the very top of the build and mounted horizontally it is very very easy for small air bubbles to get sucked into the pump and you know create a really noisy operation there is one way to overcome this though and it's exactly what i've done with this loop and it's basically just to make sure that the reservoir is completely topped up and that there's no air in the loop whatsoever which does take a little bit of time but it is definitely possible here's an idea of what the pump sounds like after the loop is completely topped up i'll also note the coolant that i'm using here is ek's opaque cryofuel in azure really nice and vibrant especially with the saturn fittings and the water block the loop has been running for around four days on and off now and thankfully there's no discoloration or anything like that to note but by far one of the biggest concerns that you guys had with this build was the fact that i was only using a 600 watt sfx power supply and that was obviously not enough for a ryzen 5950x and an rtx 3080. so i definitely would have used the 750 watt sf750 from corsair for this build but i just didn't have one spare if i'm honest and my previous testing with the rtx 3080 showed it to be more than fine with a 600 watt power supply so let's see if that's the case here too well in blender we see around 265 watts of power draw at the wall that's also with the power limit of the 5950x raised from around 142 watts to 180 watts and in heavy gpu loads like fur mark and heaven we see the power draw at around 470 to 480 watts so at this load we're well below the capabilities of the sf600 platinum that we're using here what i did not expect though was to be able to run the cpu and gpu completely maxed out at the same time blender and fermark running simultaneously at this point we are looking at over 600 watts of power draw at the wall again this was with the ryzen 5950x running a small overclock as well so evidently if you already have an sf600 platinum on hand or you can't get an sf750 at a decent price then you will be absolutely fine pairing an rtx 3080 with the sf600 platinum especially if you're planning on undervolting the gpu to save on power and thermals which is something that i definitely recommend for pretty much all itx water cooled builds but let's get to the big question which is of course thermal performance how does this thing perform with just a single 280 ml radiator which you can see at the front there and the fans i've got kind of pulling air into the case to get the freshest and coolest air passing through the radiator that's not what you'd do if you were air cooling the gpu you'd have the fans in reverse because you'd be encouraging air through the side panels instead but this airflow setup surprised me a lot and the results here are really really good but yeah 280 ml rad crammed into an itx case and i've also done all of the testing with uh one of the tempered glass side panels because that's how most meshlicious cases will be shipping so with the two 140mm fans set to 1300 rpm and the pump set to just 2500 rpm the rtx 3080 settles in at just 51 degrees c that is seriously good performance even when we reduce the fans to just 900 rpm we're still sitting at a very comfortable temperature and this isn't even factoring in gpu undervolting which i've previously shown can reduce the almost by a further 5 to 10 degrees i mean even if you wanted to run a bit of an overclock here on the gpu you've definitely got the thermal headroom to do so so at this point i was very curious to see how this custom loop compares to my own rtx 3090 watercooled build in the encase m1 which uses two 240mm radiators so i ran the same test on both witcher 3 running at 4k for 30 minutes with both builds having the fan set to 1300 rpm this isn't exactly a one-to-one comparison obviously we're comparing a 350 watt rtx 3090 to a 320 watt rtx 3080 but i think this does honestly show that the custom loop in the meshlicious has more cooling capability than my encased build despite having less overall radiator capacity it does have a more straightforward airflow path as opposed to my end case which i think we can admit is a lot more dense and has a more challenging pathway for airflow so overall super super impressive performance here as for cpu thermals there's absolutely nothing to worry about here our ryzen 5950x running at 180 watts settles in at just 67 degrees c here after 30 minutes of rendering out a scene in blender and that was with the fan set to just 900 rpm as for system noise here's an idea of what you can expect so honestly a pretty quiet loop and we're not even using special fans or anything like that these are just ek vada 140s the loudest part of this build though would have to be the chipset fan on the asus x570i strix motherboard as the chipset heats up to over 80 degrees c that fan eventually spins up to over 7000 rpm you can apparently fix this with aftermarket thermal pads for the chipset but i'd probably just recommend going for the b550i version instead which doesn't require active chipset cooling i'll also note the clock speeds on this board along with the 5950x have been improved a fair bit since the last time i tested with all calls now landing at around the 4 gigahertz mark out of the box in blender you can raise this a little bit in the bios quite easily by setting the performance enhancement mode to level one which raises the cpu power to around 180 watts and clock speeds to around 4.4 gigahertz another thing that i'd recommend doing with this build which i have not done here would be adding a coolant sensor just as i've done with my end case m1 and having the fan curve completely based off of that i'll leave a video linked down below on everything you need to know regarding how to do that but it is something i definitely recommend so some of you are probably wondering at this point whether i'm going to be using this as my main system or maybe transplanting the parts from my nk someone to the meshlicious and honestly i did really consider it mainly because i think we can agree this just looks so so good as a showpiece this would look fantastic on my desk there's also the fact that the footprint is a little bit smaller than my nksm1 and the build is a whole lot simpler thanks to only using a single radiator and again just looks so so good but if i'm being honest with myself looking at the thermal performance i'd probably see about a 5 degree thermal improvement at the same noise levels and i just don't think that's going to be worth tearing down a build that's completely fine just for a 5 degree improvement so for now i will be sticking with my encase m1 but if i was starting from scratch and i had to choose between the two cases and the two potential builds this is probably what i would go with so i think that pretty much covers everything about this custom build uh this is pretty much the last video that i'll be doing on it so a lot of you guys ask what happens now like with these builds simple answer is this will be torn down and the parts will be used for future builds and i do have a future build that i want to do with this exact water block and gpu so stay tuned for that other than that i will link all of the parts listed down below a huge thanks for watching and i will see you all in the next one

Channel: optimum

Views: 536,067

Keywords: RTX 3080, watercooled pc, watercooled itx pc, SSUPD Meshlicious, watercooled meshlicious, optimum tech, EKWB, Ryzen 5950X, Asus X570-I Strix

Id: DeBxEb_kcxE

Length: 11min 3sec (663 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 20 2021