This is the most expensive loop(s) I've ever built! Cost of parts has gotten pretty ridiculous. With that said if you want a "reasonable" build, like this comment and I'll build a loop for as little money as possible and compare it to a high end air cooler!
This. A thousand times this. Custom watercooling is for when you want an expensive piece of art just as much as a cool computer. I'll stick with my functional and cost efficient case and hardware.
Yeah, I agree. Especially if you don't game. Spend 2k on random cooling bits vs spend 2k on an M2 pro equipped Mac, which is silent without watercooling.
The Watercool Heatkiller 200mm tube reservoir is another good option for a boxy looking reservoir. Alphacool's Core 1 CPU block is currently best performing CPU block on the market. It'd be nice to see Jay use something other than EKWB everything for a change. There are so many other brands out there that make better watercooling hardware for less money.
I have been using EKWB since the GTX 7xx series and watching GGF Events I am going t try to use Heatkiller products in my next build. I love the look of the rads and the GPU waterblocks.
Those watercooling components is more than my PC of theseus including monitors and peripherals, I'd love to do a watercooling build myself someday, but when the decision is between water cooling or PC upgrade I can't really justify it to myself, so I am glad you're doing it Jay, I look forward to seeing the build progress :)
@@trashtronics1700 True, but in the past wasn't as expensive. Now, with the exception of Barrow, any GPU block in the UK is £200+. Add almost £200 for a decent D5 + Reservoir combo, another £100 for a CPU block, another £100 for fitting, drain valve and some angled fittings, between £70 and £100 for each radiator, another £30 for tubing and at least one sensor to monitor coolant temperature. Watercooling was tempting for some 3080, and more so for 3090 (using active backplate), but for most 4000 series, not really. You're best off investing that upgrading parts, or investing on some good monitor/speakers. But for those who already got that, so be it. Custom loop, for less than high end looks as silly as someone investing £300 on fans, fancy cables and all, but getting a vanilla 4060. Priorities, I guess.
Water cooling is for enthusiasts. I’m on my 3rd watercooled setup. First was years ago when I had stupid deployed military money. And now I’m at the point where I try to buy higher end components. I have a cosmos c700m. Case is massive but I love it and won’t get rid of it anytime soon. But I have had 2 seperate water cooling setups in it. Upgrading from one to the other was actually only a couple hundred after selling old components. So it’s easy to stay in this category after you get here. Not every setup needs all new components as jay just did. I needed new monoblock, tubes. Easy. I am however planning to goto dual loop when I upgrade to a 4080 on a few months.
Keep it air cool the worst with water cooling you won't see the difference in day to day usage unless all you do is look at hardware monitor And on top of it it becomes useless in 2 years when you upgrade maybe the rad and pump can be reused
My favorite is when I "think" I will be able to run tubes a certain way, and then in practice end up having to modify it and order more fittings, and then having fittings you don't need.
I found making a drawing of how the loop will be makes it less likely to order too much or not enough fittings , but yeah there's almost always something even with good planning
@@HIGHPatientI wouldn't say it's exactly a justification, but there's a reason. It's an absolute niche product, with a low production volume. The production volume is so low, because it's made for a specific board, that not a lot of people would even consider buying, let alone a waterblock designed for it and nothing else. So they take their development cost, production and material cost, add some on top to generate a profit, and that's how you end up with that price. Oh, and of course they take into account that a lot of these will never be sold, so add that, too. EK has some fairly reasonably priced options, although reasonably priced is probably the wrong term for anything watercooling. So.. yeah, I wouldn't even think about buying that. But some people will
This is why I use barrow parts. I've built so many loops with their fittings, rads, blocks, plates. You save so much over buying bitspower or other "boutique" brands, so long as what barrow offers fits your theme. And their blocks perform extremely well.
I find this build interesting. Question follows: When I plan a loop I *always* draw a diagram showing all components in the order they go with fittings etc. This minimizes dumb mistakes, helps with the bill of materials which in turn helps me me not miss anything (fingers crossed). Do you not find diagrams helpful? In any event, I'd certainly appreciate a diagram of the loop(s) that you are considering. I'm thinking this system is going to be a keeper (good thing too coz it'll probably be hefty -- no lan-parties).
The insane increases in the cost to watercool is why I ended up just going with a chiller. Good waterblock, some ZMT, some server grade clamps and my "loop" stays ambient. I am, slowly, gathering the parts to offload low workload heat control to rads, but at least this way I have a build that never gets close to max T while I gather up expensive bits and pieces.
He made this look super easy. My current computer is the Lian Li Q58 and I had to source parts from EK, titan rig, performance pc and amazon. He is completely right about ordering fittings, you will always have to buy again because you need that one fitting.
Loving the amount of content coming out, I always look forward to the holiday season even more now because of the added content! Love this channel jay!
Yesterday Ive replaced my o11 Dynamic with a EK Quantum Reflection Distro-plate and EK 4.2 D5 Pump. Now Im running a Alphacool Aurora Acetal 250 with the VPP Apex D5. I can barely hear it over my 16 Arctic P12 PWM fans (Running them all at around 650 rpm). The EK 4.2 D5 was MUCH louder! Flowrate at 100% avg 172,7 l/h, at 50% avg 124,9 l/h (Measured with High Flow Next). I use a EK Velocity² AMD4 block, Phanteks Glacier G40 Strix/TUF Block, 2 * Alphacool ST30 360mm, 1 * Alphacool XT45 360mm, 9 * 90° fittings, 7 * 90° bends, 14/10mm hardtubing. So my loop is slightly restrictive. Overall very happy with my purchase!
No idea if Jay will see this, but just an FYI: If you want to use that monoblock with the active backplate version of the 4090 block, you need an additional part that's called "EK-Quantum Momentum² ROG Maximus Z690/Z790 Extreme I/O Cover - Black"
He is so right about missing stuff as you order. I got most of my fittings from EK when I ordered my fittings, tubes and gpu block. I thought I need 6 90 angles and 8 regular fittings. However when I started building I realized I needed 1 more 90 and 2 more straight. Fortunately I live an hour from a microcenter.
Yeah I just did my own custom loop and had to order extra stuff multiple times. Added about 2-3 weeks to my build because my city doesn’t have any shops with fittings
It's not only that but also some stupid mistakes. I've built a system this summer with external radiator and here in Japan we don't have Microcenter / parts in general are expensive so I ordered pretty much everything from Germany. And during order - I saw that I need unusual fan extension cord (male-male, not male-female) because of splitter having regular fan header as input - yet I still ordered wrong one. And pretty much I haven't seen such cables anywhere else - so second DHL delivery from Germany it is. Same story with cablemod - ordered all cables / forgot SATA cables for pumps.
People told me I was crazy for doing an EK XE 480mm x 60mm plus a PE360 radiator loop for my 5950x/3090 Kingpin setup when I converted it to liquid cooling 2 years or so ago, your radiator decisions put that in perspective. Cases that fit a 480 are few & far between, one that fits both is even harder to come by, and then there's the SMA8 lol I have a Thermaltake View 91, I know it's stupidly overpriced, but it's something I'm going to re-use for the forseeable future for builds, because it's easy/spacious to work in & can fit anything, period, because it's so spacious, especially once you take out all the stupid HDD cages it comes with. I removed the loop recently from my system because I 'upgraded' to a 4090 & I'll be going 14900K when they come out, I don't miss it. I had full crazy-mode on the loop though, push pull on both radiators, so 14 fans just on the rads alone, and the loop went pump > CPU > P360 Rad > GPU > XE480 Rad (60mm thick) > back to pump res, and it was soft tubing. It's been out of my system 2 weeks & I've yet to actually drain & disassemble the loop so I can clean the rads & resell the parts/GPU etc. That's how much of a pain it is to deal with lol taking it out still fully assembled & full of fluid was fun... heavy too.
This video has helped me immensely....in deciding to never do a custom loop. I could build a second system for my girlfriend for how much those watercooling components cost...
$820 for a little bit of metal and plastic. So dumb.. I get it's a niche market and they gotta make their money back from R&D and manufacturing. But still.. this is one of those situations where, nobody wants it because it's so high, and it's so high because nobody wants it. Just like Warhammer40k Models. Lower the price and more people will buy and you'll make your money back. But, dumbass companies don't think long run, they think short gain. Gimme money right now, want it now. And in the end, the only people getting shafted, are the customers having to pay for it if they really really want it. And the company learns nothing
Wild to me that you've still been having memory issues with your 7950X3D, I've had absolutely none running 6000MHz CL30 since I got mine, although I'm using an MSI motherboard. Regardless, I'm really excited to see how this insane build comes together!
Holy moly... thanks for the reminder of why I don't run custom loop cooling in my computer. The watercooling parts alone are as much as what I spent to build my current rig (5900X and 6900XT... during the shortage years).
figuring out the fittings for my friends water loop was indeed the hardest part of it all. it was also my first and only time having done a custom loop. and yes he ended up with like 5 extras that he decided to keep instead of trying to return them
Love the Octoberfest stuff and the Skunkworks revival! That said, I would also love to see a 'moderate' water cooling build, say for beginners, where you only cool the cpu with flexible tubing and the bare minimums. It would serve as a gateway for some people on the fence about trying it out, you know? Which tools do you have to get to be able to do such a build? Can you get all the parts at Micro Center if its close by to whomever is trying it? Thanks, Jay! :)
If you transition your tube choice to glass, I learned that I was able make pretty tight radii. It did take a lot of practice, and I wasted a lot of tube in the process of making mistakes and learning how to do it, but it was totally worth it.
Please show how to connect and setup a rig with 2 separate pumps. Obviously one goes to the pump header, but where do u plug in the other? Cant just split them or u cant have speed adjust separately based on cpu vs gpu temp.
Just upgraded from Lian Li SL 120/140 to Lian Li SL-INF 120/140. Their connectors are smaller and located centrally on the ends. Also, the main cable is single. I like them.
All I gotta say is soft tubing builds are underrated. Sure hardline is cleaner but (my personal opinion, take it with a grain of salt, I doubt it's worth that much) is that the matte black soft tubing would give the aesthetic of grassroots with a clean and polished look. It's simple, and made for performance and in performance simplicity is king. That being said, I'll always admire your PC designs because they always look clean and classy and badass, man. I can't wait to see this.
I built my first loop this year after a few years of hesitation. It cost me around 1600$, and since I went full EK (including fans) I also had to buy fans and RGB controllers, adding a couple hundred on top (aquacomputer stuff is nice but quickly gets expensive) This was a (very) nice late birthday present for me, but the risks and costs are quite high, this made me very scared of pushing that power button once the loop was ready to show it's true colors! Thankfully nothing broke, and it did vastly outperform my expectations!
Gotta love water cooling... Recently moved my build to an Asus AP201 and finally used the EK DDC pump I had bought during the 2020 days in vain hopes to build a system then... Bloody thing gets stuck every time the computer is off and requires percussive maintenance to get going. Brand new, out of warranty...Great.
that ekwb block is rather expensive but it also has alot of extra features, that are not normally included. ssd cooling if i recall too, which may be a thing again with the recent pcie5 . flow and temp sensors on that block too..
I'm in the process of reviving my trusty Enthoo Pro M build for when Ryzen 8000 is out. It's nearly 4 years old now and has been through two CPU upgrades. So watching Jay-Z do this is definitely giving me some ideas!
This build is gonna be so epic! I've been subbed ever since the first version of Skunkworks, and it doesn't feel like it's been that long ago, but it has.
Step 1. Take an engineering degree to be able to calculate flow rates etc. needed to ensure heat is dissipated more efficiently than just with air cooling. Step 2. Still get it all wrong.
WTF $800 for a waterblock?!? LMFAO Glad I bought all my loops pre 2020. prices are insane !! I hate 45 swivel fittings they leak eventually. had 3 in my build but removed 2 for leaking, and replaced with home made solid copper 45 fitting with G1/4 thread. has the exact angle I needed and no leaking in a swivel.
I'm thinking about building a custom water cooling loop for my current gaming pc. The tubing and fittings will be copper either brazed or silver soldered. The radiators will be black and nothing special so long as the tubing internally is copper. No RGB anywhere, just a glass panel that lets me see the guts of the system. I want it to look like an old boiler that belongs in a basement, pure function.
Love the looks of custom loop, but last week when I was tempted to build one, the price, for no performance gain, only visuals, was higher than a Samsung G8 monitor. Ended up getting a new monitor. About noise, the 4080 and its oversized cooler, the Arctic Cooler II 360 and all around D30s at 40% in the NV7 is dead quiet. I can only hear some coil whine when benchmarking or the GPU's fans when under load, but nothing distracting. Fittings alone can cost as much as an AIO.
Nice to see you go to town on it. I’d be nice to see something other than EK though, nothing against them but their current pricing is nuts. Heatkiller/watercool would have been nice to see, or maybe even a pair of Singularity protium’s. Either way, it’s your build and it’s good to see it coming back. I love mine and I never plan to part with it.
And this was just for the parts you needed. the GPU block, tubes and coolant/water added to it brings it to 2.5K or more. Watercooling always has been a niche market for the extreme enthousiast. Also PC building is becoming a rarity soon with those insane prices, the time of building console killers for the same price is long behind us. With this loop and the PC parts you have, if you bought that unsponsored this easily surpasses 6K, still looking forward to the videos though! I love to see something build that is far beyond my own reach because that's the only way to in some way experience it.
I have been using Alpha cool VPP 775 pumps in all my PC's and never had any issues, one of them has run 18 hours a day for 6 years. I also only run XSPC Photon reservoirs in all my builds with real glass. Just a couple weeks ago I swapped out my Thermaltake Riing Plus fans with Lian Li SL 120 v2 fans to get the reverse blades on 7 out of the 10 fans. But the uni fan controller already died today, It will not show any installed fans or options for RGB and all the RGB quit. Instead of the hassle getting a replacement from Lian Li I just ordered one off Amazon. If that one dies I will never purchase anymore of their fans again.
Well I need an answer. I’m watercolling my pcs from 2003. I made custom blocks, use aquarium pumps and automotive radiators. Today I have mostly branded parts bought on cheap. But how it becomes that custom loop costs more than whole PC???
VPP Apex is different to the VPP755. I'm running two Apex pumps and they seem fine so far. One thing to note, they are NOT standard D5 dimensions, so if mounted upside down the impeller can collide with the structure inside a volute/top/res. I fixed this with my Koolance RP-452X by using two O-rings instead of one. I'm probably sacrificing some performance though.
People who have never water cooled their pc. IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS EXPENSIVE. You can get a much more modest setup that will give great results. I watercool my 7800x3d with a core 1 cpu block and xd7 d5 / distro plate combo with 1x 360mm radiator and soft tubing. I think the entire setup cost me about $400 shopping around on ebay / waiting for deals. I got the xd7 at a steal though. For $90 brand new :D
I’m surprised you didn’t go for one of EKs TEC coolers to get extremely low temps on the cpu. Another thing to consider is using Optimus you water block. Mine on a 4090 with Liquid Metal is constant around 38-43c depending on power draw.
Asus makes a pcie M.2 card. If you have a water block to cool all of the M.2s on that card mounted under your gpu it would look like SLI and keep Skunkworks looks retro!
Oh snap! He's gonna have to buy another loop for the M.2s! Just when I thought it was impossible ot make the build any more expensive.... My bet is this build will "cost" $10k when it's all said and done.
I have a couple of the 28mm double rotary offsets and they are a lifesaver in the right situation. They’re basically two fittings in one because of the rotary part.
Went from the double sided EKWB Strix 4090 block to the OptimusPC rev 2. Slightly higher VRAM temps but 10’C less hotspot on the GPU. Also good excuse to go LM.
My next build I'm thinking of glass tubing. It looks so clean and I like the joint fittings that are required. I think I may do bright chrome or gunmetal for the fittings.
If you already have it, you could use the Z*90 Formula which has preinstalled vrm water cooling. Not a fan of Asus for their handling of the bios issue but it would allow you to use a cheaper cpu block.
I just got the Montech Air 903 Base case to replace the case I currently have, which sucks due to airflow restriction and the way it is constructed is not user friendly. The Montech case looks like it is what I really needed when I built my PC in 2019. The Montech looks like a better case and is cheaper than my current POS case.. LOL Now comes the fun of swapping with emphasis on needed cleaning and addition of another NVME drive.. This case is non RGB cuz RGB is distracting and I really don't care for it LOL
tubing is very specific, as someone who's nevr assembvled these, would there be any issue using say pneumatic tubing(same diameters) on here? say the same one youd use fot an air powered staple gun
last time i custom looped anything was in 2015. my 7900xtx (non reference) is showing a 40C difference in temps between reg and hotspot so i've been looking at blocks/pumps, etc. and man wtf. prices are like triple what i remember!
I'd love to see more explanation of inner vs outer dimension as well as soft tubing. Part of me wants to do more of an industrial loop. Black soft tubing, no RGB, no case window. A practical setup meant to run for 5 years without maintenance. I generally do close to the top end consumer grade without jumping to hedt. Currently 5950X w/ 128gb ram, and had been running a 3080... decided to put off my full replacement build for a generation with all the ddr and big/little issues. I also run Linux, not too much gaming. Really looking forward to see what comes out this year. I'm hoping AMD has better DDR5 support with 8000 series, I'd love 4x 48gb (192gb) ram at a decent speed/latency. Would settle for 96gb, but wasn't going down to 64gb. Some of my project loads exceed 70gb in use.
Jay just making sure to remind me that sticking with pedestrian air cooling is the way by spending the TOTAL cost of my (hopefully) 2024 build on custom loop parts ONLY!
So I'm looking at changing just my AIO cpu and fan gpu to a hard-line set up.... what's the purpose of a distro plate besides for looks? Can't you just run from res, pump, gpu, cpu, radiator and back to res?
Sapphire rapids would be cool as hell for skunkworks, was almost always HEDT. Should keep the tradition up . The w790 sage or the asrock w790 ws would look amazing with mem blocks
hey Jay when it comes to mixing and matching components mainly the rads and EKWB are there any considerations that are needed when it comes to the fluid used in the loop. thinking about using a EKWB cpu block with a corsiar rad and corsiar tubing just not sure on what fluild id need to use.
I currently spent around 2500$ on my rig. Now that it's in its final form (O11D evo XL coming next month) I'm looking into custom watercooling... I would have to spend another 1500$ for a CPU+GPU loop with a distroplate prices are insane but I don't really mind as long as it's quality stuff
This is the most expensive loop(s) I've ever built! Cost of parts has gotten pretty ridiculous. With that said if you want a "reasonable" build, like this comment and I'll build a loop for as little money as possible and compare it to a high end air cooler!
Yeeessss
I would love to see a "bare minimum" loop
It is going to be awesome though.
Please.
I would love to watercool my system but with the cost I could spring for a 4080 and just keep dealing with 65c cpu 75c gpu temps lol
Watching Jay go internet shopping for watercooling parts is so entertaining especially when it's not my money being spent!
Who spends 800+ bucks of their own money on a mono block? For that price i want to install it and gold plate all the fittings
Living vicariously through the channels success is what I'm doing lol
/dreams
@@kamelionify welcome to I fixit
I would do some shopping but lost my job yesterday lol, gotta save everything I got to keep bills paid till I can start somewhere else
Well it's not his 💰 either 🙄
This video is a massive success, Jay. You've convinced me to never watercool my builds. But damn, do I love watching people spend money.
This. A thousand times this.
Custom watercooling is for when you want an expensive piece of art just as much as a cool computer. I'll stick with my functional and cost efficient case and hardware.
@@acinomnottarts I've thought about doing it so many times, but then i think about the cost and just go... nah.
Yeah, I agree. Especially if you don't game. Spend 2k on random cooling bits vs spend 2k on an M2 pro equipped Mac, which is silent without watercooling.
just build silent-pc's without water cooling...cheaper, more reliable, and parts last forever.
Well just go Soft tubing and normal vector block.
The Watercool Heatkiller 200mm tube reservoir is another good option for a boxy looking reservoir. Alphacool's Core 1 CPU block is currently best performing CPU block on the market. It'd be nice to see Jay use something other than EKWB everything for a change. There are so many other brands out there that make better watercooling hardware for less money.
I also like the xspc pump/res combo's
and for real some of the bykski cpu and gpu blocks are as good, if not better the EK, Alphacool etc
I have been using EKWB since the GTX 7xx series and watching GGF Events I am going t try to use Heatkiller products in my next build. I love the look of the rads and the GPU waterblocks.
Heatkiller reservoir is awesome. The easy open top system they have is amazing.
Jay is a EKWB/Singularity fan boy 😂 covert sponsorship 😂
@@rickypelletier363Watercool is much higher quality than EK. You won't be disappointed.
Those watercooling components is more than my PC of theseus including monitors and peripherals, I'd love to do a watercooling build myself someday, but when the decision is between water cooling or PC upgrade I can't really justify it to myself, so I am glad you're doing it Jay, I look forward to seeing the build progress :)
It's kinda always been like that wc is normally just enthusiast only
@@trashtronics1700 True, but in the past wasn't as expensive. Now, with the exception of Barrow, any GPU block in the UK is £200+. Add almost £200 for a decent D5 + Reservoir combo, another £100 for a CPU block, another £100 for fitting, drain valve and some angled fittings, between £70 and £100 for each radiator, another £30 for tubing and at least one sensor to monitor coolant temperature. Watercooling was tempting for some 3080, and more so for 3090 (using active backplate), but for most 4000 series, not really. You're best off investing that upgrading parts, or investing on some good monitor/speakers. But for those who already got that, so be it. Custom loop, for less than high end looks as silly as someone investing £300 on fans, fancy cables and all, but getting a vanilla 4060. Priorities, I guess.
Water cooling is for enthusiasts. I’m on my 3rd watercooled setup. First was years ago when I had stupid deployed military money. And now I’m at the point where I try to buy higher end components. I have a cosmos c700m. Case is massive but I love it and won’t get rid of it anytime soon. But I have had 2 seperate water cooling setups in it. Upgrading from one to the other was actually only a couple hundred after selling old components. So it’s easy to stay in this category after you get here. Not every setup needs all new components as jay just did. I needed new monoblock, tubes. Easy. I am however planning to goto dual loop when I upgrade to a 4080 on a few months.
Keep it air cool
the worst with water cooling you won't see the difference in day to day usage unless all you do is look at hardware monitor
And on top of it it becomes useless in 2 years when you upgrade maybe the rad and pump can be reused
@@yagesz Why do you go to a dual loop? Is it better?
thank you jay
you proved me right in NOT going with EK; they are just wayyyyy overpriced
My favorite is when I "think" I will be able to run tubes a certain way, and then in practice end up having to modify it and order more fittings, and then having fittings you don't need.
I definitely have a handful of "spares" 😅
Yup, have to agree with that statement. I've got enough _"spare"_ fittings to build least one more rig.
I found making a drawing of how the loop will be makes it less likely to order too much or not enough fittings , but yeah there's almost always something even with good planning
800 dollars for a piece of acrylic plastic is actually not negotiable.
Is there even any reqson for the manufacturer to justify that cost?
@@HIGHPatientI wouldn't say it's exactly a justification, but there's a reason. It's an absolute niche product, with a low production volume. The production volume is so low, because it's made for a specific board, that not a lot of people would even consider buying, let alone a waterblock designed for it and nothing else. So they take their development cost, production and material cost, add some on top to generate a profit, and that's how you end up with that price.
Oh, and of course they take into account that a lot of these will never be sold, so add that, too.
EK has some fairly reasonably priced options, although reasonably priced is probably the wrong term for anything watercooling. So.. yeah, I wouldn't even think about buying that. But some people will
@@noneofyourbusiness4294 thanks for the in depth response!
This is why I use barrow parts. I've built so many loops with their fittings, rads, blocks, plates. You save so much over buying bitspower or other "boutique" brands, so long as what barrow offers fits your theme. And their blocks perform extremely well.
Jay, just wanted to take the time to say thank you, and your crew, for Techtober and everything you do. Thanks!!
It's kind of crazy that they can charge $800 for a waterblock and keep a straight face
They know to hold it till payay
I find this build interesting. Question follows: When I plan a loop I *always* draw a diagram showing all components in the order they go with fittings etc. This minimizes dumb mistakes, helps with the bill of materials which in turn helps me me not miss anything (fingers crossed). Do you not find diagrams helpful? In any event, I'd certainly appreciate a diagram of the loop(s) that you are considering. I'm thinking this system is going to be a keeper (good thing too coz it'll probably be hefty -- no lan-parties).
The insane increases in the cost to watercool is why I ended up just going with a chiller.
Good waterblock, some ZMT, some server grade clamps and my "loop" stays ambient.
I am, slowly, gathering the parts to offload low workload heat control to rads, but at least this way I have a build that never gets close to max T while I gather up expensive bits and pieces.
I watch you & LTT create these custom loops & am impressed but honestly, I never realized how expensive it is.
He made this look super easy. My current computer is the Lian Li Q58 and I had to source parts from EK, titan rig, performance pc and amazon. He is completely right about ordering fittings, you will always have to buy again because you need that one fitting.
Loving the amount of content coming out, I always look forward to the holiday season even more now because of the added content! Love this channel jay!
I knew water cooling was expensive, but daaaaaaannnnnngg!! Maybe it's best I stick to an AIO
2200 USD? Oh... I'll stick to the AIO. lmao
Exactly my thoughts!
Yes because Jay don't have budget or in other words he doesn't care the price. EKWB is very overpriced, want to safe buy barrow or bykski fittings
I would love to see a "bang for buck" focused loop. It would also be cool to see more different brands than mostly EK.
Yesterday Ive replaced my o11 Dynamic with a EK Quantum Reflection Distro-plate and EK 4.2 D5 Pump. Now Im running a Alphacool Aurora Acetal 250 with the VPP Apex D5. I can barely hear it over my 16 Arctic P12 PWM fans (Running them all at around 650 rpm). The EK 4.2 D5 was MUCH louder!
Flowrate at 100% avg 172,7 l/h, at 50% avg 124,9 l/h (Measured with High Flow Next). I use a EK Velocity² AMD4 block, Phanteks Glacier G40 Strix/TUF Block, 2 * Alphacool ST30 360mm, 1 * Alphacool XT45 360mm, 9 * 90° fittings, 7 * 90° bends, 14/10mm hardtubing. So my loop is slightly restrictive.
Overall very happy with my purchase!
No idea if Jay will see this, but just an FYI:
If you want to use that monoblock with the active backplate version of the 4090 block, you need an additional part that's called "EK-Quantum Momentum² ROG Maximus Z690/Z790 Extreme I/O Cover - Black"
you need accessories with your accessories
This man spent more in water cooling than I did my whole rig three times over!! Haha
Excited to see how the build turns out!
He is so right about missing stuff as you order. I got most of my fittings from EK when I ordered my fittings, tubes and gpu block. I thought I need 6 90 angles and 8 regular fittings. However when I started building I realized I needed 1 more 90 and 2 more straight. Fortunately I live an hour from a microcenter.
Yeah I just did my own custom loop and had to order extra stuff multiple times. Added about 2-3 weeks to my build because my city doesn’t have any shops with fittings
It's not only that but also some stupid mistakes. I've built a system this summer with external radiator and here in Japan we don't have Microcenter / parts in general are expensive so I ordered pretty much everything from Germany. And during order - I saw that I need unusual fan extension cord (male-male, not male-female) because of splitter having regular fan header as input - yet I still ordered wrong one. And pretty much I haven't seen such cables anywhere else - so second DHL delivery from Germany it is.
Same story with cablemod - ordered all cables / forgot SATA cables for pumps.
People told me I was crazy for doing an EK XE 480mm x 60mm plus a PE360 radiator loop for my 5950x/3090 Kingpin setup when I converted it to liquid cooling 2 years or so ago, your radiator decisions put that in perspective. Cases that fit a 480 are few & far between, one that fits both is even harder to come by, and then there's the SMA8 lol
I have a Thermaltake View 91, I know it's stupidly overpriced, but it's something I'm going to re-use for the forseeable future for builds, because it's easy/spacious to work in & can fit anything, period, because it's so spacious, especially once you take out all the stupid HDD cages it comes with.
I removed the loop recently from my system because I 'upgraded' to a 4090 & I'll be going 14900K when they come out, I don't miss it.
I had full crazy-mode on the loop though, push pull on both radiators, so 14 fans just on the rads alone, and the loop went pump > CPU > P360 Rad > GPU > XE480 Rad (60mm thick) > back to pump res, and it was soft tubing.
It's been out of my system 2 weeks & I've yet to actually drain & disassemble the loop so I can clean the rads & resell the parts/GPU etc. That's how much of a pain it is to deal with lol taking it out still fully assembled & full of fluid was fun... heavy too.
Just spent £1500 on my 1st water cooling build from EK, not built it yet. going to take a week off work to build wish me luck.
This video has helped me immensely....in deciding to never do a custom loop. I could build a second system for my girlfriend for how much those watercooling components cost...
$820 for a little bit of metal and plastic. So dumb.. I get it's a niche market and they gotta make their money back from R&D and manufacturing. But still.. this is one of those situations where, nobody wants it because it's so high, and it's so high because nobody wants it.
Just like Warhammer40k Models.
Lower the price and more people will buy and you'll make your money back.
But, dumbass companies don't think long run, they think short gain. Gimme money right now, want it now.
And in the end, the only people getting shafted, are the customers having to pay for it if they really really want it. And the company learns nothing
Wild to me that you've still been having memory issues with your 7950X3D, I've had absolutely none running 6000MHz CL30 since I got mine, although I'm using an MSI motherboard. Regardless, I'm really excited to see how this insane build comes together!
I want to see an air cooled build for the amount Jay spent on water cooling parts.
That would be complete air cooling for 6-7 PCs , just for the EK-Mobo-Chipset cooler.
ive been running Alpha cool cross flow rads for so long now. and in my builds it was the best option for my runs.
Holy moly... thanks for the reminder of why I don't run custom loop cooling in my computer. The watercooling parts alone are as much as what I spent to build my current rig (5900X and 6900XT... during the shortage years).
figuring out the fittings for my friends water loop was indeed the hardest part of it all. it was also my first and only time having done a custom loop. and yes he ended up with like 5 extras that he decided to keep instead of trying to return them
That Alphacool pump/res is nice. I have one too. No molex crap, just sata power connecter
I showed my wife the bill for all this and my purchase of 800 in tools for work/home is no longer an issue. Thanks Jay!
the Alphacool VPP 3.0's have been good for me for a few years now no issues. The 1.0 would pop off the clip and the 2.0 would fail to start at times.
I've been using Barrow for years. Easily half the price for all the fittings but still excellent quality.
Thanks Jay and team. Imagine that cost and add %30 more cause im in Australia.
Love the Octoberfest stuff and the Skunkworks revival! That said, I would also love to see a 'moderate' water cooling build, say for beginners, where you only cool the cpu with flexible tubing and the bare minimums. It would serve as a gateway for some people on the fence about trying it out, you know? Which tools do you have to get to be able to do such a build? Can you get all the parts at Micro Center if its close by to whomever is trying it? Thanks, Jay! :)
If you transition your tube choice to glass, I learned that I was able make pretty tight radii. It did take a lot of practice, and I wasted a lot of tube in the process of making mistakes and learning how to do it, but it was totally worth it.
Please show how to connect and setup a rig with 2 separate pumps. Obviously one goes to the pump header, but where do u plug in the other? Cant just split them or u cant have speed adjust separately based on cpu vs gpu temp.
My Mobo has two pump headers on it and can be set independently in bios like the fan headers.
Just upgraded from Lian Li SL 120/140 to Lian Li SL-INF 120/140. Their connectors are smaller and located centrally on the ends. Also, the main cable is single. I like them.
All I gotta say is soft tubing builds are underrated. Sure hardline is cleaner but (my personal opinion, take it with a grain of salt, I doubt it's worth that much) is that the matte black soft tubing would give the aesthetic of grassroots with a clean and polished look. It's simple, and made for performance and in performance simplicity is king.
That being said, I'll always admire your PC designs because they always look clean and classy and badass, man. I can't wait to see this.
Super helpful. Thanks.
I built my first loop this year after a few years of hesitation. It cost me around 1600$, and since I went full EK (including fans) I also had to buy fans and RGB controllers, adding a couple hundred on top (aquacomputer stuff is nice but quickly gets expensive)
This was a (very) nice late birthday present for me, but the risks and costs are quite high, this made me very scared of pushing that power button once the loop was ready to show it's true colors!
Thankfully nothing broke, and it did vastly outperform my expectations!
Gotta love water cooling... Recently moved my build to an Asus AP201 and finally used the EK DDC pump I had bought during the 2020 days in vain hopes to build a system then... Bloody thing gets stuck every time the computer is off and requires percussive maintenance to get going. Brand new, out of warranty...Great.
that ekwb block is rather expensive but it also has alot of extra features, that are not normally included. ssd cooling if i recall too, which may be a thing again with the recent pcie5 . flow and temp sensors on that block too..
I'm in the process of reviving my trusty Enthoo Pro M build for when Ryzen 8000 is out. It's nearly 4 years old now and has been through two CPU upgrades. So watching Jay-Z do this is definitely giving me some ideas!
This build is gonna be so epic! I've been subbed ever since the first version of Skunkworks, and it doesn't feel like it's been that long ago, but it has.
I've watched so many custom water cooling tutorials, and I still don't understand how to do it all.
Step 1. Take an engineering degree to be able to calculate flow rates etc. needed to ensure heat is dissipated more efficiently than just with air cooling.
Step 2. Still get it all wrong.
WTF $800 for a waterblock?!? LMFAO
Glad I bought all my loops pre 2020. prices are insane !!
I hate 45 swivel fittings they leak eventually.
had 3 in my build but removed 2 for leaking,
and replaced with home made solid copper 45 fitting with G1/4 thread.
has the exact angle I needed and no leaking in a swivel.
I use Alphacool VPP755 pump with 2 45mm/360mm rads for about 3,5 years and didn't have any issues with it.
Great to see the revival of this case!
I'm thinking about building a custom water cooling loop for my current gaming pc. The tubing and fittings will be copper either brazed or silver soldered. The radiators will be black and nothing special so long as the tubing internally is copper. No RGB anywhere, just a glass panel that lets me see the guts of the system. I want it to look like an old boiler that belongs in a basement, pure function.
Really like this video! Best part of any build! 16:09
I've just redone one of my loops since I needed to switch the 12900k with 14900k and I'm just glad Micro Center had all the fitting I needed.
Love the looks of custom loop, but last week when I was tempted to build one, the price, for no performance gain, only visuals, was higher than a Samsung G8 monitor. Ended up getting a new monitor. About noise, the 4080 and its oversized cooler, the Arctic Cooler II 360 and all around D30s at 40% in the NV7 is dead quiet. I can only hear some coil whine when benchmarking or the GPU's fans when under load, but nothing distracting. Fittings alone can cost as much as an AIO.
Nice to see you go to town on it. I’d be nice to see something other than EK though, nothing against them but their current pricing is nuts. Heatkiller/watercool would have been nice to see, or maybe even a pair of Singularity protium’s. Either way, it’s your build and it’s good to see it coming back. I love mine and I never plan to part with it.
Just wanted to point out there is a lump behind Jay's right ear 15:57, maybe it's just a bug bite but figured it'd be better to point it out.
Our safety people would have a field day if they saw your seating position.
Expensive project man, but I look forward to the finished result and appreciate the Jay-bats at the end!
And this was just for the parts you needed. the GPU block, tubes and coolant/water added to it brings it to 2.5K or more.
Watercooling always has been a niche market for the extreme enthousiast. Also PC building is becoming a rarity soon with those insane prices, the time of building console killers for the same price is long behind us.
With this loop and the PC parts you have, if you bought that unsponsored this easily surpasses 6K, still looking forward to the videos though! I love to see something build that is far beyond my own reach because that's the only way to in some way experience it.
I have been using Alpha cool VPP 775 pumps in all my PC's and never had any issues, one of them has run 18 hours a day for 6 years. I also only run XSPC Photon reservoirs in all my builds with real glass. Just a couple weeks ago I swapped out my Thermaltake Riing Plus fans with Lian Li SL 120 v2 fans to get the reverse blades on 7 out of the 10 fans. But the uni fan controller already died today, It will not show any installed fans or options for RGB and all the RGB quit. Instead of the hassle getting a replacement from Lian Li I just ordered one off Amazon. If that one dies I will never purchase anymore of their fans again.
Do a budget watercooled pc
Well I need an answer. I’m watercolling my pcs from 2003. I made custom blocks, use aquarium pumps and automotive radiators. Today I have mostly branded parts bought on cheap. But how it becomes that custom loop costs more than whole PC???
What about using the kryo sheets instead of the KPX?
Holy shit, can't wait to see this build get started.
VPP Apex is different to the VPP755. I'm running two Apex pumps and they seem fine so far. One thing to note, they are NOT standard D5 dimensions, so if mounted upside down the impeller can collide with the structure inside a volute/top/res. I fixed this with my Koolance RP-452X by using two O-rings instead of one. I'm probably sacrificing some performance though.
They make one with no pump as well you just bring your own D5. For those that want glass its one of the only good options.
@@profosist did you mean to reply to me? If so, I have no idea what you're talking about ..
This was hugely helpful. Thank you jay!
People who have never water cooled their pc. IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS EXPENSIVE. You can get a much more modest setup that will give great results. I watercool my 7800x3d with a core 1 cpu block and xd7 d5 / distro plate combo with 1x 360mm radiator and soft tubing. I think the entire setup cost me about $400 shopping around on ebay / waiting for deals. I got the xd7 at a steal though. For $90 brand new :D
gonna love how it gonna turn out when you are done with skunkswork, also i also watercooled my ghost s1 and thats why i also choose the same case
I’m surprised you didn’t go for one of EKs TEC coolers to get extremely low temps on the cpu. Another thing to consider is using Optimus you water block. Mine on a 4090 with Liquid Metal is constant around 38-43c depending on power draw.
Watching this was like watching a friend shop for mansions. Living vicariously through J2C!
I remember when I could build a whole PC for $820
Water-cooling emergency orders! the greatest bane of our unplanned existence of PC enthusiasts
Thanks for reminding me why I prefer air cooling!
Asus makes a pcie M.2 card. If you have a water block to cool all of the M.2s on that card mounted under your gpu it would look like SLI and keep Skunkworks looks retro!
Oh snap! He's gonna have to buy another loop for the M.2s! Just when I thought it was impossible ot make the build any more expensive.... My bet is this build will "cost" $10k when it's all said and done.
I have a couple of the 28mm double rotary offsets and they are a lifesaver in the right situation. They’re basically two fittings in one because of the rotary part.
Nice Jay! This was cool to watch!
Went from the double sided EKWB Strix 4090 block to the OptimusPC rev 2. Slightly higher VRAM temps but 10’C less hotspot on the GPU. Also good excuse to go LM.
My next build I'm thinking of glass tubing. It looks so clean and I like the joint fittings that are required. I think I may do bright chrome or gunmetal for the fittings.
Watching this video is like watching Jay play PC build simulator with the part ordering and everything
If you already have it, you could use the Z*90 Formula which has preinstalled vrm water cooling. Not a fan of Asus for their handling of the bios issue but it would allow you to use a cheaper cpu block.
I just got the Montech Air 903 Base case to replace the case I currently have, which sucks due to airflow restriction and the way it is constructed is not user friendly. The Montech case looks like it is what I really needed when I built my PC in 2019. The Montech looks like a better case and is cheaper than my current POS case.. LOL Now comes the fun of swapping with emphasis on needed cleaning and addition of another NVME drive.. This case is non RGB cuz RGB is distracting and I really don't care for it LOL
tubing is very specific, as someone who's nevr assembvled these, would there be any issue using say pneumatic tubing(same diameters) on here? say the same one youd use fot an air powered staple gun
last time i custom looped anything was in 2015. my 7900xtx (non reference) is showing a 40C difference in temps between reg and hotspot so i've been looking at blocks/pumps, etc. and man wtf. prices are like triple what i remember!
Definitely a niche thing now but it's so much fun! Thanks for showing us your process.
I would love to have one of the Singularity distro plates... I hope maybe they bring them into the production at least a small run.. thanks for this.
i always use alphacool for rads, tubing, res, and connectors and be quite for the fans like useing german when ever i can. ek for the blocks
I'd love to see more explanation of inner vs outer dimension as well as soft tubing.
Part of me wants to do more of an industrial loop. Black soft tubing, no RGB, no case window. A practical setup meant to run for 5 years without maintenance.
I generally do close to the top end consumer grade without jumping to hedt. Currently 5950X w/ 128gb ram, and had been running a 3080... decided to put off my full replacement build for a generation with all the ddr and big/little issues. I also run Linux, not too much gaming.
Really looking forward to see what comes out this year. I'm hoping AMD has better DDR5 support with 8000 series, I'd love 4x 48gb (192gb) ram at a decent speed/latency. Would settle for 96gb, but wasn't going down to 64gb. Some of my project loads exceed 70gb in use.
ive always wanted a video like this, thanks!
Jay just making sure to remind me that sticking with pedestrian air cooling is the way by spending the TOTAL cost of my (hopefully) 2024 build on custom loop parts ONLY!
What a vid! Great stuff keep it up Jay and Team, I can't wait to see the rest of the build!
So I'm looking at changing just my AIO cpu and fan gpu to a hard-line set up.... what's the purpose of a distro plate besides for looks? Can't you just run from res, pump, gpu, cpu, radiator and back to res?
I want to see graphene fluid review. Have been asking it before!
I also want to see that.
Sapphire rapids would be cool as hell for skunkworks, was almost always HEDT. Should keep the tradition up . The w790 sage or the asrock w790 ws would look amazing with mem blocks
hey Jay when it comes to mixing and matching components mainly the rads and EKWB are there any considerations that are needed when it comes to the fluid used in the loop. thinking about using a EKWB cpu block with a corsiar rad and corsiar tubing just not sure on what fluild id need to use.
Hey Jay, I don’t think I have missed a video, did you review the speakers on your desk, I’m very interested in them.
I currently spent around 2500$ on my rig. Now that it's in its final form (O11D evo XL coming next month) I'm looking into custom watercooling... I would have to spend another 1500$ for a CPU+GPU loop with a distroplate
prices are insane but I don't really mind as long as it's quality stuff
A fellow Edifier fan! I like it! I had the R1280T first, then upgraded to the S2000MKIII recently. What speaker stands are you using there?