My finished mITX PC build

[Your Czar Salad 8]

I've already shared this build in a few places, but I figured I could probably put it here too. I've been building computers for quite some time, and due to financials™ I've usually gone for parts that were affordable but could run the games I wanted. This year I was finally be able to do the build I've wanted for a long time, a mini-ITX water cooled computer. I never put all the pictures into an actual album but it's all in the pcpartpicker build.

 

I know that it isn't practical, or cheap, but it was a great big puzzle and a lot of fun to build. It's yet to get over 50c on either component even after hours of playing PUBG, although since summer is starting I'll be keeping an eye out for higher temps, and it's almost dead silent in less demanding titles and I've grown to appreciate that. The only change I plan on making is swapping the 6600 for a 6700k just so I can get a bit extra performance out of it, but that will have to wait until I can afford to do that and I have the patience to drain the loop.

 

If you've got any suggestions/ideas I'd like to hear them as I'm always looking to do more  or if you hate it let me know, I'm always looking for any feedback.

[Sean 3760]

I'm sitting here wondering with a non K CPU and a non z-board, while spending an insane amount of money on EK water cooling....

[Destin 1958]

yea I gotta agree with Sean here, huge waste of money on a water loop for a locked CPU on a locked chipset :/ 

[Your Czar Salad 8]

I get that a lot, and it makes sense, but there was a lot of planning that went into this build and those upgrades are scheduled for a later date.

 

Life story time: From about 2011-2015 my personal rig was garbage that still has an AMD apu and allowed me to sometimes play on lower than low settings (cue the entrance to my TTT life), as long as the game didn't have realistically textured water/fire/smoke. I couldn't even run Half Life 2 if there was too much fire in one spot (ex Ravenholm). Over the past year and a half I've been able to build mine and help friends built theirs, so I started collecting pieces here and there and slowly upgrading.

 

Eventually my goal is a 6700k and a motherboard I could use it properly on, but for now I'm just waiting on the prices to go down a bit while new products come out since I couldn't afford them day one. Another important factor was starting the build and having some friends help out before a few moved away since we all fell down the rabbit hole of computers together. Eventually, the recycled parts out of my current rig are going to end up in the Node 202 so they've got a life ahead of them, they're just great placeholders for now.

 

Hopefully that provides some insight, I know it's not particularly common but it was the best way I could go at the time.

 

tl;dr that point 100% makes sense, I agree, but for me at the time it wasn't my main focus. Upgrades are in the works because there's always some way for me to improve.

[Grify 55]

Ignoring the exact parts , im impressed you got all that into that case and made it look pretty clean 

 

[Amoeba 576]

The fact it's 2200 dollars is what really shocks me here. You could've easily had a i7 w/ a 1080/ti in there with a custom water loop for the same price. I would've rather had better parts before touching water cooling. Especially since it looks like you aren't going to overclock your computer at all and build it for aesthetics.

[Sean 3760]

mfw I see you put your drives in an external bay instead of just getting a bigger case

 

[Destin 1958]

16 hours ago, Your Czar Salad said:

I get that a lot, and it makes sense, but there was a lot of planning that went into this build and those upgrades are scheduled for a later date.

 

Life story time: From about 2011-2015 my personal rig was garbage that still has an AMD apu and allowed me to sometimes play on lower than low settings (cue the entrance to my TTT life), as long as the game didn't have realistically textured water/fire/smoke. I couldn't even run Half Life 2 if there was too much fire in one spot (ex Ravenholm). Over the past year and a half I've been able to build mine and help friends built theirs, so I started collecting pieces here and there and slowly upgrading.

 

Eventually my goal is a 6700k and a motherboard I could use it properly on, but for now I'm just waiting on the prices to go down a bit while new products come out since I couldn't afford them day one. Another important factor was starting the build and having some friends help out before a few moved away since we all fell down the rabbit hole of computers together. Eventually, the recycled parts out of my current rig are going to end up in the Node 202 so they've got a life ahead of them, they're just great placeholders for now.

 

Hopefully that provides some insight, I know it's not particularly common but it was the best way I could go at the time.

 

tl;dr that point 100% makes sense, I agree, but for me at the time it wasn't my main focus. Upgrades are in the works because there's always some way for me to improve.

Ahhhhhhh okay yea that makes way more sense. I did the same thing for a while when I was in school. Yea this will be a sick build then once you get everything together

[Your Czar Salad 8]

12 hours ago, October said:

The fact it's 2200 dollars is what really shocks me here. You could've easily had a i7 w/ a 1080/ti in there with a custom water loop for the same price. I would've rather had better parts before touching water cooling. Especially since it looks like you aren't going to overclock your computer at all and build it for aesthetics.

I had all the parts from other systems first, and I couldn't justify the downtime while trying to sell them to upgrade to higher end parts. My GPU waterblock fits a 1080 so that's the upgrade path for it, and the current motherboard and CPU are getting swapped into a Node 202 eventually. I agree that it's got a nice coat of paint but lacks some horsepower right now, but it's not at my endgame for it yet. It'll probably sit in this stage for another month or two, but it's finally in a useable stage so to my I'd consider it complete.

1 minute ago, Sean said:

mfw I see you put your drives in an external bay instead of just getting a bigger case

 

  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I got nothing for this one. I prefer mITX so sacrifices had to be made, this is one of them. I outgrew my other SSD ages ago but I still had my mechanical drives so I figured I might as well use them. I still have extra space in my case but my current setup functions and I'm not looking to change it if it still works.

[Amoeba 576]

Just now, Your Czar Salad said:

 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I got nothing for this one. I prefer mITX so sacrifices had to be made, this is one of them. I outgrew my other SSD ages ago but I still had my mechanical drives so I figured I might as well use them. I still have extra space in my case but my current setup functions and I'm not looking to change it if it still works.

You could've modded your case a bit. You could've mounted your reservoir on the bottom next to the psu then mounted the hard drives there. 

[Your Czar Salad 8]

Just now, October said:

You could've modded your case a bit. You could've mounted your reservoir on the bottom next to the psu then mounted the hard drives there. 

I really wish I could've done that, having a bottom mounted pump/res was my original intent. I honestly was considering getting a mini-GTX card or a Fury just because it would be short enough for me to use the bottom pump mounts. The main problem with my current setup is that even with the shortest possible pump/res it's still too tall to go below the card, and then having clearances for the drain would've been something special. The space on the back for the drives is currently taken up by my fan controller and the 5+ wires running in every direction so it wouldn't really be able to go on the back like normal to begin with. The real, and also the cleanest, solution is to get a higher capacity SSD.