Just Kidding... One More Part Order
So I thought I was all done ordering parts… Unfortunately, I should have known involving water cooling wouldn’t go without an issue.
For starters, let’s talk about that 6.5” measurement that Blackmagic claims for their Decklink 8K Pro. That value is from the very tip of the SDI connectors to the rear of the board. For reference, an SDI connector has about 3/4” length, due to the engagement and threaded connector. That means the interior length of the board is about 5.75” and insert drum roll it fits in our 1U chassis with about a paper-width of clearance! Seriously though, the part that it’s interfering with is for the HDD bracket, which could be removed to provide more clearance if needed. I’m planning to leave it in though, since I need that bracket for holding the front I/O bracket that I got. (I purposely selected a front I/O panel that has 3.5” HDD mounting points, just so there’s less holes/threading I have to worry about.)
We got some things put together, and, well, as you saw from the title, we’ve got one more (hopefully final) order. Here’s the next bunch of parts that have been ordered:
2x KINGSTON 8GB 2666MHz DDR4 CL19 1Rx8 VLP
1-to-4 PWM cable splitter 4-pin
Double-sided Gorilla tape & 3M zip tie mounts
As you can see on the right, the Dynatron L3 liquid cooler placed roughly for size. This thing proved to be much more of an issue than I thought. The hoses are about 12mm thick, and not very flexible. This creates some issues, because, as you can see, the RAM (which is about 1mm from the top of the chassis) creates some difficult routing where the hoses have to go on either side. As you can see below, this creates some interesting routing issues, especially when dealing with a ultra-short riser cable on one side, and the PSU on the other side. For this reason, I’ve opted to buy some Very Low Profile (VLP) RAM that has a vertical height of just 18.75mm, as opposed to the Corsair Vengeance LPX, which has a height of 33.5mm. These ~15mm should be enough for the AIO hoses to route over the RAM, and generally make the entire build a little easier. (It would have technically been possible with the existing RAM, it would have just required forcing hosing to bend at unnatural angles, and create multiple interference points that would have harmed the long-term reliability of the build.)
Also of note: The Noctua fans swapped on to the radiator, and some basic stress tests kept the CPU below 77°C, even with the top of the chassis (mostly) in place! For the time being, it seems this will be an adequate solution to keep the 5700G cool, which also means we have hope for a (very much in the future) 5900X or similar.
Because of the angles of everything, and the fact that the cooler has the hoses connect in the very middle of the radiator, I’ll be using some zip tie mounts and double-sided tape to keep everything flat. Additionally, I’ll be driving all three of the radiator fans from one of chassis headers, and hopefully an additional one or two of the fans for intake. (You can see some space to the left and right of the radiator where another fan or three might fit.) Thankfully, ASRock has a pretty decent manual, and the CPU fan header provides 1A (12W) of power, and the two CHA fan headers provide 2A (24W), and the NF-A4x20 fan, for all it’s glory and compatibility with the 1U form factor, pulls a miniscule 0.05A (0.6W). This means, even IF the chassis fan spec is for both headers combined, I can still run 20 of these fans off a single fan header.
Finally, remember that ROG Strix B550-I board from a few weeks ago? Given the move to VLP RAM, water cooling, and the new chassis, I’m going to give it a shot, and see if I can still use it. (Before you ask, yes, the manual for the B550-I provides a spec of 1A (12W) for each of the fan headers as well.) This also means I’ll also get to utilize the USB 3.2 gen2 header. Not a huge deal, but provides more future potential.
That’s it for now. Here’s hoping this weekend, I can finally close this thing up!