Silent Death Radiator Case Water Cooled Desktop PC
This is an article about the construction of my current PC, “Silent Death”. I had this idea about two years ago and had to design it, had to raise all the money and had the pleasure of making it happen and have been testing and improving it since June 2021 (and have made some changes in the process). The main purpose of this is to show the whole process, including the problems I faced and how I solved them, so that it can serve as an inspiration to others.
The Idea
In this section I am going to explain the main concepts and how the design process was made. You have already seen the finished product in the image above, but this wasn't the final look of it since the begging so let's see the first concept. I used thinkercad tool, to make a pseudo realistic 3D model, I know there are better tools but this one have just what I needed and It was easy to start using it.
Key points
This are the key points to be focused at this stage:
- Case made of radiators
- All things water cooled
- Silent cooling
- All back (matte black)
- Straight lines
- Oversized
- Easily upgradeable
- Few RGB to none
- Industrial look
As you can se in the above image, the design is close to the final product, but with some changes. From the begging the main idea was to use the radiators as the case of the build because, why spend money on a piece of metal that is designed to hold X number of radiators inside when the actual radiator is a peace of metal?? (I know is not that simple, but… think about it).
The other part that was clear from the design is that I would need some kind of framework that hold together the radiators and didn't add volume to the concept in general. So going for a internal framework approach was always an objective. I knew that it was going to need also some kind of base strong enough to hold the whole structure and at the same time something to grab it and move it around (it turned out that it needs two people to lift it up 🪨 😬). Let’s check the final chassis in the next section.
The Chassis
The chassis is the main innovation in this build, and due that it is made out of radiators, is also cooling part, so I am going to show you how was it made. So, 7 EK-CoolStream CE 560 (Quad) and 1 EK-CoolStream CE 560 (Triple), 31 140 mm fans + 3 inside. Do I need too much cooling power? Obviously NOT, could I use smaller radiators? I could, but I have told you, I want to not be limited by anything, not heat dissipation nor space.
Ok, we have the radiators, now how to put them together? For this part you need to have some skills in DIY stuff. I use a hardware store near my house and go there like 50 times in this process. In this case, I used the inside screw holes that was made for the fans and I was not going to use, because I was planning to put fans on the outside.
Here you can see the final look of the chassis, it is framed in the inside with pieces that can be used to screw things to them, and that gives you a lot of flexibility, needed in future steps. The motherboard flamework part was bought, there are a lot of models you can choose. One thing I forgot to mention is that you need to be careful of the placement of the radiator water ports and make sure you will have enough clearance to insert the fitting for example.
Bottom Framework
The main part that holds it all together and adds stability to the whole computer is the one at the bottom. It is made of two pieces of raw metal, the weight helps to have the point of gravity lower, cut and put together to achieve these two square bars. Them are connected using a threaded rod that goes all the way from left to right between the two bottom radiators. This part has multiple functionalities: stability, handlers/grip zones to pick it up, bumpers and them act like bones to attach other stuff. In this case I attached four wheels to add mobility because it is really heavy. You can appreciate this details here in this image.
The Loop ➿
The next thing to do was the loop parts so I made a 2D design, that I am not able to found, but basically was a paper where I put the PC components and the water ones in the order that I want the loop to be. This loop have one water tank, four water pumps in series (yes, needed a lot of head), two flow meters and three water temperature sensors. I don't know how much tube length I have here, but I don’t think I'm going to measure it. This configuration archives 60 r/sec and 2.6 L/min with pumps at full speed.
Another details are that it has a filter, and ball valves dividing sections of the loop so, for example, if I want to change the GPU I only have to close the two valves and empty this part of the loop while the rest remain intact. I use clear pure water because is the best and most practical coolant, and also the loop is black so, no much of a difference.
The Computer
This section is the most easy and enjoyable part of the whole process because it's why you build all the previous stuff, just for this parts to be cooled and get the most of them. In this case, be aware of that It was built on May 2021, in the middle of the GPU and Components shortage.
Motherboard
The motherboard was kind of fixed by two facts: it needed to be AM4 socket and I wanted (at least) the VRM to be cooled, so the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Formula was my best option. The chipset is the only thing that is not whater-cooled but, it is the only air-cooled part so no problem. This is an awesome motherboard with plenty of overclock features to take advantage of the cooling power it has.
CPU
The CPU is a AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 3.4 GHz, at that time the most powerful CPU in the market. Obviously It is water cooled with an EKWB Block. It is the component that generates more heat overall. I used PBO 2 and curve optimiser to overclock it and took me like 2 months to get it to the limit and was 100% stable, BUT it was worth it. Maybe at the end share more details but it hits 5 GHz one core and in full load maintains 4.4 GHz with all limits unlocked (266 Watts draw) it hits line 73 Celsius top (14 Celsius ambient). I think that is awesome with all passive cooling.
RAM
RAM modules are Crucial Ballistix RGB DDR4 3600Mhz 32GB x 2 so 60GB in total. This component is at its XMP Profile but not overclocked yet (I need to find some time to tweak it and need a stable computer right now). It's water-cooled and yes, I know it's not needed, but I have plenty of radiators so… Why not?? It looks so cool and I love it. I think it is a Bitspower block and it was a process that I enjoyed, changing the RAM module heat sinks and using all this thermal pads in the correct places… don't miss any chance to learn something new 🥸.
GPU
Fewer things to say here because it's the only component y did not change from my previous build (down is a picture), a MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti SEA Hawk EK X 11GB GDDR5X. I really don’t need anything more powerful than this right now because I don't have time to play games 😔… But I am NOT going to pay the amount of money they cost right now, it is insane. It is ageing petty well because I can overclock it like A LOT…
Storage
Regarding storage, I can divide it in two, SSDs and HDDs. I have two Sabrent M.2 SSDs in the motherboard and yes, they are water-cooled and it was a bit complicated to get it. I had two modules and the idea was to remove the heat sink of the motherboard and put one of this water block in each SSD. Well the water block didn't fit in the SSD slot… so I came with a solution using the motherboard built in heat sink and the two water blocks. Basically the SSDs pass the heat to the motherboard’s heat sink and then, instead to throw the heat in the air, it pass the heat to the water block and into the water. It works better than I expected. I yes, I know there is no need of this, only if you transfer some huge file or make a long benchmark.
The HDDs are in a black box that is water cooled too. You can see it in the “water pumps and tank” image, just below the first water pump. It is a Watercool SILENTstar HD-Quad in case you want more information.
Data and Results
Here I will share with you some results and data of this build. You can request some specific test if you want, but I cannot promise I will have time to spend on this 😉.
Cinebench R20
- Multi core: 28500
- Single core: 15.81
Conclusion
Just as a conclusion, this has been a personal project in which I have learned a lot about many different things and that I want to share, I hope you found this article interesting. I’ve explained all the points I found important, if you want to know more about something, or just want to chat about whatever, let me know in the comments and I’ll try to answer you. All the best!
