Bolt II Overhaul

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This year I will be upgrading my Bolt II computer, including a full custom water cooling loop.

Stock image from Digital Storm; mine is almost identical, save for my motherboard being an Asus Z97I-Plus and memory being some gold ADATA sticks, as opposed to the picture Impact and Dominator Platinum

Plan of Action

I will be carrying out a three-stage upgrade of the computer over the year. The first stage will be an initial set-up of the custom water loop with only the CPU. The subsequent stages I have some ideas for, but don't want to commit to anything at the moment because there are externalities beyond my control.

• Start of the first stage
• Pump & fans/radiator fitment check
• Custom Filter
• Modified Pump Top (Volute)
• Added Cold Plate
• Memory
• Aquaero 6 LT
• Motherboard
• Optane drive

 

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You can read my review of the machine on the Digital Storm forums: http://www.digitalstorm.com/forums/bolt-ii-review-tidf23924/

A little bit about the configuration of the computer I have:

Motherboard: Asus Z97I-Plus
Processor: Intel i5-4590
Cooling: Corsair H100i with SP120 High Performance 3-pin fans
Memory: 2 x 4GB ADATA DDR3-1866
GPU: iGPU at the moment, but formerly an EVGA GTX 970 FTW (returned)
Storage: 512GB Crucial M4 SSD
ODD: Slot-load BD-XL Panasonic UJ-265
PSU: 500W 80+ Gold FSP 500-501UN

This is my case. Digital Storm later sent me a branded version of their pump cap, same as the stock image above.

Back side with the now-returned GPU.

In the initial stage, there will be some modding of components to get things to fit...necessary with a small form factor case and the types of components I will be using. Parts I'm using include:

• 2 x Darkside Gentle Typhoon 550-1850RPM PWM fans
  • These have been the highest performing fans for a long while now and they're finally available with PWM at lower fan speeds. Review: http://thermalbench.com/2015/11/12/darkside-gentle-typhoon-1850-pwm-120mm-fan/
• Hardware Labs Nemesis 240GTS Carbon Black radiator
  • This radiator manages to, with only fans in push, out-perform all of the other slim radiators with push & pull fans on them. The only down-side is the flow restriction, but I am using a shorter 240mm radiator and will have a fairly compact loop overall.
    

Reviews: http://www.xtremerigs.net/2015/02/11/hardwarelabs-nemesis-360-gts-radiator-review/ & http://thermalbench.com/2015/01/05/hardwarelabs-nemesis-480gts/​

• Swiftech MCP655 (D5) PWM pump
  • While the Swiftech MCP50X DDC pump is very competitive with the D5 pumps, I have seen the D5 generally recommended over DDC pumps across a wide range of sources.
• EK Revo D5 pump top
  • While not the top performing pump top, I chose this due to packaging needs. Review: http://www.xtremerigs.net/2015/12/23/ek-xtop-revo-d5-pump-top-review/
• 12/16mm PETG hardline tubing
  • PETG is tougher than acrylic and doesn't have plasticizers in them. The smaller OD for a 12mm ID compared to flexible tubing also was a plus.
• Fittings from Koolance, Swiftech, Bitspower, etc.
  • I will be working in fractions of a millimeter clearance in some instances so that is driving some very specific component selections. I also went with the Koolance compression fittings as they have an excellent seal to the tubes. I am trying to minimize the number of joints in the loop, SFF constraints permitting.
• More to come...

 

[jeshikat]

Looking forward to this project! I think the Bolt II is a really neat case and was disappointed when Digital Storm dropped it and replaced it with an off the shelf Lian Li case. The LL case is nice with its tempered glass and all but it's still just off the shelf.

 

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Yeah, this should be fun and interesting. There are some rather large questions lingering in my mind about how to make this all work, some of which just need to be physically checked out.

The Bolt 3 actually has a custom plastic panel instead of the glass one to reduce the weight.

 

[jeshikat]

While I can understand that for shipping costs that's a bit of a bummer. The glass is a big selling point of the case.

 

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I think it was in part due to not having anything break during shipment, if that is not an even greater reason than reduced shipping costs.

 

[Phuncz]

Certainly a unique case, with an ambitious goal, what's not to like ?

 

[Tek Everything]

I have always liked that case. it will be interesting to see how it turns out. Will you be making component upgrades as well?

 

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Yes, the intent is to add new components, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet. There are lots of dilemmas: what the next gen GPUs going to be like; whether the Zen processors will close the performance gap with Intel (if so, it could be beneficial to go all-AMD to take advantage of heterogeneous system architecture features); how motherboards are featured; and many more variables. My near term goal is to get the basic custom loop in place and done with to the point where I can relatively easily modify it to accommodate new water cooled components into the loop.

 

[Phuncz]

AMD's new platform is still about a year away, even if they plan to release in the 2nd half of 2016, this will most likely be more towards the end of the year as has been revealed in some plans. And we aren't even sure the new platform will be built for mITX, although likely.

 

[confusis]

The first AM4 boards will be out with Excavator based CPU/APUs in early-mid (around March-May) this year. The APUs mentioned in the docs seen so far are mostly APUs so I expect ITX.

https://smallformfactor.net/news/socket-am4-to-support-excavator-and-zen

 

[Tek Everything]

The Zen chips should be interesting. However from what I have read, they don't sound like they are worth the wait unless you are looking to save money. I am more excited about the upcoming Skylake chips with more than 4 physical cores.

 

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There isn't much information on Zen out there; AMD is claiming a 40% performance improvement in the instructions per clock from ALU pipeline improvements alone. That, combined with a smaller processing node size using FinFET should give the processors a decent boost if they can keep the frequencies up. And as I mentioned above, the heterogeneous system architecture could allow for some interesting performance advantages, like the heterogeneous unified memory architecture where the GPUs basically get direct memory access with coherent memory indexing. I don't expect much from Kaby Lake beyond improved feature support, so I wouldn't say AMD is out of contention at this point.

If you're referring to this Motley Fool article for the increase core count on consumer level chips, that is with Cannonlake, which isn't due until late 2017 at the earliest (depends on 10nm processing to be up and running...we know how Intel's other recent process shrinks have gone...) and that is very much a rumor as I have seen rumors saying Cannonlake will still be limited to 4 cores, as well (it could be the greater core count was designed for enterprise/embedded chips, too). Core count isn't super critical; it's been ten years since multi-core x86 processors have been on the market and a lot of software still doesn't use multiple threads well or at all.

 

[Tek Everything]

http://wccftech.com/intel-2016-road...es-10-core-broadwelle-apollo-lake-processors/

 

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I'm only seeing dual- and quad-core processors for everything but X99 platform enthusiast processors on this.

 

[Tek Everything]

I was referring to the Broadwell-E processors. I realize I wrote Skylake. My mistake.

 

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Gotcha. I think I would stay with the "S" processors. They have higher single or fewer threaded performance. There is also the potential for use of the iGPU with explicit multi-adapter enhancement with DirectX 12 that will allow it to supplement any discrete GPU.

Also, remember that Zen may go up to 16 cores in those processing units, too. So that could be a high core/thread count option along with an integrated GPU.

Bitspower did just release a CPU block/VRM & chipset block/distribution block combo kit for the ASRock X99E-ITX/ac:

http://www.bitspower.com.tw/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=173_254_257_264&products_id=4090

There are a few issues, though:

• The I/O on the board is getting stale
• I'd prefer higher single threaded performance and an integrated GPU over additional cores as my workload wouldn't utilize the extra cores
• I'm trying to stay away from slip/plug fittings in the water cooling loop, which this uses between the distribution block and CPU and VRM & chipset blocks.
• Bitspower doesn't have the highest performing water blocks...right now EK, Watercool, and XSPC do

An X99 Mini-ITX platform could be interesting if the extra PCI-e lanes were used as M.2 and U.2 ports. The X99E-ITX/ac board has done that with one M.2 slot, but there is potential for more. Same thing with inclusion of an Alpine Ridge controller for USB 3.1 Gen2 and Thunderbolt 3.

 

[Tek Everything]

I am a big fan of the S processors. I am currently running a i7-4790s which has been fantastic. I could definitely use the additional cores for video editing/rendering, but your right if you don't need the extra cores/threads it makes a ton of sense to go for the higher clock.

That is an interesting cooling option. If I was going to go X99 I would probably use a larger form factor so I could get a more full featured board.

If you are going to use integrated graphics the Zen line definitely looks promising. I wish I could get away with using integrated, but my workflow doesn't allow it.

 

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The "S" processors are inclusive of all of the Core i3, i5, and i7 processors with -T, -S, -K, and standard denotations. The -K processors are the ones that are locked and can make best use of water cooling. The recent mods the motherboard manufactures are implementing to their BIOS' allow for base clock (BCLK) overclocking of the non-K processors as well, but there are compromises that must be made there.

My point with the integrated graphics, is that it would be supplemental to any discrete GPU...much like adding additional GPUs to your system in an SLI or Crossfire configuration. AMD already does this, as they allow for heterogeneous Crossfire set-ups (the AMD GPUs do not all have to be the same), but the explicit multi-adapter technology in DirectX 12 (I'm guess Vulkan has similar features) allow for dissimilar GPUs to be used, as well. So Intel iGPUs, AMD APUs or GPUs, or Nvidia GPUs and be paired in any combination, theoretically (there may be issues with specific combinations, but who knows).

With my case, I'm limited to Mini-ITX, so the ASRock boards are the only options there are for 2011-3 processors.

 

[Tek Everything]

I am referring to the "T, S, K" monikers attached to the Haswell series processors. Not the general "Skylake-S" name. I assume that you meant that K processors are unlocked, not locked.