Hey, looks like my build experience is coming in handy! A warning: this is turning into a
bit of a wall of text. Sorry about that - I'm not good at being concise. I've made some subheadings for ease of reading
So, first off, let me allay your fears: that radiator can easily cool your build, given sufficient airflow and reasonable ambient temperatures. How do I know? I have the same radiator in my (all-mesh) Meshlicious, cooling a 6900 XT Liquid Devil Ultimate and a 5800X. From what I've seen, the Q58 should have decent airflow, so I see no reason why this wouldn't work well - though if I were you I would test different mesh/glass placements to see which works best.
My build, for comparison:
- ASRock Phantom Gaming B550 ITX/ax
- Ryzen 7 5800X
- 2x16GB G.Skill DDR4-3200
- PowerColor RX 6900 XT Liquid Devil Ultimate
- Corsair SF750 Platinum
- Aquacomputer Quadro fan/pump controller
The cooling setup:
- Nouvolo Aquanaut CPU block+pump combo, with
- Laing DDC 1T Plus/3.2 PWM and an Alphacool DDC heatsink
- EK ZMT 10/16 tubing
- EK Cryofuel clear premix coolant
- Alphacool industrial nylon QDCs (a godsend for servicability and ease of building, and reasonably affordable)
- included EK block on the 6900 XT
- Corsair XR5 280mm
- Arctic P14 fans, pulling air through the rad (only way they fit in my case)
- Two Barrow in-line fluid temperature sensors
- An EK flow indicator with the rotor removed as a micro res for bleeding/filling
- Various fittings; some Alphacool, some Barrow, some EK; 90°s, 45°s, extensions, T-blocks, etc. I do not recommend Barrow rotary fittings - several of mine have become near impossible to rotate.
-Overall experiences, thermals, tuning
I haven't run any long-term benchmarks that I can show off, but I've used the system daily since I built it a few months ago, and it's overall been fantastic. The cooling is pushing it with everything at stock - this summer, when my room temperature crept up to around 30°C, I saw fluid temperatures hit ~45°C under gaming loads. That's a bit high, certainly well above what large form factor custom loop builders would call acceptable, but it is entirely unproblematic. That fluid temp saw my GPU running at ~65°C @ 330W and the CPU at the high 70s - more on that below. Now that ambient temperatures are a bit more sensible, my fluid temps don't really exceed 40°, the GPU hovers around 60°, and the CPU after some tuning sits in the mid 60s while gaming, mid 70s under something like a handbrake encode (long-term 100% load with AVX).
Those CPU temperatures are probably making you think there's an issue here, but ... there isn't. Yes, this is hotter than most water cooled CPUs. That's down to two factors: The 5800X and the Aquanaut. The 5800X is possibly the most difficult CPU on the market to cool, as it has
insane thermal density, and the reverse-flow Aquanaut isn't particularly well suited for it. The 5800X at stock pulls ~130W through a single CCD, which makes it notoriously hot-running. The dual-CCD 5900X and 5950X are much easier to cool, as they have the same power limit but spread across twice the die area, dramatically lowering thermal density. You can see this in reviews and build logs all over the internet - the higher end chips are always easier to cool. Thus, in the stock config, I could even see the CPU reach 85°C under all-core loads.
I've since tuned the CPU a bit, with -10 all core curve optimizer, +100MHz boost offset, and slightly lowered the TDC, EDC and PPT. It now peaks at 120W, boosts to 4950MHz in bursts and sits happily at ~4.7GHz while gaming/~4.5GHz in all-core loads, and runs noticeably cooler.
-CPU block and pump mount choice
One question you might be asking: would I recommend the Aquanaut? Yes and no. It's incredibly handy for building a compact loop, saving you from needing a separate pump top/res and place to mount it. It also performs
adequately - after all, even my worst-case-scenario CPU isn't close to throttling. And yes, any CPU is perfectly fine even running 24/7 at 15-20° below its rated max temperature. This will in no way negatively affect the CPU. Still, there are two possibly better options now: the just-launched Aquanaut Extreme, which has a new, larger cold plate, non-reversed flow direction (should be a marked improvement), and easily accessible fill ports. I haven't seen any thermal results yet, but the design looks very promising. The other option is the Alloy Craft LOBO, which is currently looking for beta testers (I'm going to try one out unless shipping to Sweden is prohibitively expensive). It's a reverse-flow block, but with a highly specialized cold plate design that should be an improvement over the Aquanaut.
Would I go for one of these over a conventional CPU block and separate pump? Yes. Without a doubt. Even the original Aquanaut. It works well, and saves so much space and hassle in your build. The Aquanaut would likely work noticeably better on your 5900X than my 5800X, so if you're price sensitive, I'd go for that, but if not, the Aquanaut Extreme would be my choice - it's available for sale now, after all.
Another option would be the Alphacool Eisbaer Solo LT - that's a DC-LT pump in a CPU block. It should work well enough, but it might be a tad on the weak side for a CPU+GPU loop. If you go that route, you might consider adding a second DC-LT elsewhere in the loop to ensure a good flow rate. A single DDC is definitely less hassle though.
I'd highly recommend a DDC pump - mine is inaudible at the speed I've got it running at idle (~1200rpm), and even at 3000rpm it's barely noticeable. At full speed (can't remember right now, but something like 4500?) it's audible, but not annoying. And it delivers plenty of flow. DDCs aren't as reliable as D5s according to the internet, but given how common they are I doubt you'll have a problem. What I wouldn't do is use an off-brand copy like the Bitspower K1M. Pump quality is paramount.
-Fans and fan control
I would also highly, highly recommend the Arctic P14 fans. AFAIK, they are the best 140mm fans on the market for combined noise and performance. The 120mm P12s are neck-and-neck with the Noctua NF-A12x25, and the P14 is just a scaled-up version of that design. Mine work fantastically. The only thing worthy of note is their 3mm thicker than standard size - make sure they fit! Mine were a very tight fit, but ultimately had no issues in the Meshlicious. They perform fantastically, and are
very quiet even at full speed.
I'm not familiar with the Phanteks fans you've mentioned, but I have a
very hard time imagining they're comparable to the Arctics. Also, the Arctics are dirt cheap. Tbh it's shocking how good they are. IMO they are the main reason why Arctic's AIOs are reviewing so well - they simply have the best fans out there for an AIO, plus a slightly larger than average cold plate.
I'd also really, really, really recommend getting an Aquacomputer Quadro for fan and pump control. The Aquasuite software is unbeatable in its configurability and monitoring power, and the Quadro is tiny yet very powerful, supporting 4 separately controlled PWM fan outputs (up to 25W each, can easily power my 18W DDC pump), four thermal sensor inputs, flow meter inputs, and more. Thanks to it I can have my loop tuned for silence, adjusting fan and pump speeds based on fluid temperature. This ensures I get no sudden fan ramps due to spiking CPU thermals or similar, leading to a very pleasant experience overall. (I have a separate 100% fan profile that triggers if the CPU is at 100% load for more than 10 seconds, as that typically means it's running a render or similar, in which case I prefer to just have it run flat-out rather than ramp slowly - but that's the configurability of Aquasuite for you, you can set it to change between several profiles based on what you want it to do).
-Other stuff
There's probably a ton I'm forgetting here, but one big thing that stood out with your config: the Aorus B550 doesn't have a header for front USB-C, which the Q58 requires. So if you go for that motherboard, you'll be left with only USB-A on the front (or only USB-C if you buy an adapter for the 3.0 header). AFAIK the Asus Strix and the ASRock Phantom Gaming are the only B550 boards with that header. FWIW, I'm pretty happy with my Phantom Gaming, it's an excellent board.
Going from my experience, 600W is likely more than sufficient for your build. While transient power spikes are a potential issue with modern GPUs, especially with SFF PSUs with relatively low bulk capacitance, I can't imagine 600W would be anywhere near too low for that with your build. At stock your config will, under an unrealistic 100%-on-everything load pull 250W for the GPU, 140W for the CPU, ~25W for the motherboard and RAM, ~5W/SSD, a few watts for two fans, and 10-20W for the pump. That's ~450W ABSOLUTE max - though everything running 100% is highly unlikely outside of workstation loads. Gaming doesn't come close to that - I'd expect < 350W in gaming loads. 450W places a 600W PSU well above the 20% safety margin I routinely include in any PSU calculation. Remember, that's 20% on top of an already unrealistic calculation. In reality, with 600W you'll have more like a 70% margin in gaming loads. That should be sufficient to handle any transient power spike from the GPU.
And, of course, some undervolting is highly recommended. Given how utterly overpowered the 6900 XT is I mostly run mine in an underclocked and undervolted profile (1850-2150MHz @ 950mV, peaks at ~190W for a ~15% performance loss), which is perfectly fine for most games. The 6800 won't have the same performance headroom, but from what I've read it should undervolt better than the 6900 XT at stock clocks.
Also, if you've got the budget for it, I would
really recommend getting some QDCs (quick disconnects) for your loop. It makes assembly, disassembly, filling, draining and bleeding
so much easier. I've run custom loops for about five years now, and getting QDCs into my loop has been a dream. Suddenly components can be easily swapped, trouleshooting is relatively simple, and so on. Filling and draining becomes much easier thanks to the option of using an external reservoir (I've got a spare from my previous non-SFF build), or just sticking some spare tubing into the coolant bottle if you don't have that lying around. Most QDCs are brass, and are heavy and expensive (upwards of $20 each). I decided to "cheap out" on Alphacool Industrial nylon QDCs, and I
love them. Now, they aren't drip-free like some premium brass offerings (Koolance comes highly recommended everywhere), but they are relatively compact, lightweight, spill only a few drops per connection cycle (I tried weighing it out over 10+ connections and couldn't really get a reading - it's something like 1-2ml per disconnection), are secure and easy to connect and disconnect, and ... I just love them
QDCs do require putting some extra thought into your tubing runs, but IMO they are
so worth it. I likely wouldn't pair QDCs with a weak pump, as they do restrict flow a bit, but the restriction from the Alphacools is not noticeable in my loop (with three QDCs, ensuring each component is easily removable).
Phew. That was a lot. Hope I didn't forget anything, and hope you got through this massive wall of text
