Components¶
RAM¶
Buy GSKILL. You will get great quality that tends to post well on a variety of systems. Moreso they tend to only use nicer memory chips and binning practices, so the odds you'll be able to overclock are quite good. Kingston is okay, crucial and corsair are awful. Anything else is dumpster diving. See overclocking project page for more info.
Storage¶
I use a 2nd gen optane drive (p5800x) as my boot drive. This is simply the highest performance drive available, and will be until Optane is undiscontinued or a new memory paradigm is discovered. My Dreadnought project has a section about this.
I use a KC3000 as a secondary drive. This is basically the best performing normal gen4 nvme drive. gen5 nvme drives cost 2x as much atm and only give you more bandwidth, which is useless.
Motherboard¶
I have only ever run ASUS boards in my desktop. The enthusiast BIOS is simply superior to other vendors, and I make use of a lot of the features. I follow the hunting rifle rule for my computers. In a precision rifle your scope should cost as much as the rifle itself. In my desktops the motherboard costs at least as much as the CPU.
In terms of cold hard truth, the biggest gain I see from running a high end board is memory overclocking performance. Better boards have more advanced adjustment features and are typically lower noise both in bus and VRM.
POST codes are a must for me. It seems to be a trend atm that only very expensive boards get this $3 feature.
Graphics Card¶
I hold no special love for team green, but Nvidia cards have the best software toolchains bar none. This extends to neural net training (CuDNN) to video accelerators and other hardware acceleration libraries in professional media applications i.e. adobe suite. Even developing stuff on them is typically just a smoother experience due to the solid backbone of tooling available.
They also knock the socks off Radeon cards if you don't consider price that much.
Fans¶
Noctua fans forever. They are worth the price. They out perform everything in noise/airflow, and are the only fan I have ever seen that simply does not fail/rattle/dry out ever.
140mm fans are FAR SUPERIOR to 120mm fans. The main factor is that the noise they do produce is of a lower register than 120mm fans, so even running at the same speed they'll sound quieter. Besides this you get a much more efficient size/flowrate and they look nicer.
Watercooling¶
The real project. This PC uses an original Cooler Master Storm Scout that has been heavily modified to fit a ton of watercooling.
Pumps (D5 vs DDC etc)¶
D5 is high flow rate and DDC is high pressure. D5 exhibits quieter operation than DDC so I choose to run multiple D5 pumps in series.
All real D5 pumps are the exact same Liang pump, just resold with different labels. The PCB has seen some revisions over the years (up until 2019 ish?). The PWM version uses a differently populated PCB than the trimpot version.
I killed 2 D5 pumps trying to make them shorter. They have a vertical daughterboard for power delivery and its mostly because they're using a big electrolytic capacitor... Desoldering these daughterboards is super risky!
I recommend getting 2 D5 pumps if you're cooling anything more than a CPU.
Radiators¶
Alphacool radiators are the best. The "bad paint" / exposed fins is actually super carefully applied paint to minimize performance loss. They say paint costs 3 deg C.
ALWAYS get HPE radiators. IIRC they are phasing out the old ones too. HPE is simply better, higher fin density, better flowrate, new design.
Radiator performance is LARGELY determined by 2D surface area. i.e. thickness will have diminishing returns. 30mm is typically the happy spot apparently. I use 2 45mm and 1 30mm
Fittings¶
Alphacool all the way ESPECIALLY for 1/2ID 3/4OD tubing. Other fittings will let you down.
Tubing¶
Primochill primoflex for clear tubing, or for the best soft tubing black HDPE tubing off mcmaster or wherever else.
I use 1/2ID 3/4OD for two reasons. I like to maximize flow even if its miniscule (g1/4 fittings and all that), and the thicker the tubing the more kink resistant it is (tighter turns become possible).
Quick disconnect fittings¶
Koolance QD3 are the best bar none. They are very expensive.
Waterblocks¶
Nickel plating or raw copper who cares. You should not use kill coils in loops, the inhibitors and biocides of the modern day work better and don't cause nickel corrosion problems.
Alphacool makes the best CPU block at time of writing, I checked.
Heatkiller makes absolutely kickass blocks.
Alphacool makes the best RAM blocks, though this doesn't really matter since RAM is so low power (I still watercool it so I can clock the shit out of it)
Thermal interfaces¶
PTM7950 is the best "thermal paste". Technically its a phase change thermal pad. Its the best because it has great w/mk similar to paste, gets very very thin, and is basically immune to "pump out". It also doesn't dry out so you can run it forever.
To apply PTM7950 get a pad piece bigger than the device you want to cover, take one side of the plastic off, apply it center-out like packing tape, then take any implement and rub against the corners carefully which will perforate the pad, then peel the last plastic layer off and the excess pad will come with it and prevent the pad from catching on the plastic or pulling.
Gelid thermal pads are some of the best performing pads available, and wildly cost effective when compared to fuji poly and other psycho level thermal pads.
Conductonaut is not worth it because it'll dry out. Look at the 5090 founders edition cooler to see what has to be done to get this stuff working.