Completed Lian-Li PC-011 Air (RGB) Something old - Something new

[sswilson]

Quick reboot of this build. Intel is gone, B450 / Ryzen 5 3600 / Trident Z 3200 in it's place along with a new corsair HydroX XC5 RGB block.





Loop pre-liquid. Pretty sure both the PSU shorting plug and the little G1/4" threaded funnel came with a Primochill bay res.



Loop is filled without any obvious leaks so the towels are gone (mostly for major leaks if they occur at the start) and replaced with paper towel for an overnight leak test.

Bit bummed that my EK supreme HK block(s) don't have AM4 mounting adapters available (they have them for the supremacy, but not for the earlier models) but I suppose I can't complain too much, I'm sure I got at least 10 years of use out of them.

edit: oh, and non-staining tubing? I think not.....

 

[sswilson]

Still got the unicorn puke around the edges (front and top) but straight up blue internally.

Temps are 26C idle and 57C full bore (sp?) but I know I can tweak the fan profile better. It's currently 550 RPM idle and 1730 RPM full load, but previous profiles were 450 Idle and somewhere around 550 max with peak temps around 60c.

And yeah... as per Supergrover's earlier warning, Dragon Center is evil!!!! I couldn't figure out for the life of me why my power profile wasn't sticking... I'd check it after boot and it'd be back on the power saving profile no matter what I'd set earlier. Turns out DC was the culprit. Fortunately there's a removal tool over on the MSI forums that seems to do a good job of rooting it out so it's gone, and if I need to set the memory RGB again, I'll try doing it through the Gskill software as opposed to Mystic light.

New parts for this build: Ryzen 5 3600, MSI B450M Bazooka MAX Wifi, XPG Gammix S11 Pro 1TB NVMe, as well as the 16GB Trident Z 3200 sticks over from my other build, and finally I grabbed a Corsair XC5 RGB block to replace my old EK supreme block(s). I'm not gaming on this rig any more and don't need much in the way of GFX power so I've currently got a Quadro K600 slaved in (with a 3D printed slot cover... ) while I wait on another card to come in, but while it outputs 1440p / 120hz through the DP (my 1030 only does 60hz through the HDMI), it's less than ideal as it takes forever to be recognized by the bios on boot.

Haven't quite decided what I'm doing WRT audio yet. I need optical out and I've got a stand-alone card as well as a USB dongle that'd do the trick.

edit: As far as the Gammix goes.... Aida64 reports the controller as - Silicon Motion SM2262EN - so (assuming the reporting is correct) it looks like I got one of the original model controllers as opposed to the ones that folks have brought out the pitchforks for.

 

[sswilson]

Pretty happy with the temps.

PBO = Off Vcore Offset = -.050V

1 hr prime peak temp 70c (average appeared to be somewhere around 55c during the hour). Rad fans tuned for 460 RPM up to 62C, and peaked at 725 RPM. (Case fans set to a fixed minimum rate so 800(ish) for the HDs, and 650(ish) for the LLs.

I'm sure I could shave a few degrees off of the top end, but I don't see the need to sacrifice relative silence for the sake of full load temps below necessary levels.

 

[Bond007]

Nice results. You find you can hear the fans with a bit more speed? Only reason I ask is that most quality fans I find I can’t hear much/at all once the computer is buttoned up and I am sitting at my normal distance @ 800ish rpm. Obviously fan and situation dependant.

 

[sswilson]

Nice results. You find you can hear the fans with a bit more speed? Only reason I ask is that most quality fans I find I can’t hear much/at all once the computer is buttoned up and I am sitting at my normal distance @ 800ish rpm. Obviously fan and situation dependant.

I find there's a pretty big difference in audio levels on the MLs between 800(ish) and 1100(ish) but that it doesn't make that much of a difference in temps (certainly not worth the small gains in temps). Anything above 1200 starts to get obnoxious and nets zero gains. 4-500 is damn near silent and I can hear the fans starting to ramp up when they cross somewhere around the 600 mark.

But yes, in answer to your question.... all of the fans in this system are tolerable up to 800(ish) but not necessarily silent.

 

[sswilson]

Damn.... I got almost 4 years out of the most recent version of this loop.

What a major pain in the arse taking it apart!!!!

 

[sswilson]

And here's the end of the Lian-li's life cycle with me. Only thing left to do is to pull the TR NVMe heatsink and replace the current 2TB drive with a 1TB of the same model. Looks like I might already have a local sale lined up, but that will depend on how long my back-ordered bundle takes to get in.





I managed to shoehorn in a PA 120SE, but had to put the fans in pull config to clear the memory (not enough clearance to the case side to simply raise the front fan enough to clear the memory). I've thrown an EVGA FTW3 Ultra 3060ti (bought from here) onto it as well as an Intel "Killer" Wifi 6 AX1650 card out of my tickle trunk. I tried to use the vertical card mount, but it was way too tight with the PA in there, and I most definitely wouldn't have been able to install the wifi card.

Should be a decent gaming rig for whoever ends up with it.


And while we're at it....... taking the loop down did not go easy.... aside from the loop complexity, relatively tight spaces, and the lack of a drain (in hindsight... I should have just slaved a tube into the top of the reservoir and flipped it upside down to drain) there's also this......





Somebody didn't think to throw a load onto the cpu just prior to shut down to soften up the Tim that's been on there for a while.

Ended up soaking it in alcohol which loosened it up enough to safely get it unstuck. Fortunately none of the pins were damaged and it's back up and running as if nothing had happened.

 

[sswilson]

Can't say I'm a fan (see what I did there??? ) of the sound profile of the TR TL-C12C-S 1550 RPM fans which shipped with the PA 120SE. There's a throbbing hum which starts to become evident somewhere around 1200 RPM (they seem to be running in the 1350 RPM range to keep the 5900x at around 63C under load). Not sure if it's normal for them, or if it's a function of the offset mounting I had to use, but either way, it was irking me so the cooler fans either had to have their profiles adjusted lower (thus leading to higher temps), or maybe a trip to the tickle trunk was in order.......



Pair of Noctua NF-P12 Redux fans are probably just what the doctor ordered.... yep... much more pleasant sound profile under load while providing similar temp results. Lost a little bit of RGB with the swap (it was on the wrong side of the HSF anyways) but that's really the only downside.

Ok, that's it.... no more upgrades from the tickle trunk or I'm going to decide I want to keep it for myself.

 

[lowfat]

Likely nothing wrong w/ the fans themselves. Should just need to slow one of them down a bit more.

How do I avoid periodic humming noises when running fans side-by-side or in push-pull?

When two fans are running at almost the exact same RPM speed side-by-side or in push-pull, their acoustic interaction can lead to undesired phenomena such as periodic humming or intermittent vibrations. To prevent this, the fans should be run at ...

faqs.noctua.at

 

[sswilson]

Likely nothing wrong w/ the fans themselves. Should just need to slow one of them down a bit more.

How do I avoid periodic humming noises when running fans side-by-side or in push-pull?

When two fans are running at almost the exact same RPM speed side-by-side or in push-pull, their acoustic interaction can lead to undesired phenomena such as periodic humming or intermittent vibrations. To prevent this, the fans should be run at ...

faqs.noctua.at

That's possible, but I'm not experiencing the issue with the noctuas in the same configuration, and the 1150+ RPM hum has been reported elsewhere.

It'd be interesting to test, but I'm not sure I want to tear this down again now that I've got it buttoned up. Currently have both fans on a single cpu header, but this is a full ATX board so I've got tons of spare headers. I would just need to create profiles that were offset by 50 rpm.