New Water Cooled Build Help! Component Selection!

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SimonSt3r

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So... I am working on planning second build right now and I have come to a point where I need some outside help to make a decision. This new rig is going to be water cooled using 12 millimeter outer diameter copper tubing. I am planning selling my current 4790k to my friend at the moment. I am reusing an EVGA 980 and a Corsair 750 watt power supply. Here is my dilemma:

I am trying to decide what processor to get since there are not many motherboards on the market for z97 or 87 and I don't have much faith in eBay. I want to go smaller than my current Corsair K70 Case but I would still like to have the ability to expand for SLI, sound cards, and a Wifi card if the motherboard doesn't come with. I am worried that If I go ATX with such small tubing and one graphics card the case will look empty. If I go mATX I need a case with 5 expansion slots and I haven't been able to find any that are also good for water cooling. I am also trying to figure out a color scheme that would look good with either plain copper tubing or painted copper tubing since I want this build to look good.

All suggestions are appreciated and if you want me to clarify something just say so.

Thanks!
 
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Lutfij
If you can hold out until Kabylake comes out to the masses then it'd be worth it since reviews will be plenty and they will obviously bench it with the predecessor(i7-6700K). If Kabylake doesn't live upto it's hype then you can always resort to Skylake provided prices don't spiral out of control.

If there are any more questions after reading through the sticky then we'll be happy to clear things up.

Regarding the color scheme, you can treat copper as a color of it's own or as an accent. The former means you can have a complimentary color like grey and white or black to set as a background. Black PCB'd motherboard's will be plenty but white and grey will require that you mod the board's heatsinks(if they have any). The latter will mean...
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Lutfij

Lutfij

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Good cases off the shelf meant for watercooling in an matx form factor is the 350D by Corsair or the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv(matx-the original Evolv released). Is it possible to pass on the sort of hardware yo have to work with? If your budget supports it you could look into a custom made chassis...probably.
 
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SimonSt3r

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Do you think my tubing would look stupid if I went with an ATX form factor? What CPU would you suggest I get or should I stick with the 4790k? Also, I need to have a color scheme that would look good with copper pipes or painted copper pipes.
 
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Lutfij

Lutfij

Titan
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16mm would be ideal for an ATX setup but in the event of an matx 12mm should be fine(depending on components used, which you yet haven't stated :) ) and is more than fine in an mitx enclosure. I would like o stress though, we don't know of your hardware, both watercooling and computing wise :D
 
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SimonSt3r

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I have not selected any hardware expect for what I am reusing from my old build which is an EVGA 980 Superclocked ACX 2.0 and a Corsair 750 watt power supply. Everything else is going to be new.
 
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Lutfij

Lutfij

Titan
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Ah. So you haven't figured out which motherboard to go for? I understand the chipset but the board...have you sourced one yet through the classifieds section or perhaps through the marketplace over on OCN? If you've read through the watercooling sticky, there's heat dissipation and a target delta for your loop and it's subsequent heat dissipation surface area so if you want to go for an internally mounted radiator setup you're going to need the wiggle room. If the radiator was mounted outside the chassis then you can compound the innards as closely as possible.

Oh and another thing, what about the PSU, what series is it? The other add on questions are the fittings, have you looked into them? 12mm OD tubing on rigid compression fittings can be hit or miss depending on the fitting you choose. Bitspower? Diamond Cooling? EKWB? Primochill?
 
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SimonSt3r

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I think I will get a new CPU and therefore a new motherboard and ram. I don't know whether to go for the 6700k or 6800k though and then what motherboard to pair with it. I am not sure what you mean about the target delta, however I have read through parts of Water cooling Sticky. The PSU is the RM series Gold 80+ and I am planning on using Bitspower fittings called c47.
 
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Lutfij

Lutfij

Titan
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i7-6700K will need a Skylake or Kabylake board i.e Z170 or Z270 platform.
i7-6800K will need a board that supports Broadwell-E i.e X99 platform.

If you can wait a while, Q2 into the new year, then you can decide if Zen would be worth it or if you should splurge on Z270+Kabylake, i.e i7-7700K. The fittings will do their job fine! The crystal link series of fittings from Bitspower apparently are low profile and slimmer width wise so the 12mm of tubing OD won't look unbalanaced as is the case with other brands.

Since you're trying to work with copper tubing, might I suggest using regular push fittings from your hardware store? One's which are used for plumbing in your household with G1/4 threading?

PSU is a good range but how old is it?

Delta. You should read through the entire sticky more than once over to get a better understanding of it. I'm serious since you're going to be building, maintaining and tearing down the loop. All we can do is offer text support...pun intended.
 
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Lutfij

Lutfij

Titan
Moderator
Oct 7, 2009
54,079
4,751
173,390
If you can hold out until Kabylake comes out to the masses then it'd be worth it since reviews will be plenty and they will obviously bench it with the predecessor(i7-6700K). If Kabylake doesn't live upto it's hype then you can always resort to Skylake provided prices don't spiral out of control.

If there are any more questions after reading through the sticky then we'll be happy to clear things up.

Regarding the color scheme, you can treat copper as a color of it's own or as an accent. The former means you can have a complimentary color like grey and white or black to set as a background. Black PCB'd motherboard's will be plenty but white and grey will require that you mod the board's heatsinks(if they have any). The latter will mean you can have your components dictate a color scheme.

You may want to go through this build log for inspiration and to learn more about the fittings used for the loop.
3/8" Copper Tubing
8X McMaster-Carr Push-To-Connect Fittings
Click to expand...
You can also look into my AMS build log(in my sig space) to understand how you can work with multiple colors in a build.
 
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SimonSt3r

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Sep 8, 2015
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You answered my most pressing questions! I really appreciate your help. I decided that the deal on the 6800k was too good to pass on at Micro Center so I picked it up for $330! I am planning on using the asus ws matx motherboard. The only thing I am struggling with is which ram and hard drives.
 
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