This was the day after I got my new system to post and I dumped coolant on the mobo. On the bright side I got to really dial in the cable management and re-route a lot of clutter. The amount of room to work in this case is really nice. The rear panel has almost 2" of clearance as does the GPU.
I got everything put back together after my accident and running super reliable. I dumped about half my AIO's coolant directly onto the mobo but it was clear-coated properly with a matte clear so nothing soaked in. I had my airbrush compressor primed and ready so I was able to blow everything out quickly. I haven't had any issues since and have everything set up properly now. Hopefully I don't have to open the side panel again for a while other than odds and ends.
Was looking to go overboard on an X570/R9 5900X but pricing/availability here are both pretty dumb. Shipping from the US is up to a month on a lot of stuff, more if it goes through Ontario. My PC was also completely dead so I couldn't really wait a month since I have games to play. Being a gaming-only box with a 4K panel capped at 60Hz I really wasn't even CPU bottlenecked with the i7-5820K yet and I don't really need 12 cores for 4K/60 gaming so I decided on a temporary solution that will probably end up not being temporary based on how it's running so far, but we'll see. I ended up getting an i5-10600K for around the same price as an R5 3500X during black Friday sales and found a Z490 board that matched my GPU for $100 off as well. In the end I grabbed two M.2 drives super cheap as well as the mobo and the CPU for about what I was going to pay for the CPU alone.
I replaced the 280mm Corsair Hydro cooler I broke with a 420mm Arctic AIO. This rad is thicc. Even with a full OC on the 10600K I dropped my max CPU temps below the temps I was seeing on the 5820K with a moderate OC using the 240mm AIO. The 4 200mm case fans idle at just 350RPM but keep case temps sub-30C when playing. The setup for the intake is push/pull but with a gap so when the CPU fans are idle the 200mm case fans can vent into the lower case keeping it pressurized. I rarely have to dust inside this case, just blow out the front filter and PSU side basement filter occasionally. Considering the amount of vents in this case, cleaning has been a breeze.
I also revised my exterior mount for the GPU. I cut out the hex grating behind the rear 140mm case fan and mounted the AIO for the GPU directly in line with it leaving a 1" gap. It's push/pull this way, but when the GPU is not in use the case fan can still vent without obstruction. My max GPU temps are about the same as max CPU temps. Doom Eternal was running at 45C at 4K/60 at max settings and Horizon 4 was about the same. Since Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't release until after Christmas I'll have to wait until then to see how that runs in this setup.
New cooler has no lighting at all but the sleeves match the carbon fiber motif and the fans are decent with high static pressure, so the rear fan looks a bit out of place now with the blue pads. I'm building a second system where I can use all three blue 140mm fans and will replace it with a fan with a higher CFM later. I also need better sleeving for the GPU AIO to match the CPU cables. When I do that I'll replace the GPU radiator with the 240mm radiator from the pump I broke. That will give me an opportunity to include in-line fill points to the loop. Overall I'm pretty happy with how it came out and how it's running given how little it cost to do. I also managed to get the ram I thought my previous mobo had fried running properly in this mobo, not sure why my old mobo wouldn't accept it in the same slots the new sticks worked in, but I'm up to 64GB now which is entirely unnecessary but whatever, the DIMM slots look nice filled out and match the cables. The CPU AIO cables took little effort to retrain and fell perfectly in-line after a day.
The LEDs get brighter as they ramp up. At idle the lights are pretty dim and the fans all spin slow enough my camera caught them. At full send it's pretty bright.
Not that I see any of it anyway
Hopefully I'll be moving it into a new space in the house early next year where it's a little more visible.
