ケイ - Watercooled Enthoo Primo
- Thread starter Kei
- Start date
Kei
Member
I reckon the main reason it's considered dated is that it still has 4x non removable 5.25" drive bays. I still use 2 of them as I have a manual fan controller and a bluray writer. Tech has moved on so even 3.5" hard disks are less common now. It's all about nvme m.2 these days. I'm still rocking 6x full size hard drives and an old sata ssd.
The only gripes that I have with the primo are the side panel windows are definitely crap vs the tempered glass ones you can get on newer cases and the weight of the thing.
AngryGoldfish
Old N Gold
Kei
Member
512GB 850 Pro & 256GB polaris NVME ssds.
Hopefully, the crucial M500 will become a complete games partition, the 850 pro another games and programs partition and the 961 will become the OS. I'm hoping to strip out the old 750GB seagate constellation ES so that I can pull a whole 3.5" drive cage out to allow more airflow through the bottom.
Kei
Member
After many hours of shifting games around, cloning disks, deleting partitions, recreating partitions and restoring data, I finally finished. Who the hell has 4 steam libraries across 4 different disks and 5 partitions all dedicated to games? ...Me.
Cable management took a few hours too, but it was worth it. I can definitely see the huge advantage to M.2 now. The removal of a whole drive bay along with 3 hard disks has removed 2.5Kg of weight, improved airflow through from the front and best of all, it's stopped the vibrations from the hard disks transmitting through to the case.
I finally found my spare LED for the reservoir whilst hunting for a molex to sata power adaptor. (that's fantastically hidden behind the samsung ssd so you'd never know it was there) It does look like a chaotic light-fest in there
Cable management took a few hours too, but it was worth it. I can definitely see the huge advantage to M.2 now. The removal of a whole drive bay along with 3 hard disks has removed 2.5Kg of weight, improved airflow through from the front and best of all, it's stopped the vibrations from the hard disks transmitting through to the case.
I finally found my spare LED for the reservoir whilst hunting for a molex to sata power adaptor. (that's fantastically hidden behind the samsung ssd so you'd never know it was there) It does look like a chaotic light-fest in there
Kei
Member
Finally remembered to top up the reservoir after the level dropped from air bleeding through.
Starting to get that itchy finger around upgrading the GPU. I've had this GTX 780 just over 4 years and it's been pretty good all told. Sadly some of the more modern releases particularly those involving vulkan or DX12 are definitely showing just how far behind it has fallen. It still looks great and does the job for the most part as I game at 1200p60. I've been looking long and hard at the vega series as I see them as more future proof than pascal. Plus I seriously don't like what nvidia chose to do with GP104, considering the price and the castrated memory bus. That said, I don't particularly like the price of vega either, especially as I have to fork out £100 for a water block. I also need to replace my ageing corsair TX650 power supply. It's just past 6 years old but still works brilliantly well, dates back to a time when corsair used seasonic as their oem. Unfortunately, it lacks the second EPS power cable which newer systems benefit from and when I sleeved the cables, I actually removed the 2 pins from one of the pcie power cables to make the sleeving neater instead of using an extension.
I've been looking at a vega 56 + EK block and a seasonic prime platinum 750w psu for the last week, but haven't been able to make up my mind.
Starting to get that itchy finger around upgrading the GPU. I've had this GTX 780 just over 4 years and it's been pretty good all told. Sadly some of the more modern releases particularly those involving vulkan or DX12 are definitely showing just how far behind it has fallen. It still looks great and does the job for the most part as I game at 1200p60. I've been looking long and hard at the vega series as I see them as more future proof than pascal. Plus I seriously don't like what nvidia chose to do with GP104, considering the price and the castrated memory bus. That said, I don't particularly like the price of vega either, especially as I have to fork out £100 for a water block. I also need to replace my ageing corsair TX650 power supply. It's just past 6 years old but still works brilliantly well, dates back to a time when corsair used seasonic as their oem. Unfortunately, it lacks the second EPS power cable which newer systems benefit from and when I sleeved the cables, I actually removed the 2 pins from one of the pcie power cables to make the sleeving neater instead of using an extension.
I've been looking at a vega 56 + EK block and a seasonic prime platinum 750w psu for the last week, but haven't been able to make up my mind.
AngryGoldfish
Old N Gold
Kei
Member
Yes at present both my monitors are 24" 1920x1200. Future plan would be to have a 27" 2560x1440 panel but that's a long way off as panel tech hasn't really improved at all (if anything, QC has gotten worse) and the cost of a high quality 27" wide gamut panel is eye watering.
Still undecided on the GPU, do I go 56 at £390 or 64 at £456? Those are 2 year warranty powercolor cards. Or do I go for the gigabyte 56 with a 3 year warranty at £410? I had a powercolor x850XT PE in the long distant past without any issues.
Still undecided on the GPU, do I go 56 at £390 or 64 at £456? Those are 2 year warranty powercolor cards. Or do I go for the gigabyte 56 with a 3 year warranty at £410? I had a powercolor x850XT PE in the long distant past without any issues.
AngryGoldfish
Old N Gold
The Gigabyte Vega 64 model sounds like the best value at £410. That's excellent value in fact.
And yeah, monitors are crap right now. Since I bought my 1440p panel over two years ago, neither quality control not pricing have improved. Monitor manufacturers are doing a terrible job producing good quality monitors at reasonable prices. It's one of the biggest issue, IMO, in the gaming hardware sector, far worse than the RAM pricing.
Kei
Member
Well I umm'ed and ahh'd for a long time last night and finally decided that I'd save the £20 and go with the powercolor 56, the EK copper + acetal full cover block and the seasonic 750 prime platinum. Annoyingly, I'll lose all my fancy braided cables as they are hardwired on the corsair TX650 I'm currently using.
Yeah, the monitor debacle right now is completely bonkers. I would have liked a 27" 2560x1440 10 bit wide gamut IPS or VA panel with freesync and a decent response time. Such a device doesn't exist yet which is really annoying. If I scrapped the need for wide gamut, it would be significantly easier to find something to suit.
AngryGoldfish
Old N Gold
Liquid cooled Vega 56 on its way. Schnice!
I'm quite happy with my BenQ monitor. It's not what I really wanted in terms of specifications and features, but I paid a fair price for it and the quality was good. I have two dead pixels, and that's it. Nothing else is wrong with it. I could have paid twice that amount and had fifteen dead pixels, bleeding in the corners, yellowing, buzzing noises, etc. I'd rather pay less for simpler features and decent quality than pay more for fancy features and appalling quality.
It's a shame your cables won't work. It would be nice if all PSUs had the same pinouts. It would make things so much easier. I need to get round to buying new cables for my new build. It's expensive, but it's worth it when it's done right. I'd rather spend the money on the cables than a 1080Ti. Some people think that's madness, but I like it.
Kei
Member
I've still got plenty of the paracord that I used to sleeve the cables on the corsair so I could in theory just make up a set of extensions. Problem is I remember how tediously long and painful it was doing it before, well, that and the fact that I broke the pin extraction tool whilst doing the last pcie cable. The eagle eyed either never said anything or nobody noticed that two of the wires on my 8 pin pcie cable are still black braided rather than blue.
This is why I prefer extensions to sleeving a PSU. At least it's 1-to-1, but I still hate sleeving. I started buying pre-sleeved / pre-pinned cables in 12' length. That way you just snap them together. Not an ideal solution, but an acceptable one for someone who hates sleeving. 
AngryGoldfish
Old N Gold
The issue with extensions is finding a place to stash all the extra bulk.
Kei
Member
All arrived this morning. Work got in the way of making any significant progress on it.
Only problem I've run into so far is being able to test the vega card prior to fitting the waterblock as I really dont want to have to drain the loop to take the 780 out. Then refill it with just the cpu and test the gpu then drain again and rebuild adding the gpu in. First idea was to use the second x16 slot but it turns out that the reservoir bracket in the enthoo primo prevents fitting a long gpu in those lower slots.
I've decided to try and test it using the 8x slot underneath the 780, leaving the 780 in the loop for now. If that doesn't work, i'll have to dump the vega card into the older FX8320 system.
Only problem I've run into so far is being able to test the vega card prior to fitting the waterblock as I really dont want to have to drain the loop to take the 780 out. Then refill it with just the cpu and test the gpu then drain again and rebuild adding the gpu in. First idea was to use the second x16 slot but it turns out that the reservoir bracket in the enthoo primo prevents fitting a long gpu in those lower slots.
I've decided to try and test it using the 8x slot underneath the 780, leaving the 780 in the loop for now. If that doesn't work, i'll have to dump the vega card into the older FX8320 system.
Kei
Member
PSU works well, less coil noise with the 780 too. Vega 56 worked ok in the 8x slot so I've dismantled it and fitted the water block. Just need to drain the loop tomorrow and rebuild it and go through the usual bleeding chaos.
Nude Vega 56.
Finished. Nice that EK now include a single I/O bracket. Standard cooler is actually remarkably nice and is pretty quiet too. That is when I compare it to the old Toxic HD6950 I had with the same basic design. Against water cooling, it's bloody noisy.
Nude Vega 56.
Finished. Nice that EK now include a single I/O bracket. Standard cooler is actually remarkably nice and is pretty quiet too. That is when I compare it to the old Toxic HD6950 I had with the same basic design. Against water cooling, it's bloody noisy.
AngryGoldfish
Old N Gold
Those giant screws look quite cool. It has a sort of industrial look to it.
