Time Sync.

[AlienALX]

What black hose did you get? Was it EK by any chance? The reason I ask is because I have that stuff in 3/8 5/8, and it's a very difficult fit with some fittings. I couldn't put Bitspower collars on when using EK tube in 3/8 5/8 (because of the finer thread I suspect). But XSPC fittings were fine, as were Darkside ones, but those both have much thicker threads on the collars. FYI!

Nope. Basically none of them make black hose in this size any more. The fittings, IIRC, are 10/8. However, it's wiser to use 11/7 which works fine and seals very snugly.

Due to the size (the fittings cost me 99p each ffs) the hose options are very limited now. I bet it hasn't improved since last year.

So I order 3m from Ebay. apparently 10 8. Arrives and it's more like 9/8.5. It would have leaked for sure. So I got a refund. Ordered some more, same deal. Just really, really crap. Kinked as soon as you looked at it.

So I ordered 10m from Amazon and it was from China. IIRC it was about £12 which I was happy to pay (one of them times where I don't care how much it costs I just want it right FFS !!) and yeah, it's 11/7 alright and looks lovely.

So I saved it for a rainy day

Oh and I can categorically say that huge hose makes 0 difference either. I've had 19mm that you could use as a cosh and it's impossible to work with and makes 0 degrees difference.

I don't want a rig based on vanity. I'm far more about function, and ease of working on. Hence no hard tubes.

I'm also going to whack this thing in my main rig too.

Quite simply because it's really, really fast.

 

[hmmblah]

What black hose did you get? Was it EK by any chance? The reason I ask is because I have that stuff in 3/8 5/8, and it's a very difficult fit with some fittings. I couldn't put Bitspower collars on when using EK tube in 3/8 5/8 (because of the finer thread I suspect). But XSPC fittings were fine, as were Darkside ones, but those both have much thicker threads on the collars. FYI!

I was going to grab the EK black tubing and re-use most of my bitspower compression fittings. You say it's a difficult fit, but does it eventually fit? Maybe warming the hose up a bit would help?

 

[AlienALX]

Top tip guys. This sounds kinda gross but it works really well.

Cut your hose to the right length. Make sure it fits from point to point. Then basically stick the ends in your mouth and wet the outside of the tube. It's so easy to do up the fittings tight with a bit of lube. Like I say it sounds gross but it totally works. Without that method I'd never have been able to do up my 19mm fittings over that XSPC hose. It was literally ripping skin from my fingers half way down.

I wouldn't know what else to use as lube either. Something like windex? IDK, spit is cheaper

PS fixing it now. My god damn phone effing changes every bloody word I prod FFS.

 

[hmmblah]

LOL, good to know. Maybe a little KY would work? I'd imagine it would get a little messy though.

 

[AlienALX]

Ky dries, but gets very slippery if you wet it again. You have to like wash it off.

Don't ask me how I know that, I'd probably tell you lmao.

But yeah, tight metal on sticky rubber just jams, you mustn't go in dry.

 

[Bartacus]

I was going to grab the EK black tubing and re-use most of my bitspower compression fittings. You say it's a difficult fit, but does it eventually fit? Maybe warming the hose up a bit would help?

The hose itself will fit, but the collars are *very* tight with Bitspower (at least in size 3/8 5/8). Due to the fine collar threads, they wouldn't 'catch' so I couldn't screw them down. They would slide up the tube with some difficulty, but wouldn't 'catch' on the threads. The tube would fit tight as hell tough, heck you wouldn't even NEED the collars. But of course, that would look 'off'.

 

[Kei]

Can't wait to see some results! Make sure you get the UEFI/microcode updated right away. TR is a bear, I've had many issues with hard locks, random reboots, poor performance etc. On windows 10 1809 it was rock solid even on the older UEFI versions, but after updating to 1903 I was having to reboot daily, sometimes multiple times a day. After the updates though it is stable again. Haven't updated to 1909 yet.

I'm running the ASRock X399 Taichi.

Odd, I've been running a 1920x on the original gigabyte x399 aorus board from 2017 to now through all the versions of windows 10 without an issue.

 

[hmmblah]

Odd, I've been running a 1920x on the original gigabyte x399 aorus board from 2017 to now through all the versions of windows 10 without an issue.

I'm running a 1920x as well. It's probably this board. I have had nothing, but bad luck with ASRock products over the years.

 

[AlienALX]

I'm running a 1920x as well. It's probably this board. I have had nothing, but bad luck with ASRock products over the years.

Nah, seems like luck. My buddy had loooooads of crap with his Zenith.

There are tons more factors than just the CPU and board really. Memory, GPUs, USB stuff.

 

[hmmblah]

Nah, seems like luck. My buddy had loooooads of crap with his Zenith.

There are tons more factors than just the CPU and board really. Memory, GPUs, USB stuff.

That's true. My last issue with ASRock was a B350 board I had in my home server. It was great for about a year, maybe a reboot here or there. After that time though, I couldn't keep it stable for more than a few days. Updated all drivers, firmware etc. Still would lock up every few days.

I swapped the board for a Gigabyte B450 board, re-used all other hardware, didn't even reload the OS. It's been stable ever since.

 

[AlienALX]

Yup take a recent example.

My MSI board was stalling at boot, taking up to five minutes to start. I figured oh there's a fault with the hardware.

Turns out it's the RGB mouse mat ffs.

Disconnect it, vroom vroom FFS.

If I install the software for it? Dear god.

 

[hmmblah]

lol, things were so much simpler before rgb.

 

[AlienALX]

I am now with board.

Diablo came over on Saturday (I call him that haha, even in person )

She's empty. Sort of.

So my usual method is towel on floor of PC. Insert jug under GPU fitting, remove. Turn fitting to hold jug in place. Let the coolant drain until it stops, then remove the res cap and let the pressure go so the lower loop can drain via gravity.

That went well. Then the trick is to screw in the hose with the fitting on into the other side of the GPU and blow, hard. And this worked well, and the coolant left the system. Unfortunately I hadn't put the cap back in the res so it was a full blown fountain. Mostly in my face (but hey, the coolant is rather sweet in taste.. I suspect PG).

Any way embarrassment aside it's a good thing Diablo knows his water cooling, as if any one else was helping me it would have all been in the bottom now.

I had to remove some wiring for the RGB ram sticks too, that took me about 2 hours. It's not easy going back to a PC you built over a year ago with 3 months of on and off work put into the wiring. It's like a crash course.....

I think I have it all back where it should be though. Sadly the water leaked all over the screen cover (3mm clear) and did get inbetween the screen and it somewhat. So that is all apart now and has been dried and will be left for a week.

Now this is where I get all philosophical.

XSPC EC6 has now saved my ass twice. Had that been any water based coolant I would be scared to death. I once had a leak from a PC full of red EC6 and it leaked for many months before I even realised. All I found was dried up red powder all over the electronics, with no damage or fire.

 

[AlienALX]

"Hey, I didn't order any Stere-oh, they're SSDs"

I also found a solution for the M.2. This.

No back plate so it's ideal. Poifect.

You simply fit this.

And then connect the MINI SAS cable to the drive. It's a PCIE NVME drive, but it connects with a cable (probably so you can cool it properly as it gets hot.). However, I saw the other day that the Intels are the most reliable DATA drives in the world. Even more reliable than any mech drive. Basically Google use them for their servers, and Linus has been buying some of their older smaller ones. Then a tale of woe from last night....

Last night I had one of those nights that every single one of us dreads. Like, the sort of night where it strikes fear into even the most hardened techie.

All I had to do was take the U.2 drive out of the Triad and fit two M.2 drives to my new board. Simples. I also had to fit a cooler to one M.2 drive which banana-d it and I thought I had killed that, but I digress.

I took out the U.2 host card and booted the PC. Then realised that I needed to try and clone Windows to the RAID stripe. So I put it back in, terribly fiddly horrible little screw and all. Booted into Windows and could not get it to clone so I rebooted to try again and it got to the PIN screen and the PC shut down. Hmm that's odd. Rebooted, same thing happened. Gave the wires a shove and that was it. Nothing. Dead PC. Removed the GPU and sound card still nothing. Removed the PSU cables from the board, let it sit, cleared CMOS and plugged the PSU back in. The standby light on the board was dim and flickering. I thought "Oh crap, I've either killed the PSU or board".

Reset the CMOS a few more times and still nothing. It just wouldn't start. Fiddled with the switches on the board and yay, it starts. Tried to boot, it shut down again, repeat the entire process above twice.

Then I noticed something. I noticed that my GPU had 8 pin cables on it, but one is a 6 pin. This isn't an issue at all as they are only grounds, but what I had done was slice the plastic so it fitted in the socket. Problem was it wasn't seating correctly. So I had to cut it up a bit and finally got it all working. PC booted, I installed Windows on the stripe and all was good in the world again.

But I got those chills. You know? the "OMG I just killed £1000 worth of upgrades !" and "I don't want (or can afford) to buy a new PSU or board etc".

Thank god. Somewhere in all of this the Killer wifi has vanished, but that happened before. It's a funny little module that sits under the IO, so means taking the board out. I think some Deoxit would sort it out, but I have an Asus PCIE card so that is in there now.

5 hours. 5 hours instead of what should have been 5 bloody minutes !

 

[AlienALX]

The PCIE adapter card came.

Bit annoyed it's that way as the cable goes off in the wrong direction.

No magic smoke. Atto didn't seem right though.

But Crystal is bang on spec.

Now the boring stuff is over I will take a couple of days off and then get stuck in next week.

 

[AlienALX]

 

[AlienALX]

Then disaster struck.

The pics are probably in the wrong order and I can't fix that on a phone.

Looped it all up and got out my spare PSU. Poured the res full and turned on the pump. Every last drop dumped into the floor.

Turns out that in the under side of the bitspower t piece there lives a G1/4 hole with nothing in it for the temp probe. Which fell into the bottom of the rig and thus wasn't actually in there when I poured the coolant in. But you can't see the hole cause its facing the floor. Right above the screen.

So I've just done my whole day in reverse.

Ffs. Sorting pics now..

 

[AlienALX]

OK dried and rebuilt. It's now full and pumping from a stand alone PSU.

It's dry. Thank the heavens.

Will leave it for two hours then turn off and do another hour in the morning.

 

[Bartacus]

Ahh the good old Homer Simpon "d'oh" moment, lots of fun, LOL! Thankfully nothing got roasted, that would have been one expensive "oopsie". I like the combo of red fittings and black tube!

 

[AlienALX]

Jesus, what a test.

I left the loop running for three hours, no leaks. I didn't expect it to given it was fine for 13 months.

Finally plucked up the courage to boot it. Only it wouldn't boot. I ended up moving the PCIE riser ribbon to the top slot. Then it booted, but that is where the fun began. It kept shutting off the display (Sound familiar? same issue I had with my sodding Vega). I thought it might be BIOS related and I looked at that. Feb 2018. OK so it needs a bios.

Three attempts later and Windows installed. But, every time I tried setting up the GPU the screen would switch off. Took me two hours to get the BIOS on. Great, RAM now boots and works at 3200mhz.

But still the screen kept switching off. I noticed a red VGA LED on the board too.

Took apart the Powerlink, removed it from the equation. Same. It eventually did boot with the GPU drivers, but kept shutting off and turning the screen off.

I can't tell you how hard this is with a vertical riser on a GPU. You can't see the POST codes without laying on the floor. Same goes for resetting the BIOS and so on.

In the end (and I still don't know how I did it) I removed the Cooler Master cage, with the GPU looped (as I said, IDK how I managed it) put in the Phanteks riser (bracket is at my mother's) and just ran a few benchmarks and everything now seems stable and normal.

So that is the second CM riser I have had that worked for a while and then died. Oddly the Phanteks riser was better on the VEGA, but it still kept crashing. It seems OK on here though, fingers crossed.

I tell you what I am too fat and too old to be rolling around on the floor. I bet I won't be able to walk tomorrow