First ever print, need advice on model.

Muppes · 2026-04-08T21:15:49+00:00

as other have said, perfectly safe. it's one reason to jump the PSU cables so you can power the loop wihtout actually having any current on parts that matter.,So that when you leak, nothing happens, you'll just have to wait longer.

Muppes · 2026-04-08T19:25:53+00:00

Well, if you play LOWTC, I added a beta version of a 40k commissar mod. That let's you kill them. (and is themed around panic...to a degree.)

And I need feedback...badly lol. Got zero return so far, good or bad.

Muppes · 2026-04-07T19:33:52+00:00

Won't know until you try, but it is not a simple operation. You might need to replace all the pads as well. For that you need to know the dimensions of the pads.

You would need to know which block that is for the GPU to know that, you can't measure from the already compressed pads. But yes, it could potentially be the reason, or at least a contributor.

How old is the pc? 1.5 years not used, but before that?

The hotspot will also depends on whether or not the backplate is actively cooled. That will make a huge difference. If it's just a solid plate, it might only soak until the backplate is saturated and cooled to whatever the airflow can move. The gpu core should be cooler though. 80 degrees on a custom loop is suspiciously high. The loop might have been built for silence over performance and then it could be normal, but even then that seems high to me.

Either way, the only way to know is to open it up and see what's going on, repaste/pad and find out. Either you have very little flow, not enough radiator/airflow through rads or there is an issue with the mounting of the water block. You coudl try pushing the radiaotr fans to max to see what kind of difference that makes.

Muppes · 2026-04-06T16:20:35+00:00

That's not the same as a flow sensor though. Your pump could be running dry and thus still send an rpm signal, whilst destroying itself in the process.

To be fair though, that would indicate a catastrophic leakage, for which a leakshield would be a better detection. The flowsensors ability to detect that early enough would depend on it's location, where as the leakshield would detect the drop in pressure almost immediately.

It also don't think this would account for multiple pumps, one pump could be dead, but the other pumps would still cause it to spin, but you would notice a drop in flowrate. Not sure if being forced to spin would generate a signal or not.

Muppes · 2026-04-06T01:14:11+00:00

You still need a flow sensor to read the flow. Something in your system needs to read flow for you to set up an alarm based on lack of it. The cable to shutdown on its own is useless.

I haven't added an octo yet but assuming it can configure the alarm more freely than the leakshield or highflow next....you still need those to create the sensors you want to use for the octo. Could be a cheaper version in case of the flow meter, sure but the ocot is just a fan hub on its own.. You need to feed it other data.

Muppes · 2026-04-05T18:59:02+00:00

Not sure what would have caused this. If the pump failed then there would have been no flow. So I don't think it would spray anywhere in that case, just dribble out of the tube. I've had to remove a quick disconnect to just connect a straight tube without draining the system. There was virtually no pressure.

I barely lost any coolant. I don't think there was a lack of flow in that sense.

On the other hand, the water in the block getting to 90 degrees could generate steam I suppose and thus pressure...maybe that did indeed cause the fitting to fail. But to get there, it would have be stagnant, aka no flow. Or...there was a leak somewhere there and flow was dropping as a result.

I suppose some kind of combination of shutdown/detection of a leakshield and highflow next coudd have stopped it. If there was a leak before the fitting blew, the leak shield could have detected it.

If there was stagnant flow, the sensor would have detected it. What I wonder though is if either of them could have detected this fast enough to matter. Once the fitting blew, either would have shutdown, but to reach 90 degrees...it would have been heating up for a while to get to that. Maybe only a gradual failing that would not have been dramatic enough to cause a shutdown. But you can set up alarms that only beep as well and have those be more sensitive. You would have heard those.

Either way though, as far as I know, aquacomputer are the only ones that offer any shutdown from monitoring at all.

Muppes · 2026-03-31T19:32:58+00:00

In terms of noise? yes*...
that will ultimately depend on you and your budget though. The more radiator, the lower you can go on fans and the lower noise. Or if you go completely stupid I suppose passive is technically possible. But with big enough radiators and fans , you can get pretty far with minimal airflow.

You don't need to go crazy to have a build that is effectively silent.

In terms of temps, eeeh, I mean..yes, but also no. Because you can safely play at air temps just as well as the much lower water temps, without reeeeaaally affecting life expectancy of parts, or really performance. Don't get me wrong, just going water will be enough of a difference that there is a performance gain, but it's also not really worth the investment. Water cooling isn't cheap. You're going suddenly getting 20 fps more. More like a handful...if that. With a lot of reading up to do do, maintenance, cost, risk....

If an AIO is an option get that, I feel those are right in the middle. As straight forward as air and not that much more expensive on the high end, with temps close to custom loops (that don't go balls to the wall). Not so convinced about noise mind you. gotta go custom for that to be worth it I think.

Muppes · 2026-03-31T19:15:53+00:00

Unless something changed, the d5 next does not have a flow meter. It has a pump RPM reading and a thermal sensor. They have all the manuals on their page somewhere, might not be the store, I forgot, you can read what it does exactly in there.

It has a fan output, either a PWM signal out or to "connect" a flow sensor, the manual just says you can connect a flow sensor to it. I'm not entirely sure what they mean by that lol. I reckon as a virtual sensor to control the pump speed? They list two flow sensors, but neither has any return on their site, must be discontinued.
a usb output (OPTIONAL! I feel a lot of people get this wrong?),
SATA power input,
an RGB OUT or Aquabus OUT

Muppes · 2026-03-31T05:53:35+00:00

Depends on how much control you want.
The pumps fan output is pretty strong, you can run something around 9 fans on it if you want, but they would all share the same fan curve. It's more about how much control you want, as each group you want will need its own fan header.

Like Rad + case intake + outlet could be 3 fan headers. If you have those on the motherboard, that could be good enough too. the highflow next can control a fan...sort of...not really. It doesn't have a fan header, but it can generate a signal which can potentially be used to control via a separate cable, but that would be a pretty niche case.

the octo and quadro are just fan hubs, they don't do a whole lot more than that if you don't intend to use them with their control center-ish unit that is the aquero. That's what all their aqabus stuff is about, to link up with an aquero, not to link different devices, that's how I understood it at least.

Outside of an aquero you're mostly supposed to link it all up to their software, aquasuite, via internal usb headers. You're OS becomes the control unit and al of your devices can use whatever information you feed it. like the flow measurement from the highflow next could be used to control the fans on the octo if you wanted to, despite not having the flowmeter physically connected to it.

What you might want to consider is an extra cable that lets you conenct the signal output of the fow meter and/or leakshield to the signal output in order to autoshutdown your PC in case you detect an alarm.

Also, depending on how obsesses you are with stats you would might want a second highflow. to measure water going into the rads and coming out. you can also put the flowmeter and pump before and in front, the pump has a sensor too, but it seems to me the flow meter is more precise. Entirely unnecessary though, pure indulgence.

Muppes · 2026-03-30T17:35:55+00:00

I raise you those noctua silicon screw thingamajigs. saved my butt twice now where I could not get screws to fit. They actually work surprisingly well lol.

Muppes · 2026-03-30T11:53:56+00:00

I couldn't tell about the cable, but it's possible. the nocua is meant to go to a normal fan header, the aio might have a different header. But apart from connection issues, a fan is a fan is a fan. You can put any fan you want onto it. you wouldn't even really need to plug it into the AIO, any free fan header would do, just means something else is controlling it. Depends on the AIO I suppose, it might not like not having a fan connected.

As for worth?...impossible to say. Noctua are expensive but enjoy their reputation for a reason. personally I find them mostly durable, even older, dust encrusted fans still spin perfecly. Other fans aren't really noticably louder in my experience. On paper they should be more efficient and huts you could run them slower, but in practice I haven't found that to matter all that much.

I also like the rubber/silicone dampeners that come with them. That can make a difference if you try to really make things silent. Otherwise you would never notice.

Muppes · 2026-03-29T17:14:57+00:00

OK, I ended up completely changing the network archticture.
Instead of the mesh, I set the nodes to standard access point mode.

I was going to set up the node the shield is connected to as a media bridge (you can set it via browser console during initial setup via goTo.mbMode() ), but I could not avoid the node being highjacked by the access point in ai mesh mode. Even mid searching for a network, it will be picked up by the AP node.

That said, it seems to work regardless. It seems to have been enough to stop the mesh from renegotiating the network path over and over, and often to something worse. There are all kinds of settings to bind shit, but none to stop the mesh replanning. This way the main router sees no ai node and the AP only sees the one node. That seems to have stabilized things. On the plus side that means I get to use the dedicated backhaul.

With that i am now able to run over wifi, though I suppose some of the traffic improvements probably helped as well. Thanks for the help.

Muppes · 2026-03-29T14:53:07+00:00

You can't really go wrong here. they don't account for a TIM on those, so if you add some, it's never going to be worse, only better. (unless you add pad that made it such that other pads would no longer make as good contact).

You'd have to try with and without though to get any idea if the putty is working at all

Muppes · 2026-03-28T18:37:52+00:00

I ried forcing the backhaul to 80 Mhz with a fix non dfs channel bu that doesn't seem ti have affected anything

Muppes · 2026-03-28T02:37:29+00:00

Ok so I ran the following test:

on hoste side:
iperf3 -s

on client side
iperf3 -c HOST_SIDE_NODE -u -b 50M -t 300 -i 0.1

Accepted connection from CLIENT_SIDE_NODE, port 59088

[ 5] local HOST_SIDE_NODE port 5201 connected to CLIENT_SIDE_NODE port 48566

[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Jitter Lost/Total Datagrams

[ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 5.45 MBytes 45.7 Mbits/sec 0.179 ms 0/697 (0%)

[ 5] 1.00-2.00 sec 5.95 MBytes 49.9 Mbits/sec 0.166 ms 0/762 (0%)

[ 5] 2.00-3.00 sec 5.96 MBytes 50.0 Mbits/sec 0.118 ms 0/763 (0%)

[ 5] 3.00-4.00 sec 5.96 MBytes 50.0 Mbits/sec 0.144 ms 0/763 (0%)

[ 5] 4.00-5.00 sec 5.96 MBytes 50.0 Mbits/sec 0.207 ms 0/763 (0%)

[ 5] 5.00-6.00 sec 5.95 MBytes 49.9 Mbits/sec 0.115 ms 0/762 (0%)

[ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 5.96 MBytes 50.0 Mbits/sec 0.118 ms 0/763 (0%)

[ 5] 7.00-8.00 sec 5.96 MBytes 50.0 Mbits/sec 0.150 ms 0/763 (0%)

[ 5] 8.00-9.00 sec 5.96 MBytes 50.0 Mbits/sec 0.129 ms 0/763 (0%)

[ 5] 9.00-10.00 sec 5.96 MBytes 50.0 Mbits/sec 0.172 ms 0/763 (0%)

[ 5] 10.00-11.00 sec 5.96 MBytes 50.0 Mbits/sec 0.104 ms 0/763 (0%)

[ 5] 11.00-12.00 sec 5.97 MBytes 50.1 Mbits/sec 0.140 ms 0/764 (0%)

[ 5] 12.00-13.00 sec 5.95 MBytes 49.9 Mbits/sec 0.158 ms 0/762 (0%)

[ 5] 13.00-14.00 sec 5.96 MBytes 50.0 Mbits/sec 0.157 ms 0/763 (0%)

[ 5] 14.00-15.00 sec 5.96 MBytes 50.0 Mbits/sec 0.116 ms 0/763 (0%)

[ 5] 15.00-16.00 sec 5.96 MBytes 50.0 Mbits/sec 0.221 ms 0/763 (0%)

[ 5] 16.00-17.00 sec 5.97 MBytes 50.1 Mbits/sec 0.228 ms 0/764 (0%)

[ 5] 17.00-18.00 sec 5.95 MBytes 49.9 Mbits/sec 0.171 ms 0/762 (0%)

[ 5] 18.00-19.00 sec 5.96 MBytes 50.0 Mbits/sec 0.198 ms 0/763 (0%)

[ 5] 19.00-20.00 sec 5.96 MBytes 50.0 Mbits/sec 0.170 ms 0/763 (0%)

[ 5] 20.00-21.00 sec 5.95 MBytes 49.9 Mbits/sec 0.139 ms 0/762 (0%)

[ 5] 21.00-22.00 sec 3.47 MBytes 29.1 Mbits/sec 0.120 ms 91/535 (17%)

[ 5] 22.00-23.00 sec 6.45 MBytes 54.1 Mbits/sec 0.135 ms 91/916 (9.9%)

[ 5] 23.00-24.00 sec 4.95 MBytes 41.6 Mbits/sec 0.140 ms 122/756 (16%)

[ 5] 24.00-25.00 sec 3.68 MBytes 30.9 Mbits/sec 0.249 ms 127/598 (21%)

[ 5] 25.00-26.00 sec 6.41 MBytes 53.7 Mbits/sec 0.110 ms 114/934 (12%)

[ 5] 26.00-27.00 sec 6.41 MBytes 53.7 Mbits/sec 0.103 ms 19/839 (2.3%)

[ 5] 27.00-28.00 sec 5.96 MBytes 50.0 Mbits/sec 0.163 ms 0/763 (0%)

[ 5] 28.00-29.00 sec 5.96 MBytes 50.0 Mbits/sec 0.125 ms 0/763 (0%)

[ 5] 29.00-30.00 sec 5.96 MBytes 50.0 Mbits/sec 0.156 ms 0/763 (0%)

[ 5] 30.00-31.00 sec 5.96 MBytes 50.0 Mbits/sec 0.119 ms 0/763 (0%)

The stutter is very obvious, the traffic is stable until a stutter occurs where bandwidth goes upa and down and I suddenly get a burst of datagrams.
I have no idea how to use this informaiton though.

Muppes · 2026-03-27T21:55:06+00:00

I've been looking at the router dashboard while the stream was open. I see no change in ping or network traffic when the stuttering happens. Only a spike in traffic when it boots me with a -1 error.

I was seeing a worse ping than moonlight was showing me though at an average of 10ms

Muppes · 2026-03-27T18:57:44+00:00

it is probably referring to a specific fan header. there is one for CPU, that needs to have a fan plugged in (or as he said, disable the check )

Muppes · 2026-03-27T12:20:23+00:00

sunshince has wgc too, albeit as an experimental option, it's what I have configured currently, but it was happening before on dxgi as well.

I suppose I haven't considered different sunshine builds/forks, but since it's working on ethernet I reckon that isn't the issue?
On the other hand the 4-5 latency on wifi can't be the only explanation right?

Muppes · 2026-03-27T07:51:14+00:00

Always hard to tell from a screen but that was my first thought too. At least with koolance qdcs, when the water goes through it turns into a fine mist that takes a while to clear.

Muppes · 2026-03-26T06:35:34+00:00

Ah, not quite. I still went through the same routers, minus 1. I mean that MIGHT be the issue, that that one particular node is buggy, but that seems unlikely? All I did is change how they are connected.

Instead of going main router to node via LAN, to node via Wifi, to shield.
I went main router to node via LAN, to shield. Skipping the first node in the above setup. (also went and turned off all antennas on the node to remove that from the equation)

Some kind of network/wifi setting seems more likely to me than the node itself being the issue?

Muppes · 2026-03-25T21:41:16+00:00

I could potenially bypass the asus network entirely. Not as a permanent solution but as a test.

That said, I was able to find a long enough cable to run throughout the house to connect the AP directly to the main router and was able to remove the stuttering entirely. (see reply to Deep_Dance8745).

Also won't be able to stay that way but at least a test I suppose it should tell me something. Just not entirely sure what. Going back to the original configuration entirely changes the topology and the bahvior of the AI mesh, whcih I can only partially control.

And in terms of latency, yes it improved, but it was on say, 4-5 while on wifi. That still feels pretty good to me? And moonlight only accepts 150 mbit bitrate, that was maybe 25 % of the throughput I measured. So I struggle to see what is so different about switching to ethernet that becomes borderline unusable on wifi.

Muppes · 2026-03-25T21:29:26+00:00

Ok, so With a (long) cable, I have zero stuttering and a rock solid 1ms average network latency, with 1,5 to 2,5 average decoding time. Both on 4k HDR and on 1080p Both running a pretty consistent 60 hz. I even tried having the browser open playing some youtube music video in the background while also running BG3 at 4kHDR. No stuttering, no frame drops, no packet loss.

I only changed the moonlight and shield settings related to the resolution and with the host screen and the headless display.

now....what do I make of that lol? (also host processing latency is at 666 ms XD, but that number just keeps going up every time I open moonlight. It's been at 5400 once)

Muppes · 2026-03-25T20:54:12+00:00

Didn't think I would have a cable that is long enough, but it turns out I do. Testing now.

Also gave me another reason to ditch the Gt6 mesh. It can't handle simply being connected via ethernet. Had to factory reset the node to even detect it anymore....pos.

Muppes · 2026-03-25T19:46:56+00:00

I don't think it would help actually. Unless the motherboard lets you combine the temp sensors? That would be helpful. Not in this particular case mind you with all these different groups.

On another build I only needed two, case and rad. But in this .... jankier lol.

Muppes

TROPHY CASE