i'm part way through this build done test fitting my components and kind of playing around the
placement of things so i thought it would be a good point to hit pause and talk measurements
and component choices so let's take a look at some numbers that i think you'll want to know
welcome to machines and more we'll continue our look here at the ssupd meshlicious and
start diving into the custom water cooling content and as you're planning your build
i hope the information in this video can be helpful to you and i think this is going to be
one really fun case to build and no matter what level you're at so our first number is 53 and
that's roughly the clearance you have over your cpu when you shift the case divider from the three
slot gpu configuration over to the four slot gpu configuration now obviously you're not going to
be running a four slot thick water block but the reason i would advise doing this is if you want
to mount a combo pump res on the gpu side of the house so to do this you'll loosen up the screws
holding down the case divider remove the cover next to the motherboard's I/o shield and then just
shift the whole divider over there's quite a few screws so take your time make sure everything is
unscrewed and then you should be able to unlatch it now with 53 millimeters you should have more
than enough for your typical cpu water block and your typical G-1/4" elbow i've got the alpha cool
fitting here and also the optimus am4 block and it just about as flush with the front
but you're definitely going to need either a hard line bend or a 90 degree fitting to
get out of this tight area so just keep that in mind that also means though that you need to have
an sfx or an sfxl power supply only because now you don't have thickness for an atx unit
and for custom cooling i would double down on my recommendation to go for the sfx unit because
you're going to want every little bit of space here now this fan also pretty much has to face
out now because there's no way you can turn it in and you don't have to clearance to offset it
either and so you're going to want to use the mesh panel over this side for that ventilation
and on the other side that gpu block is going to be completely covering the fan and well that's not
a good configuration so that brings us to the next number and to the other side of the house
from the edge of the case to the case divider you have 86 millimeters so now this is no problem for
something like the ek flt 120 ddc combo pump res and even if you need to utilize the surface level
ports here you still have enough clearance for them with uh like an elbow fitting so mounting
this particular pump will be a bit tricky due to the way the divider is notched out on the top
but i did fashion up some washers to clamp it down to the tray well enough and then i'm just
going to use a zip tie or two through the actual holes on the divider plate to just
secure it down in case anything slips this particular pump with the mounting solution is
58 millimeters to the surface of the unit before you account for any fittings so it is a good fit
for this case the d5 version of this pump res is actually exactly 86 millimeters thick so if
you do go with that one just realize that it's going to be right flush with the surface of the
case and you will only have those bottom ports usable another good candidate for this case
would be something like the corsair xd3 ddc and because that pump is completely encased
and that does come in at also a little bit less than 60 millimeters in thickness so it's
comparable to this guy here the reason i like this style of pump res for the case especially the ek
flt style here is because it will be quite easy to ensure that the pump is topped off the pump
does sit lower in this res and if you don't fill it up all the way you should have no issues still
with a more traditional cylindrical pump res sitting at the top of the case right here well
it's going to be really tricky to bleed it out and fill level will be really critical to getting it
to run properly and you almost have to fill it up a hundred percent of the way for there to be
absolutely no sound a unit like this ek kinetic will need about 75 millimeters of clearance to
run properly so while you could definitely mount it to this case here through the holes in the
back the case here i just don't think this style is as optimal and if you do go with something like
this just try to get it as low as possible but i think the fill level will still be very critical
this one is the 120 millimeter long tube and i think that's ideal for the flexibility in this
case but with the right unit you could probably get a 160 long cylinder in the case if you had
to something like the you know the ek 160 spc is probably something that'll fit within the space
here but you do lose the flexibility for for the tubing coming out of the top here so continuing
on the case we arrive at 330 and that's the gpu length that you'll have all the way to the top
if you shift the support bars all the way down to the bottom of course the true amount of length
that you have is going to be contingent on how your pump is positioned and connected if you're
using a standalone pump res unit and that is the absolute max now if you used a combo cpu block
and pump like the barrow unit then yeah that you definitely have all that space here if you need it
if you need to overlap your pump i think that's going to be quite tricky if the ports
on your gpu block are at the end for my setup here though i'm using the ek3070fe block
and that gets the gpu length down to a paltry 185 millimeter so it is a good fit it's such a perfect
fit that with a direct connection to the gpu block with an elbow fitting and the support bar is
shifted all the way down the top of the pump rest is almost flush with the top of the case it sticks
out just enough so that the offset in the mesh top cover can fit it perfectly now if you're going for
a pump res and your gpu block does need to overlap you should be able to make it work but then my
recommendation would be really just go for a block that has the ports on the side here versus the end
and if you did have the over overlap along with needing to use those ports at the end of the block
that's going to be really tough now getting into rant selection the magic number is 64 millimeters
of max thickness for your rad plus fans for a 280 since you would mount that directly to the case
panel now with a 240 you lose about a millimeter because of the adapter plate that's required there
what that means is that if you really want to go for the thickest possible rand you could
do something like a 45 millimeter thick pe 240 rad plus slim fans now that being said i really
wouldn't recommend that type of build i think i think it's something like xspc's ex240 which
is 36 millimeters coupled with 25 millimeter thick fans would give you just a little bit of breathing
room and that would be critical to making the build work out nicely now the question is thick
rad with slim fans versus thinner red with regular fans i'd always go for the latter and getting the
best quality fan into your build is going to yield more performance your choice of 240 or
280 is also going to depend on your component choice here i would lean towards a 244 reasons
of cable management and the fact that you can use these very high quality nfa 12 by 25s here
um but you know throw something like arctic p14s on a 280 and you also have a huge amount
of cooling potential there now for my build here i'm going to go with a hardware labs gts240 i'm
only going to be running a 5800x and the 3070 in this so with some decent fan speeds i'm confident
this will work just fine these gts 240 rats are awesome and just a hair under 30 millimeters thick
so you can get that combination of effective cooling and space efficiency with this rad and
it also does come in a 280. another similar round which is also made by hardware labs is the corsair
xr5 which is very similar and also comes in both 240 and 280. it does perform a little bit worse
than the gts240 but it is a good rad nonetheless if you're running a 240 you have two positions
and even though it looks here like the adapter only has a limited amount of travel just based
on the notches and the screws you can just take the adapter off and flip the whole set around
so that you can position the red exactly where you want it so we've covered all the major components
except for one thing here and that brings us to the last number which is one and that's because
the cable management in this case especially with tubing run considerations is going to be
one heck of a challenge i did switch power supplies here to the corsair sf600 because i have
a mesh cable set for it but in general getting cables to look nice in this case is really going
to take some serious experimentation you rather have to going to be very creative in hiding them
or get nice cables to show them off so in my build instead of hiding that completely which
i think is extremely difficult i'm just going to embrace it and make them part of the theme
the back of this motherboard does have enough clearance that you can just snake them behind
and also that pump bracket for the flt unit is perfect for cable management
so i think it will look okay but just keep in mind cable management in this case is already tricky
and yeah i hope this turns out okay with the theme here so i'm gonna go ahead and finish
looping this guy up i am gonna be cutting up a whole bunch of
uh this guy here so i'll do that we'll follow up with the full build tubing considerations and uh
performance discussion shortly so go ahead like subscribe links down below thanks for watching