High-End Gaming PC 2021/2022 with Custom Water Cooling | Part 2 Assembly

Summary

The components we have chosen are neither the cheapest nor the most expensive. Especially the case from Be Quiet!, the Silent Base 802, offers high-quality workmanship and enough space for such a custom water cooling project for a very fair price. An absolute recommendation from my side! The 1000 watt power supply is also the right choice here, especially since the future of GPUs sounds power hungry. Let’s hope that the 1000 watts will not be too low in the end! I don’t have to say anything about the graphics card, because an NVIDIA RTX 3080 FE (underwater) is not a bad choice in terms of price-performance. The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X was still the faster CPU on the market at the start of the project. Now, with Intel’s Alderlake, this has changed again in Intel’s favor, but the 5800X is still a very good CPU. The differences are only marginal in WQHD anyway!

Image gallery of the installation of the water cooling system from Alphacool

 

And what about Alphacool now? The custom water cooling system turned out fantastic. The components are really well made and in terms of compatibility only remains to say: Yes, Alphacool has its own aRGB connector solution. But you can chain them endlessly, they don’t fall apart again at a slight pull (if you do cable management). At the end there is an adapter to 3 pin aRGB header for the mainboard and ready! By the way, this adapter is included with the GPU, CPU block and ice ball. As for the cooling capacity, you can see below!

Image gallery of the finished high-end PC setup

 

The peripherals from ASUS ROG are very high-quality in any case and fit the overall picture perfectly. The mouse and keyboard I had a long time with me to test and they have convinced all along the line! In terms of price, the two are also placed exactly as is customary on the market. Now if you are a die-hard ASUS ROG disciple, I also recommend the ASUS ROG Delta S, the ROG Throne Qi, and the ROG Balteus mouse pad. However, you have to be willing to pay the rather steep price for your obsession. Because there are other alternatives in terms of price-performance. But then they cannot be integrated into the ASUS ecosystem! In the end, everyone has to decide for themselves.

 

If that was too colorful for you, you can also do it in one color!

Yes, all that bling bling is not everyone’s cup of tea. You are not forced to light everything, because custom water cooling also goes without RGB! For me, that would be a violation of the RGB confessions, but who abides by such rules? Kidding aside!

Conclusion

On the subject of custom water cooling and DU, yes I mean you who have not yet installed one. Hopefully I was able to explain a lot of this to you? What counts in the end: There are things in life that cannot be expressed in words. For example, lemons! And so it is with hard tubing. Here you simply have to bend two or three tubes yourself to get a feel for how the whole thing works. It’s okay to set ambitious goals, but never without an alternative plan (corner connectors/angle pieces, etc.). Because more than two bends basically means having a lot of patience and a lot of pipes!

What can the water cooling really do now? Good question! We tested this by setting all 120 mm Rise fans to 1000 rpm and the pump to 100%. What you should always do with such a pump from my point of view!

Ryzen 7 5800X (PBO enabled), RTX 3080 max. PowerLimit (MSI Afterburner), Cinebench R23 Multicore 30 min, Furmark Burn-In)

 

GPU max. 58.4° C, memory 78° C with 370 Watt max. power consumption, CPU 82.5° C with 4.65 GHz under load and 119.2 Watt power consumption (CPU package power).
That can basically be seen, but too much power is converted into superfluous waste heat here without providing more power!

Ryzen 7 5800X (PBO enabled, core voltage offset -0.150 mV), RTX 3080 stock, Cinebench R23 multicore 30 min, Furmark burn-in)

After 25 minutes, nothing moved upwards: CPU max. 70.1° C at 4.75 GHz and only max. 112.7 watts. The GPU was cooler by a total of 10° C and only sucked 320 watts.

Gaming test: CoD Cold War 1440p Ultra Settings, DXR off, DLSS quality, NVIDIA Reflex + Boost on (30 min private Map)

Everything very cool and whisper quiet! Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to measure the dB (A). But I suspect that it is a maximum of 40 dB (A)! And you could turn the fans down even further if you wanted to. The RTX 3080 FE always clocks around 2 GHz come what may and is perfectly suited for 1440p gaming with over 150 FPS in such games. And the MSI Optix MAG274QRF-QD convinces with its very good IPS panel, which makes gaming really fun!

Do you really have to spend so much money and cool your PC with a custom water cooler? No, you don’t have to! The initial costs are already enormous compared to an AiO or alternative air coolers. On the other hand, you can also use the custom water cooling from Alphacool for years and only have to change the GPU block, because there are corresponding adapters for the CPU block! So you can think of it as a long-term investment. The cooling performance speaks for itself and leaves plenty of room for maximum overclocking at the same fan speed!

The goal for this project was to give you an understanding of custom water cooling. Even a layman, like my brother-in-law, managed it all by himself in the end! So you don’t have to be afraid of it, just the wherewithal. It still remains a matter of taste! Finally, a short timelapse video that my brother-in-law has made along the way. Is now not the best quality, but still become quite cool. A Like would be quite nice – so film off!

My brother-in-law was able to implement the original plan in the end, but only thanks to many unplanned corner connectors and angle pieces. The overall result is very successful in my view and all ASUS ROG fans will surely be able to elicit a tear of joy from this sight! What do you think? See you soon in the forum and I wish you all a happy Easter!

All water cooling components were provided by Alphacool for the project without obligation or strings attached. The ASUS ROG components are from my test stock, which were provided to me by ASUS without any conditions and released for this project. The same goes for the NVIDIA RTX 3080 FE, which is also from my test stock and was approved by NVIDIA for the test setup. The Be Quiet! Silent Base 802 as well as the Be Quiet! Straight Power 11 Platinum 1000 watts are from Igor’s test stock and were also contributed for this project. All other components were purchased by the company itself.