So, it's a long story
As I know, there is no cheap LGA 2011 narrow AIO water coolers. I bought four Gammaxx L240T and designed custom mounting brackets that was laser cut from 2 mm AISI304 steel. Also, standard mounts (6mm) was too high, and I used set of DIN912 M4x20 bolt + one stanard nut + one DIN985 M4 nut with plastic insert to fix the water block.
Everything else was quite trivial, x10qbi works just fine with four fans running at low rpm. As my system come without backplane I decided to disassemble HDD holder grid and made sort-of soundproof labyrinth that allows airflow but cancels high frequency noise from PSU fans a bit. Temperatures is fine, and only PCH10G is overheating, so I put two fans over BMC board for now, probably will change it to something else in future.
Machine was installed in IBM 11U rack that was soundproofed with felt, and two 140 mm fans wan installed to pull the hot air from the rack. Now it works with 3x E7 8891 v2 idling at 40-45 C and running at 60-65 C under load. Noise level is 37 dB idling and 43dB under full load, and most of the noise came from the PSU that I will change to something less annoying in the near future. Next steps will be design and fabrication of new top cover and hacking EMC VNX disk shelf to use noctua fans in the PSU.
nice job! this is quite useful information and i agree that coming up with a nice way to mount waterblocks on the CPUs is not easy at all.
I'm personally coming up with a custom loop and I have LGA-2011 narrow ILM brackets from EK already:
Mounting plate Supremacy LGA-2011 Narrow ILM.
But I wasn't about to go and spend $400 on waterblocks. Fortunately, nowadays, chinese watercooling manufacturers such as Byksky and Barrow have very high quality legit stuff at a fraction of the cost. I bought a Barrow x99 block for ~$35 AUD and it actually fits the bloody mounting bracket from EK! haha! Now the only issue I had was actually the octagonal rubber ring. The one from Barrow was actually too thin for the mounting bracket. I mean the seal is O.K. but it is barely enough. So to be safe, I have 5 EK supremacy o-rings on the way. I'm confident that they'll work.
For the BMC cooling, have you looked into swapping out the stock heatsink for an active one? It seems like when you are finally able to turn down the fans, things that never got hot before are now burning. haha
I've been eyeing a few active heatsinks on ebay - I hope i can find one that's short enough to fit
Those temperatures are quite respectable with what you have. Since I can't be bothered with a rack, I'm planning on running tubing all the way to a MO-RA radiator (most likely 420mm) outdoors. That way, I can blast the fans without being worried about noise. This is valuable data because I always wondered if a single MO-RA would be enough...
I'm guessing your CPU temperature still has *alot* of headroom, because all your radiator fans are dialed down to super-quiet levels?
As for the noise from the fans, I'm quite averse to using noctua fans. They're just so stupid expensive for not alot of gain at all. I'm pretty sure the reason why the stock power supply fans (which are Nidec Ultraflo counter-rotating fans) are so loud is because the midplane fans are directly competing against them. This design is O.K. for an industrial environment but for the home with a watercooling setup, I think that the airflow needs optimisation.
My plan is to actually
flip the power supply fans around. So this means the fans will be sucking air in from the back. And I'm going to remove one of the fans, leaving the other one inside just in case something goes wrong that I haven't accounted for and I need air blasting power. The noise level from the outlet fan is actually almost inaudible at standby. But I haven't tested it at full load yet because the system doesn't boot with only 1/2 fans detected. It thinks there's something wrong. I'll have to split the single fan's tachometer.
Instead of those teeny tiny 40mm fans trying to cool the PSUs, I'm going to let the midplane fans do all the work. They're much bigger and the CFM is much higher at lower RPM. The rear fan kits will help suck even more air out. To avoid circular airflow, I have a ventilation duct fitted to the rear of the case which goes out the window - like the portable air conditioners. I'm actually in the process of setting this up and it's going to help prevent the room from getting hot.
I think that will work??? Even if you don't plan to fit ducting like me, just put a plastic separator sheet so the exhaust doesn't get sucked back into the case lol. Let me know if you end up trying that. My watercooling build is still a bit away i think.
