Gigabyte G1.Sniper M3 Motherboard Build & Living Review

[Graceman]

Hi Dark Mantis

Finally got together all the parts could not do the desktop case you used as I needed to use a upright tower type so used an Antec NSK 4000B mid tower case
Then I used the Corsair CX 450 watt PSU and also the corsair 16GB memory in two 8Gb strips
I stilll used the Alphacool nexxus UT60 radiator and the same pump and reservoir as your build but found things had moved on since you published this and the water block was no longer available, so I choose the Ek supremacy CSQ full cooper Water block.

After some re-arrangement of the case internals and fitting some braces for the water pump & reservoir found I could pipe up easily with only joins at the radiator, pump, & waterblock just 6 fittings in all. I manged to pipe through the rear of the case with just two 12mm holes and this eliminated any bulkhead fittings. all the pipe fittings are straight and pipe runs in gentle bends.

Now if I can only get an answer from EK as to if there is requirement to orientate the water block to Intel i7/3770 chip I can finish the build.

Its still going to be the G1 Sniper M3 and i7/3770k chip with Intel internal graphics so no graphics card and I now have the Revo OCZ revodrive 240Gb PCIe hard card so if they reply over christmas I shall be trying to install windows 8 on a clean new hopefully fast pc.

The only question I now have is the connection for the pump did you use the cpu fan control for this so it has variable control or did you connect to sys/fan socket on the MB ?

The pump is neatly by a sysfan socket but its going to be another cable if I need to connect to the cpu fan control.

[Graceman]

Due to poor quality of the Alphacool parts supplied to me they would not assemble correctly, The reservoir did not have an oring grove of the correct depth to match the oring as supplied.
On Assembly you tighten the reservoir to the pump body and the oring is clamped between the faces, due to the varying depth the offset strained the plastic to the point of fracture across the weakest point where two internal threads are closest. This happens without much tension applied.

The oring section is 1.42-45mm the oring groove varies from 0.43mm to 0.77mm and if you go to any oring manufacturers site the oring groove depth should be 1.15 mm

The object of this is that the oring is clamped and the rubber material spreads and deflects in the groove thus forming a seal the mating faces of the two parts mate and limit any over clamping pressure so optimal seal is achieved.

[Graceman]

I have had nothing but issues with Alphacool products since trying to build a water cooled PC, whilst the UK suppliers have been great the products are poor in quality not manufactured to any real standard and fail.
I received second hand parts missing components and so far have failed to get any real response from Alphacool.
The uK supplier has since stopped this product line due to the issues
I post this as a warning so other do not waste their time & money.

I started this in November and still cannot get the Alphacool products to assemble correctly. Alpha cool just ignore emails to their forum .

[nmarquez84]

Hello friends, I am looking for a motherboard for the Intel Core i5-3570K (Quad-Core Processor 3.4 GHz 4 Core LGA 1155 - BX80637I53570K), the PC will be used for graphic designers require use Auto autocad, which I recommend

[nmarquez84]

Hello friends, I am looking for a motherboard for the Intel Core i5-3570K (Quad-Core Processor 3.4 GHz 4 Core LGA 1155 - BX80637I53570K), the PC will be used for graphic designers require use Auto autocad, which I recommend

Hi Graceman,

I am sure that you would be very pleased with the build just as you have described. The OCZ Revodrive is faster than any SSDs and works smoothly as well as being able to boot from it straight from the box.

The power supply is included with the case and as with most of Antec's PSUs it is more powerful than it states. It ran all the hardware there no problem even including the graphics card so if you are planning to use the on chip graphics it should be more than enough.

Although the i5 2500K I used has a good on chip GPU option I would advise upgrading to the IvyBridge i7 3770K with the HD4000 gpu which should be fine for what you are asking of it. It is a step up from the SandyBridge's on chip graphics.

There are other Z77 based motherboards that would suit you but this is a well built board and for a fair price to be honest.

If you watercool the system in a similar way to how I did you should find it quite straightforward and what I particularly liked about this design is that it is fairly safe as the majority of the water  components are kept away from the rest of the delicate components in case of any leak. I was very impressed with the Antec case, it was very solidly built and a nice design.