Water Cooling Gaming Build Guide Feat. Silverstone TJ10 & Swiftech H220 Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,913 words · ~14 min read
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promo.com. Welcome to a gaming build guide that we're doing here, guys. So,
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we've got a Silverstone TJ10, a Silverstone Strider Gold Evolution 1000
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watt with their sweet braided cables that are actually using like a nylon
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rather than a plastic braid. So, they're absolutely perfect in terms of not being
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able to see through to the cords. Extremely durable, all that kind of good
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stuff. They look absolutely awesome. Uh, for liquid cooling, we're going to be
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going with a Swifttech H220, but we're actually going to be expanding it. So,
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we're going to add a liquid cooled GTX
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670 as well as a Black Ice Extreme
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single 120 mm radiator, giving us a total of 3x 120 mm rads, one of which is
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a thick rad, as well as a liquid cooled
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3770K and a liquid cooled GTX 660 in the
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same loop. So, hm GTX 670. Sorry, I said
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660, I meant 670. We're also going with a Gigabyte Thunderbolt ready board. This
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is a Z77X UP5th. So, this is pretty much
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state-of-the-art as far as features get. It actually has dual Thunderbolt ports.
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For memory, we're going to go with 16 gigs of Corsair Dominator Platinum 2400
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MHz memory. So, this is just I mean, honestly, this is a showcase piece. We
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want it to look awesome. It's also got the blue light bars in it. So, this is
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going to be a blue themed build. Hence the use of blue LED fans for our
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radiators as well as ah yes two Samsung
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840 Pro 256 gigs in RAID zero and of
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course the centerpiece the Silverstone TJ10 and we're pretty much ready to go.
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So this isn't going to be an exact step byep how to put CPU in socket that kind
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of build guide but it's just going to be kind of following along with us as we
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build up this sweet looking liquid cooled machine. Oh yeah, we're using
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blue tubing as well. Now, one of the first things we're going to do because
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we have to expand our Swifttech H220 is we're going to loosen there you go the
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included hose clamps and we're actually going to drain the system completely and
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swap out the fluid for something else. So, we're we're also going to swap out
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the tubing because we don't have more of Swift black tubing on hand and for our
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blue themed build, we wanted to use blue tubing anyway. So, step one is to loosen
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there you go that clamp which holds the tubing in place. Now, you want if you're
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going to reuse these clamps, you want to use 3/8 inch ID 5/8 inch OD tubing. So,
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there you go. There's the Swifttech Hydrax water that's inside. So, we're
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going to take the whole thing apart. Then, what we're going to do to simplify the filling procedure for ourselves is
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we are going to put it back together with all the additional components in
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the loop. We're going to kind of measure where the tubing's going to go and then
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we're going to fill it. Then, we're going to put the whole assembled thing back into the system. This will allow us
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to fill it as thoroughly as possible without trapping any air bubbles in it.
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Now, the plastic brackets that allow for toolless installation of 120 mm fans
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have to be removed from the top of the case. So, you just take out the eight
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screws here, here, here, and here. And then you can just pull those brackets
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out just like that. We're going to replace them with the rad support
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bracket that is available as an add-on for the TJ9 and TJ10 case from
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Silverstone. So, we've made some changes now. We've actually gone ahead, we
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figured out that we can mount the rad
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bracket directly to the fans rather than mounting it to the rad as it says in the
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instructions. So, this gives us the ability to use the reservoir that's
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built into the uh the H220, which means we don't have to preassemble the loop if
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we don't want to because we'll be able to pull it out, top it up, and then put
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it back in if the need should arise. So, we can just go ahead and show you guys
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where this is going to go. So it screws in sort of here somewhere. Something
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like that. There we go. Just like that. So it's going to sit in the top. Then
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our thick rad is going to go back here. We've also installed the power supply.
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I'm just going to pull this back out. So we've installed the power supply with
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its sleing and we're trying to figure out what we're going to do in terms of cable management because this case is a
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little bit dated and it doesn't have the best cable management out there. Oh
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yeah, last thing. Right. So this is an important step uh at this stage in the
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build. So you can see where the cables are running out of the fans. So you have
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to plan for we're planning to plug all the fans into our motherboard. So this
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one's going to go here. This one's going to go here. The pump is going to go to
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the CPU fan. The rear fan is going to go to the bottom one here. And the front
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fan's going to go here. That way we can use the motherboard's utility to control
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all the fans in this system. So we ended up scrapping the Black Ice Extreme. And
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I remember what I hated about these radiators, and that's that the mounting
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holes are 120 mil, but the actual radiator is quite wide, so we weren't
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able to fit it in our case. The bad news is that uh we had to use a thin radiator
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to replace it. And it's a bit of a an older one, but I'm going to show you
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guys my magic trick for fixing beat up radiators. And Sharpie marker. And
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Sharpie marker. And Sharpie marker. It
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actually works surprisingly well. You have to look at it pretty close to realize that it's been touched up with
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with a permanent marker. So, there you go, guys. There's a line of tech tips
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for you. Draw on your computer. If there's anything about it that you don't
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like, it even works for little places where the fins are bent. You just throw
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some Sharpie in there and it becomes a lot less noticeable. There you go. It
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just like disappears like that. It's awesome. Uh, we've also mounted the
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motherboard into the case. So, there you go. That's what it's going to look like.
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Uh, this is for some kind of like server thing or something like that. Once we
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get the black the black of the other side panel on there, it should look a little bit better. But I would have
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preferred if Silverstone had stuck with the older revision, which didn't have
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this hole in it. And I think that's pretty much our status update for now.
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All right, so we're about to load our drives in, which is on these convenient
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rails with padding for antiibration. However, we won't have to worry about
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that cuz we're using 2 and 1/2 in drives on 3 and 1/2 in adapters. Don't mind the
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OCZ adapters. The uh the drives are Samsung still. So there we go. Clicks in
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just like that. Now, I'd also like to take a moment to show you guys our CPU
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block installation. So, that's done. So, these three 3/8 in tubes are going to
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route to this radiator, that radiator, and that GPU block. Also, the cable
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management, although it's not perfect in this case because we're using
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individually sleeved cables. We did manage to get the 8 pin behind the
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motherboard and have it come up individually so it's nice and thin back
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there and go behind the board. Also, the 24 pin is going to look pretty decent
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right here, I think. And then we've got all of our front panel ones routed
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behind the motherboard tray in a bit of a tricky way. So I'm going to go ahead
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and flip this around so you guys can check it out. Oh, it's getting heavy
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already. Wow. Okay, so there you go. So these have to come between this support
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brace here and the motherboard tray. Then there's a little bit of room here
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cuz this support brace actually prevents you from routing cables across it. I
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would have liked for Silverstone to have somehow somehow improved that, but there
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you go. So, we did manage to get most of our cable routing done. And of course, a
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sleeved modular power supply makes a really big difference because we only
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have to have these cables connected to it, which is going to keep the bottom
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much tidier than it would have otherwise been. We've actually disconnected quite
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a few of the cables here. So, uh, we're getting close to the end of our water
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cooling adventure. As with any liquid cooled build, you can make whatever
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plans you want, but a lot of the time you end up changing little things here
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or there. So, we actually rotated the SwiftTech block. Uh, hold on. Which
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side's threaded on here? There we go. That's the threaded side. Uh, we rotated
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it 90 degrees so that we'd have our inlet on the top so that we could get uh
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an easier run to the what will be the outlet on our reservoir. So, that's
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going to go up above the dominators there. Then, that also gives us a nice
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clean straight run from this guy to this guy. This one was really tight and was
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kind of hard to get in there, but uh overall I think it's going to look
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really, really sharp. So, here we are putting our hose clamps down on the very
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base of the barb there. And then what we're going to do is we're going to grab
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the Swift screws right here, and we're
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going to clamp those babies down. So, those will look just black and stealthy
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uh with the included fittings on the radiator as well as the pump. And then
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we're using compressions on the other ones uh to make those ones look really
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clean as well. And it looks like we actually haven't run that yet. Other
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than that, oh yeah, so we've routed the cables for the video card itself. So
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those are going to go here. Again, nice and stealth cables. We've also started
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cable tying things down to make them a little bit more clean. And we're getting
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really close to the end of this build here. The liquid cooling tubings have
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been routed. So, you can see one of the things to be really careful of is when
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you're using these clamp uh well, these clamp clamps, you want to make sure only
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one side's threaded. So, you want to make sure that you're going to be able to access it with the screwdriver. So,
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we had to take the dominators out to get at the ones on the CPU block/pump unit.
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Um, we have some very tight runs here. I don't like to cross tubing in a liquid
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cooling build. It's just one of those like it's one of those faux paw type
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things where it doesn't quite look as clean. But I think overall it kind of
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worked in here because we do have very very short runs which is part of what
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makes a water cooling build look optimal as well. You want very very short short
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runs. And I mean I think the only things that I could complain about with this
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particular machine are maybe the short graphics card. I wish we had kind of a
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longer graphics card so it looked a bit more a bit more beastly. But other than
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that, I mean it's uh it's really really really sharp and I'm very very pleased
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with it. So we're going to go ahead and fill it. Now, we did change our minds
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about filling it uh first, then putting the whole thing in. And I'm glad we did
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because that did make it a little bit easier to deal with overall. So, filling
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it is just going to involve taking out this rad and then um setting up a power
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cord here so that we can uh power cycle
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in order to circulate water through the loop and then keep topping up the
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radiator as we go. We also still have to run SATA cables, but other than that,
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we're pretty much done. So, guys, this is it. This is where we reveal what this
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project was actually for. Here's a little tour of our Steeler series themed
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gaming den set. So, we're going to be doing some Steeler unboxings, as you can
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probably tell from all the boxes that are here. So, we've got uh a bunch of
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cool stuff we've never looked at before, like some variations of the Siberia V2s,
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a new Sensei, as well as their Apex RAW.
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That's something I'm actually really excited to check out. We saw that for the first time at CES. I've also hinted
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on Twitter about this. So, we actually got
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a Steeler vinyl wrapped custom gaming
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desktop uh sort of table here that I think is absolutely stunning. You can
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get this done for about 500 bucks to get a custom printed vinyl and then have it
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wrapped around a table if you can find someone you know who does it, which I think is just freaking sick. And just,
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you know, I mean, you don't have to put Steel Series logos on it, but you could put whatever you want. and it would just
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kind of actually look it makes the overall desk look so much cooler. Uh so,
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right, so our rig is done. I meant to mention this before, but we never
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installed an optical drive because we intend to use an external optical drive
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for our optical needs cuz we don't really use it all that often. And then
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it's time to power it up. So, I want to add some more lighting effects still.
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But, oh, I forgot to plug it in. But this is what it looks like for now just
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with the Dominator light bars in there as well as some glow from the LED fans
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that are uh that are around the edges there. Can you see that? Okay. Uh try
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and get a little bit less less glare maybe from this angle a little bit. But
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uh yeah, overall I'm extremely pleased with this build. It's a wicked looking
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like gaming den build. And oh, is it
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still charging though? It's still recording. I know. Oh lol. here. Why
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don't we move that or Oh, we can't move it
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much. Okay, that was all the moving it. All right, so that gives you guys a
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pretty good look at what it looks like inside. We've also got a really sweet
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glow coming out of the top grills here because those LED fans are right up
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against the grills and the rads are on the inside. Uh, if you wanted to see the
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finished insides, which I don't remember if I showed you in the last shot or not,
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looks pretty good in there, too. I know I said a lot about how the cable
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management of the TJ10 isn't really optimal, but I think you guys will find
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that in spite of that, we ended up with a very, very clean looking interior,
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aided in a big way by these sleeved cables here that are available as an
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upgrade for the uh Strider 1000 Evolution. So, stunning build. Actually,
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this is a really good angle, too, from slightly over more that way. There you
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go. So, uh, big thanks to Silverstone for helping us with this TJ07 build.
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And, uh, I'm looking forward to bringing you guys lots of cool videos from our
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new Steel Series Gaming Den. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips
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for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.