Another of those first water builds, yes yes.

Before I start, I want to give a shoutout to Modmymods! Those guys are awesome there, quick responses, and willing to help out! If you ever need help or have questions and/or need tips, ask Josh Knapp.

My build right now is far from perfect, definitely need to replace some tubes but I was impatient. What inspired me to post was the lack of 5000x z690 builds with MSI DDR5.

What started as a DDR4 12900K build got upgraded when I got a blast of dopamine and was able to score a set of Corsair DDR5 right off the line in Taiwan (said so on the tracking info). Conveniently, there had just been a Best Buy drop of Z690 motherboards so I did what the universe was telling me to do and obliged.

Initial DDR4 specs:

Corsair 5000x RGB
Z690 EDGE WIFI
Corsair 3600 C18 DDR4
Intel 12900K
3090 Founders Edition
Corsair H150 AIO
6 Corsair 120mm ML PRO fans.
4 Corsair 120mm LL fans
Corsair Commander Core XT
2 Samsung NVMe and 1 SSD

After the ram arrived, the motherboard followed and they were installed. I ran Cinebench R23 and temps immediately spiked to 100C, which coupled with the gentlemen over at NerdSpeak #water-cooling discord, convinced me to water cool my system.
After a bunch of questions, research, and browsing, I decided to go with hard tubing - really liked the look and decided to go for the challenge. I wanted to go for clean and longevity so I went with Primochill fluids.

Watercool Parts:

Alphacool 3090 FE GPU Block
Optimus Foundation Acrylic Matte black base CPU block (order ahead, they take a while)
D5 Next Pump
Aquacomputer Aqualis D5 100 mL Reservoir (34079)
Alphacool fittings and plugs, Barrow Valve.
Barrow 14/10 clear hard tubing
Heatkiller 360mm Slim radiators
Replaced the Corsair 120mm LL fans for 3 more ML 120s. They all top out at 2400 RPM
Aquacomputer Hubby7 hub
Additional Corsair Commander Core XT
PrimoChill Water Cooling Cleaning Prep Kit - New System
Distilled Water & Liquid Utopia



After a lot of wasted tubing, result below...




Conveniently, the Alphacool active backplate came out as I was about to post this so I ordered it from Germany and was on my doorstep 2 days after. I ordered the Alphacool pressure valve, extension fitting, and some more tubing since I decided to flip the radiator to run from GPU to rad and then to CPU. The backplate definitely gave the build a unique look but I love it!



It was a fun project and at times extremely frustrating. I only used extensions where I needed because of clearance, besides that it's all tubing. Let me know what you think!