Hi all,

Just wanted to share my watercoold H200 Ryzen build. I didn't find much in the way of watercooled H200's when I planned this so i'm happy to answer any questions people may have.

I started off last year when Ryzen launched and picked up an R5 1600, a GTX 1060 and some cheap and garish LED stuff to get it working. Fast forward to this year and after watching god knows how many watercooling videos on YouTube (Here's looking at you JayzTwoCents...) I wanted to give it a go myself, only I also wanted ITX form factor. And silent operation. I got pretty damn close!

Specs -

Case - NZXT H200

CPU - Ryzen 5 1600 with EK Velocity copper block @3.8GHz

GPU - Zotac GTX1080 Mini with EK Thermosphere universal block @2088MHz

RAM -Corsair Vengeance LPX LED DDR4-3000

Motherboard - Asus ROG Strix X470-I

PSU - SilverStone SX650-G SFX 650W modular

Radiators - Alphacool ST 120mm and Alphacool ST 240mm X-flow

Pump - Alphacool DDC pump/res combo

Fittings - Alphacool Eiszapfen

Fans - 3x EK Vardar F3-120 for water loop, Gelid Silent 6 for GPU VRM's, Noctua NF-R8 for PSU

Coolant - Mayhems Pastel UV white

Cables - Braided white extensions

I Picked up a Strix X470-I board, a Zotac GTX1080 Mini, a H200 with lovely red trim (this wouldn't be an issue later) and started collecting the plethora of fittings, radiators and water blocks.

I had the idea of somehow tying it thematically with my headset, I use AKG K701's with a small tube amp that I bloody adore and i love the white/silver/leather aesthetic. First thing I did was hand stitch some chocolate brown leather and glue it to the originally red cable management bar that is synonymous with NZXT's current H-line of cases. I also painted the fan inlets on the front edges in silver to match the headset's detail.

Then I saw videos of builds with an LCD screen in the case which worked out perfectly for me, i'd recently switched from a triple monitor setup (I used to stream a lot) to a Predator X34A and was missing having a second screen for Spotify or monitoring temps so I picked up a 5" LCD screen intended for a Raspberry Pi and looped an HDMI cable out of the back of the case into my GPU. The screen fit perfectly where the SSD drive used to be, I relocated that to the back of the case behind the motherboard. I now run Rainmeter on this with a skin I built myself and stats pulled from HWinfo.

Speaking of the Mini, it's bloody hard to get a nice waterblock for it. I'd heard rumours of Barrow making one but shipping was weeks away, the 1080Ti Mini block wouldn't fit and the Alphacool M14 wouldn't work as the inlet/outlet pointed out of the end of the GPU right into where my Alphacool DDC pump/res combo would sit. Then I found a rarely seen little gem on the EKWB site for their Thermosphere block - the fittings were in the usual place and it had the same flow characteristics as their Supremacy CPU blocks, all I had to do was heatsink the VRM's and RAM and apply some form of airflow. I cut down the old air cooled heatsink that was on the card and attached a 60mm Gelid Silent 6 for constant airflow and practically silent operation.

Finally, the last noisy item in the build was the SilverStone PSU, it had silent operation below 40 degrees C but once it warmed up it was bloody noisy. Unfortunately you can only fit a >15mm deep 80mm fan inside the PSU housing so I fitted an Noctua NF-R8 externally and ran it off a PWM header on the board with fan speed monitored to ensure it was working. The result is much quieter operation and cooler temperatures consistently.

Throw in some 10mm ID hardline tubing, some shiny Alphacool Eiszapfen fittings and 1x120mm and 1x240mm X-Flow radiator, an EK Velocity CPU block and three EK Vardar F3-120 fans and I finally got it up and running with some Mayhems Pastel UV white. No leaks, temps are stable, everything went surprisingly painlessly first time and i'm gobsmacked something hasn't died.

Honestly, i'd love to one day have a Zen 2 CPU and an RTX2080Ti in here too but I can still get within if not exceed my GSync range at 3440x1440 depending on game, workloads would only be classed as light productivity so it'll hold up for a while like this. I reckon I could squeeze all that in there though!

Anyway thanks for reading, I wanted to make info available to anyone who wanted to attempt something similar, there's not much in the way of custom looping the H200 that I could find so hopefully this will be useful, if anyone has any questions feel free and i'll do my best to answer