u/professordumbdumb

Found the primary culprit in my axles - and it’s not worm gear lash (though that plays a minor role).
The main cause of sloppy axle lash is the loose tolerance between the spur’s axle keys and the axle shaft keyed end. They are extremely sloppy out on multiple sets of meus I run, but some are slightly better. Worst in the v3’s. The solution is machine gap filler, and treating the half shaft keys with a release agent prior to set assembly
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I like this case. This setup seems like a decent solution to the airflow problem I was having previously. At full chat the Alphacool reservoir generates a tonne of air bubbles - but backed off to 50% doesn’t really seem to affect cooling at all, and resolves all the cavitation. Pressure tested overnight at .3bar and all good.
Used an old 4090 MSI liquid pump to steal the correct barbs to adapt the lightning block. Looks stock from the outside. Used 10/13 soft tubing for the runs, st30 rads, and alphacool cpu block. The fans are all the newer g2 noctuas - 2 of which I stole off of a noctua aio that I was testing. The fans really are as good as they say. They come with little gaskets to optimize seal at the rad, and for the noise they generate - essentially the best fans ive used.
The fan in the loki 1200 never bothered me until now - as everything else is essentially silent. Temps are about as good as they get. 1000w to the gpu and never rises above 60c even nearly silent - but can do a bit better with pump and fan ramps - though - it will never run 1000w in normal use. Ram / ssd / cpu all nominal now - as no heat is dumping onto them from the gpu.
The rear intake fan isn’t even connected right now - as the negative pressure seems to work just fine in this config. Some have suggested to try the ap201 - and I may do at some point - just wanted to see what peak a3 would look like.

Used a silent wings 3 and took off the led cover to make it fit in the 3.5 config. Used some incredible looking standoffs from a kit with set screws and was happy with the wiring lengths - seemed to tuck in ok. I would custom wire it - but it works fine this way and is still pretty tidy. The reverse kit seems to work ok too. Undervolted and sits by the tv - so the coil whine isn’t a huge deal but isn’t terrible on this one anyhow.

All fits ok - but ssd and ram get much hotter than with an MSI liquid cooled 5090 (which I greatly regret selling) and ram loses stability. Motherboard chipset fan seems to run like a banshee and does absolutely nothing. Swapping this matrix into another machine soon, as I have a ?more suitable option. I like this case and want to see how far I can go with it.