Project Rainbow Vomit: Alphacool Core Storm 360 (Plus extras)

[Mussels]

First off: A huge thank you to @EddyAlphacool for sending me this genuine lootcrate, Christmas came early this year.

This build log/Review is going to be focused on Alphacool's Core Storm 360mm ST30 water cooling Set with a large focus on how beginner users can use this as an entry level into custom watercooling, and then how to expand it beyond that.
In true TPU style I'm not going to hold back on any flaws, I'm going to be clear and up front on any special features as well as any design flaws or potential issues a first-time builder may experience.

This will take time to plan, assemble and document as real life gets in the way, being a solo operator here with an 8 year old.



The focus of this build is going to be done within the limitations of that kit as much as possible - I want users to know what they can and cannot achieve with the Alphacool Storm kit alone, without any extra costs.

This kit is best shown by their own product photo, and includes:

Spoiler: Alphacool's Core Storm 360mm ST30 water cooling Set

Alphacool's Core Storm 360mm ST30 water cooling Set

• NexXxoS ST30 Full Copper 360mm Radiator V.2 with 5 G1/4 fittings. Not two, FIVE. This helps a ton with setup for drain and fill ports. Three fittings included are tiny, recessed ones you can see below so you don't have to worry about them hitting anything.
• Eisblock XPX Aurora CPU Cooler
• Core 100 Aurora Reservoir & VPP Apex Pump - Basically a D5 clone. D5's have a reputation for simply being the best there is in the watercooling world, and every brand has their own variant. Extremely powerful for large loops, but also extremely quiet when dialed down to lower RPMs.
• 3x Rise Aurora 120mm fans: Alphacools entry into the RGB bling fan market, they aren't noctua's but they're damned gorgeous.
• Eiszapfen 13/10mm G1/4" fittings and AlphaTube HF 13/10mm tubing & HF G1/4" quick connect coupling: Tubing and fittings are obvious, the single quick disconnect is intended to be useful as a drain port. 6x straight and 2x 90 degree fittings are going to be enough for 99% of setups with soft tubing.
• Alphacool's Subzero thermal paste and Tec Protect 2 Clear coolant
• aRGB Controller and cables, critically this includes converters to the universal 3 pin ARGB standard motherboards use.

Oh and a PSU jump starter but I've got a better alternative to that i'll demonstrate later.

Spoiler: What I received:

I also received some extras to use since i've got what was considered a high wattage system a year ago with an RTX 3090, receiving a second radiator (45mm thick this time) extra fittings and this absolutely epic looking helix reservoir

It looks like the container the T-virus was stored in in the resident evil movies, with a fuse.
In reality it's got a UV cathode inside it to make Alphacools UV reactive coolants shine. Glowing reviews of this shining example of dad jokes and puns will shine the light on this illuminating review/build log.

(It's highly reflective so photographing it has proved tricky - this is a placeholder image)

The complete setup I received - too large to fit on my desk, so you get my kids awesome playmat.

These radiators are God-tier with the extra fittings: You get the regular two you'd expect but with twins on the opposite side too, and then a hidden fifth fitting that can be used for draining or filling

You get a sippy cup and bottle of water to keep you hydrated:
(You are responsible for your own health if you drink coolant. Don't.)

The fittings have optional O-rings in three colours, which honestly is just an awesome little addition for minimal cost to alphacool

The T-virus container comes with it's own mounting hardware, and a 12V power pack. This is plug compatible with the 5v ARGB devices so you MUST take care not to mix them up, if you purchase one of these.

For a fun challenge, pronounce this word and upload it to youtube

I'll cover the res/pump combo and the fans in their own entries.

To be done:

Detailed close ups and thoughts on:
CPU block and mounting
Res + Pump combo and mounting (direct to case, to fans, etc)
Helix Reservoir
Fans and how they fit the radiator in push and pull

Some bonus early fan images as I worked out camera settings, the duplicates are a reflection off a tinted glass PC case

Spoiler: The Plan

How I want it to go:
I have the Fractal Design R6, which supports a *lot* of setups if you remove the HDD bays. The only catch is that to use all the positions (top front and bottom) you need to be careful about where the res and pump end up, and making sure fittings don't get blocked.
I've got a fantastic Fractal PSU which is a lot smaller than competing corsair models and leaves a lot of room down below in the case, but I doubt i'll put a rad down there - 30x360mm at the top and 45x360 at the front should be more than enough cooling, with a 140mm intake at the bottom for fresh air and a possible pump/res mounting location.

How it ended up going (With lots of photos):

Spoiler: Temperatures

Before/after temperature comparison. This is no TPU bench setup I can't give super detailed comparisons vs other competing products I don't have.

Heres one example of 'before' temperatures, key is that this is (almost) 80 hours of HWinfo recording with gaming, idle and 2D workloads and peak ambient temperature of 21c
This isn't a stress test, a quick test or anything other than how I use my machine, showing the peak results of days of regular use.
Yes, I hid a bunch of the stats because we only care about the CPU GPU and chipset here - the temps of external USB3 hard drives I'm doing data recovery from are worthless here, but I wanted the full screenshot for transparency and proof of the just under 80 hours of runtime.

Well damn, the after results speak for themselves.
This is a 30 minute R23 stress test and then 2 hours of 4K gaming, and the maximum temps are just lower overall. Ambients are 1C down. (20C vs 21C)

78.3c down to 71.3c, spread between cores has shrunk from 9C to 5C, GPU is down 8C

Yeah, these radiators are definitely a step up. Yes, I have 3 more 120mm fans in this setup - but they're also all locked to 800RPM, vs the 1,000RPM of the previous setup

Bonus: I have three sets of three fans.
3x Alphacool rise 120mm
3x Corsair ML120
3x CoolerMaster Mastercool MF halo 120mm

So I'll be comparing how they look and fit in push and pull setups, with images and videos/animated GIFs.

 

[Tomgang]

Well so who would win. You or the unicorn?

 

[Mussels]

Well so who would win. You or the unicorn?

I... have no idea what your question actually is.

Unicorse wins.

 

[Tomgang]

I... have no idea what your question actually is.

Unicorse wins.

I am referring to that then your build is finished.

Will it or the unicorn puke out the most rainbow puke

 

[Mussels]

Temps added in, these rads are definitely outperforming my previous radiators

 

[Mussels]

I am referring to that then your build is finished.

Will it or the unicorn puke out the most rainbow puke

Definitely the PC. I'm trying to learn how to do basic video editing so i can record some 4K60 video of the RGB and strip the audio (youtube removed a lot of tools for some reason)

 

[Tomgang]

Definitely the PC. I'm trying to learn how to do basic video editing so i can record some 4K60 video of the RGB and strip the audio (youtube removed a lot of tools for some reason)

Alright. Well I can't say my own pc is free from rainbow vomit. But I will put it to good use this Christmas as I dit last year.

My rainbow vomit infected pc

The Christmas theme I made last year

I am planning to try out something simular this Christmas and put rainbow vomit in to some use.

 

[Mussels]

Unfortunately i seem to have blown up 3 of the 6 ports on my corsair commander pro


This is making fan control a little awkward right now.

 

[Mussels]

Hmmm, one oddity.

The alphacool fans have 20 LED's, but only 12 are addressable - the first 8 in the ring copy those in the fan.
The Coolermaster MF120 Halo fans have the first 8 LEDs in the fan blades with the next 12 in the ring

And my corsair ML120's have an entire four LED's and no rings so they're far behind both of these.

The key is that when you set them up customisable like i have with OpenRGB, you end up with this:

The CM fans can be set with the outer ring(s) distinct from the fan blades

While the Alphacool Aurora rise look like this:

With animations you may not see it, but it's a very odd way to set up 20 LEDs. It should be 8+12 for the 20 total, or just treated as 8 and copied
(No, adding more LED's to the software doesn't allow them to be addressable)

 

[Mussels]

And just for a fair comparison, the corsair ML120s

If connected seperately instead of using the 3-1 connector, this uneven LED count would only make things weirder - you couldn't set the fans up as much beyond single static colours because four of the 20 LED's would always be different to the fan blades near them

 

[Mussels]

Time to get some more content going in here!
My corsair commander pro died, the magic blue smoke left 3 of the 6 ports and now it won't show up in most software. RIP little buddy.

This update will focus on: Coolant



I've killed the Predator and collected his blood I mean, got some alphacool UV reactive coolant (Same primary ingredient)

The visual difference once it's in the loop is huge, as most LED lights used inside PC's give out some UV naturally anyway - let alone the vial used to store the T-virus


Umbrella Corp Alphacool also sent me a lovely sample of the virus, so it went from this:

To this:

To just... melting my camera. It's a subtle glow that cameras cant pick up on properly

There's a hose in the way in this shot, this is with the clear coolant that came with the Alphacool bundle.
It's a Bear Grylls emergency drink

However if you ask my 8 year old, if you mix blue and yellow you'll get...
Visual confusion! It's far, far trippier with water movement/bubbles, but it can be used to make the coolant look layered - since I can set all 12 LEDs different, you can almost make it alter colours on every side, or set up an animation in your RGB software to have it cycle around

Oh and this is set to all red, because red + blue = wait what?
This lets you do a lot of fun stuff that seems physically impossible, you can literally have a red halo above and below the liquid. If you choose a color opposite to the coolant, the lighting becomes invisible except at the top and bottom and it's fun as heck to play with.

Red and yellow? I think you mean green and orange!

Pay no attention to the face hugger, I ordered cadbury creme eggs but got some cheaper from weyland-yutani corp instead.
Light blue supercharges the coolant (That UV tastiness!)

And just because I can, remember Alien 3 where they used a giant spinning venitilation fan for a really spooky effect and a poor dog had an enounter with a face hugger?
I'm a terrible, terrible person. Say Hi, Bingo! Sorry you missed the parade with your sister, we had experiments to do!

Oh right the CPU block looks cool too, but I got distracted playing with my toys. Literally.

Clear > Bluey: > UV Blue w/ Blue:

It's interesting that dark blue looks the same as with light blue with the UV coolant, while blue and white LED's look the same with the blue coolant

Green with blue? HULK SMASH PUNY TEMPERATURES

 

[Mussels]

Todays window into my madness is called: DRAIN PORTS!
The death star had one of these, and they forgot to seal it off and look how that ended up.

After issues in my previous setup of draining from the pump block, I had crud collect in my bottom radiator and the bottom of my front radiator. This led to lots of cleanups and wasted time so i was 100% set on a drain port at the front bottom of my case.

I ran into a small issue with my case where if the fittings were at the top, the bottom one couldn't be used to drain the loop.
If i flipped the rad, sadness! It wasnt a perfect fit in my case any longer!

Aww man, the ports are blocked!

Fixed it!

First attempt was a 90 degree rotary fitting with a small amount of tubing, but it put pressure on the 90 degree fitting and caused a slow leak if it bent the wrong way

In fact it just royally farked that fitting, oops!

In the end I settled for the more logical choice of "Oh right soft tubing is soft"

The secret to this working is that because i can kink that soft tubing, no fluid comes out when i unscrew that cap - and then i screw in some hose and drain it to my bucket of fun


For an important example of why you need both a drain AND A fill port, this is the flow rate with the drain port open:

And this is from opening the fill port on the res at the same time (The one on my top rad was even faster, but impossible to do one handed)

Whether its filling or draining, the fastest way is with somewhere for water to go in, and air to come out.
Just be careful with filling since if you fill at the highest point (top radiator in my system) fluid will eventually come pouring out the other opening (the res) - so filling tends to work best if you alternate between the locations to bleed air out, rather than open both at once.

 

[Mussels]

And today, Quick disconnects!

Before i begin i'm going to say two things

1. Always. ALWAYS. be prepared for drips or leaks.
2. If your PSU is at the bottom of your PC, face it downwards.

I plugged in an NVME riser card to help diagnose something for another thread here on TPU, and had to move the Helix Res forward to do so.

I kinda "hinged" these so that when they open apart on the rotary 90 degree fittings i used, a little strain is placed on the res - but since its mounted with adhesive tape and soft tubing at the other end, it's got that level of flex to give. This would not work if it was too rigid.

When this opened a teaspoon of coolant fell into my hand, so I simply went and washed it off. Yay, no spills in the PC!

Just to show off some fancy fitting options that exist (And because it looks cool in a steampunk sorta way), this jumble used several types of fittings. 90 degree G1/4 fittings, rotary extenders and the quick disconnects.

Heres what happened and why i say to prepare for leaks:
To tighten the quick disconnect, i had to spin the red arrow down.
The red/blue arrows are a rotary fitting that can go either way without leaking, that I had no real purpose for using here -I just had no other M-M fittings spare.
Without that rotary fitting, this likely could not have happened - but if this was simply soft tubing with a G1/4 at each end, the same result happens that by twisting the 'hose' to tighten one end, the other end comes out.

Because I failed to hold green in place while tightening red, green spun itself "open" just enough to leak when the system powered up.
Had I not been prepared (both the paper towel and a downward facing PSU) that simple mistake would have led to coolant right into my PSU.

What tightens one fitting, loosens the opposite fitting. Always, ALWAYS check both ends after adjusting things.

 

[Mussels]

Can't say i'm super keen on how youtube handled my 8K video (by forcing it to 4K and making it grainy) - so i'll be trying 4k60 for the next video attempts


Trying out the best methods to showcase the RGB devices, as default rainbow vomit is genuinely a letdown compared to what you CAN do with RGB and proper software/controllers

The fractal pattern on the RAM, the slow fill and fade on the top fans - it's not an all or nothing approach like when people stick every device onto a single motherboard header and clone every device to the same simple pattern

 

[Mussels]

The unicorn rave party has beguuuuuun
@EddyAlphacool You've created a monster

 

[Athlonite]

Ran both videos at once (bitch to get them in sync audio wise) but looks really cool

 

[Mussels]

Ran both videos at once (bitch to get them in sync audio wise) but looks really cool

I'll say this, it's a damn trip in person since my keyboard, mouse, mousepad and speakers are also synced in
I can even connect the phillips lighting and have half the house join the party....

 

[Athlonite]

Time to annoy the shit out of the neighbours LOL

 

[Tomgang]

Looking good. Rainbow vomit rave party is on

 

[Mussels]

I'll go to the effort of cleaning this room up, firing up every single piece of RGB - including multiple mice and keyboards

Dual monitor the old winamp milkdrop visualiser and throw a real unicorn rave party

 

[DemonicRyzen666]

Needs hologarphic flakes for true rainbow puke.

How about just getting the clear sticker kind on the out side of the case.

 

[Mussels]

I have holographic-ish dancing RGB jellyfish?

I wanted to set that up as a prank res in the system, but ran out of room

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

You've created a monster

 

[Mussels]

This ones for you @lexluthermiester

I'm going to rejigger the CPU's quick disconnect tubing to go ABOVE the front rad, then behid the top rad's fans and above the DRAM

It'll require some 90 degree fittings and shenanigans, but will clean up that one janky hose

 

[lexluthermiester]

This ones for you @lexluthermiester

I'm going to rejigger the CPU's quick disconnect tubing to go ABOVE the front rad, then behid the top rad's fans and above the DRAM

It'll require some 90 degree fittings and shenanigans, but will clean up that one janky hose
View attachment 273808

It'll look better too. Worth the effort IMHO.Of course, it's your system and if you're happy with it, that's what count. Wasn't trying to come off telling you want to do.