GerryC Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 (edited) I have been working on this project since the beginning of the month, determined to finish before Corvettes at Carlisle this week, and as of yesterday I finished This is only the third complete system I've built for myself (previous two were in 2004 and 2006) and it is my first foray into liquid-cooling. For those who don't know what that means, it's basically the same setup as the radiator in your vehicle. Better get the ready because this is going to be a long one. I did quite a bit of metal work on the chassis before actually assembling the system and I took photos of every step (I know how much everyone here loooooves pictures) I ordered all of my components from Newegg.com, and all of my water cooling gear from FrozenCPU.com. Both companies are in the US and have outstanding customer service. FrozenCPU had my whole order (about 30 individual items) picked, packed, and shipped within two hours of ordering, AFTER THEIR BUSINESS HOURS ENDED for that day. I'll try to include some contextual comments with each picture Here is the chassis fresh out of the box. Lots of stuff inside that I won't be needing: Like all this: Much better: But this mesh is going to restrict a lot of precious airflow: Cut out: Wrapped the edges in rubber molding: Took apart the front panel connectors. My goal is minimizing the amount of wiring inside the case, also I have another use for this assembly: Mounting switches to control the lights inside of the case: Around this time my other components arrived so the plan was to do an external test boot to ensure everything worked before installing it all into the case. In case you can't tell, this thing will be blue Everything works! Now to get some measurements: Drilled holes to mount the water reservoir: The top of the case had a hot-swap hard drive bay, which I would never use, plus it looked ugly and took up space on the inside. I wasn't sure of what to do with the open space that it left behind, but whatever I decided on, these mounting fins needed to go: Like so: The water pump was bigger than I thought it would be (about the size of a tennis ball) so I drilled out a 2 1/2" hole in the bottom of the case for it to sit in: After this the whole case was vacuumed out, hit with an air compressor, and then wiped down with a damp cloth to remove all the metal shavings. In the mean time, I mounted the water blocks onto the processor and video card. Removing the heatsink from the video card: Block installed. One of the mounting screws broke and a simple call to DangerDen (based in Oregon) and they overnighted me a whole new screw kit. Wow. Nice smooth surface on the CPU block: Installed: Back to case work. Here is the pump, sitting in the hole I cut out (also lined with rubber molding to prevent damage and reduce vibration). I did this to a. mount it securely and b. hide half of the pump so it didn't look so big. It worked I ran the power cable under the case and up through a preexisting hole in the bottom. Had to remove the connector to feed the wires through After playing around with some ideas I decided to fill in the open space at the top of the case with a piece of acrylic. For $10 I got a 12"12" slab, including the rubber molding (had to put in boiling water for 10 minutes to soften it up). I also drilled a hole in the center to mount the filling port for the water loop. Installing this window was probably the most daunting and time consuming part of the entire build. It isn't sitting 100% level but it looks pretty good for just winging it. Installed the front fan using rubber mounts. Ignore the greasy hand prints on the case. I suffer from the same debilitating disease as Adam, it's called Italianitis Mounted the front panel into the case and tested the switches, success Mounted the hard drives in these 5.25" bay adapters. The case came with hard drive cages but they blocked the front fan and where I wanted to mount the pump. Plus, they were an eyesore. So I improvised By mounting them backwards to keep the cables out of sight. Yeah, it's a sickness. Nice and clean Front of the case put back on, and the switches line up. I had to cut up part of this because it was designed for usb ports, you can kind of see where I did it, but I don't have a before picture. Now we're getting somewhere: Splitter for the filling line Next task is to flush out the radiators with boiling distilled water: Fill up, shake, empty half out, shake, empty completely, repeat 4 times: Fans mounted on the radiators and Installed in the case. The smaller radiator came with black screws while the larger one came with silver A trip to Lowe's was in order. Everything wired up and reading for tubing: What's lurking beyond the shadows: But these gold letters caught my eye in a bad way: As did these white red and yellow wires: Problems solved (also replaced the radiator screws to all matching silver): Tubes installed, and leak testing: I was unhappy with the reservoir -> pump line so I took it apart, along with the drain, and redid them: All finished up, time for some glamor shots: If you made it this far, thanks for looking, now go take a nap lol Edited February 20, 2013 by GerryC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
THE Mook Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 That's friggin cool! I have no idea what I am looking at save for your product ID, but that sure looks like fine, Italian Crafstmanship if I've ever seen it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Team Adam's Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 HOLY MOSES! Thats awesome!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marylander Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 I'm guessing you're going to do more than play Solitaire on that thing, no? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redneck08sierra Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 so instead of it being air cooled, it is water cooled? holy crap...that's cool Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laguna Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 Come PvP me on WoW. haha Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GerryC Posted August 21, 2012 Author Share Posted August 21, 2012 Yup, the benefits are improved cooling efficiency due to water's higher thermal conductivity compaired to air, near-silent operation thanks to no need for smaller high-speed fans, and of course killer looks Thanks guys Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
floraneg Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 I saw that in a DeLorean. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
savi01 Posted August 22, 2012 Share Posted August 22, 2012 Awesome build! There's always something rewarding about building your own computer (much like detailing your own ride). This is one of the most tidy setups I've seen, and the attention to detail is incredible. Very freakin' nice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JBlack151 Posted August 22, 2012 Share Posted August 22, 2012 That is just amazing. It's like a piece of art. Amazing job Gerry! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blue04SSS Posted August 22, 2012 Share Posted August 22, 2012 Thats awesome. Love the design Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngryPolska Posted August 22, 2012 Share Posted August 22, 2012 That's badass man. Very nice job. I absolutely love single sleeved power supply wires. Only thing I'm wondering about is your choice of video card? You must not game much? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GerryC Posted August 22, 2012 Author Share Posted August 22, 2012 Awesome build! There's always something rewarding about building your own computer (much like detailing your own ride). This is one of the most tidy setups I've seen, and the attention to detail is incredible. Very freakin' nice.Exactly. I take after my grandfather, he was very handy when it came to doing things himself. He passed away last year and one thing I learned from him was if you do something yourself then it will always come out exactly how you want it to. Thanks for the comments That is just amazing. It's like a piece of art. Amazing job Gerry! Thats awesome. Love the design Thanks guys That's badass man. Very nice job. I absolutely love single sleeved power supply wires. Only thing I'm wondering about is your choice of video card? You must not game much? Thanks. Once I saw individually sleeved power supply cables I just had to lol. If I wasn't water cooling I may have put more $ into the graphics card, but decent PCIe 3.0 cards are pushing $500+... I may upgrade down the road if need be, but I am a web designer and only game occasionally, so I only needed something capable but not overkill. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3PedalMINI Posted August 22, 2012 Share Posted August 22, 2012 (edited) sweet rig man! I need to build me another computer my fps in bf3 is awful. I need silence, I bought a massive heat sink for my processor to quiet it down and it has substantially, I just want complete silence. What system did you go with? Is it active or passive? And is it silent? Edit:Looked at pics on pc, see that you also have fans...nice rubber mounts! Edited August 22, 2012 by 3PedalMINI Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GerryC Posted August 22, 2012 Author Share Posted August 22, 2012 All I can hear is the faint hum of the water pump. I downloaded a decibel meter app for my phone - dead silent in the room is 26dB, and when the computer is on it hits 32dB. I didn't go with a "system" per se, I just picked individual parts that were compatible with each other and put it all together. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonothon Posted August 22, 2012 Share Posted August 22, 2012 Elegant and clean. I'm a fan of blue, too. Very nice job. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngryPolska Posted August 22, 2012 Share Posted August 22, 2012 (edited) Thanks. Once I saw individually sleeved power supply cables I just had to lol. If I wasn't water cooling I may have put more $ into the graphics card, but decent PCIe 3.0 cards are pushing $500+... I may upgrade down the road if need be, but I am a web designer and only game occasionally, so I only needed something capable but not overkill. Edit: nevermind. I just noticed you installed a 560. That's actually a pretty decent card. Anyways, thanks for posting the PC build. I absolutely love that kind of stuff. I just built a nice PC recently also. It's kind of a side hobby of mine, outside of detailing with Adam's Edited August 22, 2012 by AngryPolska Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gencoupe3dot8 Posted August 22, 2012 Share Posted August 22, 2012 Not to geek out here but can you provide a build list? With links if not to much of a pain. This looks alot like a Lian-li project I did (without the LC). I was always worried about leaks... That project died and I haven't had a chance to rebuild or even troubleshoot fully.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GerryC Posted August 23, 2012 Author Share Posted August 23, 2012 (edited) The trick to leak testing is using a spare power supply and jumping the ATX connector. This tricks the unit to believe it is plugged into a motherboard, so you can run the water pump without powering on the rest of the system. Case: Corsair Obsidian 650D Power Supply: Corsair Profesional AX650 Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V Processor: Intel i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad Core Memory: 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600 Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1024MB Sound Card: Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Pro (from previous system) System Drive: Crucial M4 128GB Solid State Drive Operation System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Storage Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB CPU Block: Swiftech Apogee HD GPU Block: Danger Den DD-GTX560 Pump: Swiftech MCP655-B Radiators: Black Ice GT Stealth 240 and 120 Fans: Noiseblocker XLP Reservoir: EK RES X2 Tubing: Danger Den DreamFlex UV Blue Fittings: Swiftech Lok-Seal Compression Edited August 23, 2012 by GerryC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngryPolska Posted August 23, 2012 Share Posted August 23, 2012 Nice man. Almost the exact same specs as mine, minus the liquid cooling and the regular 560ti. My next build down the road will be a full liquid cooled system. I've been running a slight overclock on my 3570k @ 4.0ghz. I can say this, if you've ever played Arkham City on ultra settings, with full PhysiX enabled, you'll know how demanding that game can be. It destroyed my old PC running an AMD Athlon Quad Core 630. This new PC? It doesn't even flinch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GerryC Posted August 23, 2012 Author Share Posted August 23, 2012 What voltage do you have it set at for 4.0? I'm at 3.8GHz at 1.135v - cores idling between 30-32c I'd love to push it as far as I can without hitting 1.2v Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngryPolska Posted August 23, 2012 Share Posted August 23, 2012 What voltage do you have it set at for 4.0? I'm at 3.8GHz at 1.135v - cores idling between 30-32c I'd love to push it as far as I can without hitting 1.2v I've read about people running 1.4-1.5v with these Ivy Bridge i5's. Crazy stuff. I adjusted the speed in the Bios for the turbo boost, just bumped it up to 4ghz. All the voltage settings are set to "auto". Most the settings on this Z77 Gigabyte board are set and forget. Unless you really want to get crazy with fine tuning frequencies, etc. I didn't want a 24/7 overclock, so I opted to bump the turbo clock up instead. You can do it either way, it's just up to you. Most I might go with is a 4.2ghz clock. Right now, I idle right around 35C and around 50-55C in game. You on the other hand and can go much further then that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scott mc Posted August 23, 2012 Share Posted August 23, 2012 Huh? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
savi01 Posted August 23, 2012 Share Posted August 23, 2012 These i-series Intel chips are great for overclocking. I think you'll be able to push it to 1.4-1.5v with ease. I'm running an i7-2600K at 4.2Ghz, but I tried out the built-in overclocking which came with my MSI motherboard, and it took care of everything so nicely I decided not to mess with the settings myself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jwright0291 Posted August 23, 2012 Share Posted August 23, 2012 Now sell it to me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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