Brilliant. Thanks Mike, any advice would be welcome. I have realised now that the XL is quite a bit larger than the O11D's we both have, my mistake. Jamie, my son, is playing around on a PC simulator looking at layouts and has already decided on a vertical GPU mount, which he doesn't yet have, along with two 360 rads and a D5 Pump/res. I too, am getting concerned at the amount of money he doesn't have!
I've taken on board your Distro comment and I'll look into that, as I'm not familiar with them at all. Thanks for your input.
My advice would be:
- Look at other builds for reference and decide what you like.
- Create a list of main components - radiators, pump/res, distro plates, CPU/GPU blocks, what type & size tubing you'll want
- Check through it for incompatabilities and have a rough idea of how you'll route it inside the case to see if there are any major issues (eg I decided to put the drain port so it comes out of the back of the case, so I needed to drill a hole through the case to do that).
- Don't forget you'll need to fill it, drain it and ideally monitor at least fluid temp and pump usage
- Think about fans, RGB (if you want that) and wiring. For me this was actually the hardest part, or at least the part where I trashed more components and ended up dialing back some of what I initially wanted to do (eg I bought loads of wire, sleeving & connectors because I wanted to do complete custom cabling, but the time involved was too much and even though the end result looked good, the quality of the connections I crimped wasn't high enough).
I ended up with the Aquacomputer Ultitube pump/res which has a fan out so that goes to a 10-Way fan splitter to power all the fans (I did have a Aquacomputer Octo but I fried it being stupid). For the aRGB I have 2 Aquacomputer Farbwerk 360's. This was a learning curve and I made many errors. In the end I just went for an easy set-up and ditched some of the more complicated ideas i had like recabling all the fans.
- Watch some youtube videos to get an idea of what looks good and how to bend tubes / plan builds.
- Buy the main components and test fit what you can (if it's a working PC like mine was, I couldnt do CPU/GPU until the end, but I had radiators, pump/res installed). This will help decide whether you're routing plans are sensible and what kind of runs you'll have / what connectors you may need.
- You won't get the number / type of fittings correct! I massively underestimated how many 90 degree, extensions, offsets etc I would need. Buy more than you need.
- Once you are ready, try and buy all the tubing / fittings as together and from as few suppliers as necessary, that way you can return what you dont need and get more of what you do need quite easily. This will also mean you'll need to build it quickly too, so maybe get some tubing and practice some bends first.
- You'll need at a minimum a heat gun, a silicone bending insert, something to cut the tubing (hacksaw, pipe cutter, dremel), something to make and sand a bevel into the tubes (I used a bevel cutter and sanding sticks), some measuring tools (metal rulers, tape measure, set square was useful), pressure testing pump (test to 0.3-.05 Bar - not 1.0 Bar like I was trying, that will just blow the pipes out of the fittings and make you cry!). I bought a set with some bend templates in, but didn't use it much because it was crap - the 90 degree one didn't make 90 degree bends! So in the end I made a jig that I could use to bend whatever I wanted. Even with that, I found that exactly where the tube would bend / needed to bend was a bit of trial and error.
- Bending PETG tubes isn't that hard, just watch a few videos and go for it.
Plus lot's of other stuff I forgot!
By the time you've totted up all these costs, you might feel like a new case isn't that much more to add
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/phan...s-panels-full-tower-case-black-ca-0bq-pt.html https://www.overclockers.co.uk/lian-li-o11d-evo-xl-black-ca-7bp-ll.html
