Watercooling, all arrived and ready to be installed!!

Well after 3 weeks of researching and gathering all the required parts and tools I am ready to install my first watercooling setup in my rig...

I have the following:

Alphacool NexXxoS XP CPU Block
Swiftech MCW60 VGA Block
Swiftech Memory Ramsinks
Thermochill P120.2 Rad with Polished Chrome grill
2 x 120mm Sharkoon Silent Eagle Fans
Laing DDC 12v Pump w/ Plexi Top
DangerDen HD Poly 5.25" Bay Resevoir
all 1/2" Barbs
8ft 1/2" ID clear tubing from DangerDen
12 x Hose Clips
Royal Purple Ice Coolant
2L De-Ionised Water
Arctic Silver 5
Arcti Clean kit

and also to aid me in the installation I have these:

3 x HSS Jigsaw Blades
110v Bosch Jigsaw
14.4v Hitachi Cordless Drill
3.5mm HSS drillbit
12mm HSS drillbit
Half-Round File
Matt Black Spraypaint
Masking Tape

Im going to start tomorrow morning by cutting the hole for the rad, then with a dry fit of motherboard and gfx (with removed stock cooler) cut all the tubing to length, fix all the tubing with the jubilee clips, fill the system and leave it on leak test overnight.

will report from my other PC into this thread with a progress report some time tomorrow when the system is on test.

wish me luck!! cutting into my £180 silverstone case is a little daunting even for me (who quite happily rips peoples houses apart and puts them back together for a living)

Hopefully you're leak testing when not attached to the system - don't skimp on that as I've seen terrible terrible situations...

no of course not!

thats why Im doing a dry-fit first to cut the tubing to length then leave it on test, no components in there, I will remove the motherboard tray

make sure you take pics!

Wow
talk about being prepared !
if i were you id think long and hard aout thw placement of the piceses. aim to have AS LITTLE TUBING AS POSSIBLE in the loop ! careful loop order / placement will achieve this !
MS paint and shoe laces are your best friend here ( dont ask)

R B CUSTOMS said:

Wow
talk about being prepared !
if i were you id think long and hard aout thw placement of the piceses. aim to have AS LITTLE TUBING AS POSSIBLE in the loop ! careful loop order / placement will achieve this !
MS paint and shoe laces are your best friend here ( dont ask)

Click to expand...

Now that sounds like you into bondage with your PC

As said the routing is the hardest part, get it right and it looks great, get it wrong and man it looks gross! I have been slowly replacing all the pipe in mine with copper (10mm) so i can get it as neat as poss, only on my 3rd version now, just using short bits of tube to connect onto the blocks to allow for a bit of movement and miss alignment.
When i get it right i will polish and laquer the pipes.
Good luck

thanks for the comments guys.

Unfortunately I dont have a digital camera at the moment, I lent it to someone for a holiday in Australia!!! I will try and borrow one tomorrow.

Well, the story so far is...

I removed the old heatsinks for both the CPU and GFX card, cleaned with the Arcti Clean Solution.

I Had pre-assembled all the pump and res, blocks etc during the week. so all I had to do next was put the motherboard tray in with GFX and CPU, roughly fit the CPU and GFX block, I then cut all the pipe to length.

removed all of the parts from the case, and laid them on the floor, with the rad slightly elevated, and the res higher than the rad. Filled the res and this is where it got tricky...The pump was far quicker than anticipated, and I couldnt turn it off in time so it pulled a lot of air into the system whilst I was trying to fill it. However after the system was full (the water at this point was very cloudy and full of bubbles, I left the cap off the resevoir and just slightl opened the bleed screw on the rad, put a towel under it, I then left it to sit for about an hour and a half whilst I prepared the case for cutting.

I then masked the top of the case out and traced the shape of the grill and screw holes onto the tape with pencil - after a check and double check I blackened these in with an OHP marker pen.

The actual cutting has been the easiest part so far, just took my time, drilled pleanty of pilot holes for the jigsaw, and when it was cut I filed all the burrs off.

When I got the case back inside, the WC system was virtually air free. So I then proceeded the fit the rad, pump and res into the case, just leaving the bocks propped up on a box for the moment, opened the top of the res again (but left the rad valve shut this time) in order to get rid of the remainder of the air from the system. I will check a bit later, and cap the res off and leave it for a good while on leak test. I doubt it will leak, I have ensured everything is nicely secured. But better safe than sorry eh!

As I say, I hope to get hold of a camera tomorrow and take some pics of the finished rig for you

F.F.S!

Well after all that, I got both the CPU and GFX blocks fitted in situ (im still only running it off a jumpered PSU) but blow me down, what should have been one of the easy parts of the whole install has managed to stop me from completing!!

The Swiftech BGA Ramsinks I bought to go on the memory on my GFX card wont stick!!! I removed the protective film thats on the back, which leaves you with a rubbery thermal pad, thats tacky, but no matter how hard I press them onto the RAM modules they just wont stick - the way the card is, they face downwards, and they just keep falling off!! wtf?

will I be able to boot the system tomorrow without these ramsinks? or are they essential?

how should I get the to stick to the ram modules? some Arctic Epoxy or what?

Just typical of computing eh :

ed- I have AS5 and some Arctic Ceramique around somewhere would either of these stick the little buggers?

dont forget to bleed the system of air before you boot !

not sure about the ram sinks tbh mate.
did you clean the ram before attempting to stick them ?

no I wont forget to bleed, have had to bleed 3 times during installation as little pockets of air have gotten trapped when I lay the case on its side. But its not too much hassle.

I did clean the ram modules with the surface purifier, the thermal pads just aint sticky enough. read a few threads via google about peoples with this same problem.

Ive heated the pads up with a lighter, and stuck them again, and 7/8 have held for now. I will place an order for some AS Adhesive, and stick the blighters on. Really gets on me wick tbh as everything else went well, its the stupid supplied sticky that wont stick thats let me down

does anybody think that AS Ceramique or AS5 would have any chance of sticking these ?

ed- or would superglue do the job?

RAM sinks are unnecessary. Really, GDDR3 doesn't get that hot at all. There are a lot of people who'll say "OMFG you need t3h sink0rz!" but there are also a lot of people here who run day in day out without them. Just set it up without imo.

ok, thanks for the reply.

will the RAM not overheat during games though? Surely I should invest in some adhesive to stick these on, Im game a lot at I plan to overclock the card.

But if you think it will be alright without then I will boot the machine tomorrow, I just wont stress the GFX too much.

Just as a note, when I removed the old stock cooler, there was thermal pads on the base for the memory, but it was hardly melted - so you are right they dont generate much heat.

Well Im up and running (sans Ramsinks) Ive ordered some epoxy if I do decide to install them....

what can I say, Im really impressed with the system - its dead quiet, the only thing I can hear now is the whurr of my Raptor and that's in a silentmaxx enclosure anyway!!

temps are very impressive:

(CPU - idle)The Eudemon's thermal sensor is reading 20'c
(CPU - idle)Everest is reading 19'c
(CPU - load)The Eudemon's thermal sensor is reading 25'c
(CPU - load)Everest is reading 24'c

(GFX - idle)ATi Tool + Overdrive both reading 32'c
(GFX - load)ATi Tool + Overdrive both reading 36'c

The GFX memory is currently at 37'c idle and 40'c load, this is without the ramsinks, so hopefully when they are on they should make a difference - also when I install them I will attach a thermal probe to the GFX core.

So what do you think?

Temperatures sound good mate, I haven't watercooled since the days of the Miro Maxxxpert kit personally and last build was for a friend with a vapochill waterchill (i think?) kit.

Where are these pictures?! Tempt me into water cooling again!

I didn't bother putting any RAM sinks on this time round. Doesn't seem to have made a whole lot of difference as I can still clock the memory at 95Mhz (190Mhz DDR) above stock speeds anyway? <shrug>

yeah my digi cam isnt here atm, so I'll have to try and borrow one. Inside is a little messy atm, I kinda horsed the drives and bits back in last night as I was wanting to get done hehe.

Hi gr1mey,

The problem I see if you stick the ramsinks onto your video card using epoxy is removing them later if you sell the card on.

Simon

yeah I did think about that, but I dont think I will be upgrading until DX10 - thats more than long enough for the card to be of good use in games.

I plan in the future to do a watercooled SFF build, and this card will go into that when it becomes redundant in my main rig.

i may be being rather silly in asking this but wouldnt apoxy not conduct the heat very well and infact a heat compound would be better ? (please correct if i am wrong)