First Watercooling attempt :D

So I finally decided to give watercooling a try and swap my TRUE, NB and SB sinks for a new loop with some case mods and a bit of a case tidy up as well, so here goes:

The Kit:

1 x XSPC RS360 Radiator
1 x EK NB Water Blocks EK-NB 780i
2 x 1M 10mm Flow Springz (UV Blue)
8 x XSPC G1/4 to 10mm Compression Fitting
1 x Zalman ZM-RHS1 VGA Coolers
3m x XSPC 10/8mm PVC Tubing
1 x 1L Feser One Coolant UV Blue
1 x XSPC Dual 750 Bay Reservoir Pump – Clear
1 x Swiftech Apogee GTZ (LGA775) CPU Block
6 x Noctua NF-S12 1200 RPM 120mm Quiet Case Fan
1 x Enzotech - Low profile Chipset block SLF-1
2 x 12” Akasa UV Cold Cathodes
1 x 200 piece pack of 100mm black cable ties
1 x 12m Roll of PTFE Tape
2 x 33m Black Electrician’s tape

The Process:

The obligatory external “before” shot:



I whipped the TRUE off and got the mobo disconnected and removed from the case:



Flipped it over and whipped off the 8 sprung screws holding the heat sink arrangement on



Once removed (with a bit of tugging and a sphincter twitching crack) the whole thing gave way revealing that EVGA haven’t skimped on thermal paste and pads, in fact they appear to have heaped it on





So once the chips were all nicely cleaned up I installed the back plate for the CPU block and retaining screws for the NB block



The bocks went on relatively easy, in fact the SB heatsink was the biggest pain (as you can see the one I went for sits at odd angle, but does the job)



Close up of the blocks in place



I tubed it up, filled the res and ran it for about a week to leak test and wait until the remaining fans were delivered along with getting myself a jigsaw to attack the case with Up until now the rad had been sitting on the inside bottom of the case with three temporary fans just sat in top, needless to say my temps were actually worse than under the TRUE, by quite a bit.

So once all the parts arrived, I stripped the machine back down again and marked up the mobo tray and bottom of the case for my jigsaw antics





Cutting the small holes on the mobo tray proved very fiddly and if im being honest a right mess, so off to plan two, one big hole

Once cut I used some edging to finish off the holes id cut





In the end the edging to the bottom of the case was actually reducing the purchase of the screws into the rad, and you couldn’t see it anyway with the rad and fans in place, so I removed it and fitted the rad under the base of the case, with the three fans bolted on top, sitting on the floor of the case sucking air up from under the case, through the rad.



I then “discreetly” installed the two UV tubes in the reveal of the front frame, one either side





From there on it was pretty plain sailing getting the mobo in and taking some time to route the cables down the back of the mobo tray and through the hole id jigsawed out:

Lights out, UVs on





So after a few hours with the rad being it its new place the temps have dropped to just under what the TRUE gave on a cold day. Im hoping that when the AS5 cures I will get more of a drop, but have noticed that under load they are a lot lower that the TRUE gave.

All in all im very pleased with the end result and may tweak the odd thing here and there and may at some point spray the mobo tray black and may even lap the CPU as cores 0 and 1 have always been at least 5 degrees hotter than cores 2 and 3 – but that’s for another day


Cheers

TB

looks good dude. Its nice to see a decent set up over the "kits" people seem to buy.

Very good effort for a first WC setup. I bet you sat back in prideafter finishing it.

10mm tubing aint my thing tho tbh - any reason why you went for this instead of 7/16 or 1/2"? Just curious.

Thanks guys

I did a bit of reading up on tubing sizes and there didn't appear to be any advantage or difference between most tubing sizes, that coupled with liking the compression fittings and what was in stock when I placed the order I guess

Very Nice, will you be watercooling the GPU'S

No cooler on the mosfets

650kb+ per pic is not good at peak time with tiscali =(

Ben M said:

650kb+ per pic is not good at peak time with tiscali =(

Click to expand...

Perhaps you should get real broadband