My Custom Cooling

So after a lot of reading and advice from ocuk forum members I have finalized my cooling setup.

This is my shopping list.

CPU block - EK Supreme HF Full Nickel
Rad - XSPC RS Series 240mm Dual Radiator : RS240
Pump - Laing DDC-1+ Ultra Pump 600 L/hr 18W (MCP355) : DDC-1+ T
Pump top/Res - XSPC Laing DDC 200ml Reservoir Pump Top : Plexi
Tubes - Masterkleer 1/2" ID - 3/4" OD (13-19mm) Flexible Tubing : White / UV Blue 3m
Fans - Arctic Cooling Arctic F12 3-pin 120mm High Performance Case Fan x 3
Fittings - 1/2" ID - 3/4" OD Silver Compression Fittings x 6
Fittings - 1/4" Thread 45° Rotary Adapter with 1/4" Inner Thread : Silver
Petra's Tech PT Nuke Concentrated Biocide 10ml
Distilled water 5l(£4.99 from local chemist)


Watercooling loop is initially only going to be on the CPU.
I have a Q6600 currently running @ 3.2Ghz on stock voltage.
Idling around 30 - 34C at 22C ambient room temp and load at 50 - 52C when running Prime95 when used with my trusty Titan Fenrir.
My intention for watercooling is not for overclocking, but for the reduced temps and for my long lived dream of going under water!

I ordered the generic 1/2" ID 3/4" OD compression fittings, simply because the cost of bitspower is way too high for me! and compression fittings look much nicer than barbs (for me at least)

I received the Phobya Compression Fittings instead of the generic once! Still to this day there is a shortage of this size fittings in UK it seems.



Fans for the RAD was a choice between the Yate Loons and F12's.
I have heard a lot of good things about yate loons, but on paper the F12's looked better so I opted for them.
Needed just 2 120mm fans for the RS240 RAD I was ordering, but I had thought of replacing the xigmatic fan on the side panel on my Antec 1200 case, so I ordered 3.

Initially I was going to mount the rad in the rear 2 fans, but as I realised after the parts arrived, it would not be possible with out modding parts of the side panel.
Didn't want to lose the side fan or to cut off part of the fan retention clip as suggested to me, so after some more work I could mount the rad to the front of the case with out modding the case.




Masterkleer 1/2" ID - 3/4" OD (13-19mm) Flexible Tubing

2 meters should have been more than enough for my size of a loop but this is my first time so I had to order more just in case!



I had to wait 2 more days just for the res top to arrive! Oh the pain and suffering of waiting just for 1 piece of this jigsaw to arrive!

It was a choice between going for bay reservoir or a separate one. I needed space in the 5 1/4 bays for a the HDD(s). RS240 rad already taking 7 bays from the bottom, I am only left with 4 excluding the DVDRW drive.



Had to do a lot of measuring and research on the Radiator before ordering.
I was going to fit it to the rear 2 120mm fans but as it turned out I over looked the part where it interferes with the side panel. fan retention to be exact!
Even with rotary fittings i could not fit this in to the rear fans.
Also it seems the case fan mounting holes would not completely align with both of the fans and rad!




before fitting the rad to the loop I did clean it about 8 times with hot Deionised water and then one last time flushed it with Distilled water.
Doing a cocktail shake thingy!
After about 4th time I could not see any particles in the water any ways.

Laing DDC-1+ Ultra Pump 600 L/hr 18W (MCP355) : DDC-1+ T
Was not sure of the heat and noise generated from this pump as there were some mentions in the forums.
So I ordered a damper kit as well - didn't need to use it though! It is soooo silent!
Only time it was noticeable was when leak testing and because of all the air inside the components it made some noise.
I can still hear it if I get about 2 inches close to the pump! Thats an improvement from Titan Fenrir!





EK Supreme HF Full Nickel
Was going for a full copper, but after seeing JeffyB's cool project, convinced me otherwise!




Fixed the CPU block in my ageing GA P35C DS3R.
Soon to be replaced by Asus P5Q Deluxe or P5E Deluxe.



Not a good shot of the rad but this is how it would be mounted.



Couldn't get more pics of the fans attached to the rad - I actually forgot about taking pics!

Leak testing



Connected the pump and fans to an old PSu - using the paper clip jump start method.
It was too noisy at start of the leak testing and bleeding process, so I had to take it to the living room to run over night.
This is only just a little bit of tissue in the pic but I used a lot of it at the beginning along with some towels as well, just to be safe!

Cant really see the rad since it is fixed to the front bottom drive bays of the case.
Only the bottom fan cage is attached to the rad - which holds it firmly to the case. Other fan cage would not align with the holes of the rad.

Alos I fixed 2 of the stock antec fans to the back of the rad so it works as push/pull configuration.
Managed to get the fan controlling knobs to the default position in the front of the fan cage as well.

2 front fans are F12's - they connect to the motherboard pwm header and auto speed adjusted by speed fan.

I could have made the loop shorter by reducing the tubing length, but I wanted to be able to take the pump-res combo out of the case so that it is easy to bleed out if I need to. Also rad can be taken out of the case with out disconnecting the tubes inside.
Since I dont have that much restriction in my loop I guess this would be ok.



After about 8 hours or running the loop all the visible bubbles seem to be clear. And the pump was near silent as well.

This is the least favourite part of the whole thing! Cable tiding!

same GPU as you...nice build thus far

Almost done!



As with most of the things regarding my PC, this will NEVER be finished! I will always have things to do - add - remove or upgrade!
But thats the fun part for me.

I know this is just a spec of dust when you see the big boys out here but this is my first step for water cooling - something I wanted to do since 2000 - since I had an AMD Thunderbird 600MHz!

This is excellent, good job!

Very nice job,well done

Nice work mate - did not know that the TT has such a long 12v connector I ended up having to get the Antec 850CP as that was the only one I could find with long enough cables.

Really like the white tube you are using. I went with the black, and looking at your build I am wondering should I change hmm...

1Day said:

Nice work mate - did not know that the TT has such a long 12v connector I ended up having to get the Antec 850CP as that was the only one I could find with long enough cables.

Really like the white tube you are using. I went with the black, and looking at your build I am wondering should I change hmm...

Click to expand...

Thanx

Well it is long enough as it is, but I have made some "Adjustments".
First, the PSU is fixed so the fan is facing down, Antec recommends to do this the other way where fan is taking air from the top.
Clearance between the psu fan and the bottom of the case is not much but enough to have air in.
But when I was doing the watercooling loop I moved the psu up. I just had to remove the back plate and fix it to the bottom and mount the psu to the top holes.

You should make a build log as well!

Ah so that is how you did it. Thanks for the tip.

What I was going to do was open the PSU I had and just make a longer 12v cable and re-sleeve them all. But in the end I took the easy option (and the expensive one) and bought the PSU that is made for the case.

As to making a build log - you know I might just get round to doing that one of the days. I might just do that when I get my new graphic cards and wet them.

Come on AMD 6000 series.

1Day said:

Ah so that is how you did it. Thanks for the tip.

What I was going to do was open the PSU I had and just make a longer 12v cable and re-sleeve them all. But in the end I took the easy option (and the expensive one) and bought the PSU that is made for the case.

As to making a build log - you know I might just get round to doing that one of the days. I might just do that when I get my new graphic cards and wet them.

Come on AMD 6000 series.

Click to expand...

Are you using Antec 1200?
It is a big case but I feel it is not big enough for water! Specially for multiple rads or 360 rads!

White tubing is "white/uv blue" but can hardly see it in that colour! May be bcos I dont have uv ccl.
I got white tubing with Arctic cooling F12 fans to fit the rad in the rear 2 fans but antec's measurements are bit off from the rads mounting holes, and I would have to cut off part of the side fan bracket of the case.

So thats why I had to go to "Plan C" - with the rad in the drive bays.
Still some bits and bobs to get to do some minor things - like getting more F12 fans to replace all antec stock fans,putting some UV LEDs, and somehow hooking them all up to a fan controller.

All of this while trying to make up my mind about upgrade or not - and if I upgrade is it i5 or i7 or AMD x6

someones trying to get their post count up

nice build

Nice build, well done. Nickel blocks are so nice, i'm such a asucker for shiney

twist3d0n3 said:

someones trying to get their post count up

nice build

Click to expand...

yep! it does help a bit and Thanx!

JeffyB said:

Nice build, well done. Nickel blocks are so nice, i'm such a asucker for shiney

Click to expand...

It was your build which made me go full nickel from plexi/nickel, so thanx for that!

Didn't expect to go water cooling until after getting the graphics card, so now I am bit sad that I can't put my gtx460 under water!(Not that it runs hot or noisy)

Spot on work there mate. I appreciate the effort as I had to do the same with my old 1200 when I wanted to go down the watercooling road. If in future you feel the need to add another rad you can get one to sit very nicely under the big top fan with a very small amount of case modding. Im talking miniscule and it makes a huge difference in temps. If you ever want to know how just give me a yell but excellent work there

nice build mate i was think about doing the same to my 900 v2 to cool daul gtx480s how many bays does the rad use up ? as i only have 9 not 12
there is a 200x200 mm rad ive seen that can fit under the top fan did u look in to this as thats the way i was thinking of going there is a post about it on here

imtoyoungtodie said:

nice build mate i was think about doing the same to my 900 v2 to cool daul gtx480s how many bays does the rad use up ? as i only have 9 not 12
there is a 200x200 mm rad ive seen that can fit under the top fan did u look in to this as thats the way i was thinking of going there is a post about it on here

Click to expand...

rad uses 7 bays. So I had to remove all 3 hdd cages. Now using the 5 1/4 to 3 1/2 hdd mount which came with the case to mount just 1 hard disk. So in your 900 v2 you will have to remove all hdd cages as well.
I saw the 200x200 rad you are talking about, but some one in another forum tried to fit that in an antec 1200 but couldnt - it seems only 160x200 will fit. Antec does a rad to fit the top big boy fan as well but it is not copper - i believe it is Aluminium - so there may be a corrosion issue.
Besides for dual gtx480s I would guess you will need more than 200x200! Don't know even if 240 rad is enough cos i have heard they run very hot!

Perhaps 240 in the front and another 240 on the top?

ChrisLandin said:

Spot on work there mate. I appreciate the effort as I had to do the same with my old 1200 when I wanted to go down the watercooling road. If in future you feel the need to add another rad you can get one to sit very nicely under the big top fan with a very small amount of case modding. Im talking miniscule and it makes a huge difference in temps. If you ever want to know how just give me a yell but excellent work there

Click to expand...

That was my "plan B"

I am thinking of some more upgrades and mods for the future so thinking of another rad - may be on top (240) as you said, or externally at the back (360)- attached to bottom rear fan with a rad mount.
I would like to see how you have done it! Any pics?

Avathar77 said:

That was my "plan B"

I am thinking of some more upgrades and mods for the future so thinking of another rad - may be on top (240) as you said, or externally at the back (360)- attached to bottom rear fan with a rad mount.
I would like to see how you have done it! Any pics?

Click to expand...

I think I still have some somewhere. I will have a look about and see what I can get for you. I recall only having to take 10 screws out of the lid to slide the top off then I only had to drill 2 extra holes to get the 240 rad fitted. Give me a couple of hours and I will look for them pics mate.

You can actually fit an EK 240mm rad perfectly on the rear 2 exhaust fans you know. Will be a lot easier for you to add this than mod the top "bigboy" fan to accept a rad.

Also Avathar77 why so many double/triple posts? I will merge your posts for you

You can put over 80 images per pos, so there really is no need for 10 consecutive posts.

NathWraith said:

You can actually fit an EK 240mm rad perfectly on the rear 2 exhaust fans you know. Will be a lot easier for you to add this than mod the top "bigboy" fan to accept a rad.

Also Avathar77 why so many double/triple posts? I will merge your posts for you

You can put over 80 images per pos, so there really is no need for 10 consecutive posts.

Click to expand...

For some reason my attempt to fix the xspc rad on rear fans didnt work well!
First, only one fan would align well with the screw holes of the rad. Later I found this to be "sufficient".
But the most problematic was the tight fit with the side fan bracket in the window. You will actually have to cut the plastic lip to fix the compression fitting, even if you use a angled rotary adapter.
And I actually wanted to fix 2 fans in front of the rad to push the air in, now this makes things more "cramped" in the case.
I wanted to keep the side fan as it helps for the northbridge heatsink. Right now thats the highest temp in my PC @ 26C (17C room temp), cpu tepm is @ 19 - 20C. I know northbridge chips of p35 chipsets can handle much much more, but this is just my kind of ocd kicking in!

Thanx Nath for the info abt the number of images I can put per post & merging all those posts for me! Will try to do it right next time!