Project "Simples" TJ07

Biffa

Biffa

Biffa

Man of Honour
Joined
30 Oct 2002
Posts
15,849
Location
Surrey
So I missed the boat on the TJ07 gold rush and am coming to the case after everyone and their dog has done a TJ07 project. :p:

So you may all be sick of them by now but by god its a lovely case. I've had all sorts of cases in the past and do tend to spoil myself every now and then and go high, from old Coolermasters to big ass Lian-Li I've often bought the good stuff and then kept it for quite a while.

Which brings me to this build. Its a rebuild of my trusty old home computer, you know the one that you keep on upgrading, giving it new leases of life without changing the facade too much.

Over the years this one has been a XP1800+, an FX60 workstation, Q6600, Q9650, and i7 920. All with requisite motherboards, go faster stripes and more recently watercooling.

You may have seen pics of it, you may be an afficionado of the brnd and feel I have committed sacreligeous acts on it in recent times but if not I'd like to introduce Mars, aka Bigjobbie. :)

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Current Specs:
  • Case: Coolermaster ATCS 201 (Circa £200/$250 in 2001) :shocked:
  • Mods: 120.2 Rad hole cut in the roof :eek:
  • Mobo: DFI X58-T3EH6
  • CPU: i7 920 D0
  • Memory: 6GB Crucial Ballistix 1600
  • Gfx: GTX460
  • HDD: 160GB SSD, 250GB SATA, 80GB SATA
  • Zalman ZM-MFC1 fan controller
  • Radiator: Swiftech MCR220QP
  • Fans: 2 x 120mm Redwings, 3 x 80mm Redwings
  • CPU block: HK 3.0 LT
  • GPU block: EK FC460 Nickel
  • Reservoir/Pump: XSPC X2O 750 Bay Res Pump
  • 8/11mm clear tubing
  • Corsair 650W PSU

Plan is to move to a bigger case, this one is very cramped and I'm not getting the performance I know i can from the chip. So improve water setup, better temps, higher overclocks, mad leccy bills :eek:

This is what I picked up second hand to replace the CM201 :D

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The guy had kept her in pristine condition, only the smallest of blemishes that you wouldn't notice if you weren't poring over the finish lookin for them. (not that I would!)

Note the Disk bays? Obviously he had been a bit of a storage nut, he told me he was selling the case to get one with more space for disks! But apart from that a great guy and a great buy. (I do like silver cases)

So whats going to go in there you ask?

Well from the old rig I'll be recycling: i7-920/GTX460/DDR3/HDD's/MCR220QP/Zalman ZM-MFC1/CPU Block and GPU block! ;)

And adding this lot!

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Thats:
  • MCR320QP Radiator
  • Laing DDC-1+ Ultra Pump
  • XSPC DDC res top/Raditator stands(360+240)
  • Silver kill coil
  • 7/16" ID - 5/8" OD (11-16mm) Blue tubing/Nickel fittings
  • Various power extenders.

Lets take a closer look:

Fittings "numnum" & Rad detail :)
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To be continued
 
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Always liked the TJ07 i prefer it to most newer cases, i was so close to getting one for my build. Enjoy the build, looking forward to more pics :)
 
OK so the time had come, I prepared the wife that she wouldn't have a computer for the day, braved the incredulous stares from my daughters when informed the same, and shut down the old girl (the computer not the wife!)

So time to strip out the old box, and I think you may guess what I found when I pulled the loop out. Lets just say I was having severe flow problems and thought my old 750 XSPC pump was knackered, but it wasn't.... oh no.

Heatkiller comes apart nice and easy... but Oh MY GOD...

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What is it... let me out... mummy!! :eek: But we cleaned it up with dilute vinegar, tomato ketchup and good old elbow grease!
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So it was probably plasticiser or some aditives in the coloured liquid I've been using up till now, but NO MORE, its Distilled water and kill coil (silver) for me an mah rigs :D.

Next up, time to strip down and build up... COR!

TJ07 has a LOT of screws allowing you to do just about anything with the innards.

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And allows you great access while you are working on the rig, you can actually break this down even further but I didn't need to I hoped.

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Lets put the pump/res together.. that looks like fun! :p

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Nearly done, see the good seal with the o'ring thats essential.
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Heh... When I saw your first pic of coloured water in a front-mounted res, I was going to ask you if your waterblock got gunked up at all. But you answered the question for me...

I really like the idea of having dyed water in a WC setup - I was after doing a dual-loop build with red dye for the CPU loop, and blue for the GPU, with the two reservoirs in front-mounted 5.25" bays. I think it could look pretty slick... But it seems that just about every setup involving dyes eventually ends up with waterblocks that are clogged with putrid organic-looking gunk. A slick looking system isn't worth having to clean out that mess every couple of months in order to retain performance!
 
Duff-Man just use distilled/deionised and coloured tubing, I don't think the coloured water in the res works really, personally. but if you wanted it you could do it with coloured acetate on the outside or somesuch mod.
 
Biffa said:
Duff-Man just use distilled/deionised and coloured tubing, I don't think the coloured water in the res works really, personally. but if you wanted it you could do it with coloured acetate on the outside or somesuch mod.
Click to expand...

This is the conclusion I came to also... :) I might just go for internal reservoirs though. I'm still planning the whole thing...

Looking forward to seeing your finished article though! I'm sure the blue tubing will come out nicely.
 
Update #3
Now we are cooking!

OK fitted the radiator stands by drilling a couple of holes into the base on each side, enough has been seen on how to drill a hole suffice to say you have to watch out for the feet location on the bottom of the TJ07. And boy is that aluminum thick!

Bit different here as I am pushing hot air out of the case at the bottom as I felt that the rads would just be heating each other up if I pulled air into the case. I could be wrong of course, everyone seems to pull air in when mounting rads in the bottom, I guess I'll suck it and see and rip it apart and change them if I find its rubbish :)

So after removing everything except the frame of the case, I could see where the rads would fit in and start to plan the layout of the tubing and ancilliaries.
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As you may have guessed the PSU is going to go behind the 240 radiator, and I could definitely have got away with a 480 in place of the 360 but its only a CPU/GPU loop so no biggie. If I upgrade the loop later I can switch to a 480.

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This is how it looks down there with both radiators in place, and you can see the start of the loop and how it all fits together. Man that Swiftech MCR220QP is OLD and beat up! :)

Loop plan is:

Res->pump->CPU->GPU->360->240->Res

Heres some pics to give you an idea:
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You can see the tubing connecting the two radiators and the way the entry of the tubing into the bottom area of the case is actually on opposite side the radiator its connected to, thats just to minimise any kinks or the need for multiple 90° connectors. In fact I plan only having one 90° max in the loop. :D

Oh and I'm using 38mm Yate Loons on the MCR320QP and 1850 Gentle Typhoons on the MCR220QP :)

Its just what I had left over from another more serious build. :D

I'm liking that blue tubing now.. yummy yummy.

Oh and I've decided to add something to this beautiful case that I never do on my cases, but more on that later (in case it turns out really bad I can pretend it was something else!)
 
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I always thought people had the air blowing in on one side, and out the other with that case, although now I think about it, I might not have actually read that anywhere, and just assumed it.

Also, is there a reason why you've put the 2 rads together in the loop, as for my (hopeful) watercooling build soon, I was going to go res>pump>cpu>rad1>gpu>rad2>res as I thought it would give better performance for the GPU, as the water will be cooler when it gets there, but the water should be a similar temperature when it goes into the cpu.
 
R.C.Anderson said:
I always thought people had the air blowing in on one side, and out the other with that case, although now I think about it, I might not have actually read that anywhere, and just assumed it.

Also, is there a reason why you've put the 2 rads together in the loop, as for my (hopeful) watercooling build soon, I was going to go res>pump>cpu>rad1>gpu>rad2>res as I thought it would give better performance for the GPU, as the water will be cooler when it gets there, but the water should be a similar temperature when it goes into the cpu.
Click to expand...

I know what you mean, about the confusion :)

At the end of the day, the temperature in a loop will stabilise throughout the loop, I know its hard to believe but it does. You can affect the temperature of a loop much more by adding restriction to it and slowing down the waterflow than you can improve it by moving the parts around.

w3bbo said:
Love the look of that TJ07. Never really been keen on silver cases but that does look very clean.
Click to expand...

It feels amazing to touch too.
 
Out of interest, what were your temps like with that gunked up heatkiller?

IF ever there was a warning not to use coloured coolant that is it! FESER by any chance?
 
Amazingly temps werent OTT, the water conducts the heat so much better than air that it never went over 85° on the CPU.

Thing was I thought the pump had died, I thought "man that X20 750 has been going for years, must have just given up the ghost" because the water was moving so slowly, but it wasn't the pump/res in the end at all, and now I'm using that pump/res to leak test components, it still works great!

It was feser in there for the longest time, and after speaking with quite a few people in the industry its probably more to do with the "inhibitor" added to the premixed solutions. The Inhibitor gunks up the system and the dyes stain the parts and together its a gross combination.

The only thing that would be great over here is to be able to buy good quantities of distilled at cheap prices, yes you can get deionised and its probably just as good, and I've used it when flushing out loops, but if I can I use distilled for the final loop fluid.

Just a PITA to get it unless you have a friendly local chemist :)
 
I have ordered 2x 2.5L from my local Chemist (Lloyds) on a number of occassions, think it cost just shy of £4. They were more than happy to help but gave me puzzled looks when I said it was for a PC lol.
 
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