1st w/cooling build - hoping for thoughts & suggestions

amb001

amb001

amb001

Associate
Joined
21 Jan 2008
Posts
16
Hi everyone, I'm about to embark on my first PC build in quite a while and have decided to go the way of a dual loop water cooling system. This will be my first w/c build so i'm likely to buy some components with blocks pre-installed to make it a little easier for me. I am hoping i could call upon the experience of you guys to review my planned set-up and any advice and suggestions will be very much appreciated.

I'm looking to install this dual radiator set-up in a Thermaltake Mozart case as i believe this may be the case that provides the most room due to it's monsterous size! Any thought's on other case options for internal dual rad set-ups would again be very welcome.

Loop 1
This loop will cool the CPU (Intel QX9850 or QX9650) and chipset which will be on an EVGA nForce 680i SLi Black Pearl motherboard

Main Cooling Components
Thermochill PA120.3 Radiator
3 x Noctua NF-S12 Silent 120mm Case Fans
EK Multioption Reservoir 150
Laing DDC 12V ULTRA Pump & Plexitop

Loop 2
This loop will cool the SLI graphics cards which are likely to be either 2 Black Pearl 8800GTX's or Ultra's

Main Cooling Components
Thermochill PA120.3 Radiator
3 x Noctua NF-S12 Silent 120mm Case Fans
EK Multioption Reservoir 150
Laing DDC 12V ULTRA Pump & Plexitop

I may also opt to watercool the ram and am considerring doing this via loop 2.

I'm hoping to end up with a powerful, cool and quiet PC used mainly for gaming.
 
Other cases that you could put dual loops fairly easy in:

Lian Li G70 (now replaced with the A70)
Lian Li V2000 / V2100
Silverstone TJ07 (probably the 09 and 10 as well)

Don't bother buying the Black Pearl cards, your wasting about £50 on each one.
Just buy the normal GTX or Ultra and then buy EK waterblocks for them both!

1 thing I did notice is that you didn't state which CPU block your gonna use.
Part from that it looks peachy.
 
Hi, thank you for your comments and suggestions. I'm now swaying towards the PC-A70 as the overall size doesn't seem excessive compared to the Mozart.

I believe that the Black Pearl EVGA board comes with blocks pre-fitted to the nb, sb and power regulators. There is also a CPU block included and I understand that these are all made by Innovotek.

Would the EK 8800GTX GPU Water Blocks also work on the Ultras? The listing on the OC product pages only states GTX models as being supported.
 
you could probably do a lot better than the innovotek blocks, I expect the nb/sb/mosfet blocks are ok but the cpu block wouldn't be great and they normally use weedy tubing with compression fits.

and OH MY GOOD GOD i just saw how much that board is! seriously.. reality check time, a standard 680/780i board with decent EK blocks would be probably cheaper if not in the same area and be much higher spec.

I'm currently using 2 swiftech mcw30s on my nb and sb, mips mosfet blocks and a mips ram freezer ram waterblock and the whole lot cost me something like £150 on top of the price of the board (most expensive bit being the ram freezer at £70 that ISN'T included in the black pearl)and I have a flexible solution I can move around.

I'd probably get a reference 780i board (if thats your poison) seeing as you're taking off the cooling for water don't get any fancy heatpipe nonsense.

Then get EK nb/sb and mosfets or maybe swiftech mcw30s for the nb/sb, a mips ram freezer if you like and probably EK gfx blocks for reference 8800GTX cards too.

That lot would save you a fortune and you could have proper 3/8 or 1/2" tubing using decent g1/4 barbs rather than compression fits.
 
Did you do any research on those noctua fans with a thermochill PA rad?

I think that I read somewhere that they don't work too well with rads.
 
Thank you all for the invaluable advice and component recommendations. This is just the type of help and guidance I was hoping for and it's certainly opening my eyes to a number of things.

Time to re-evaluate a few components and to start pricing this lot up :eek:
 
hi just some info on your choice of m/b the black pearl is not worth the money just get a i forget the mod no but it is xactly the same just without the blocks as the innovatec blocks are very restrictive and the board without the blocks is only £170ish so you are paying over the odds for blocks i have built 2 systems for customers who supplied these black pearl m/b and both have been RMA they are ****:p
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom