Carbide 540 - Twin WC

cs2000

cs2000

cs2000

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29 Aug 2012
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200
Hey all, just getting some "pen to paper" so to speak ready to tackle what I believe to be the first (although I could be very wrong) twin watercooling loop in a carbide 540.

I looked around the tinternet for a while trying to see if anyone else had done it and couldn't see any so decided to do it myself. I know its a waste and the total increase in temp would only be a max of 5 degrees to cool both the CPU and GPU in a single loop, but for several months now ive had an image in my head of a twin loop system using Mayhems pastel blue and red coolant and I knew eventually id crack and have to order.

The only new-ness in this build will be the watercooling kit, the hardware consists of my current build, parts of this are around a year old, others more like 6 months, anyway, it is as follows;

Asus P8Z68 V-Pro Gen 3 Motherboard
16GB Corsair Balistix Tracer Tactical RAM
2x 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 SSD's
3TB Western Digital
Gigabyte 680 GTX (2GB edition)
Intel i5 2500k
Antec High Current Pro 850 Watt PSU

The plan is as discussed, two distinct loops with two coolant colours. I have a interesting way of further differentiating the components which il discuss/reveal when I start the build which will be Saturday.

Currently my pile of bits involve mostly extra fittings, 90 & 45 degree rotaries etc, as well as some new TIM, a couple of shoggy sandwich's and other useful little bits.

More updates on Saturday when the DPD van arrives as im keeping the exact parts secret......
 
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Unboxing, Ideas & Preparation

Colour Scheme
Just wanted to discuss the colour scheme. As per Post 1, the coolant will be Mayhems Pastel Red and Blueberry Blue. In my other build HERE I sleeved all of the PSU cables myself, this was a good exercise, I was pleased with the result, but its one that took up 40-50 hours of my life and would not repeat for love nor money! However, I do like the look, so decided to plumb for the BitFenix Alchemy cables. Sadly these don't come in red and blue so I have had to order red and black. Some cables, such as the EPS connector come with red and black together, other however such as the PCI Express power only come in one colour, so ive gone for red cables with black connectors.

So, we have...
Blue motherboard, Blue coolant - Match
Red cables, Red coolant - Match
Black cables, Black case - Match


Preparation
OK, first things first, this all has to come apart. Old parts need to be boxed up and saved, parts in the new machine need cleaning and prepping, lets begin the days activities.
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I must say, I can see now why mt temps were rising, this is all that was left on the CPU of the TIM that was on the H60, theres almost nothing on the block!
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So, now the components are out I need to prep the CPU and GPU for the arrival of the water blocks, lets start with the CPU... (sidenote, Asus make some lovely motherboards!)
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Chips are now all cleaned and prepped, SHINY!!
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Last thing I have to do before DPD come is prep the 680 back plate, I ordered this a few days ago from OCUK so have had it to hand, lovely piece of metal and il be sure to get some more photos of it later when its on the card, just had to apply the thermal pads where indicated :)
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Next updates will be unboxing when DPD arrive :)

Unboxing
So, DPD will be here in a5 mins orso, so heres the list of whats coming up! There will be photos as soon as it arrives. This list doesn't include the case or coolant as ive already mentioned that ;)

EK Water Blocks EK-FC680 GTX+ CSQ Full Cover Waterblock - Acetal
EK Water Blocks EK-Supremacy - Acetal
Monsoon 1310mm (ID 38 OD 12) Free Center Compression Fitting Six Pack - Blue
Monsoon 1310mm (ID 38 OD 12) Free Center Compression Fitting Six Pack - Red
Corsair Fan, SP120 PWM Low Noise High Pressure Fan 4 pin, Dual Pack (CO-9050012-WW)
Bitspower G 14" Temperature Sensor Stop Fitting - matt black
BitFenix Alchemy 24-Pin ATX Extension 30cm - sleeved blackredblack
Primochill Primoflex Advanced Tubing 1310 - Clear
NZXT Front Panel connections cable set 30cm sleeved - Black
BitFenix Molex to 3x Molex Adapter 55 cm - sleeved blackredblack
BitFenix Molex to 4x SATA Adapter 20 cm - sleeved blackredblack
BitFenix 6+2-Pin PCIe Extension 45cm - sleeved redblack
XSPC LCD Temperature Sensor (White) V2
BitFenix Alchemy Internal USB Extension 30cm - sleeved redblack
EK DCP 4.0 Pump (12v)
EK-RES X3 110 Reservoir
Hardware Labs Black ICE Radiator GTS-Lite 240
BitFenix Alchemy SATA 6GB/s braided cable 30cm - Black
BitFenix Alchemy 8PIN EPS Cable - Black/Red

ITS HERE :D :D :D :D Finally. Ive been waiting for OCUK stock to be fulfilled for about 2 weeks nopw, had to make 4 last minute changes to my order and pay extra for Saturday delivery, but its so worth it!
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The Case - Carbide 540
Certainly well protected! Has a material dust bag/protector all over it with plety of polystyrene!
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So, lets get cracking!
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The Fans - SP120 PWM
Very well packaged, I bought the double pack, you get red, blue and white colour rings and a set of screws :)
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Hardware Labs Black ICE Radiator GTS-Lite 240
Not a lot of packaging on these, just in a plain box with two sizes of screws. Nice high FPI density and appear very well made :)
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The Pump - EK DCP 4.0
Very nicely packaged, nothing extra though aside from a molex + fan pass though cable in case you wish to run these fans from either molex or fan header. Il be doing molex for now.
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The Res - EK-RES X3 110 Reservoir
Nice little kit here, the main res body is pre-assembled, you also get tube res holders and enough blanking plugs to cose all but two of the 1/4" holes.
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Monsoon Fittings
Wow, now THESE are pretty....
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The CPU Block - EK-Supremacy
Nice box here, you get the block itself, a pack of fittings, 2 backplates for both AMD and Intel mobo's and some Gelix Extreme paste, shame as I already bought a large tube of this!
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The GPU Block - CSQ Full Cover Waterblock - Acetal
Another good set here, another tube of TIM, this time its EK Ecotherm TIM, il be using my Gelid Extreme anyway. Fill pack of moun ting hardware too.
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So, that's all, assembly time, updates will come when this part is finished :)
 
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Lets Get Together

Right, lets get building. As is the way with these things, you can easily get carried away and not take enough photos, so I do apologise if I miss huge steps...

First job was to mount the largest components, these are obviously the rads. These were mounted in place along with the corsair fans, can you spot a colour scheme emerging yet???
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Next job was to mount the pump and res's. The DCP 4 pumps are much larger then the DCP2 I originally wanted (and I already had one of these) plus the reservoirs are separate so I knew these were going to present a challenge. I ended up mounting them below the ODD drive bay onto of 1.5 shoggy sandwich's. As you can see, I used some more of the sandwich and some hot glue to add some anti vibration to the rear of the pumps, again, hints at the colour scheme..
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And as for the reservoirs, sadly the modular drive cages simply had to go, then using the brackets in the kit, the pumps attached to this rear grille. When they're installed it makes filling difficult as there's not enough clearance for a jug. Gladly the Mayhems coolant bottles come with a extra cap that has a spout on it, ive attached some aquarium airline hose onto this which will allow me to fill the res up straight from the bottle.
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So, now lets get the block attached to the mobo. This is the same as every other waterblock ive ever installed so no photos of the process, but simply hold the backplate to the rear, find the correct screws from the hundreds provided, hand screw them into the backplate, add some TIM, lower the block onto the CPU and tighten. Done
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So, next job was to install the motherboard, this was an easy process so no point taking photos, there's nothing that makes it different to any other case, so no photos, however, the next largest component was the 680 with its newly attached water block, here's a shot of the fully build card with its block and back plate attached.
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So, finally a reveal on the colour scheme. The motherboard is chock full of blue heatsinks, so the entire loop is blue. Im using the blue fan rings on the corsair fans, blue Monsoon fittings and blue pastel coolant. The GPU loop will be red, so the same applies there. Heres a shot of the hardware all installed so far.
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And then I realised.....Firstly, I was about 50cm short of tubing, and secondly, I needed 2 more fittings per loop. This came about due to my last minute switch from a combined pump+res to separate units which ate up another 2 fittings. The only loop that was as complete as possible was the CPU loop. Obviously I need to flus the system out and to do this you don't need the res, so was dpoing this for a few hours with hot tap water, then DI water. Need some more tubing to get to this stage on the CPU loop, plus the ectra fittings to be able to add the res into the loops. These are both on order so should be here early this week hopefully.
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SO, we will pause here for some thoughts on the case.

1. The case is a blessing and a curse. The hardware side looks amazing, all very tidy and clean, but the other side is an absolute mess. I know ive made it worse by cramming in two loops but there's is no way in hell you can cable manage the rear.

2. I am using the Antec High Current Pro 850 watt PSU, I don't know if this is exceptionally large however it fouls on the sata cables coming from the other side of the case. To get it to fit I had to bend the sata cables from the drive bays as much as I could and then apply large amounts of pressure whilst screwing it in. There's not a lot of clearance for large PSU's. The case does allow you to remove the drive connectors which would fix this issue, but I wanted to use them, in the end, it all goes together, but it doesn't feel nice.

3. You Could, get away with installing an 240 and a 320mm rad in there easily, you would need some 45/90 degree connectors but wouldn't be much of a struggle at all, perfect for SLI set-ups.

4. There appears to be a fault with the drive sleds that are in the hardware side of the case. Theyre designed to be tool-less and as such are designed for 3.5" drives. I wanted to run with 2.5" SSD's and thankfully there are holes in the bottom of the sleds to screw one of these in. Sadly theyre in the wrong place! I attached my two OCZ Vertex 3's to these, pushed the sleds as far as they'd go in and they don't made connection with the SATA ports! In the end, I attached some foam rubber under the drived to support them a little and inserted them into the connecters without the sleds. Seems a bit of a F up though

More Updates 25/09
So, last night my extra monsoon fittings arrived, I also found some old 13/10 tubing from my Prodigy water-cooled build. Im not using this in the loop as I want the good Primochill Advance tubing, but it can serve its purpose to aid in flushing the loops and preliminary leak testing.

So, first I attached the new fittings to the EK reservoirs. I also included some Bitspower temperature sensors which will sense coolant temperature. Theyre located just underneath the res inlet so will be a good place to monitor them. I currently however have absolutely no plans to monitor this (or the CPU temp as I also have a probe installed there) but they're there in case I find a nice way to do it later or for trouble shooting at a later date.
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Next is a rather crappy shot, just the cheapo tubing and a bowl of very warm tap water running through the system to flush contaminates out, its surprising the amount of particles, black paint, etc that you find in the bowl after running this for a few hours. After this I ran it with 2.5 ltrs of De ionised water with 1 tbsp. of baking soda in it to neutralise any acids in the rads or blocks, I left this to run for around 12 hours. Il follow this through again this evening with a few hours just flushing with DI water to clear out any baking soda residue.
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Hoping my tubing turns up today and I can get the res's bolted in and get the coolant in!
 
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Im hoping the extra monsoon fittings will arrive from OCUK today and not end up at the post office.

I do have some tubing en-route but no idea when that will arrive! better hurry up as I have the BF4 beta to play next Tuesday!

Apologies again for my poor photographs!
 
Cant get any photos seeing as im at work, but for anyone thinking of mounting two pumps where I have.

If you pop off the front panel which takes just two screws and some pulling to free the clips, there's a hole where you can slip a cable tie through, this lets you wrap the tie around the pump and hold it against the case without physically having to drill or make any alterations to the case at all. Just make sure you pad the rear of the pump with anti vibration padding of some sort otherwise you will induce a lot of noise through the case frame.
 
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