Corsair 600T watercooled build: "Blue Dragon"

Well it's nice to finally post a proper update :p! Firstly @ AMG: Yep, fans go between the case body and the top mesh, and the rad fits inside the case. That's the main reason I chose this over the 650D.


Also started doing a bit of cable management (can never start too early :)!). I don't have equipment to solder, so it was creative 'folding' to make the cables the right size. 600T's cable management is HEAVEN btw, HEAVEN. The next time I try to sort cables on a Lian Li I might have a stroke.





Guess what arrived in the post today :). About a week late, but meh...twas the only place with the quad rad in stock.

Magicool 360:


Phobya 480 Extreme:


Had a bit of a nervous few minutes moving the HDDs and seeing if the rad would actually fit ;).





Yay! 1cm spare. The rad is a bit wider than the official measurements, but the 600T is a wide case. With both case sides on:



And both rads in position:



I'm going to be using the rest of today to plan out tubing routes. I think it's going to be a bit tricky as the HDD cage is where I want the pump to be, and also as I'm using GPU only blocks. My pump (MCP 655 with EK block) is also rather large and it's going to be a struggle to find room. Since we're on that topic, just leak tested the pump+block this evening and was all fine:



May post my final route later. Will order the remaining fittings etc tonight and hopefully get everything on Wednesday. Need to work out how to attach the quad rad to the case too.
 
Thanks dude :).

265mm at the widest point, but about 255mm internally where the rad is. Rad is a shade more than 245mm wide.
 
Biffa said:
Two standard double radiator stands one on the front, one on the back, bolted to the bottom of the case.
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Using a double rad stand was the original idea but the rad needs to be raised off the floor of the case by 2cm for a couple of reasons - the case sides taper so if the rad rests on the floor it wouldn't fit. Also, the edge of the case floor is lipped.

Anyway I'd found a rad stand that raised the rad a little bit when attached:








But the clearance (red line) is one cm too short. Found that it was easy to drill holes 1cm further up the rad stand however, and just attach the rad higher up. Now it fits perfectly in the case bottom :).






macmodder said:
My next rig was going to be the 600t with a 120.3 rad on top and the 200mm Phoyba Extreme rad on the front, maybe I'll rethink ;)
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Yeh was originally thinking of doing, but the phobya 200mm is only marginally better than a double rad, and I couldn't find any standout large rad fans. Coolness factor though, 200mm rad is awesome :D.
 
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DavyBoy said:
Looking good mate, only thing I would change personally would be daisy chaining all of the radiator fans into one fan connector, then using a fan controller like the Lamptron FC5 (or any other one that can handle a decent amount of amps per channel) and then hooking all 4 fans onto one single channel on the controller.

Though I did notice that you said you never had soldering equipment, but it would be worth buying a cheap soldering iron just to tidy up the rad fan cables, as it makes things look a lot tidier, and it's relatively simple to do as well.

Really good use of the quad rad though, bet there will be several people "steal" this idea.
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Thanks mate :).

Probably not going to daisy chain as I have the FC8, and I've already braided it so that the connectors are in two groups of four. The fan cables coming out of the Quad are all the same length, so once they're all connected to the FC8 it'll essentially be a single cable.



Definitely want to get a solder to do the molex and sata power cables though - they tend to be the hardest to manage neatly imo.
 
Today's work...quad rad properly mounted to case floor, pump mounted onto HDD cage and front panel headers braided and tidied.

Here's the planned tubing route:





It's the best I can come up with, but I'm open to alternatives :). Also need to decide whether to have black tubing, or transparent (will have Mayhem blue dye in the water).
 
Yeh you guys are right - that way would make routing the tubing a lot easier. I think gpu2->gpu1->cpu might look a bit more compact and neater though. I guess it'll just be down to experimenting.

My whim has decided on transparent tubing with blue dye :).

Biffa said:
Sooo... its me paying for all this is it? :p
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Lols...thanks for the contribution! At least you can get to see how your tax monies go to work :p.
 
shaffaaf27 said:
surely speed is the same throughout?
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I believe flow varies a good deal more from point to point in the loop than temperature. Hopefully it won't be too much of a factor as I have a high pressure pump and my rads aren't too restrictive - though I need quite a few elbow joints.

I wanted to go Bitspower as I already had some of their fittings. Erk. Firstly they're all out of stock in every UK store I've looked at (need a lot of fittings) and pricing up at a large EU seller I got:
10 x compression fittings 70Euros
8 x elbow/45deg fittings 95Euros
2 x gpu block 90Euros
4 x extension fittings 30Euros
Additional charge to pay by card 15 Euros
Delivery 19 Euros
No including tubing + dye = £282

Replacing Bitspower with generic bits and buying from the UK:
All generic fittings: £88
Gpu blocks: £86
Delivery: £7
Total = £181

It won't look quite as good as bitspower, but the extra £100 will sure come in handy. Forgot how expensive it is to watercool :(.
 
Thanks very much for the offer, I ordered last night though :). I needed 10x extra Black Sparkle 1/4-3/4 inch compression fittings which I could only get abroad.
 
Bit of a pointless update today but I wanted to play :). First box arrived today! Half my fittings, primochill tubing, gpu blocks, some more IC7 and mayhem dye.

Thought I'd test out the gpu blocks and see how well they'd work with the original backplate. Quite well it turned out, but it also turned out that the backplate is really flexible and doesn't lend itself very well as a supporting brace for the block. Will have a think on this.









Then, for absolutely no reason at all, I decided to pointlessly watercool one of the gpus just to test idle temps. Idle because I don't have any passive VRM sinks at present and I'm not quite stupid enough to fry my card. So, blowing a fan directly at the naked VRM and booting from the WCed card:



On a passive double radiator, idle temps were 23 degrees, which is 12 lower than the stock cooling I just swapped out. Don't know what that says about stock cooling tbh, though the IC7 must have helped too. Bear in mind my room is very warm atm. Don't dare load the gpu in case I burn out my VRM chips.

Now I have to disassemble my pointless temporary loop xD.
 
Here's my gpu so far. I've been mutilating the stock cooler and using the front plate to brace the gpu, and to cool the VRM. The front plate screws into the backplate so the whole thing now has a nice heft and solidity to it. I'd like to paint it but not sure if I can be bothered atm :(.



Protip. PROTIP.

If you're going compression, spend the extra money and buy Bitspower. It's not just the looks, my first time using generic compression fittings, I haven't finished the loop yet and I'm already terrified that something's going to pop out. The rotation joints are creaky and wobbly, the threads are dodgy, and the compression barbs are too short and too thin so if you overscrew, the tubing just falls out. But if you don't screw in enough, the tubing isn't tight. NIGHTMARE.

I've used my old bitspower fittings on the places that are under the most stress anyhow. Solid as a rock.









Last shipment of fittings coming tomorrow, taking day off to complete the loop and leak test :).
 
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KiiYzOo said:
that 5870 actually looks quite nice, I usually don't like chip only gpu blocks but that looks nice :D

I think I may agree with you on the bitspower fittings part, although I used ek compressions, there were a few leaks at first, until I tightened the leaking ones that were on my rad to the point that they were almost wrecking the threads
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Thanks mate! But wow, majorly scared of leaks now. If there's even a tiny leak somewhere I'm never going to be able to face running my comp when I'm not in the room, or asleep :p. I want to run the pump at a high setting and I can just imagine one of the tubes just popping out and spraying water all over the insides.....................................................
 
Big update. Been very busy today, and not very happy with the loop, probably cos I ignored some of the advice in this thread and totally disregarded the impact of flow. I do like how it looks though :). Did the 2nd GPU this morning, only took me an hour this time as I knew exactly what needed to be cut:







Tubing up, and checking every fitting 10 times:



I improvised with bridging the gpus a bit as I wanted it to look a bit unique. The bit below seemed like genius at the time but ahem...you'll see xD.



And leak testing + bleeding:









Need some noms. Temperatures and issues to be addressed later :p.
 
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Thanks guys! Thought I'd test some temps after the loop was ready, but with only the quad rad running as I hadn't sorted cables for the top rad yet.

CPU
Quad with 4 x GTs running in silent, and Triple on passive...Linx first. 2500k at stock, after 6 passes the hottest core hit 49C tops on load. Not bad...but the gpus weren't been stressed and I'd hoped to get a bit better.

GPUs
Testing GPUs in furmark. What the ****? Bottom GPU is 20deg idle, top GPU is 30deg idle which is ok (top gpu is outputting an image). However, under full load, the bottom GPU goes up to 23deg, and the top GPU hits 65!!!

My first thought here was - dammit, I've ballsed up my crossfire. Ran Heaven benchmark and same result. Then ran a couple of games that I know work with crossfire, still no temp increase on the bottom GPU. Disabled and enabled crossfire, tried new bridge etc. Uninstall, reinstall drivers + latest CAP, same result. Tested bottom gpu and it works properly, outputs image etc.

What the ****??

Like an idiot I only then checked fps with crossfire enabled and disabled, and it turned out I was getting double fps with it enabled. I only then checked the load for each card, and it turned out both were at 100%.

Basically, my loop is cooling the bottom card so that at 100% load, temperatures only go up by 3degs, but because of my 'ghetto crossfire link :p', flow to the top card is being restricted massively, and load temps there are very high indeed. So, sort out that link and hopefully gpu and cpu temperatures will both improve :confused:? Argh need to drain and redo that part of the loop at least :( :(.

 
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Bubo said:
Is the flow direction correct for the cpu? I thought the left had fitting should be the inlet on the Supreme? Unless I'm reading the pump wrong it seems to be going in the right hand port on the cpu block.
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Well spotted, you're right! Read the instructions wrong. Looks like it's going to be a total drain job then. Do you know if it's going to damage the block if I continue running like this for a while, or does it just affect temperatures?

Bubo said:
Not sure if this can be true since at first sight the gpu blocks appear to be in series therefore should have the same flow. I'd be thinking about reseating the block.
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Surely flow would drop a lot before the top gpu due to the highly restrictive connectors?
 
Bubo said:
The flowrate in a series loop like you have is the same everywhere. The water velocity may change due to changes in cross sectional area, but the actual flow will be a constant, and it is the flow rate which governs the cooling performance. Your top and bottom gpu blocks are getting exactly the same flow regardless of your link. Only if you had a parallel arrangement might you be starving one of them of flow. If the flowrate is the same in two identical blocks when the cooling performance should also be the same, therefore something must be wrong with the mounting.
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Well whaddaya know :). I got to dash but will think on this and remount - cheers!!
 
Bubo said:
edit: infact looking at the 4th photo in post #97, they do, and on the face of it the top card has the inlet in the wrong port, which may explain why your top card is too hot. Mystery solved I think.
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Mate, that's epic :). Love OCUK. Will re-do the tubing over the weekend and report back.
 
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