So its update time and quite a big one in fact so grab a coffee.
On Thursday I received a shipping notification to say all of my fittings, blocks and tubing + everything else I needed to build the system. This was a lot earlier than originally anticipated as the GPU block wasn't supposed to be available until the end of Jan.
Then Friday morning came around and it all arrived
So I commandeered the dining room table to give me plenty of space to get my build on as I am still in the process of decorating my gaming room (ill update on this when its done)
So here is pretty much everything laid out ready to go into the Corsair 280x case.
First things first was to check for clearance to make sure my planned runs were going to work as I knew the top rad would be very close to the mobo. I didn't however think it was going to be this close
So back to the drawing board it was, I probably could have called it a day here and looked around for some shorter more compact 90 degree fittings. But I decided to go with plan b.
I decided to rotate the top rad 180 degrees so the fittings would be at the front of the case instead of the back matching the bottom rad.
So I popped both the rad's in with the fittings on so I could again check for clearance and mark up where I needed to drill through the case so I could route the hoses through to the back of the case where the pump res was going to sit.
With both holes drilled (20mm holes) I then attached the hoses to make sure they would pass through without any issues.
Top hole
Bottom hole (no laughing)
I then connected these up to the pump
*The pump is mounted to the inside front of the case using the adjacent bracket supplied with the pump. As the front cover is removeable I was able to mark up where the pump would go and drill through the front to mount the bracket then put the front cover back on and cover up the screws. You would never be able to tell this was how it was mounted, but I did forgot to get a pic of that*
The flow direction I had decided on was
Pump out to Bottom Rad, GPU, CPU, Top Rad then back to the pump
Next up was getting the motherboard mounted CPU, CPU block and Ram installed along with the 2 NVME drives I will be using (Sabrent Rocket 256gb Boot, Sabrent Rocket 1tb Games)
I decided on the EK Velocity non RGB Nickel Plexi block for this as I wanted minimal cables and RGB with a nice stealthy black and silver theme. A quick switch over of the OE chrome bezel to the black one I bought makes the block look even nicer in my option.
I also bought the black precision mounting kit from EK to go with this as well again to keep with the black theme.
It was at this point I hit another speed bump. With the mobo mounted I could no longer get access to or plug in the 8 pin EPS cable to the top of the board as this was now blocked by one of the fans.
Not to much drama, out came the Dremel and I trimmed the corner of the fan off and tidied it up with some sand paper and voila.
Up next was stripping down the Zotac 3090 and applying all of the thermal pads and paste for the EK block and back plate. At this point I must say the instructions on EK's website were fantastic and really easy to follow, being a complete novice and this being only the second PC I have built and the first I have water cooled these instructions made it reassuringly simple.
*Never the less still scary*
Boom, now its starting to come together nicely.
From there I then ran the rest of the hoses to connect up the loop. I had initially planned (Plan B) on running a 90 degree fitting out of the right side of the CPU block to match the 90 going in to the GPU but unfortunately the hose wouldn't clear the ram and I didn't have any M-F extenders so on I went to Plan B 2.0
Cabling then came next. I used the Corsair black braided cables as I am using the Corsair RM850i PSU this made the most sense. I did consider the Cable mod stuff but for the cost I just couldn't justify it.
As I don't like the thick square cable combes that come pre installed on the corsair cables I pushed these as far down the cables as possible to hide them in the back of the case and bought an assortment of cable combs from eBay (about 15 24pin, 8pin & 6pin ones for about £4)
As I really like the look of the bridged PCI-e cables from Cable mod (not spending £80 on one cable though) I took one of the 24pin ATX cable combs and cut it down to suit the 8+8 PCI-e Corsair cables giving it that bridged look.
Then on to the back where it was starting to look like a spiders nest with all the cables.
Cable management really isn't my strong point but I tried my best to keep it as tidy as possible
Once i made sure everything would fit into the back of the case i unplugged all the cables from the PSU and plugged my EK leak tester into the Pump to make sure there were no leaks.
I pumped it up to here and left for about 30 mins and hey presto no drop in pressure at all.
Once the leak test was done I then removed the tester and plugged in my temp sensor that came with the pump/res just so I could keep an eye on fluid temps. The instructions say to only use this on the port on the bottom of the res but as I was using this as my drain port I put the sensor in the side as I couldn't see any reason why it wouldn't work there.
After that I plugged in my spare 24pin power cable and the bridging plug that came with the pump/res so I could fill the system. This was the most nerve wracking part of the whole process. 1) what if it leaked 2) what if I run the pump dry 3) what if I completely miss the fill port and chuck coolant all over the pc (and the carpet, the Mrs would kill me)
To be honest it wasn't as bad as I first though after the nerves settled. I used EK's cryofuel Blood Red pre mix (I bought 2 litres to make sure I had plenty but only used around 600ml) and used the EK filling bottle to make it as easy as possible.
5-6 cycles of the pump later and the system was full so at this point I left it for 4-5 hours just with the pump running to get any air out the system and make sure it wasn't leaking.
I then moved the system upstairs to my temp gaming room to make sure it would post.
Boom, first time it booted straight it to the bios screen where i updated the mobo bios, set the ram XMP up and selected the correct boot drive as I also have a 1tb Samsung 2.5 SSD in the back and it wanted to boot to that for some reason despite it not have windows on it anymore.
After a little bit of bench marking and updating drives I popped the side panels on and also wired in my corsair RBG strips to the commander pro as it was a little dark inside the case. I wanted minimal RGB but with how good this thing looks I really wanted to see it all.
I tried a few different colours but I think the final one is my favourite.
It looks quite blue in the pictures but it is very much crisp icy white.
And this is why I went with the Blood Red coolant, just for a little subtle flare of colour.
All in all I probably spent about 12 hours over the Friday/Saturday & Sunday putting it together as I really wanted to take my time, not rush it and be 100% happy with it. Overall I am extremely please with how it has turned out and the little deviations along the way have actually turned out better than i think I had originally planned to build the system.
If you've read this far then thanks. I've never done a build or post like this before so feel free to point out any areas of improvement or thing you may have done differently with the build.
Daniel
