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- Joined
- 25 Nov 2012
- Posts
- 25
Just moved this from the watercooling section - I think I put it in the wrong section.
So, been building PC’s since university days back in early 2000 when my Windows 2k system decided to burn and die a day before an assignment was in, and being a student, all I was really interested in were studying the ladies so I would only do work when I had to. This led to a crash course into the world of repairing computers and its become a bigger hobby of mine ever since.
12 years later, I decide to throw myself into the world of watercooling. This post shows different stages of my case as I built it, then redid it all again, modding different things as I go. Every single component and peripheral you see in the pictures here have been bought from here at overclockers, except for the EK Bridge as they advised and sent me the wrong one so I got it from elsewhere instead. Anyways, be nice….
The antec 1200 has never been reknown for being exceptionally great at watercooling other than on a basic level and doesn’t really have any space inside without some mods so I initially started off by having a dual rad stuck on the rear of the case as I had seen others do. This is my first ever WC setup and my first ever attempt at modding a case…
Ripped off the cooler off my MSI 580 gtx for the EK WB to be installed
Missus was not impressed when she saw the study
Hated the jubilee clips, swore that I would change them as soon as I reasonably could. Wasn’t too happy with the loop at this point. Felt messy to me.
By this time, I almost despised the loop and a week later, I ripped it all apart and redid it.
The dual rad I put behind the front fan bezels, kept the fans blowing inwards and attached two fans on the rear of the rad pulling the air through into the case, allowing it to be exhausted through the top 200mm and two rear 120mm fans.
Changed the coolant to red which was what I wanted in the first place, but green was all that was in stock when I initially ordered the components.
Then I got bored of the blue fans and decided to change them from blue to red by changing the LED’s myself. Il do a separate tutorial on this if anyone is interested and link it to this post. They then looked like this.
I then kept getting irritated with the side panel window of the 1200 case and the metal mesh and bar blocking my view of the interior of the case. Surprisingly, not that many people have modded the side panels of the 1200’s so I thought how hard could it be (Famous last words).
After a bit of trusted dremel action, this was the result
A simple piece of acrylic was bought – apologies for the company name, that was totally unintentional. Please remove the picture if necessary.
End result:
A month or so later, I decided to put another dual rad in the case, and figured how hard is it putting it at the top, so I can utilize the 200mm extraction fan. Also finally got some nice compression fittings to take the place of those horrid jubilee clips
Due to the position of the new dual radiator, it blocked Antec standard HDD trays so I made some brackets for them instead.
I was finally starting to feel happy with the interior loop design…
Then a bit of cable management:
Ended up removing connectors from some of the cables to run them through holes I had drilled to keep them out of eye sight.
Another month went past, and again, I had a look at my set up and thought, its still not enough (The bug had well and truly bitten me by now), I need to upgrade my GPU anyways. Placed another order and these came through the next morning at the same fast speed and standard I have come to expect of overclockers.
With the new CSQ waterblocks fitted
Put a backplate on them. Yes, I know it says 680 on the backplate by overclockers didn’t stock the 670 FTW backplates and as it uses the 680 reference board anyways, they were the only option I had. Made a slight mod to them as well to make the EVGA UV reactive.
As I had the case stripped down again, I wanted to do more with my cable management and started to look around at some cases. I looked at the Corsair 800d and really loved the idea of having a shelf covering your PSU and cables and thought, well, lets just make one then. So, a donor was found in my garage and its top donated against its will to my new cause.
This finally ended up installed as such and I used the two watercooling grommets from the rear of the 1200 case to cover the smaller holes, blocked those holes at the rear of the case with black painted Perspex and covered the PSU exhaust hole with speaker mesh.
At this point, I got everything put back together again, another bleed of the loop and booted back up again. Then all hell broke loose. Crashes, BSOD, memory dumps etc especially when telling the system to engage SLI mode. So, must be the PCI buses. I had checked my manual before installing the cards and it said that the top and bottom PCI slot would run at 16x when sli’d. Anyways, bit of troubleshooting later, found out that MSI had misprinted their manual and the bottom PCI slot was running at 4x hence the conflicts. So, ripped the system down again, and ordered a new EK Bridge instead. I sent overclockers a webnote to see if I had to stay with CSQ or if I could use the other normal EK bridges to which I was advised that I could. Order placed, part arrived, not compatible. I then ordered it through another company for next day delivery.
Here you can see the front of the shelf in place. I have since changed that so there are no screws or any other way of seeing it held in place which is being done so by velcro. Still got a flush finish however.
Everything put back together again, rebled, and its been fantastic since. So, a month later, got bored, tried to figure out what to do next, then got of the Perspex left over from the window mod, and changed the front of my case.
Oh, how did the donor computer case hold up to this?
Im curious to hear the opinions of those more experienced in watercooling setups. Must admit, I love the front of my case, came out so much better than I ever thought it would. My temps are still absolutely fine - as I write this, temps are 24c, and under heavy load, Far Cry 3 maxed out, they hit late 40s, early 50s with all the fans turned up.
So, been building PC’s since university days back in early 2000 when my Windows 2k system decided to burn and die a day before an assignment was in, and being a student, all I was really interested in were studying the ladies so I would only do work when I had to. This led to a crash course into the world of repairing computers and its become a bigger hobby of mine ever since.
12 years later, I decide to throw myself into the world of watercooling. This post shows different stages of my case as I built it, then redid it all again, modding different things as I go. Every single component and peripheral you see in the pictures here have been bought from here at overclockers, except for the EK Bridge as they advised and sent me the wrong one so I got it from elsewhere instead. Anyways, be nice….
The antec 1200 has never been reknown for being exceptionally great at watercooling other than on a basic level and doesn’t really have any space inside without some mods so I initially started off by having a dual rad stuck on the rear of the case as I had seen others do. This is my first ever WC setup and my first ever attempt at modding a case…
Ripped off the cooler off my MSI 580 gtx for the EK WB to be installed
Missus was not impressed when she saw the study
Hated the jubilee clips, swore that I would change them as soon as I reasonably could. Wasn’t too happy with the loop at this point. Felt messy to me.
By this time, I almost despised the loop and a week later, I ripped it all apart and redid it.
The dual rad I put behind the front fan bezels, kept the fans blowing inwards and attached two fans on the rear of the rad pulling the air through into the case, allowing it to be exhausted through the top 200mm and two rear 120mm fans.
Changed the coolant to red which was what I wanted in the first place, but green was all that was in stock when I initially ordered the components.
Then I got bored of the blue fans and decided to change them from blue to red by changing the LED’s myself. Il do a separate tutorial on this if anyone is interested and link it to this post. They then looked like this.
I then kept getting irritated with the side panel window of the 1200 case and the metal mesh and bar blocking my view of the interior of the case. Surprisingly, not that many people have modded the side panels of the 1200’s so I thought how hard could it be (Famous last words).
After a bit of trusted dremel action, this was the result
A simple piece of acrylic was bought – apologies for the company name, that was totally unintentional. Please remove the picture if necessary.
End result:
A month or so later, I decided to put another dual rad in the case, and figured how hard is it putting it at the top, so I can utilize the 200mm extraction fan. Also finally got some nice compression fittings to take the place of those horrid jubilee clips
Due to the position of the new dual radiator, it blocked Antec standard HDD trays so I made some brackets for them instead.
I was finally starting to feel happy with the interior loop design…
Then a bit of cable management:
Ended up removing connectors from some of the cables to run them through holes I had drilled to keep them out of eye sight.
Another month went past, and again, I had a look at my set up and thought, its still not enough (The bug had well and truly bitten me by now), I need to upgrade my GPU anyways. Placed another order and these came through the next morning at the same fast speed and standard I have come to expect of overclockers.
With the new CSQ waterblocks fitted
Put a backplate on them. Yes, I know it says 680 on the backplate by overclockers didn’t stock the 670 FTW backplates and as it uses the 680 reference board anyways, they were the only option I had. Made a slight mod to them as well to make the EVGA UV reactive.
As I had the case stripped down again, I wanted to do more with my cable management and started to look around at some cases. I looked at the Corsair 800d and really loved the idea of having a shelf covering your PSU and cables and thought, well, lets just make one then. So, a donor was found in my garage and its top donated against its will to my new cause.
This finally ended up installed as such and I used the two watercooling grommets from the rear of the 1200 case to cover the smaller holes, blocked those holes at the rear of the case with black painted Perspex and covered the PSU exhaust hole with speaker mesh.
At this point, I got everything put back together again, another bleed of the loop and booted back up again. Then all hell broke loose. Crashes, BSOD, memory dumps etc especially when telling the system to engage SLI mode. So, must be the PCI buses. I had checked my manual before installing the cards and it said that the top and bottom PCI slot would run at 16x when sli’d. Anyways, bit of troubleshooting later, found out that MSI had misprinted their manual and the bottom PCI slot was running at 4x hence the conflicts. So, ripped the system down again, and ordered a new EK Bridge instead. I sent overclockers a webnote to see if I had to stay with CSQ or if I could use the other normal EK bridges to which I was advised that I could. Order placed, part arrived, not compatible. I then ordered it through another company for next day delivery.
Here you can see the front of the shelf in place. I have since changed that so there are no screws or any other way of seeing it held in place which is being done so by velcro. Still got a flush finish however.
Everything put back together again, rebled, and its been fantastic since. So, a month later, got bored, tried to figure out what to do next, then got of the Perspex left over from the window mod, and changed the front of my case.
Oh, how did the donor computer case hold up to this?
Im curious to hear the opinions of those more experienced in watercooling setups. Must admit, I love the front of my case, came out so much better than I ever thought it would. My temps are still absolutely fine - as I write this, temps are 24c, and under heavy load, Far Cry 3 maxed out, they hit late 40s, early 50s with all the fans turned up.
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