My bodgetastic go at watercooling. (Loadsa pics - 56k nononno)

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Due to my first watercooling build using a house radiator, I decided on something a little less overkill and huge. :D

Since I already had a hole in the top of my case, I decided on a roof mounted 120.2 rad. I would use a 120.3 but my PSU would block the 3rd fan. I made a new plexi top for it... Not exactly great looking, but does the job. I then jigsawed out the holes for the fans, then screwed 'em in:
imgp0442rk7.jpg


I then gaffer taped the rad onto the fans, and set up a quick loop to flash out the rad, as it was new:
imgp0448id1.jpg


I now installed the PSU, motherboard and blocks, and hooked up the hoses:
IMGP0453rez.jpg


I now had a bit of a problem... My hose was kinking where there were sharp bends... The solution, bust out the blowtorch and make up some copper tubing! Leak testing:
imgp0456tv1.jpg
 
Once I got 99% of the air out the system, put some foam under the pump to stop vibration noise, and put bit of wood in to hold the hoses, I fired her up!
imgp0459kp2.jpg


The proof of the pudding... CPU temp = 18 degrees but everything is at stock right now. I need to tweak this c2d up to 3GHZ+
imgp0457ai4.jpg


Now I just need to install my hard drives and case fans, and get clocking. :D

I'll post an update on how it performs once I've done this.

Rig overview:

Motherboard - Gigabyte 965 DS3
CPU - c2d e4300 coole by d-tek fuzion
GFX - x800gto cooled by silverprop fusion soon to be replaced by 7800gt as soon as my maze 4 arrives.
RAM - 2GB of crucial d9gmh pc5300c3
PSU - Tagan 480W
HD - not installed yet but a 74gb raptor and a 320gb 7200.10
 
Nah, that's the motherboard sensor temperature. I can get 20C with an AC Freezer 7 Pro on my old DS4's.

It should cool very well though. Personally, I'd have spend £0.50 on some anti-kink coiling, but if you can work with copper piping, all kudos to you.
 
There's no way thats running at 18*C but as said I'm sure its nice and cool.

Without phase chanage cooling its impossible (in this environment) to ever get the CPU cooled below room temp.


Mike - Where did you get the connectors at the back of your case. I'm after some. Any bigger pictures?
 
Orange Peel said:
There's no way thats running at 18*C but as said I'm sure its nice and cool.

Without phase chanage cooling its impossible (in this environment) to ever get the CPU cooled below room temp.


Mike - Where did you get the connectors at the back of your case. I'm after some. Any bigger pictures?

I suppose bongs are technically phase change. However to be pedantic pelts can get you below room temp.
 
Chris Beard said:
I suppose bongs are technically phase change. However to be pedantic pelts can get you below room temp.

I did say "without phase" so be as pedantic as you like :)
 
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maybe his room temp is 15C? If i can get in the low 20s with air cooling (close to ambient) on my E6400 @ stock , then decent WC should close the margin even more.
 
simonnance said:
maybe his room temp is 15C? If i can get in the low 20s with air cooling (close to ambient) on my E6400 @ stock , then decent WC should close the margin even more.

But everything is internal or getting its air from inside the case (rad) thus the internal case temp will always be higher then the room temp. This being the case his CPU can't ever be lover than room temp.

In my experience watercooling usually averages about 10*C above room temp. This isnt 100% accurate but from years of trying different methods it seems to be fairly reasonable on a half decent WC Rig.

The problem is too many people believe what the motherboard sensors tell them. Stick a decent external probe on an see what it says!

I worked for a while testing different coolers/motherboard setups and found some motherboards reported a 20*C lower reading than the actual CPU temp!
 
GeX said:
love it.

reminds me of my old old old old setup
which evolved (with the use of copper) to

http://tackycheese.net/images/old/comp/not_kinked2.jpg <-- can even see the old skool voltage adjusters on a spare PCI blanking plate.
Wow, that's pretty damn old school. Very cool tho, and I'm sure all the valves must make bleeding a bit easier. :cool:
WJA96 said:
Nah, that's the motherboard sensor temperature. I can get 20C with an AC Freezer 7 Pro on my old DS4's.

It should cool very well though. Personally, I'd have spend £0.50 on some anti-kink coiling, but if you can work with copper piping, all kudos to you.
Yep, the motherboard sensor is probably out - I'll throw a HD in there today and get some proper temps with TAT or something.

Also, I probably would have got some anti-kink coiling if I was doing it again... It's just I wanted to get it done ASAP, and I had copper lying around the house. :D I went up to 22mm before the elbow to keep the flow rate up.
Orange Peel said:
Mike - Where did you get the connectors at the back of your case. I'm after some. Any bigger pictures?
I got 'em from B&Q along with the T-piece. (If this is classes as a competitor, LMK and I'll remove it) :o I simply drilled a hole in the case, and used hot glue to keep them in place. This pic isn't very good, but it's all I have right now:
imgp0458rezlw9.jpg

simonnance said:
maybe his room temp is 15C? If i can get in the low 20s with air cooling (close to ambient) on my E6400 @ stock , then decent WC should close the margin even more.
I think the same temp guage in the bios used to show around 40 with the stock cooler on, so it's definately out. I'll get some TAT temps today, I'm hoping a lowly 120.2 can handle CPU, NB and GFX.
 
No problem. I went to a mega huge store... The smaller B&Q's might not have 'em.

I eventually got XP installed, and took a wild guess at some BIOS settings to get it stable, and let orthos run for 2 hours:

untitledtg4.jpg

It's certainly running cooler than the stock intel cooler, but I expected the temps to be a little better. I guess the fact that the fans only do 1000RPM means I'm not getting much air thru my rad, but at least it's nice and quiet. Any other watercooling people getting similar temps?

I'll try dropping the vCore or something, I only set it at 1.45v in the BIOS to make sure it was stable when installing XP. :)

EDIT: Would it be a good idea to have all the case fans sucking air into the case?
 
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some people say that TJunction for the E4300 should be 85C but TAT reads it as 100C so you should minus 15C off the temps TAT is showing.
 
nice work mate, looks good :)

a little off topic but: what additive did you use when you still had house rad going? im getting a little tired of my water going rust-brown all the time xD
- im presently using central heating system inhibitor. which has stopped any corrosion of waterblock, but didnt do a thing for the exciting colours..
 
Wingz said:
some people say that TJunction for the E4300 should be 85C but TAT reads it as 100C so you should minus 15C off the temps TAT is showing.
Ahh, I'll have to look into this... Thanks for the info.
Amonlym said:
nice work mate, looks good :)

a little off topic but: what additive did you use when you still had house rad going? im getting a little tired of my water going rust-brown all the time xD
- im presently using central heating system inhibitor. which has stopped any corrosion of waterblock, but didnt do a thing for the exciting colours..
I used central heating system inhibitor also, but I also got brownish blackish water after a while.

I just drained it every few months - the bleed valves on house radiators made this very easy, and it doesn't take too long. :)
 
I've used a mix of Antifreeze and distilled water. Not changed the water for nearly two years and its still a clear blue colour. There's a slight buildup on the water block but that only just started to form.
 
Wingz said:
some people say that TJunction for the E4300 should be 85C but TAT reads it as 100C so you should minus 15C off the temps TAT is showing.

I think it was Coretemp (and then only V0.94) that had this issue with the E4300, rather than TAT, which I believe shows accurate temps on the E4300.

If you download and install V0.95 of Coretemp, then that should pretty much report the same as TAT, give or take a degree or two.

I had an E4300 before my current chip, and V0.94 of Coretemp used to report load temps of 45c, and TAT 60c. V0.95 of Coretemp reported 59c, so I'd go with TAT or V0.95 of Coretemp as accurate readings.
 
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