My First Water Cooled Build

Kropsky

Kropsky

Kropsky

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Joined
28 May 2012
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145
So this is my first water cooled build project. In fact I've never built a PC before, just swapped bits out and upgraded. So it's a daunting task but one I hope will be interesting.

It centres around the STH10, so day one is all about assembling the thing. Here are some images...


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A big box.

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Very well packaged at that.

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Every single item, big or small, was packaged like this. Pretty impressive.

An overwhelming amount of stuff was in the box. Didn't know where to start. Instructions helped a lot.

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Another angle

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I started by joining the chassis compartment with upper and lower mid plates

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This is what it looked like once both were attached. Couldn't work out how to join the pieces, and then realised the scres were countersunk for a reason...I'm an idiot.

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Next up was to attach the rear chassis

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And then the top and bottom chassis

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Front chassis and cover was next, followed by I/0 panel.

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Lovely design for SSD, HDD bays

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Now the motherboard backplate. It was a little tricky since it slides out and I had to make sure it was all level. Nothing too stressy, just fiddly.

Closed...

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And open...

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Top cover goes on

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All covers

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Front door goes on

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And protective film comes off

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Tomorrow I'll crack on with mounting the rad mounts and the rads, as well as the fans.

I'll try and work out how to add tops to the pumps I bought.

Hardware arrives on Monday so it's a decent idea to get this stuff done now.

See you later.
 
Day Two: Fans and stuff

Today I put the wheels on the ST10. Good quality stuff.

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I then cracked open the water cooling stuff I have got. I've pretty much got all of it - just waiting on EK water blocks for GPUs - I'm sure the royal mail will get them to me before the end of the year.

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Started by laying out the front intake fans for the case

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And then installed

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Here's the 480 Black Ice Rad I'm putting in the top chamber.

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Frame installed first

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Fans installed and rad too.

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Had a panic when I pushed a screw too far on a couple of occassions and bent the fins. I don't think it knackered the water channels but I will have to be very vigilant when leak testing later down the line.

Bottom chamber rad - 560 - up next. Using Pk3 Noise blockers. Had to take out one of the chassis fans to get the rad in - it's really quite large.

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With these fans you get the rubbarised edging to help with vibration reduction. Since they are silent bearings I didn't bother, because even with the longer scres they provide with the fans, there's still enough screw to bugger up the fins on the rad. i played it safe and just installed with a shorter screw. Didn't bother with the fancy edging stuff.

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Sorry about shaky focus. Hopefully you can make out the back of the case and the fans/rads in upper and lower chambers.

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Last thing - I have not been able to attach the 560 rad to the frame. Here is a picture of it (sorry again for the rubbish quality). Any idea what screw length I would need? Can't find any around the home. Need to go out and get some. I need to make sure that I don't do the stupid thing I did before with the upper rad.

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Muel

It's not the money, just my lack of knowledge about it. This whole thing is new to me - as I saifd, I've never built a PC before, so going w/c is insane in itself. I guess I'll watch a vid on the soldering and see what's what. Thanks for the tips.
 
Yes, you can fit x2 560s in the bottom chamber, though plumbing is hard! Top chamber can only have 480s. 560 in bottom chamber means removing front intake fan, which I have done. Just done my first sleeving ever, on a GT fan. Looks ok. But now you've intrigued me with the soldering idea!


I was planning on pulling air in on front intake, and pushing air out of back of case on rads in top and bottom chamber. Does that sound OK to you?
 
Not much

Just fancied w/cooling the buggery out of it.

Cooling x2 gpus (570) - they burn hot. Also an i7 3930 and x16 ram. Don't ask me why I bought that much ram.

On the soldering front, I think I am just going to try and braid the cables and tuck them away wherever possible. I think the main thing for me is getting a rig up and running with no leaks. Next time I play around I can think about soldering. Too many unknowns for me at the present. Never done any of this before. I know I'll get flamed for buying an enormous case and not filling it to brimming point straight from the get go, but the idea was to get a case that I can add to later without having to worry about changing/modding case later on.
 
Thanks Muel. Looks easy enough. But because I am a chicken, I will just try and do it the easier way for now, get the thing up and running, and then give it a go. It's getting a bit overwhelming to be honest.
 
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