My first WC build (with pics!)

GoogalyMoogaly

GoogalyMoogaly

GoogalyMoogaly

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Hi all.

Well I'm nearing the end of my first water cooled PC (hopefully).
It started out as my intention to water cool an existing PC. This then turned into a PC upgrade and water cooling (since the old pc as it stand doesn't really need water cooling). In the end I actually just built a new system.

The basic specs are:
CM 690 II Advanced (Lite's weren't in stock)
OcUK OC Bundle (containing Phenom II X6 1055T, 880GM-UD2H, 4GB Corsair XMS3 and Titan Fenrir)
1TB Samsung F3
Corsair TX750 PSU
LiteOn SATA DVD Drive
2GB 4870x2 with XSPC waterblock (second hand)

Water-Cooling Parts:
XSPC X20 750 Water cooling kit
EK 120.1 Rad
TFC Compression fittings
TFC Green tubing
Anti-kink coils
Silver coil
Bi-Distilled water
Feser Base Corrosion blocker (probably don't need, but better safe than sorry)
3 x 120mm Apache Black fans.

All in I'd estimate this cost me about £1000. Which seems like a lot for the spec I got...

OK, now this is my first water cooled build and the first time I've bothered to take photos of a build. So apologies for being useless on both fronts.

I didn't take any photos of the unboxing, cuz, well I didn't think about it and anyway it's fairly standard stuff the company website will probably give better pictures of them than me.

I hadn't figured out how to turn the flash on yet, so it's a bit dark. I've taken the plastic bracket off the CPU as it's not needed.
2h4x0d2.jpg


A close-up of the CPU, because, well I thought I'd best take pictures of something and this seems like a fairly important part!
26379ew.jpg


Skipping ahead slightly, here a picture of a lot of the bits in place. I also wanted to show the size of the Titan Fenrir as it's the largest heatsink I've seen first hand. If you're wondering why I've got the Titan Fenrir in there, I decided to boot the PC and check it all worked before I had a loop full of water. At this point I unoverclocked it (as it was running hot, plus I'd been advised to when...) and installed Win7 Ultimate.
sg0pzp.jpg


Slight close up of the Titan Fenrir.
ofz90.jpg


Slight close up of, uh, a bit down and to the right of the Fenrir...
21cypp1.jpg


OK, Titan Fenrir out, XSPC Delta V3 waterblock on and a tube connecting it to the Res/Pump.
e00emo.jpg


4870x2 inserted and all tubes connected.
20sao0x.jpg


Now need to leak test it. Bit worried I've not got thing tight enough.
Also not sure if I have the Delta V3 screwed down tight enough. How much am I supposed to compress the springs?

Also, 2 of the tubes (the 2 on the graphics card) didn't really bend the way I wanted so I've sort of twisted them 180 degrees to fit. I've tried not to make them sharp twists.
Is this going to cause a problem?

I really did intended to try to make the cabling tidy and I did try to, but things conspired against me a bit (and I got bored).

A few things I've learnt that I'll remember if there is a next time and thought I'd share for other first timers...
The CM 690 II is a bit small to fit everything in when trying to WC 2 components. Get a bigger case, even if it costs a lot more.
Get a Modular PSU.
Get a few 90 degree (or 45 degree) fittings. Better to have them and not need them...
If there's an option between a good-ish cheap-ish thing and a very good expensive thing, go for the expensive thing if you can, there's probably a reason it costs more...

Sorry if this bored everyone, it wasn't as exciting as a lot of build logs I know.
 
Great effort for a first time - congrats.

Bit of a tip for you. Tidy those cables up, it will look so much nicer and aid airflow. Also take those springs off the tubing. It looks way too busy in there lol. Like I said though, a great first attempt.

Take a look HERE for some expert watercooled logs if you need any inspiration.
 
How are the springs functional? I see no tight bends there? Don't get me wrong, springs have their uses and can sometimes be aesthetically pleasing but they just add to the rats nest in this 'case'.
 
nice first attempt there

much better than my first build.

cable managment could be better but its all a learning process.

good work and respectable spec imo
 
Like others are said well done on your first build....now think what you can do to improve it without spending any money (ok perhaps a few cable ties). Im thinking about getting that case so show me what you can do, there are a lot of ways of hiding the cable available and seriously it wont take you more than an hour, also it might help with temps a bit by increasing airflow around your case :)
 
Nice first build. Re-cut your anti-kink so that it reaches the compression fittings and it will look allot better. As above sort the cables out (shouldn't take long) and you will have a first class build.
 
Thanks guys, nice to know that it wasn't too bad an attempt for a first try.
If the only issues are that the antikink coils and other cables don't look good then I'm quite pleased. Since my CM 690 II doesn't have a side window the look of it isn't so important, I'm looking mostly for functional.

I'd be interested to know what other people do with the cables in this case as I can't really see what I can do with them. I have put some behind the panel that the motherboard attaches to but found that with too many they bunched up in areas and I couldn't get the back panel on. There doesn't seem to be a lot of space behind there.

I've had to use a splitter cable to connect the 3 Apache's and it has a connector to connect to the cpu fan header on the motherboard. If I didn't connect that I could probably put that behind the motherboard tray, is it best to have that connected?
 
Nice 1st Water cooling try there mate but like everyone else says, tidy the god damn cables!

The space behind the mobo may be tight but you can still squeeze everything behind there, as long as you can take the panel off. Electrical tape can also help seal things down to the chassis.
 
Quick update.

Turned on, booted into Windows.
Decided to check temps. CPU was a bit higher than I hoped, but not scary.
Ran Prime95... and that's when the brown stuff hit the fan (not literally, that've would've been even worse!).
After about 1 minute of Prime95 the PC turned off.
I thought maybe it was a thermal shutoff (even though the temps weren't that high), so I left it to cool.
Upon turning it back on again...
A case fan sparked, stopped spinning and started to make a really bad smell.
Then the motherboard sparked and CAUGHT FIRE near the CPU. I kid you not there was a flame, very tiny but a definite flame. Like an idiot I started blowing at the flame like it was one of the three little pigs houses! When I managed to think clearly again I switched the PC off at the PSU.

I mean seriously, how unlucky do you have to be to have a water-cooled PC catch fire!!?

OcUK were brilliant and RMA'd the motherboard no problems and with a decent turn-around time.
Since the case fan was plugged directly into the PSU though I was concerned that maybe the PSU had an issue. So I contacted Corsair via their forums and RAM_GUY suggested I RMA the PSU, just to be sure.
I contacted the etailer (not OcUK) to see what they would do. They wanted to test it and charge me £35 if found not faulty. Now I don't know but i always imagine retailers like OcUK and their competitors to do really basic tests on returned items. So I wasn't happy with this course of action. So I returned it to Corsair (in Holland, for £20 postage) as they said they would send me a replacement as RAM_GUY had suggested it.
So 2 weeks after they received my PSU (according to DHL) Corsair sent a replacement (remember they weren't testing for a fault, it just took 2 weeks for them to locate my returned PSU). Disappointed at Corsair's turn around time considering I hear such wonderful things about their RMA process. OcUK left them standing here.

So, hopefully this weekend I'll be putting it back together. Lets see what goes wrong this time...
 
That's just ultimate bad luck man!!! Hope nothing else got damaged in the process!!!

Was going to say that I like the look of the setup, I like the coils on the tubes and as everyone else said - sorting the cables will not only look better, it'll clear the airflow through the case to aid with cooling the rads so it is worth doing even if you need to get some extensions and fight with the case to hide them all :)

Hope to see a nice 'good news' update soon!!

/subscribed
 
Well, this PC now appears to be up and running!
I guess the question now is how long for!

It wasn't completely smooth sailing though. The new motherboard came with an Overclock profile, but it wouldn't boot using this profile! (It would boot with defaults).
Looks like possibly it just needed a few more notches on the old Vcore setting. However I contacted OcUK and rjkoneill was very helpful. Apparently they've discussed it with gigabyte and the solution is to downgrade the BIOS to version F4 (I had F5) and up the Vcore. But rjkoneill was helpful and sent me a new OC Profile for the F4 BIOS, so there may have been other tweaks as well.

So now it boots with the overclock in place!

As you can probably imagine, I nervously decided to start up Prime95 again.
I ran a blend test for about 1 hour (it wasn't a stability test (assuming OcUK had done this) it was to check temperatures.

So, running a Phenom II X6 1055T @ 3.8GHz, after an hour in a Prime95 blend test HWMonitor was giving me these values...

TMPIN0 = 40C
TMPIN1 = 46C
TMPIN2 = 61C

Do they look OK?
Does anyone know what TMPIN0, TMPIN1 & TMPIN2 are on a GA-880GM-UD2H motherboard?
I'm guessing TMPIN1 is the CPU temp? Or at least I'm hoping so as TMPIN2 was getting close to the 62C limit that I believe Phenom IIs have!
 
Since I had to remove the motherboard and the PSU I took the opportunity to try to neaten up my cables.

I think it might be a slight improvement, but not as good as a lot of peoples. I think a modular PSU would've helped out a bit here.

2vkm5fk.jpg


Sorry to keep on about this, but does anyone know, or know how to find out what TMPIN0, TMPIN1 & TMPIN2 (in HWMonitor) are on a GA-880GM-UD2H motherboard?
I've checked in AMD Overdrive (although it doesn't support the 880 chipset) but that uses the same labels as HWMonitor.:confused:

Could make the difference between
TMPIN0 = 40C
TMPIN1 = 46C
TMPIN2 = 61C
being good temps or being very high temps. :(
 
The delta v3 is a pain to get sat correctly. I have it sat on an i7 on if you overtighten it the board won't boot but if you under tighten it the temps can be poo.

Eventually I just tightened it so that the thumb screws are 1cm from the top of the screw on each side. It's also a good idea if you can fabricate some kind of backplate but that's personal preference.
 
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