My new water cooled build log :)

Gregster

Gregster

Gregster

Caporegime
Joined
24 Sep 2008
Posts
38,284
Location
Essex innit!
YOUR BASKET
1 x XSPC RayStorm D5 RX360 WaterCooling Kit £289.68
1 x NZXT Switch 810 Big Tower Case - Gun Metal £159.95
1 x XSPC RX240 120mm Radiator - Black £65.98
1 x Scythe Kaze Server 5.25inch Black Fan Controller £42.89
1 x 34 Piece PC Tool Kit £19.98
2 x Mayhems Pastel - Raspberry Purple Coolant 1L £14.99 (£29.98)
1 x Aqua ComputerTwinConnect 2-Slot - SLI/Crossfire Bridge £14.99
2 x Scythe Gentle Typhoon 120mm 1450 RPM - 3 Pin £13.99 (£27.98)
1 x Akasa AK-TK-01 Cable Tidy Kit £5.99
1 x Aqua Computer Ball Valve Female Thread G 1/4 without Fittings £5.99
6 x EK-PSC Adapter Rotary 45° G1/4 Black Nickel £3.59 (£21.54)
6 x EK-PSC Adapter Rotary 90° G1/4 Black Nickel £3.59 (£21.54)
2 x XSPC 7/16" ID (16/11mm) High Flex Hose - Clear £2.99 (£5.98)
2 x XSPC G1/4" to 7/16" ID, 5/8" OD Compression Fitting (Chrome) £2.99 (£5.98)
Total : £738.62 (includes shipping : £16.85).




This is what I bought from OcUK to water cool my rig. I am waiting on 2 Aquacomputer aquagraFX for GTX 680 Lightning G1/4 water blocks to arrive so I can do the LTG's as well.

The current rig I have to go with this little lot is:

Asus Rampage IV formula
3930K SB-E
MSI Lightning 680 X 2
Antec TruePower 750 (soon to be changed for a 1200/1000.
Avexir 16GB quad channel DDR3 2133 ram
Asus VG278H 27" monitor X 3
Logitech G510 + G9 keyboard and mouse
Sennheiser 3DDD 7.1 gaming headset.

Pictures are rubbish sorry but I finaly got all my parts except the MSI Lightning 680 water blocks, which should be with me around the 15th.

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All nice and new and keen to go in :)

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Removed the bottom HDD holder for preperation of the 240 rad.

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All fans and rad fitted. I had to take all the fans off the rad because I was going to fit it all internaly but the rad + fans wouldn't fit under the 5.25 bays.

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All pipes fitted and my finger tips were real sore. I have big hands, so I had to tighten everything up with my finger tips :(

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Connected the pump to the PSU only whilst I filled the res up and repeated. I was surprised at how smooth this went. Took around 4 fills to get everything in and left it running for around 3 hours with periodic vigirous shakes of the switch case. No bubbles remain and the little tiny bubbles I kept turning the pump up and down (which seemed to help).

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Time to start feeding all the bitfenix braided cables round and trying to keep on top of cable management.

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I ran a test with only 1 GPU to make sure all was good (which it was thankfully)

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I monitored temps for 30 mins ish (got bored)

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Very pleased with my first ever water cooling build and I am looking forward to when the LTG blocks arrive so I can get them under water also. I will be adding the 240 rad then also. I didn't feel it was worth adding yet :)

Sorry for the bad pics but I did enjoy building it :)
 
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Really nice mate, congrats on a successful first water build :cool:

Got any pics of the front of the case? And how do you find the bay/res combo, any vibrations?

(you might want to report your own OP and ask them to move this to the project logs section :) )
 
Looks good that setup, i like the colour of the coolant too.

Good luck with the gpu blocks too.
 
iB CoMpL3XiTy said:
What a monster! :D

Never understood those MSI backplates though, looks like a kids cheap toy with those tacky plastic lumps on top.
Click to expand...

The back plate is justified with these I would say, over 12" long and very heavy so the extra support is needed. Also the plastic lump on top houses a power core to give cleaner power delivery to the GPU core (or so I'm told).

Looks great gregster, how are you finding those XSPC fans? Also I'm fairly sure I'm the only person on the face of the earth that can't get those raystorm LED's to look tidy, ended up removing the ones I have :(

Edit: You may also benefit from flipping the fans around into pull, with push you're just pushing warm air over the system thats going to be constantly re-cycling around the top rad ;)
 
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pgi947 said:
The back plate is justified with these I would say, over 12" long and very heavy so the extra support is needed. Also the plastic lump on top houses a power core to give cleaner power delivery to the GPU core (or so I'm told).
Click to expand...

Oh don't get me wrong I really like backplates in general and a card of this spec IMO should come with one, I just think the grey plastic lump makes the card look cheap when it really isn't.
 
iB CoMpL3XiTy said:
Oh don't get me wrong I really like backplates in general and a card of this spec IMO should come with one, I just think the grey plastic lump makes the card look cheap when it really isn't.
Click to expand...


Agreed, the grey/blue lump does look cheap, it feels cheap too tbh, a chunk of painted plastic to be fair.
 
From what I understand the best thing you can actually do is remove the cap completely, seemingly the cap traps in hot air...
 
The plastic is quite stiff, you need to push in the clips around the edge of the top and then work it off, I've only removed mine for testing with/without the reactor core fitted.
 
Thanks guys. I will have a play with the fans and I was tempted to put 2 more underneath for a push/pull configuration. Temps are good tbh and I wanted to go water cooling for noise levels and now all I can here is the hum of the pump and the 680's when gaming.
 
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