Need help with watercooling a friends computer

[vampre1122]

I have been given the task to watercool a friends computer.

However, I have no idea what to get.

His specs are:

I-7 4770
3 x zotac 2gb gtx 770
Corsair 900D (I can put in a 2 x 360, 1 x 140 and a 240mm rad)
He has a Asus Maximus VII Formula Intel Z97 as it has the watercooling threads

What I need to know is this:
What reservoir to use, what pump to use, what barbs and fittings will I need, and what tubing. None of that acrylic piping though, aint nobody got time for that!
The colour scheme is red and black to match the motherboard.

 

[DataVampire]

Are you going to watercool the garaphics cards ?
How much money have you got to spend ?
Why not buy a nice 460 rad the 900d if im correct can fit x3 of them ?
Tubing size is up to you, and what tubing size you prefer dictates the fittings?
Do you want the best fittings you can get ? no expense spared ?
The preferred pump is a laing d5 vario.
You can get a res that fits inside the front of your case, you can also get one that fits into the front of your case that also includes a pump. you can also get a res pump combo that fits inside the case. there are quite a few choices you can make, I guess im saying, you need to provide more information.

Have you looked at the kits (where they contain everything you need to get going) bar ofc the graphics cards(if your going to watercool them)

 

[Zarniwoop]

I have a 900D case and I used 2 x 480 and 1 x 240 radiators. A 480 in the top of the case and a 480 and 240 in the bottom. Don't bother with a 140mm radiator in the back of the case; it won't offer enough additional cooling to warrant the increased tubing and clutter. I wanted to have positive pressure to cut down on dust ingress and have both bottom radiators set for pull intake and the top radiator as pull exhaust. I have the 3 fans in the front of the case as intake and a 140 in the back as exhaust.

I used Alphacool NexXxos 60mm radiators as they seemed to come out well in cooling capacity comparisons. The only thing to note with these radiators is that they have a lot of flux residue in them and need to be well flushed out before use. I didn't know this and only flushed them with water and the flux residue increased the acidity of my Mayhems red Pastel coolant and turned it a purple brown colour. If you are going to use red or pastel coolant then use the Mayhems part 1 flushing kit on the radiators first.

I would recommend a D5 vario pump. It is powerful enough and is quiet if you mount it properly (I used a Shoggy sandwhich). I used 2 pumps to keep the flow up and to provide redundancy, but 1 is fine also.

Most mainstream tubing sizes are OK. Most people choose the size for aesthetic reasons (it make little difference to cooling). I liked the look of the large tubing so went for 19/13mm. Tubing with thicker walls is a little harder to use as it has a larger bend radius but it is more resistant to kinking. I would recommend Primochill Primoflex Advanced Tubing.

Reservoirs are really down to personal preference. Some people prefer bay reservoirs for ease of mounting, but I like the look of a tube ones. There is plenty of room for mounting in the 900D case. However I had to fabricate a little mounting bracket out of a piece of aluminium to enable me to mount it exactly where I wanted (to the right of the GPUs where there are some cable routing holes). The size of the reservoir does not really make much difference to cooling but I used a Aqua Computer Aqualis XT 150ml one. I like the look of it and it seems to be well made. I also liked the position of the inlet and outlet ports and it is easy to fill. You can get tube reservoirs with the pump mounted with it, but I wanted separate pumps.

I have tried out various brands of compression fittings (I didn't like the look of barbed ones). Before I started I noted that a lot of people said that Bitspower fittings are the best (although expensive). I like their standard compression fittings the best of all that I tried. However I was not that impressed by their angled and rotating fittings. They are very stiff and I had some where the rubber seals were damaged. The angled fittings that I liked the best were the EK ones. They look good in black and they rotate nice and freely.

Mount the reservoir above the pump and try to keep the tube route as short and simple as possible. The order of components in the loop doesn't matter as long as you have the reservoir directly feeding the pump. I went for a anticlockwise route; Res-pump-top rad-CPU-GPU-GPU-GPU-bottom rad-bottom rad-Res. I actually had pump to pump as I had 2, but if using 1 pump I would do it as above. This route seemed to be the simplest and neatest.

I also went for the red and black colour scheme. It is not original these days but is does look good!

Good luck!