I probably could post this in the water-cooling section but decided to throw it here, been using my current system for a good amount of years but been having issues a lot recently that I think can be attributed to a faulty motherboard (hard drive would disconnect, ethernet adapter would uninstall/reset itself etc), so I purchased a replacement from the members market to tie me over for a bit, I also bought myself the NZXT Phantom 820 as an upgrade from my current NZXT phantom case, it has been modded to fit the water-cooling components into it, removed all HDD bays (had to buy a 5.25" bay drive to fit my 2 SSD and 1 HDD into) cut part of the top of the case off to fit a 360mm (slim) radiator (which was held on by a few custom drilled holes) and the best place to mount my pump was upside down underneath the 5.25" bay, the maximus extreme board is an E-ATX board so wider than normal and it was abit tight fitting some things in - had to lose a fan off the top and bottom radiator, so basically it worked, but it wasn't pretty, that was 2 years ago this month.
So this is the loop before any water - you can see what I mean by missing a fan on the bottom rad because of the res (250mm LF with a UV cathode) and the best place I could find for my pump, no HDD bays, you can see also that the board reaches out and just covers the 1st grommets
just a quick look of it with my red xt-1 and it powered on
So my fancy new case arrived and I was all set to move things across cases, drained my loop and during disassembly I noticed some stuff in my loop (I'm going to start a different thread on this I think to get ideas on what it was) so took everything apart - cleaned out the fittings individually, cleaned out the pump, cpu block/gpu block etc - more hassle than I wanted but to be fair I did wait 2 years before doing a clean so I only had myself to blame.
After cleaning the block I started to build the machine in the new case, skip forward and got everything installed and in place, started pouring water into the loop, doing so slowing because when I 1st did this 2 years ago I had a leak at the pump top/mod kit (bitspower)
this is what leaked on me both times,
Water in the loop and everything looked fine, paper towels nice and dry
you can see water is in the res. it filled up the pump and had started to fill the bottom rad. too
, turn the pump on let the water circulate abit, recheck the loop and notice water everywhere, may have well just turned a tap on in my system - I decided at this point that I had enough of the current pump mod kit etc and went looking for a new pump mod kit(back really), didnt see any I liked that I could guarantee would work with my pump top so decided to go EK and get one of the new RBG reservoirs, decided to go for a combo piece for convenience and to keep it looking tidy.
- the leak this time, water just poured out as soon as I turned the pump on....and yes that is the psu
EK only seem to sell the combos with a PWM D5, I already had a vario d5 so when the combo arrived I swapped out the PWM pump for my vario (although I did like the look of the PWM sleeved cables)
I also ordered the top so I could use it as an inlet
everything new I ordered
Started the build with the new components I bought the EK mount to attach the pump/res combo vertically on a 120mm fan, this time aroudn I was going to have 4 fans on my bottom rad and 6 on the top, because my old 250mm res had clearance issues and the new 140mm one didnt
- the new layout - notice the lack of a psu this time
Leak test this time went fine, no issues, so I used part 2 of my mayhems cleaning solution in my system for about 16hours, flushed the loop I think 6-7 times (leaving the new water in for about 30mins each time) to get debris in the system out (the stuff in my loop I mentioned earlier) until the water looked clear, after that was in the clear I finished off my cable management,
lots of cabling
added the RGB controller to the res so I can change colours
I have the leds red on in my system but the purple comes up well in this photo
, connected my water temperature sensor I bought aswell
and I was all set for some RGB case/res goodness
This is a small selection of the photos I took, but I realised I didn't take that many good pictures of the case once it was fully built and ready to go, basically I ordered the new parts tuesday evening, they got posted to me the next day but I didn't actually receive them until the following tuesday and didn't get the pc properly booted until wedensday - by this point I had given up on photos and was just happy to have a pc that could boot, I'd update here once I take a few good photos and I'l add in anything else I missed, this was just a quick write-up.
So my fancy new case arrived and I was all set to move things across cases, drained my loop and during disassembly I noticed some stuff in my loop (I'm going to start a different thread on this I think to get ideas on what it was) so took everything apart - cleaned out the fittings individually, cleaned out the pump, cpu block/gpu block etc - more hassle than I wanted but to be fair I did wait 2 years before doing a clean so I only had myself to blame.
After cleaning the block I started to build the machine in the new case, skip forward and got everything installed and in place, started pouring water into the loop, doing so slowing because when I 1st did this 2 years ago I had a leak at the pump top/mod kit (bitspower)
Water in the loop and everything looked fine, paper towels nice and dry
EK only seem to sell the combos with a PWM D5, I already had a vario d5 so when the combo arrived I swapped out the PWM pump for my vario (although I did like the look of the PWM sleeved cables)
Started the build with the new components I bought the EK mount to attach the pump/res combo vertically on a 120mm fan, this time aroudn I was going to have 4 fans on my bottom rad and 6 on the top, because my old 250mm res had clearance issues and the new 140mm one didnt
Leak test this time went fine, no issues, so I used part 2 of my mayhems cleaning solution in my system for about 16hours, flushed the loop I think 6-7 times (leaving the new water in for about 30mins each time) to get debris in the system out (the stuff in my loop I mentioned earlier) until the water looked clear, after that was in the clear I finished off my cable management,
This is a small selection of the photos I took, but I realised I didn't take that many good pictures of the case once it was fully built and ready to go, basically I ordered the new parts tuesday evening, they got posted to me the next day but I didn't actually receive them until the following tuesday and didn't get the pc properly booted until wedensday - by this point I had given up on photos and was just happy to have a pc that could boot, I'd update here once I take a few good photos and I'l add in anything else I missed, this was just a quick write-up.
