Parallel In The Black

[Mysterae_]

Welcome to my project, Parallel In The Black.

This is actually a mod of a previous mod (on a different forum) so many elements will have already been done and will carry over.

I'm currently in the middle of my progress so the first few posts will be a bit of catchup.

This mod was due to changing from 780Ti SLI to 980Ti SLI; it's never a simple swap when your system is watercooled as you need new blocks. I also thought I'd do something different and plumb the water blocks in parallel, mainly for looks than any perceived performance benefit. The 980Ti's will be water cooled but not in the traditional manner, I still want to retain the reference GTX look.

Here's an up to date schematic of the water cooling:

Rig Specification:

Processor – Intel i7 4770K @ 4.7GHz​

Memory – Corsair Dominator Platinums 16GB @ 2400MHz​

Motherboard – MSI Z87 XPOWER​

Graphics Cards – MSI Reference Nvidia 980Ti SLI (overclocks to be determined)​

Power Supply – Corsair AX1200 (considering changing this)​

Boot Drive – Sandisk 240GB SSDs (2 in RAID 0, 480GB total)​

Case – Silverstone FT02 Black​

The water cooling, fans and lighting will all be controlled by an Aqua Computer Aquaero 5XT. I'm adding flow rate sensors to both in an out as well as some lighting control. The wiring schematic below gives some hints to my intentions.

The case (Silverston FT02) will be modified to give more space, the USB ports upgraded to 3.0, the viewing window extended and the all too easy to scratch acrylic window will be replaced with tempered glass.

I want this build to quick, but as I'm waiting on some parts from the states I've extended the target completion date to end of September which is more than achievable.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Mysterae_]

Update

980Ti GPU Cooling

One of my aims with this mod was to retain the reference GTX look yet still be able to water cool the 980Ti’s. The solution had to be non-destructive to the graphic card for resale purposes in the future. Then I found the Koolance PLT-UN40F cold plate; a 40mm square water block which is the perfect solution to my needs. No dremelling required to fit this.

Take one reference 980Ti:

The method shown below of stripping the 980Ti makes getting the heatsink out quite easy, but I did previously strip the whole thing down. I found that some of the thermal pads were a bit skewed so I’m glad I did that.

The PLT-UN40T is relatively small water block. I quite like it; a solid good design, deep channels, offset inlet and outlet ports and a highly polished surface on the base. The only criticisms I have for the block is that the top isn't very thick so the thread length isn't very deep and it doesn't come with any fixings of any sort.

To fix the water block I sourced a number of items, such as M2.5 screws, washers, springs and thumb nuts. I considered many options and thought putting the block under spring tension to be the best option. The image below shows the fixing arrangements for two water blocks.

Pre-assembly and fitting of the water block. I decided to use Noctua NT-H1 as my thermal interface material this time.

The 980Ti reassembled with the PLT-UN40T fitted. I used some nuts to refit the screws that previously held the acrylic window on, otherwise it wouldn't have looked right with the holes.

Added some push fittings and chrome tubing for these pictures to see what it would look like .

I chose this hybrid method of cooling because I have the theory that the water cooling can focus on cooling the GPU core and the fan can cool the VRMs and RAM modules. The air from the fan will also pass over the water block aiding in the cooling but that is secondary. I'm aware than the fan speed is set by the temperature of the GPU core but that the VRMs need just as much attention. When at load the water cooling will mean a lower GPU core temperature (than normal) and thus a lower fan speed, but the VRMs will be getting hot powering that load. To mitigate this issue a custom fan curve will be set in MSI Afterburner, probably by adding a +20C offset to the fan curve or implementing a 1:1 ratio for core_temp:fan_speed, i.e. 20C:20%, 35C:35%, 50C:50% and so on. This will need a little experimentation.

Illumination? When Nvidia promoted the Titan X I really liked the images with the green glow coming from the graphics card, so I thought I'd imitate it .

The resulting effect is exactly what I was looking for .

With some chrome pipes fitted:

The green light is visible through the fan as well, nice.

Here is the LED strip, not the best imo and I may replace it with a Phobya Flexlight as it has more LEDs per cm. Although the light strip I have fitted is RGB so any colours are possible, but only green or white would be of any interest in this build. I may also double up on the strip, fitting another on the bottom of the card but I think that may glare too much. It's pretty good as it is I reckon.

The cable to the lighting won't be white as in these pictures but sleeved black instead and will be carefully hidden by the SLI bridge.

Twins .

Thanks for your interest and I'll update again soon.

 

[Jokester]

Any reason why you have two flow meters in series? They'll only differ if you have a major leak.

 

[GAM8LE]

That is a VERY cool idea and those schematics are so detailed.

I have a question. Your last picture - where does the tubing for the top card go? Down the middle of both cards with a 90 degree bend?

 

[Mysterae_]

Any reason why you have two flow meters in series? They'll only differ if you have a major leak.

The flow meters are actually placed at the in and out of the parallel branches and I'm doing it out of curiosity really, to measure the effects of the blocks in parallel. I could pretend that I'm doing it to monitor in case there's a change in pressure indicating a blocked block, but I would be only kidding myself!

That is a VERY cool idea and those schematics are so detailed.

I have a question. Your last picture - where does the tubing for the top card go? Down the middle of both cards with a 90 degree bend?

That image was from an initial test fit and I didn't like it - I'll fast forward a little bit and show this:

I did away with the 90 degree fittings and bent the pipe myself, much better looking I reckon. In my next post I'll show how I arrived at the above result .

 

[grim.]

That looks fantastic. Very different to the sort of build I'm used to seeing. Look forward to seeing the finished results.

 

[rickyjb]

looks amazing. im guessing you work with copper day to day ?

also what Finnish are you going for on the tubes?

 

[RyanF]

looks amazing. im guessing you work with copper day to day ?

also what Finnish are you going for on the tubes?

Probably Mika Häkkinen

Really interesting build, the design of the GPUs is crazy - really like it!

How do you plan on cramming this all into a case though? That last pic looks like it'll be a tight fit

 

[Mysterae_]

That looks fantastic. Very different to the sort of build I'm used to seeing. Look forward to seeing the finished results.

Cheers mate. It's good to be a little different .

looks amazing. im guessing you work with copper day to day ?

also what Finnish are you going for on the tubes?

Day to day I work with copper pipes as often as a fish rides a bicycle . I just really like it a material for water cooling, you just need practice to work with it. The copper you see above are purely templates pieces as they will be replaced with chromed copper tubing. Making the templates and testing the system lets me use the pc while I wait for other parts. It's much cheaper to work with the normal copper than the chromed stuff. I tend to waste a lot of copper tubing getting the bends and lengths just right.

Chromed copper tubing:

The tool in the middle is a Kwix tool, fantastic for straightening out coiled copper tubing

Probably Mika Häkkinen

Really interesting build, the design of the GPUs is crazy - really like it!

How do you plan on cramming this all into a case though? That last pic looks like it'll be a tight fit

Ha ha! Cheers, not quite finished with the GPUs yet either, just waiting on some parts. It's actually all test fitted, the FT02 is a very large case but I have had to modify it and losing 3 hard drive cages and 5 cdrom mounts. Having the radiator, reservoir and pump external is a must. I place the radiator next to a window to remove the warm air from the room. More on that side of things later.

 

[Luggs]

omg this is amazing! never seen anything like this before. like the gpu mod too, lighting looks fab.

 

[Mysterae_]

Update

Welcome back.

In order to remove the existing 780Ti's and install the 980Ti's for testing before modding I had to bypass the water cooling of the graphics cards and use the on-board graphics for a bit.

Here's a close up of the installed bypass from the XSPC Raystorm CPU block to the XSPC XPOWER motherboard block. The XSPC Raystorm is the chrome edition with chrome and clear acrylic mount kit, not available together which is strange as they are such a good match. Illuminated with four white LEDs and their brightness controlled by the Aquaero.

Talking of the Aquaero, you can see in the images above I've mounted it where I'm more likely to see it. I can see water temperatures, fan and pump speeds at a glance.

Case now stripped of all parts and I've marked out what I need to remove. I loose all but one CD-ROM drive bay and two hard drive slots. I don't have an optical drive installed and I've plenty of storage available on the network so it's no great loss. If you are wondering what the white tape is for - it helps increase the lighting of the motherboard by reflecting it back - those tracks that indicate the separation of the auto circuitry and MSI logo.

The rear of the FT02 is marked for the new placement of the Koolance Quick Disconnects. The other connectors will stay where they are. When I installed these previously I also dremelled out the PSU fan grill of the case as I found it a bit too restrictive.

Time to drill 18mm holes required for the new placement of the QDC's.

1. Holes marked with an automatic centre punch
2. Pilot holes drilled
3. 18mm drill bit at the ready!
4. Holes drilled, cleaning them up with my trusty deburring tool

The Silverstone FT02 has 7 accessible PCI slots with the 8th being blocked off with a plate, as if Silverstone changed their mind somewhere in the design process. Anyway, it was time to liberate that 8th slot as I needed it clear to improve the airflow from the far left 980Ti.

1. The plate concealing the 8th PCI slot, image from above
2. The plate concealing the 8th PCI slot, image from below
3. Rivets drilled out, plate removed and the 8th PCI slot is clear
4. Air blower connected to my compressor at the ready to blast all the cuttings from out of the case, goggles on!

Now ready for some dremelling of the optical and hard drive cages.

I didn't take any pictures of the dremeling as I was running out of time. Also apologies for the low quality of the following images.

Dremelling complete and taping up the edges.

Refitting all the hardware back in to case so that I can work out the best paths of the copper tubing.

Then I realise that the placement of the bottom pipe isn't ideal....

More soon!

 

[Luke_Bowman]

Interesting project, looks really good so far and love the chromed tubes. Thought it was Swagelock at first!

Looking forward to seeing the finished project

 

[colinmcr]

Now this is different, I like what you are doing. The gfx card hybrid is awesome, I'll defo be following this. What diameter is the tubing 12mm?

 

[Keechy]

this is too cool man

 

[Mysterae_]

Interesting project, looks really good so far and love the chromed tubes. Thought it was Swagelock at first!

Looking forward to seeing the finished project

Cheers! I had to google Swagelock - they have some nice kit! Their benders look especially nice to use.

Now this is different, I like what you are doing. The gfx card hybrid is awesome, I'll defo be following this. What diameter is the tubing 12mm?

Thanks, the tubing is 10mm outer diameter.

this is too cool man

Ta, that's the intention

 

[Mysterae_]

Update

When at the initial design stage I thought I'd try some 45 degree fittings but due to the varying height between the CPU and motherboard ports I noticed it started to affect the straightness of the main horizontal feed pipe. So I ditched the 45 degree fittings and set about bending the pipes to the correct angles myself.

Much better. If you look to the right of the image you'll notice another hole in the frame of the case. During the installation of the pipework I found that the distance between the two horizontal feed pipes was too little, so I drilled another. I'll get some blanking grommets and close of these open holes.

When I reached the left 980Ti I wasn't entirely happy with the routing of the pipes for it.

So I went with a kind of staggered overlapping layout which I like better. This is the final layout, well, until I replace the copper pipes with the chromed copper - the pipes fitted will be my templates so that I don't waste a lot of the chromed tubing.

Because I do get through a lot of copper tubing getting it just right!

Looking good I hope you'll agree . The masking tape on the three bottom intake fans provided me with a datum that I could use with a set square to get the pipework how I wanted it.

Time to leak test it . Blue paper towel placed strategically wherever there is a connector. Paper clip PSU jumper at the ready. When the PSU is turned on the Aquaero is powered which provides power to the USB D5 pump.

After a successful leak test (yay!) it was time to power on.

This is where I'm currently at. The system is running nicely with no ill-effects from having all the blocks in parallel. You may notice I don't have the flow meters in circuit as yet, I still need to make up the USB cable for them. I'll do this when I change the pipework to the chromed tubing.

Still lots to do, with further modding to the 980Ti's. Please leave a comment if you'd like and I'll update again soon!

 

[Avathar77]

Impressive work!
Always wanted to do copper tubing but never have the time sadly.

 

[jt_uk]

Still lots to do, with further modding to the 980Ti's. Please leave a comment if you'd like and I'll update again soon!

Holy Crap!! Thats naughty. Take your time, dont rush.

 

[colinmcr]

What do you call those fittings you've used? Is there an o-ring in there or is it some sort of press-loc?

 

[Mysterae_]

Impressive work!
Always wanted to do copper tubing but never have the time sadly.

Thanks, make the time .

Holy Crap!! Thats naughty. Take your time, dont rush.

, taking my time but I am aiming to have it completed before the end of September. The problem I have is that I keep thinking of other ideas, it's knowing when and where to stop.

What do you call those fittings you've used? Is there an o-ring in there or is it some sort of press-loc?

The fittings are 10mm push-fittings. I've included an image below as this is a common question. The fittings to the water blocks are G1/4 threads which is what most blocks use. Each of these fittings have two o-rings - one on the thread to seal against the waterblock and one inside to seal against the pipe. There's also a metal 'clinch' inside the fitting to grab the pipe so that it doesn't fall out. To release the pipe you simply press on the outer ring of the fitting and pull the pipe out.