Project: Bleedin' Li
- Thread starter Marvin
- Start date
woohoo my sig is featured in your teaserlol
Your blacked up OcUK looks pretty sweet too!
Alas it's not mine: Clicky...
It's nice though.
Coooooooool! Thanks lol
Although I can't get the rounded quote boxes to work
Anywho, I'll stop hijacking your thread now....
Soldato
So is this with a i7 920 & GTX480 both colled by a SINGLE slim 240 rad 
Thats marvellous!
Thats marvellous!
Soldato
That is some great work there Marvin!
Wow at the temps!
Wow at the temps!
Here we go, the final photo shoot:
Kinda nicked joxang's mesh behind the window idea to hide the lower compartment, without just putting some flat black aluminium in there
Also hides the HDDs, which I hadn't worked out what to do with them
So, there were some build issues, primarily revolving around the pump/res. Basically, the ring that clamps the pump to the reservoir has an O-ring in it. Not having the prior knowledge of dismantling a stock pump, I followed the instructions (which were a little ambiguous as to the position of said O-ring, especially in anticipation of a poor translation), and basically put the O-ring behind the pump, not in front. This resulted in a huge leak every time I tried to fill the res. Unfortunately, my fan controller was right underneath, but luckily the water that did get on it was:
a) de-ionised
b) not dyed at this stage
so a quick dry with a towel and a stay in the airing cupboard sorted that out.
When I figured that out, I filled the loop, and then proceeded to get my old PSU out for the bleeding/leak testing stage. Plugged the pump in, had my shorting bridge attached to the 24-pin ATX connector and switched the PSU on. The fan kicked in, but no pump. I thought I might have killed it somehow, or that it was DOA. Turned out that despite the colours with PSUs being set as:
Orange - 3.3V
Red - 5V
Yellow - 12V
Black - Ground
(et al)
Alphacool had helpfully colour coded the pump with a red wire, so following the molex spec (rather than remembering where the wires went) I ended up putting it back for 5V, which naturally wouldn't start...
So, after sorting that out (and it wasn't really worth braiding that cable either - oh well), it bled fairly successfully, and the pump works nicely on setting 5, though is a little loud at idle. I did hook it up to my fan controller (which worked when bleeding and was lovely and quiet on 7-8V, as I wanted to test it out) using a 3-pin to molex adaptor that I'd used before on a DDC, but for some reason it didn't start when I first fired the PC up, resulting in a boot temperature of 100°C on the CPU...
So now to the performance, updates will be coming when I overclock, and I'll do some in-game temperatures and so on.
As for noise however, I thought that this subject is the main potential sticking point of this type of set-up. There's no denying, at 100% fan, it's loud. Probably in terms of dB, louder, or as loud as, a GTX480 stock cooler at load. However, the noise is subjectively quieter, as the fans are quite deep, pitch wise, as you are simply hearing the air move through the radiator, not the fan itself as with the GTX480 fan, which whines annoyingly.
As I play games with headphones on, load volume isn't a massive issue, so I can turn up to 100% without issue, but in the interests of not ****ing everyone else off, 75% still performs well, but isn't as loud. At idle however, this thing is great. With the fans down to ~900-1000 rpm (4V), the pump and HDD are the loudest things in the case by far. I'm super impressed with the Ultra Kazes at low voltage, and with the Sharkoon 2000rpm fan at the back for noise, neither making annoying screamy noises, but more a 'woosh'.
Anyway, while playing Dawn Of War 2: Retribution last night, I had the fans on ~40% (4V) and the GPU temperature crept up to 53°C (as it sits almost permanently at 100% load), the water temperature was at ~40°C. I turned the fans to 100%, and within 30s to 1 minutes the water temperature dropped by a full 10-12°C to 27-29°C, and the GPU temperature dropped to 45°C. This temperature remained stable through the rest of the game, which was about another 30 minutes.
If you've bothered to read all that, well done, have an Internet cookie for your efforts. Overclocking results aside, I think this shows that a dual radiator with the right set-up can result in very nice temperatures, and a very capable loop.
Final Specifications
Hardware:
CPU: i7 920 D0
Motherboard: Asus Rampage III Formula
RAM: Patriot Viper II Sector 7 6GB
GPU: Asus GTX480
SSD/HDD: Kingston SNV425 128GB, Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB
PSU: Seasonic X-650 Gold
Sound Card: Asus Xonar Xense
TV/Capture card (the top green card): AverMedia HD Capture/H727
Cooling:
CPU block: EK Supreme LTX Nickel/Plexi
GPU block: EK VGA Supreme HF Nickel/Plexi
GPU VRM/VRAM cooling: Asus GTX480 standard cooling plate with fan removed
Pump: Alphacool VPP655
Reservoir: XSPC Dual-bay D5
Tubing: XSPC Clearflex 3/8" ID 1/2" OD
Fittings: OCUK clearance PerfectSeal 3/8" barbs/Bitspower 3/8" 90° barbs/Bitspower G1/4 temperature probe/Bitspower X piece/Feser G1/4 through-fittings/XSPC M20.5-G1/4 adaptor
Fluid: B&Q De-ionised water (49p per litre), Mayhems Red dye
Kinda nicked joxang's mesh behind the window idea to hide the lower compartment, without just putting some flat black aluminium in there
Also hides the HDDs, which I hadn't worked out what to do with them
So, there were some build issues, primarily revolving around the pump/res. Basically, the ring that clamps the pump to the reservoir has an O-ring in it. Not having the prior knowledge of dismantling a stock pump, I followed the instructions (which were a little ambiguous as to the position of said O-ring, especially in anticipation of a poor translation), and basically put the O-ring behind the pump, not in front. This resulted in a huge leak every time I tried to fill the res. Unfortunately, my fan controller was right underneath, but luckily the water that did get on it was:
a) de-ionised
b) not dyed at this stage
so a quick dry with a towel and a stay in the airing cupboard sorted that out.
When I figured that out, I filled the loop, and then proceeded to get my old PSU out for the bleeding/leak testing stage. Plugged the pump in, had my shorting bridge attached to the 24-pin ATX connector and switched the PSU on. The fan kicked in, but no pump. I thought I might have killed it somehow, or that it was DOA. Turned out that despite the colours with PSUs being set as:
Orange - 3.3V
Red - 5V
Yellow - 12V
Black - Ground
(et al)
Alphacool had helpfully colour coded the pump with a red wire, so following the molex spec (rather than remembering where the wires went) I ended up putting it back for 5V, which naturally wouldn't start...
So, after sorting that out (and it wasn't really worth braiding that cable either - oh well), it bled fairly successfully, and the pump works nicely on setting 5, though is a little loud at idle. I did hook it up to my fan controller (which worked when bleeding and was lovely and quiet on 7-8V, as I wanted to test it out) using a 3-pin to molex adaptor that I'd used before on a DDC, but for some reason it didn't start when I first fired the PC up, resulting in a boot temperature of 100°C on the CPU...
So now to the performance, updates will be coming when I overclock, and I'll do some in-game temperatures and so on.
As for noise however, I thought that this subject is the main potential sticking point of this type of set-up. There's no denying, at 100% fan, it's loud. Probably in terms of dB, louder, or as loud as, a GTX480 stock cooler at load. However, the noise is subjectively quieter, as the fans are quite deep, pitch wise, as you are simply hearing the air move through the radiator, not the fan itself as with the GTX480 fan, which whines annoyingly.
As I play games with headphones on, load volume isn't a massive issue, so I can turn up to 100% without issue, but in the interests of not ****ing everyone else off, 75% still performs well, but isn't as loud. At idle however, this thing is great. With the fans down to ~900-1000 rpm (4V), the pump and HDD are the loudest things in the case by far. I'm super impressed with the Ultra Kazes at low voltage, and with the Sharkoon 2000rpm fan at the back for noise, neither making annoying screamy noises, but more a 'woosh'.
Anyway, while playing Dawn Of War 2: Retribution last night, I had the fans on ~40% (4V) and the GPU temperature crept up to 53°C (as it sits almost permanently at 100% load), the water temperature was at ~40°C. I turned the fans to 100%, and within 30s to 1 minutes the water temperature dropped by a full 10-12°C to 27-29°C, and the GPU temperature dropped to 45°C. This temperature remained stable through the rest of the game, which was about another 30 minutes.
If you've bothered to read all that, well done, have an Internet cookie for your efforts. Overclocking results aside, I think this shows that a dual radiator with the right set-up can result in very nice temperatures, and a very capable loop.
Final Specifications
Hardware:
CPU: i7 920 D0
Motherboard: Asus Rampage III Formula
RAM: Patriot Viper II Sector 7 6GB
GPU: Asus GTX480
SSD/HDD: Kingston SNV425 128GB, Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB
PSU: Seasonic X-650 Gold
Sound Card: Asus Xonar Xense
TV/Capture card (the top green card): AverMedia HD Capture/H727
Cooling:
CPU block: EK Supreme LTX Nickel/Plexi
GPU block: EK VGA Supreme HF Nickel/Plexi
GPU VRM/VRAM cooling: Asus GTX480 standard cooling plate with fan removed
Pump: Alphacool VPP655
Reservoir: XSPC Dual-bay D5
Tubing: XSPC Clearflex 3/8" ID 1/2" OD
Fittings: OCUK clearance PerfectSeal 3/8" barbs/Bitspower 3/8" 90° barbs/Bitspower G1/4 temperature probe/Bitspower X piece/Feser G1/4 through-fittings/XSPC M20.5-G1/4 adaptor
Fluid: B&Q De-ionised water (49p per litre), Mayhems Red dye
Last edited:
Beautiful! And great temps too. I understand the performance of those slim rads + high cfm fans is better than the performance of 'quiet' low fpi rads? Otherwise I'd consider adding my gpu to the loop.
Have you/are you going to put any lighting in this build?
Also, do you play any DOWII multiplayer?
Have you/are you going to put any lighting in this build?
Also, do you play any DOWII multiplayer
?
Associate
- Joined
- 8 Apr 2011
- Posts
- 453
Nice, worth the wait ^^
It's not necessarily the 'slim-ness', but the FPI, being 30 FPI in this case, which is why it performs pretty much the same as the GTX240. At high-rpm (>2000rpm) the high FPI radiators do out-perform the low-FPI/quiet radiators.
I had to remove the NZXT lighting behind the mobo as the standoffs are quite short so it didn't fit. I'm having a think about how to incorporate it though.
Also, do you play any DOWII multiplayer
Define 'play'.
I fail at it really, and so only play friendly 'house-rules' type matches against my brother (neither of us are 'rush players' so we both turtle and have a proper battle)...
Thanks!
A beautifull build, liking the red and black colour scheme on the back of the case. Is your flow going down? ie CPU to GPU? Ive heard from people that if you have it going the other way round you oftens see better temps because the water is travelling the same way as the heat wants to, although may not be useful for you because you go the GPU there, if it was a CPU loop only then it may be more applicable.
Thanks, not heard that one before if I'm honest. I suspect the difference is negligible, as the water in the loop tends to equalise temperature-wise.
Associate
Gorgeous build, the dark mesh and colour contrast really sets it off. 
Here's a 40 minute stress test (6 threads on IBT, HT enabled) at 100% fan. CPU still at stock, GPU at 800/1950 resulting in a maximum temperature of 52°C and 43°C respectively. Ambient's at ~22°C, max water temperature was 29°C.
Overclocking coming up!
Overclocking coming up!
Soldato
Very interested in this build!
What are the cpu temps before and after adding the GPU?
What are the cpu temps before and after adding the GPU?
I don't get what you mean? I built the loop from scratch to include both CPU and GPU....
Soldato
Oh ok my bad! I thought you had CPU loop first!
Why may I ask you put the HDD at the bottom instead of the 5 1/4 bay?
Why may I ask you put the HDD at the bottom instead of the 5 1/4 bay?
There's no room in the 5 1/4" bays due to the fill port. I tried to put it in there, but it wasn't having it. So I thought that the bottom was the best place really...
Ok, here are my final overclocks with the bits in place:
The maximum GPU temperature of 53°C reported by Afterburner was before I shoved the fans to 100%, it remained at the 47°C level throughout the test.
Overall I'm quite pleased with the temperatures, though I think I might drop the i7 to 4GHz, as I know it can do that at a much lower voltage, which should result in lower temperatures. Of course the temps reported here are literally worst case scenario temperatures, as both the CPU and GPU are at 100%. In games the temps are much lower on the CPU.
I think, in summary that it's entirely possible to run a very capable rig on a single 240 radiator, with the following caveats:
As always, the EK water blocks are impeccably well made, and perform admirably well. They were chosen as whilst they are not the best performers, both blocks have low flow restriction, which is vitally important.
I'm not particularly happy with the XSPC reservoir. As expected, a Lian Li plus a reservoir/pump that's not particularly well damped results in a vibrating noise, which is annoying. In hindsight, I'd have saved some money and bought a DDC 18W, then put it on my fan controller, as the D5 doesn't seem to scale well when put on the fan controller, and it doesn't have a signal wire, so I can't see what speed it does.
So, where this will go next? I may just change the reservoir and pump top to a tube style reservoir or similar, and an EK D5 top. This will also free up a couple of drive bays, which I could use for the SSD and HDD. I might also experiment with some high-rpm 25mm fans in place of the Ultra Kazes and see how they affect noise and temperature. I have two more Sharkoon 2000rpm fans (like the one in the back of the case) to try, and I might see what else there is on the market and give them a go.
Of course I could also try different radiators, maybe a Coolgate or TA120.2 with the high RPM fans, to see whether the loop can perform well even fairly quietly. Then there's the possibility of adding a radiator to the roof or rear 120mm fan for more power, though the looks would suffer.
Anyway, thanks for taking an interest in my project, I'll be sure to update when the next changes fall in...
The maximum GPU temperature of 53°C reported by Afterburner was before I shoved the fans to 100%, it remained at the 47°C level throughout the test.
Overall I'm quite pleased with the temperatures, though I think I might drop the i7 to 4GHz, as I know it can do that at a much lower voltage, which should result in lower temperatures. Of course the temps reported here are literally worst case scenario temperatures, as both the CPU and GPU are at 100%. In games the temps are much lower on the CPU.
I think, in summary that it's entirely possible to run a very capable rig on a single 240 radiator, with the following caveats:
- The radiator must absolutely be matched to the fans (and vice versa) very carefully. You need to squeeze all the performance possible from the radiator, so this choice is crucial.
- Equally, it's unlikely you'll be able to run a silent computer with such a set-up, so bear that in mind. While it's still subjectively quieter than a stock GPU cooler at full load, it's still not quiet per se. This isn't an issue for me as I wear headphones when I game and can't hear the fans, but it would put many off.
- 38mm fans have good and bad points. At full load, they are subjectively quieter than a 25mm fan pushing a similar amount of air, but at idle they produce an annoying motor noise similar to a pump that hasn't been fully bled of air. I'm already thinking about changing them, as they're really quite annoying.
- You'll need good pumping power, as a set-up like this thrives with higher flow rates. An 18W DDC would be preferable even with a simple loop like this to a 10W DDC or below.
As always, the EK water blocks are impeccably well made, and perform admirably well. They were chosen as whilst they are not the best performers, both blocks have low flow restriction, which is vitally important.
I'm not particularly happy with the XSPC reservoir. As expected, a Lian Li plus a reservoir/pump that's not particularly well damped results in a vibrating noise, which is annoying. In hindsight, I'd have saved some money and bought a DDC 18W, then put it on my fan controller, as the D5 doesn't seem to scale well when put on the fan controller, and it doesn't have a signal wire, so I can't see what speed it does.
So, where this will go next? I may just change the reservoir and pump top to a tube style reservoir or similar, and an EK D5 top. This will also free up a couple of drive bays, which I could use for the SSD and HDD. I might also experiment with some high-rpm 25mm fans in place of the Ultra Kazes and see how they affect noise and temperature. I have two more Sharkoon 2000rpm fans (like the one in the back of the case) to try, and I might see what else there is on the market and give them a go.
Of course I could also try different radiators, maybe a Coolgate or TA120.2 with the high RPM fans, to see whether the loop can perform well even fairly quietly. Then there's the possibility of adding a radiator to the roof or rear 120mm fan for more power, though the looks would suffer.
Anyway, thanks for taking an interest in my project, I'll be sure to update when the next changes fall in...
If you're going to replace the drive bay res, it's possible to fit a 120mm rad in 4 x 5.25 drive bays with an adaptor - any 3 x 5.25 bay fan adaptor and just attach the rad to the fan. Extra cooling and spares you having to dremel a big hole out in the roof .
.