Associate
Project: "Desk Rad"
Description
This project combines a desk and Antec P180 case to bring watercooling to an Intel i7 processor with dual Nvidia GTX480 on a GA-X58A-UD7 motherboard. It didn't start out quite that way...
Here's the CURRENT state of the radiators behind the desk:
Background
Two years ago I ventured into the watercooled computers with a Zalman Reserator XT, cooling a Intel Core 2 Extreme (Quad) CPU and a Nvidia 8800GTS. The kit was easy to install and the result was pleasingly quiet.
I also have a media PC that was 5 years old and in need of an upgrade. It ran XP on a Pentium M in a MicroATX HTPC box. It only had a small fan on the processor. The noisiest thing was the hard drive (and I've been waiting for decent sized SSDs to come down in price to address that aspect). Processing video on this setup is not realistic e.g. transcoding DVDs. Consequentially I ended up shipping the videos to the faster PC and processing them there.
Initial Plan
The initial idea was to upgrade the media PC only, but the case is small and the wife's style requirements needed to be adhered to for the room the media PC is in, plus it still had to be quiet. This led me to consider watercooling. After my experience with Zalman stuff I initially chose the Reserator 2 (a passive tower radiator come reservoir). It is a very quiet system, but there are question marks over its ability to cool today's processors.
I thought it might cool my existing Quad processor and that led me to moving the processor from my existing "fast" PC to the media PC and using the CPU block provided with the Reserator 2 in my fast PC, with the existing CPU and block moving to the media pc. This was a working plan for quite a while until I realised that the Reserator 2 was separately powered from the mains, rather than from the PC's power (as in the Reserator XT). Given that the media PC is in standby for most of the time, turning itself on and off as recordings dictate, plus leaving the Reserator 2 on all the time wasn't acceptable.
Plan 2
The second idea was to use the existing Reserator XT for the media PC (which still meets the wife's approval) and to move to a completely new setup for the fast PC.
I always seemed sensible to me to have the radiator external to the computer case, so somehow fixing the radiator to the desk formed an early part of my thinking. I also wanted to use as many of the components I already had, including the Antec P180 case, which is far too small the house a decent sized radiator. That decision has cost me a lot of hours of work, but it's been fun.
I considered some other Reserator style products, but decided to design my own this time. I liked the look of the EK range of products and generally speaking I have bought their products. The initial shopping run included:
• Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 v2.0 Motherboard
• Intel Core i7 980X 3.33G 12MB
• Corsair 12GB (3x4GB) DDR3 1600 DOM DHX
• EK CoolStream Radiator XTC 420mm (fits 3x 140mm fans).
• EK-Supreme HF Nickel CPU block
• EK-DCP 4.0 12V DC Pump
• OcUK Watercooled GTX 480, which comprises ASUS Nvidia GTX 480, EK full cover (Ni/Plx), Nickel backplate, single slot bracket (this product is no longer available).
• 3x Scythe Slip Stream 140mm 1200 RPM
• Corsair AX 1200W PSU
I also opted for 10/13mm tubing and compression fittings. I thought that the main restrictions to flow would be the all the blocks and connections rather than the size of the pipe. Some people seemed to have trouble with compression fittings being too close together to easily work with and there seemed to be little difference in the bend radii of the larger and smaller tubes. However the main reason was that I decided to try out the watercooling block that came with the motherboard and this recommended 7mm ID tubing, so I thought the 10 mm ID might be OK with a good clamp. I knew that 8mm ID tubing (Zalmans was OK, so I might be able to use that at a pinch for some of the loop. As it turns out the 10mm ID tubing is fine with the Gigabyte block and I've had no leaks so far, so I am happy with that aspect.
I bought clearflex tubing, but I am not 100% happy with it. The walls aren't as rigid as the Zalman tubing, which means you have to be careful when bending it or it will easily fold over and stop the flow.
• 6m ClearFlex60 tubing 12,7/9,5mm (3/8"ID) clear
• 10x 13/10mm (10x1,5mm) compression fitting outer thread 1/4 - knurl
• 2x coupling Koolance 13/10mm (3/8") male - black nickel
• 2x coupling Koolance 13/10mm (3/8") female - black nickel
• EK Water Blocks EK-Reservoir for Phobya DC12-400 / EK DCP 4.0
• 2x 13/10mm (10x1,5mm) compression fitting 45° revolvable outer thr
• 13/10mm (10x1,5mm) compression fitting 90° revolvable outer thr
• 3x Enermax T.B.Silence UCTB14 ( 140x140x25mm )
Unfortunately the Scythe Slipstream fans I bought for the radiator had to be returned because their holes were for 120mm fan housings rather than the 140mm I needed for the radiator. I went for the Enermax T.B.Silence fans instead, which are very quiet.
I installed the radiator behind the desk and used the Koolance couplings to allow the desk and computer to be separated. The Reserator has the same sort of couplings, which gave me the idea for this project.
I subsequently bought another ASUS GTX 480, EK full cover block and back plate and EK-FC links and bridge (although I bought the wrong bridge first time...). The new bridge arrives tomorrow, so I will hopefully be installing it then.
I made a few mistakes during the preparation and installation of the radiator behind the desk...
Mistake #1
I followed the radiator cleaning guide on the stickies on this site, which call for the radiator to be filled with vinegar and left for 6-8 hours. The result was very blue/green cloudy water:
It also appeared to discolour the blanking plugs:
No actual harm was done, but I think it was over aggressive.
Mistake #2
I was a big careless when installing the fans onto the radiator and used the wrong length M3 bolt. I didn't think I had tightened them too much but during my leak testing I discovered that I had punctured the radiator with one of the screws....
So that meant a second radiator, which at least meant I could clean it differently! I also opted to use some rubber washers between the fans and radiator to make sure the bolts didn't get anywhere near the actual radiator.
Reservoir
My original plan was to have only the radiator (and fans) attached to the desk, with the pump and reservoir inside the case. This dictated the size of the reservoir and to be honest I regret getting such a small reservoir. It takes at least 3 fills of the reservoir to get water into a drained system, which is tedious at best. And if you are careless and leave the reservoir on the floor when you open the top to fill it, the water rushes out of the system and into the reservoir and from there over the floor! I only did this once, but that was enough.
Plan 3:
So I revised the plan and placed the pump and reservoir (which are effectively a single unit) behind the desk alongside the radiator. I managed to pick up a 15cm radiator shelf from Wickes for £3 which was a perfect fit behind the desk.
I could place the pump on the desk for filling, but I needed to move the desk to get at the pump and reservoir, so I have hatched yet another plan which is yet to be put in place.
Plan 4:
The third idea for the reservoir is to place the pump and reservoir at the side of the desk, where there is already access and to extend the size of the reservoir to reduce the need for repeat fillings. I have bought a EK Link and EK reservoir extension to add over 140 mm to the length of the reservoir. The reservoir will now extend above the desk height and will therefore be the highest point in the system.
Case mods
The Antec P180 has a separate section at the bottom of the case housing the PSU and a drive caddy, holding up to four 3.5 inch drives. Between the PSU and the drives is a fan (see the photo above of the original system). Unfortunately the 1.2 kW PSU is a lot larger than the previous PSU and this meant the central fan had to go. The PSU does have its own fan, but I was concerned that it might get a bit hot so I decided to place a fan at the front of the case blowing air over the drives towards the PSU. There is almost enough room for a fan to be placed right up against the steel grill at the front of the case. Unfortunately the drive caddy wouldn't quite fit, even when I shaved off a bit of the fan with my Dremel.
So I had to move the drive caddy about 1cm towards the PSU to give sufficient room for a normal 120mm fan. I did this by moving the plastic runner 1cm to the front of the caddy. This involved making 16 M3 tapped holes for the M3 bolts holding the plastic to screw into. Once I formulated this plan it actually went very smoothly, even though the steel of the caddy is quite thin, leaving the distinct possibility of striping the thread.
I also found that the fan made a nasty noise when attached directly to the steel grill at the front of the case, so I made my own brackets to provide holes in the right places for the fan and to move it slight further from the grill.
I found that I could use the rubber fan holders with this arrangement, hopefully providing some soundproofing from vibration.
I did also remove the second drive caddy to provide space for the pump and reservoir (although I have now moved them onto the desk). That caddy could be replaced if I ever get more drives now that the pump is elsewhere, but for now the extra air space is good.
Pump control
Having heard the pump while testing out the radiator, I decided that I needed to be able to control it. I saw mCubed's bigNG as something powerful enough (my pump uses 18 W) and flexible enough for my needs. The bigNG does indeed seem powerful and flexible but the accompanying software leaves a lot to be desired. I am still getting to grips with it, so you will see some more postings on that subject later. It is very early days for this set up, but at the moment it is controlling my pump and radiator fans and it has decided to turn both OFF twice, leading to the water temperature recorded on leaving the case rising to 29 deg C! I need to fully understand why that might be.
To follow
There will be more to follow:
1. New location for the reservoir
2. Installing the second GTX.
3. Configuring and using the bigNG.
Description
This project combines a desk and Antec P180 case to bring watercooling to an Intel i7 processor with dual Nvidia GTX480 on a GA-X58A-UD7 motherboard. It didn't start out quite that way...
Here's the CURRENT state of the radiators behind the desk:
Background
Two years ago I ventured into the watercooled computers with a Zalman Reserator XT, cooling a Intel Core 2 Extreme (Quad) CPU and a Nvidia 8800GTS. The kit was easy to install and the result was pleasingly quiet.
I also have a media PC that was 5 years old and in need of an upgrade. It ran XP on a Pentium M in a MicroATX HTPC box. It only had a small fan on the processor. The noisiest thing was the hard drive (and I've been waiting for decent sized SSDs to come down in price to address that aspect). Processing video on this setup is not realistic e.g. transcoding DVDs. Consequentially I ended up shipping the videos to the faster PC and processing them there.
Initial Plan
The initial idea was to upgrade the media PC only, but the case is small and the wife's style requirements needed to be adhered to for the room the media PC is in, plus it still had to be quiet. This led me to consider watercooling. After my experience with Zalman stuff I initially chose the Reserator 2 (a passive tower radiator come reservoir). It is a very quiet system, but there are question marks over its ability to cool today's processors.
I thought it might cool my existing Quad processor and that led me to moving the processor from my existing "fast" PC to the media PC and using the CPU block provided with the Reserator 2 in my fast PC, with the existing CPU and block moving to the media pc. This was a working plan for quite a while until I realised that the Reserator 2 was separately powered from the mains, rather than from the PC's power (as in the Reserator XT). Given that the media PC is in standby for most of the time, turning itself on and off as recordings dictate, plus leaving the Reserator 2 on all the time wasn't acceptable.
Plan 2
The second idea was to use the existing Reserator XT for the media PC (which still meets the wife's approval) and to move to a completely new setup for the fast PC.
I always seemed sensible to me to have the radiator external to the computer case, so somehow fixing the radiator to the desk formed an early part of my thinking. I also wanted to use as many of the components I already had, including the Antec P180 case, which is far too small the house a decent sized radiator. That decision has cost me a lot of hours of work, but it's been fun.
I considered some other Reserator style products, but decided to design my own this time. I liked the look of the EK range of products and generally speaking I have bought their products. The initial shopping run included:
• Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 v2.0 Motherboard
• Intel Core i7 980X 3.33G 12MB
• Corsair 12GB (3x4GB) DDR3 1600 DOM DHX
• EK CoolStream Radiator XTC 420mm (fits 3x 140mm fans).
• EK-Supreme HF Nickel CPU block
• EK-DCP 4.0 12V DC Pump
• OcUK Watercooled GTX 480, which comprises ASUS Nvidia GTX 480, EK full cover (Ni/Plx), Nickel backplate, single slot bracket (this product is no longer available).
• 3x Scythe Slip Stream 140mm 1200 RPM
• Corsair AX 1200W PSU
I also opted for 10/13mm tubing and compression fittings. I thought that the main restrictions to flow would be the all the blocks and connections rather than the size of the pipe. Some people seemed to have trouble with compression fittings being too close together to easily work with and there seemed to be little difference in the bend radii of the larger and smaller tubes. However the main reason was that I decided to try out the watercooling block that came with the motherboard and this recommended 7mm ID tubing, so I thought the 10 mm ID might be OK with a good clamp. I knew that 8mm ID tubing (Zalmans was OK, so I might be able to use that at a pinch for some of the loop. As it turns out the 10mm ID tubing is fine with the Gigabyte block and I've had no leaks so far, so I am happy with that aspect.
I bought clearflex tubing, but I am not 100% happy with it. The walls aren't as rigid as the Zalman tubing, which means you have to be careful when bending it or it will easily fold over and stop the flow.
• 6m ClearFlex60 tubing 12,7/9,5mm (3/8"ID) clear
• 10x 13/10mm (10x1,5mm) compression fitting outer thread 1/4 - knurl
• 2x coupling Koolance 13/10mm (3/8") male - black nickel
• 2x coupling Koolance 13/10mm (3/8") female - black nickel
• EK Water Blocks EK-Reservoir for Phobya DC12-400 / EK DCP 4.0
• 2x 13/10mm (10x1,5mm) compression fitting 45° revolvable outer thr
• 13/10mm (10x1,5mm) compression fitting 90° revolvable outer thr
• 3x Enermax T.B.Silence UCTB14 ( 140x140x25mm )
Unfortunately the Scythe Slipstream fans I bought for the radiator had to be returned because their holes were for 120mm fan housings rather than the 140mm I needed for the radiator. I went for the Enermax T.B.Silence fans instead, which are very quiet.
I installed the radiator behind the desk and used the Koolance couplings to allow the desk and computer to be separated. The Reserator has the same sort of couplings, which gave me the idea for this project.
I subsequently bought another ASUS GTX 480, EK full cover block and back plate and EK-FC links and bridge (although I bought the wrong bridge first time...). The new bridge arrives tomorrow, so I will hopefully be installing it then.
I made a few mistakes during the preparation and installation of the radiator behind the desk...
Mistake #1
I followed the radiator cleaning guide on the stickies on this site, which call for the radiator to be filled with vinegar and left for 6-8 hours. The result was very blue/green cloudy water:
It also appeared to discolour the blanking plugs:
No actual harm was done, but I think it was over aggressive.
Mistake #2
I was a big careless when installing the fans onto the radiator and used the wrong length M3 bolt. I didn't think I had tightened them too much but during my leak testing I discovered that I had punctured the radiator with one of the screws....
So that meant a second radiator, which at least meant I could clean it differently! I also opted to use some rubber washers between the fans and radiator to make sure the bolts didn't get anywhere near the actual radiator.
Reservoir
My original plan was to have only the radiator (and fans) attached to the desk, with the pump and reservoir inside the case. This dictated the size of the reservoir and to be honest I regret getting such a small reservoir. It takes at least 3 fills of the reservoir to get water into a drained system, which is tedious at best. And if you are careless and leave the reservoir on the floor when you open the top to fill it, the water rushes out of the system and into the reservoir and from there over the floor! I only did this once, but that was enough.
Plan 3:
So I revised the plan and placed the pump and reservoir (which are effectively a single unit) behind the desk alongside the radiator. I managed to pick up a 15cm radiator shelf from Wickes for £3 which was a perfect fit behind the desk.
I could place the pump on the desk for filling, but I needed to move the desk to get at the pump and reservoir, so I have hatched yet another plan which is yet to be put in place.
Plan 4:
The third idea for the reservoir is to place the pump and reservoir at the side of the desk, where there is already access and to extend the size of the reservoir to reduce the need for repeat fillings. I have bought a EK Link and EK reservoir extension to add over 140 mm to the length of the reservoir. The reservoir will now extend above the desk height and will therefore be the highest point in the system.
Case mods
The Antec P180 has a separate section at the bottom of the case housing the PSU and a drive caddy, holding up to four 3.5 inch drives. Between the PSU and the drives is a fan (see the photo above of the original system). Unfortunately the 1.2 kW PSU is a lot larger than the previous PSU and this meant the central fan had to go. The PSU does have its own fan, but I was concerned that it might get a bit hot so I decided to place a fan at the front of the case blowing air over the drives towards the PSU. There is almost enough room for a fan to be placed right up against the steel grill at the front of the case. Unfortunately the drive caddy wouldn't quite fit, even when I shaved off a bit of the fan with my Dremel.
So I had to move the drive caddy about 1cm towards the PSU to give sufficient room for a normal 120mm fan. I did this by moving the plastic runner 1cm to the front of the caddy. This involved making 16 M3 tapped holes for the M3 bolts holding the plastic to screw into. Once I formulated this plan it actually went very smoothly, even though the steel of the caddy is quite thin, leaving the distinct possibility of striping the thread.
I also found that the fan made a nasty noise when attached directly to the steel grill at the front of the case, so I made my own brackets to provide holes in the right places for the fan and to move it slight further from the grill.
I found that I could use the rubber fan holders with this arrangement, hopefully providing some soundproofing from vibration.
I did also remove the second drive caddy to provide space for the pump and reservoir (although I have now moved them onto the desk). That caddy could be replaced if I ever get more drives now that the pump is elsewhere, but for now the extra air space is good.
Pump control
Having heard the pump while testing out the radiator, I decided that I needed to be able to control it. I saw mCubed's bigNG as something powerful enough (my pump uses 18 W) and flexible enough for my needs. The bigNG does indeed seem powerful and flexible but the accompanying software leaves a lot to be desired. I am still getting to grips with it, so you will see some more postings on that subject later. It is very early days for this set up, but at the moment it is controlling my pump and radiator fans and it has decided to turn both OFF twice, leading to the water temperature recorded on leaving the case rising to 29 deg C! I need to fully understand why that might be.
To follow
There will be more to follow:
1. New location for the reservoir
2. Installing the second GTX.
3. Configuring and using the bigNG.
Last edited:
... This look tho I can't w8 to see it.. More pic plz
