Project: ケイ - Watercooled Threadripper

Started the tear down of the coolermaster today. The psu and fans have all been transferred across and i'm presently working on draining the loop so i can transfer the rest. Here's the progress so far:

Test fitted the res to see how well it fits. Will have to either resort to velcro or drilling the panel in the case as only two bolt holes line up. Tube routing is going to be fun. I'm hoping that I don't need any extra spacers.


Luckily that I actually have enough gentle typhoon's to cover all of the radiators. Really want to have GT's all round though as i simply cannot find anything that performs even close.


Cable routing has been easier than it was with the coolermaster, but it's still a difficult task. Whoever invented the SATA connectors needs to die, as they are always a pain to keep tidy, especially the power connectors which are upside-down. (meaning that the top hard disk needs to have the first connector on the cable.
 
I finally drained the loop in the old coolermaster today and shifted the components across to the phanteks. The ribbon cable that links the xonar essence st to the hdav h6 daughter board is not going to be particularly easy to hide now that it's all exposed. (was jammed behind the psu before)


I'm not joking when i say that the gap between the gpu and the reservoir is barely 3mm. There looks like there may be sufficient room on the side of the hdd cage to mount the thin xspc ex240 with a set of fans. Not sure if it'll be worth the effort though as i'll have 480 + 240 just for cooling the cpu and a single gpu as it is.


One very annoying thing i've finally noticed is that asus left out the front panel usb 3 header on the P9X79. It wasn't an issue with the coolermaster as it didn't have the connections. A minor nuisance with the phanteks is that you cannot unplug the cables from the connector pcbs like the coolermaster so i'm going to have to route the cables out of the way rather than remove them.


I'm still waiting on my other parts so that i can actually get on with the build. I changed my mind on the aquacomputer pump top after reading some reviews and seeing just how poorly it performed, so i've swapped that out for an EK. I also need to pack up the reservoir and take it to my local ups drop off location so that overclockers can swap it for a new one.

I'm still scratching my head on how i'm going to route the tubing, especially since the inlet and outlet on the reservoir are on the bottom.
 
My other parts should be arriving tomorrow. Sadly I'm still not likely to finish before next week as I'm sending the used photon res back to ocuk tomorrow and i'll have to wait for them to process the rma and send the replacement.

I sorted out the rest of the cables this evening so that virtually everything is now connected up. I still need to sleeve the led/switch connectors and ideally, I should sleeve the molex y splitter i'm using to power the xonar too, but with it not being visible I'm not sure i'll bother for now.


This is the potential location for a thrid radiator. Not sure if it'd be worth the effort though. Not 100% sure whether the res will interfere with the fan either.
 
Other parts arrived yesterday. More problems. So far nothing has gone to plan with regard to parts being right and arriving on time. The swap to an EK pump top didn't happen even after they confirmed the changes and refunded the price difference. Wouldn't mind too much as i did originally order the aquacomputer top, but it turns out that based on the base plate size, it's way too big to fit on the mounting point in the case. So that's got to go back. I've ordered some 10mm fitting extenders so that i can use angle fitting on the lower radiator(s).

Fittings. I like good value hence the 1/2" fatboy barbs. (think i've spent no more than £30 in total on all my fittings) Spot the 2 bitspower fittings. (got them super cheap as they were on sale)


Primochill advanced LRT 7/16" tubing vs xspc clear and uv. The new stuff is extremely clear compared to the xspc i've been using. (the old uv tube is stained by the coolant)


The whole of the upper radiator covered by the best fans money could buy. All 4 fans are powered by a single channel off the fan controller.


The XT45 480 in the roof may look a tad slim but at least the bluray writer won't block airflow at the front.
 
I'm really liking where this is going, great attention to detail and I like that your taking your time and making sure everything is neat and tidy. The end result will look even better taking this approach. I look forward to seeing future updates :)
 
Braided the front panel connectors and replaced the short molex for the sound card with a longer part this afternoon.


It's coming together now, still waiting on the reservoir and pump top though. Testing out the tube routes using the old xspc tubing. Behind the motherboad tray seems to be a bit too tight, but i won't know for certain until i've got the top for the pump.

 
Superb cable management and colour scheme going there! I really really really like it! Thag case is huge as well! Plenty of room for a lot more stuff.

Well done mate :)
 
New reservoir arrived from overclockers today. Perfect condition this time with no missing bits. Still waiting on the pump top, but at least i can start routing the tubing. As to barbs vs compressions, much prefer the look of barbs not to mention the significant difference in cost. Nice as having a full set of blue/green monsoon fittings would be, it'd cost me around 3 times as much money, probably more. The accident was completely my fault as i reused old tubing that i'd removed more than once from the barb on the cpu block. (tubing that i never touched was still super tight) Taught me a lesson i won't soon forget.
 
The last piece of this giant puzzle arrived this afternoon. No doubt people are going to be asking wtf i was thinking getting a white top, but at the time i went with it, there were no black ones anywhere. I also thought i may potentially paint/colour in bits in blue/green to match. (though it's totally hidden anyway so makes no odds)

Now that it's in place I could see that it is still possible to run the tubing around the back of the motherboard after all, though i'm not sure which route is the better choice.


The inlet sticks out by the bottom rad. The alternative route for the pump outlet is via that circular grommet and up behind the reservoir bracket.


No idea which is the better route. Behind the tray uses slightly more tubing and may also run the risk of slight kinking/squashing at the grommet up at the top of the case. Decisions, decisions...
 
Got the reservoir mounted properly, the tubing cut and fitted and filled the loop. Not managed to bleed it yet but so far at least there have been no leaks evident.


I decided to run the tubing behind the motherboard, which seems to fit ok with no kinks or squashed sections. Only minor issue so far is that the damping on the pump is insufficient. Hopefully i'll get it finished off tomorrow as it's now been two weeks since i dismantled the cm690.
 
Finally managed to finish up on this today after having to visit halfords to get more DI water. Ended up using about 2.2L in total. I was hoping that the change in reservoir was going to make bleeding easier, but in standard xspc style, air that returns to the reservoir is sucked down into the pump for another trip around just like the last xspc res. In keeping with the trend that this rebuild has had, the new WD black 640GB drive is DOA. (trusty 9 year old spinpoint 200GB gone back in)

The reservoir looks awesome although there is a distinct lack of lighting elsewhere in the case. Fan noise is very low now, but there is a resonance between the case and one of the hard drives that's a tad annoying. Idle temperatures are a bit lower than before at 32 degrees on the cpu and 29 on the gpu. Core 3 on the cpu is sitting at 24 and it's peak temp is only 44 vs all the others being 51. Didn't remove the block so haven't touched the paste since January.



I'm now considering rebuilding my old phenom II system from earlier in the thread using the old 690 case and the spare water cooling parts as i'm only lacking a d5 pump and some hard disks. It'd be built as a store server using an LSI sas card and 8 drives in raid 5 + OS drives in raid 1.
 
Replaced the DOA black 640GB with a 1TB WD enterprise SE. Remarkable difference between it and my current 1TB WD black (FAEX) regarding noise. The SE is silent unlike the black which reminded me of my original raptor 74 when seeking. It also outperforms the black by a healthy margin too. It's finally allowed me to retire my old 200GB spinpoint which is knocking on ten years old. (Crystal disk says it's only run for 23,000 hours) I'm very tempted to replace the other drives with these SE's too, although it'd probably make more sense to go with the 2TB version as it's cheaper than most of the other 2TB drives.
 
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