I couldn't find many people who had done this before so I thought I might as well share my experience as I go. Long story short I'm downsizing from a MM Ascension Extended case to my old Cooler Master Cosmos S, but didn't want to loose the cooling performance of four large radiators. The solution, mount them to the side of the case.
Now sure, plenty of people mount rad's externally, either on the back or on the top that's pretty standard these days and all the parts you need either come with a good case or can be readily bought. However mounting in this fashion needs a bit of planning, something to which I haven't done a real lot of if I'm honest. I'll be doing this mini project over a few weeks as and when I get cash for new water cooling fittings (PM me if you have any 90 degree 1/4" fittings) as I don't want to dismantle my current rig completely and be without my "precious" for a month.
So on and on, here is my basic idea for how I want the project to end:
The radiators are stood off from the case using steel tubing I got from B&Q for £3, there is enough in one length to mount all of the radiators, I hope.
The flow will be setup like so:
Someone said about drilling large holes into the side panel and having the tubing come from behind, however in the Cosmos S achieving the necessary plumbing behind the motherboard tray would be a challenge and somewhat expensive. Sure it would look a lot better, but hell if it works it works and I can always find a better way in the future.
I made a 3/4 template (A4 isn't large enough, had no A3) of one of the radiators I had that wasn't in my current build by tracing it onto A4 paper. I then used this to plot the required holes onto the side panel.
I used a high speed rotary cutter to drill the holes:
However I couldn't figure out where the heck the precision unit had gone for it so it was done free hand, and with something spinning at god knows what RPM it's easy to mess up:
So this is it mounted, I was going to use just 8 holes at first but have decided with the two outer rad's to use all 12 to give the side panel more strength (not done yet). Even now with just four bolts this rad isn't going anywhere, however it is convexing the side panel just enough to make the locking mechanism of the Cosmos S hard to latch properly, and it can drop off it not done correctly. I will likely add a rescue harness to the outside rad's which connects to the handles atop the case so if that panel does unlatch it can't go far.:
I might get a bit more done today if possible, I'm thinking to drain my loop in my current rig, take the rad's out and put a single EKWB 320mm on to get me by. This way I can mount all of the rads to the case and find out if there is an issue with balance, if so I may have to construct a pair of stands to go under the rad's. Feel free to throw any ideas at me on ways to improve, except for tidying my work place
.
Now sure, plenty of people mount rad's externally, either on the back or on the top that's pretty standard these days and all the parts you need either come with a good case or can be readily bought. However mounting in this fashion needs a bit of planning, something to which I haven't done a real lot of if I'm honest. I'll be doing this mini project over a few weeks as and when I get cash for new water cooling fittings (PM me if you have any 90 degree 1/4" fittings) as I don't want to dismantle my current rig completely and be without my "precious" for a month.
So on and on, here is my basic idea for how I want the project to end:
The radiators are stood off from the case using steel tubing I got from B&Q for £3, there is enough in one length to mount all of the radiators, I hope.
The flow will be setup like so:
Someone said about drilling large holes into the side panel and having the tubing come from behind, however in the Cosmos S achieving the necessary plumbing behind the motherboard tray would be a challenge and somewhat expensive. Sure it would look a lot better, but hell if it works it works and I can always find a better way in the future.
I made a 3/4 template (A4 isn't large enough, had no A3) of one of the radiators I had that wasn't in my current build by tracing it onto A4 paper. I then used this to plot the required holes onto the side panel.
I used a high speed rotary cutter to drill the holes:
However I couldn't figure out where the heck the precision unit had gone for it so it was done free hand, and with something spinning at god knows what RPM it's easy to mess up:
So this is it mounted, I was going to use just 8 holes at first but have decided with the two outer rad's to use all 12 to give the side panel more strength (not done yet). Even now with just four bolts this rad isn't going anywhere, however it is convexing the side panel just enough to make the locking mechanism of the Cosmos S hard to latch properly, and it can drop off it not done correctly. I will likely add a rescue harness to the outside rad's which connects to the handles atop the case so if that panel does unlatch it can't go far.:
I might get a bit more done today if possible, I'm thinking to drain my loop in my current rig, take the rad's out and put a single EKWB 320mm on to get me by. This way I can mount all of the rads to the case and find out if there is an issue with balance, if so I may have to construct a pair of stands to go under the rad's. Feel free to throw any ideas at me on ways to improve, except for tidying my work place
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