Time to journey down water cooling...

Pretty good video! I was expecting just a quick shot of the inside but proper talk through it all :)

Along with distractions (FA cup, phone etc :p )

Looks good tho, nice work!

lol...yeah the distractions helped I guess haha...thanks tho :D its still running right now and so far still no leaks :D and yeah I wanted to give a full run down cos it is my first attempt and I was so pleased about it :D

Looks like you have air in your CPU block no? Also your tubing could be cut down a lot. Rest looks tidy and full vid is nice and should help newbies looking to set there own up.

When you say air, do you mean the fact you can see the water rustling about?
 
well looks like I need more coolant after all cos the bay is not even full to the brim...I did a lot of tilting and even put the case on its side and allowing the liquid to move around more but it wouldnt have any of it...so I will buy more coolant and go from there...also I do need to cut the tubing to slightly smaller size cos now one of the is touching the GPU and the others will more than likely touch the side panel when I put that back on...so still a long way to go...

As for temps...nothing special to report...I think I may actually have a bad CPU after all cos even on idle the temps are still reading mid 40s and when I run Prime at 4.0GHz not only do the temps hit as high as 80C it then gives me a BSOD...which is always nice I guess...but I will buy more coolant first see how that goes and if I still cannot get lower temps then a new CPU it is...

Thank you for those who have helped me so far and for those who have kept an eye on my progress...now I know what needs to be done and I shall follow through with it...

:D
 
You dont need to fill the res to the very top, just make sure that the barbs are well covered. I have about a cm of air in the top of mine and never had problems just so long as theres constantly coolant going out to the pump your fine (hence why the barbs need to be well covered :p )

I am using compression fittings and I have made sure they have been screwed on very tightly and making sure no leaks are being made but I still think more coolant is needed.

Hows that work with the case on its side when trying to get rid of air in loop?

didnt do much good at all cos the amount of coolant I had in there wouldnt shift around the loop...
 
Well I managed to do some more changes...this time I reduced the amount of tubing being used as it was slightly overkill and one of them seem to be touching the GPU which I didnt like...and I then reapplied more paste and I started seeing temps of 70C max when running Prime which I thought was damn good this time round...but after about 5min of Prime it BSOD again...so maybe the CPU isnt bad after all and I guess I just needed to sort out the pasting lol...now I just need to get more coolant to allow the liquid to bleed out the air cos ever after so much tilting and wanting to drop it from 10ft there is still air being moved about.

Looking at the amount of coolant in the res in the vid, before you had a go at tilting, it seemed pretty full. Now you say you've had a go at tilting and now the level has dropped massively. If I understand you correctly this is direct proof there was virtualy no coolant in the rad the first time. If the level has dropped then you've bled some air out of the rad succcesfully, you just need to continue doing this but with more coolant. It helps when bleeding to imagine where a pocket of air would go if left to its own devices, then plan your tilting accordingly. I'd also think about mounting the rad the other way up if you can, it will make bleeding in your case much easier.

You have a point there. I did notice the liquid was going down in the res so yeah definitely more coolant is needed. As for the rad the only way to get it working the other way round is if I move it outside of the case cos it wont fit inside that way round. the way that it is now works better for me as I dont want to do too much with it. Maybe when I decide to cool my GPU I will think about putting another rad on the outside but so far so good.
 
lol.. maybe Ill spend £150 on a portable air con unit in the room to lower the ambient temp which should have a knock on effect on cpu temp...!!

TBH my room is the warmest room in the entire house a) cos the sun hits directly into my room in the morning and during most of the day and b) cos of the number of machines I have it can get quite warm in here (which is only good come winter time lol) but even now as I am typing this idle temps in my gaming PC are under 40C but I bet come winter they will get considerably lower...saying that my other machine which has a Q6600 using an Arctic Cooler Extreme CPU cooler is also idling at under 40C, but I have noticed that on some days even when I am not doing anything on that machine the temps have risen to almost 50C and that leads me to believe that my room is damn hot lol. But I have the window open right now and my door and cool air is circulating which is nice :D
 
Your rad is ok as it is you just need to lay the case on its side and then stand over it with the pump running. Lift the case off the floor so your looking directly down on the mobo and tip it all diff ways.

I tried that too...but I noticed when I did that, the pump stops and that is down to the fact that there is not enough coolant. No matter how much and how hard I tilt it in different positions cos there is no liquid in the pump to circulate it, it stops pumping. I have bought more coolant and when that arrives I will carry on where I left off.

But blimey this has been one big learning curve for me thats for sure. :D
 
Another thing that i found worked better than tilting the case around is to remove the rad from the case and move the rad around while the case is sat as it would be used (eg upright) this way the pump doesnt run out of coolent as easy and the rad can be the lowest part with air shooting to the res.

Hope that helps good build loving the progress video

Nice idea that thank you :D
 
You get the fun task of doing all this in reverse when you drain the system too haha.

The number of times Ive thought the systems all drained and sorted but then picked up the rad and got another load of coolant pouring out on me haha.

Trust me I am relishing the moment when that happens :D

Get ready though I am uploading another video on youtube...think you might like this one :D
 
Just looked at your latest vid, how much did you clean your rad out before you set everything up? There is one shot of the res in your vid when you can see tiny bits whoosing in the res, these are probably bubbles. Its hard to tell but these could also be very fine "silt" which is usually from solder flux which hasn't been fully flushed. This stuff can easily be mistaken for tiny bubbles. You can tell for sure when you switch the power off, if it is solid residue it will sort of float about when the water stops moving, whereas bubbles would tend to rise. Also, looking at your loop config again, you best method to bleed would be to put the base on its back, i.e. the side where the mouse/kb/psu power leads all plug in, that wants to be on the bottom, making sure the res has enough water to ensure the pump inside is totally submerged. If you position the case like this whilst filling the rad inlet/outlet are in the right orientation. You mention a couple of times above about the pump stopping cos its ran out of water, you really shouldn't be doing that as it is not good for a pump to run it dry. When you tilt and move the case it is critical you turn the power off if it looks like the fluid level is going to go below the pump inlet, i.e. the classic flip on/off maneuver.

The rad is brand new and its definitely not slit in the res, they are indeed bubbles cos when I turn it off its as clear as day...as for the tilting thing, I did exactly that as well...moved it about turned it on and off but still the liquid was not moving through...but dont worry as I have said I have bought more coolant so when that arrives I shall definitely be doing more thorough tilting and such...:D
 
Tubing looks tidier mate. Once you stick some more feser in there the air will sort itself out. I expect your temps will get even better once theres no air in there and with the voltage your running 4.5Ghz looks possible.

Thats what I like to hear. Thanks mate :D
 
Well guys, I have done what I set out to achieve (more or less lol). I put more coolant in this evening and right from the off the bubbles cleared. I had to take the CPU block off the CPU briefly to allow further air to escape and well, just look at the pics below :D

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Res almost full
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I did some heavy testing. Got upto 4.5GHz but crashed whilst running Vantage as Prime wouldnt run. For now its sitting very pretty at 4.3GHz and I am very very happy with it. Temps still in the lower 40s on idle and still not going anywhere near 80C when running Prime. As I use it solely for gaming I know I dont have to worry about that anyway.

Would like to thank you all for watching this thread and my videos. It's been a journey and a half. Next step, the GPU but that wont happen for a couple of months at least even though I already have the XSPC 4870X2 block now :D
 
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i love this set up mate glad i found yours you wanna spec my pc for a water rig lol.

Haha...oh God where to start ok here goes:

This is for the CPU loop:
CPU block: EK Supreme Plexi with 1366 plate Core i7
Res/pump: XSPC 750 dual bay res/pump
Radiator: XSPC 240mm
Tubing: 4m TFC 3/8"ID 1/2"OD clear tubing
Fittings: 6x TFC 3/8"ID 1/2"OD compression fittings
Coolant: TFC 1L UV blue coolant

The GPU loop is pretty much the same except:
GPU block: XSPC 4870X2 Acetal full cover block
Radiator: XSPC 360mm radiator
Res/pump: XSPC 450 res/pump combo

Notice the trend? lol...XSPC for me :D

Hope that helps mate.


I like it...I see you cooled the chipset, CPU and GPU all in one loop. Nice one :D
 
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