Very cosy W/C, advice please.

WoZZeR · 16 Apr 2007 at 17:12

Very cosy W/C, advice please. Piccies!!

Hello chaps

I assembling my SD37P2 Shuttle at the moment and am looking for some routing and fitting advice, order of components etc.

I've got a couple of piccies below, the radiator inlet and outlet are at the inside front near the CPU block and the reservoir is at the top:

It looks a bit messy but I am tidying it up. The pump is facing outwards but can face either forwards or backwards too.

I have 2 graphics cards in the PCIe slots with connectors like so:

I shall receive a Northbridge block this week too.

My proposed loop was:

Reservoir, Pump, CPU, Outer GFX (via RH side of case) exiting via Inner GFX, Northbridge, Radiator, Reservoir.

The snag is very tight bends and 'pinching hose', are there any fittings or an alternative loop I could use?

All ideas welcome.

Drazic · 16 Apr 2007 at 17:23

You can have it flowing to whic ever parts you want as long as the hose is all nice and flowing.

Looks tight in there!

The pump can be mounted verticaly you know if that helps.

WoZZeR · 16 Apr 2007 at 17:30

Ah excellent, so it doesn't matter what order as long as I get good clean runs, music to my ears.

Might see if the pump fits sideways, good idea.

Cheers.

samcat · 16 Apr 2007 at 20:42

WoZZeR said:
Ah excellent, so it doesn't matter what order as long as I get good clean runs, music to my ears.

Might see if the pump fits sideways, good idea.

Cheers.

Res should always be just before the pump (ie pump sucks water from the res).
Other than that it makes minimal difference to temperature what order things are in.

Sam C

Drazic · 17 Apr 2007 at 01:02

WoZZeR said:
Ah excellent, so it doesn't matter what order as long as I get good clean runs, music to my ears.

Might see if the pump fits sideways, good idea.

Cheers.

Nope not at all, how ever you can get them to link up that look hot and clean is fine.

Has to be 90* so the center inlet barb on your Alphacool top is now horizontal. These pups only work at 0* and 90* nowt eles!

samcat said:
Res should always be just before the pump (ie pump sucks water from the res).
Other than that it makes minimal difference to temperature what order things are in.

Sam C

Yeah i forgot about that, cheers Sam.

If it was me i'd fit all the blocks, fit the parts then bolt them into the case, wire the psu up to them and route you wires so there neat and out the way, if you can mod the case to make space do it.

You need to have good air flow in there still even on water for ram, etc.

Then i would route the tubing. Just let the tube twist and flex to where it wants to go. Looks 8mm stuff so should be pretty cool.

I can fit 18 lots of 1/2'' stuff in a V2000B dude so this will be a piece of cake with 8mm

Feel free to add me to msn if you need more help.

Oh and bigegr images, 800x600 be perfect to see it more

WoZZeR · 17 Apr 2007 at 09:13

Thanks for the advice.

I am trying to keep it very clean inside.

I might have to get some of those anti-kink springs though.

Will post some less blurry and larger images later in the week.

I've got some right angled fittings coming later in the week for the cpu and or radiator so I should be able to get some neat runs.

BTW, what is the blue lead for on the pump?

Once again, thanks.

Darg · 17 Apr 2007 at 09:23

Looks interesting. Haven't seen a water cooled shuttle yet. It will make a nice quiet PC for the sitting room if that's what you intend it for

DaveMac · 17 Apr 2007 at 09:52

Looking good, where is the PA120.3 going?

DDC blue wire is for RPM monitoring, stick it on a the CPU fan header and enable alarm in BIOS for pump failure.

You can orientate the pump any direction except for inlet barb facing down as this will prevent bleeding and will damage the pump.

WoZZeR · 17 Apr 2007 at 11:47

Thanks chaps, the radiator at the moment is a Black Ice II and hangs on the side on a homemade sidepanel, I've got 2 Scythe fans for it so hopefully it will do a decent job. Looks hideous, but when It's up and running I shall toodle over to the casemodding chaps and seek advice to 'pimp my rig'.

I'd love a PA Rad' the temps would be nice, perhaps for the future.

Drazic · 17 Apr 2007 at 14:14

You can not mount the pumop in any direction. It's horitonzalt or vertical only, go check Laing or take a pump that running move it about, that gridning noise is the impler hitting the top and not floating on the mag mount and cermaic bearing.

I posted a guide here which i was suspsend for which was lame telling you all the facts!

Can you get anti kink coild for this size tubing? I think you can get away without them to be honest they look cheap and tacky i think

pastymuncher · 17 Apr 2007 at 15:10

Water cooling in a Shuttle. Brave man. Looks tight on space in there. What are those graphics blocks?

WoZZeR · 17 Apr 2007 at 15:23

The GFX coolers are AquaGratix, the only ones I could find that would fit in the gap between the cards. Can post piccy if required.

They may prove restrictive, they have smaller threads for the fittings, it's a wait and see thing, hopefully the pump is a good one.

As recommended on this very forum I used AS5 for the GPU's and Arctic Ceramique for the RAM.

pastymuncher · 17 Apr 2007 at 15:36

The pumps a DDC is'nt it? If so it's one of the best. I used the same combination of AS5/Ceramique on my EK 8800GTS block. It does the trick.

Col_M · 17 Apr 2007 at 18:10

Darg said:
Looks interesting. Haven't seen a water cooled shuttle yet.

You have now

This is my Bro's SK83G

WoZZeR if you need any advice from him i'll pass on the message, he's fiddled around so much with it that i'd be surprised if there was much he didn't know, at least you have the bit extra space of the P2 chassis

WoZZeR · 17 Apr 2007 at 19:33

Hehehe, that looks quite funky.

That reservoir is also acting as a passive cooler I take it?

Thanks for the offer of help, I'll shout when I get stuck.

Col_M · 17 Apr 2007 at 19:45

WoZZeR said:
Hehehe, that looks quite funky.

That reservoir is also acting as a passive cooler I take it?

Thanks for the offer of help, I'll shout when I get stuck.

Yeah it's kind of a radiator and res in one, he has a rad in there too, in a small setup every little helps

WoZZeR · 17 Apr 2007 at 19:54

pastymuncher said:
The pumps a DDC is'nt it? If so it's one of the best. I used the same combination of AS5/Ceramique on my EK 8800GTS block. It does the trick.

Yup, It's a DDC.

Col_M said:
Yeah it's kind of a radiator and res in one, he has a rad in there too, in a small setup every little helps

I fancied internal cooling. I've seen it done, but I wanted to keep both HD's, the DVD and Floppy Drive. The main option was a supplementary 80mm Swiftech MCR QP inside, by the CPU but I've elected to go for the Blackice on the outside.

WoZZeR · 27 Apr 2007 at 16:54

It's running!!!

I'll post some piccies tonight, just installing XP and utilities etc.

All went OK although I drowned a stick of OCZ DDR2 800

so it's running on Corsair Value while I get some pennies together.

Temps look ok for a Shuttle 29 CPU and 39 GPU's.

The 2 Scythe 57cfm fans make a racket though.

Dead Dog · 27 Apr 2007 at 22:31

wozzer - i think the main thing you'll need is small hands

Col_M - well hard looks like a rocket launcher up there, i also like the way you've made w/cing a shuttle that bit easier by using the thickest damn tubing you could lay your hands on - hats off to you

WoZZeR · 27 Apr 2007 at 23:06

I'll take a couple of external pics with the cover off in the morning, these are before the floppy, DVD, HD's etc were fitted:

This is from the top down

I have an Alphacool NB cooler to fit but I needed 2 more right angled fittings so I shall fit it later on when I have discovered any other tweaks I need to do.

The loop is a bit nonsensical but after hours of fiddling about trying to get decent straightish hose runs it is as follows:

Reservoir, Pump, Outer GFX, CPU, Inner GFX, Radiator.

The fancy swivel fiitings on the GFX blocks came in very handy:

I'm still tweaking away, but early signs are promising, the temps using the Stealth II are OK, not as low as you full tower dudes but at stock it was 29 CPU and 39 GPU at idle.

Currently at 3.3ghz (E6700) with GFX at 675mhz and 1035mhz the temps are 41 CPU and 42 GPU. Load temps for CPU under Orthos on priority 10 are around 52 to 55, some 20 degrees lower than I was getting on air. 3D Mark 06 is posting around 11500 at the moment.

Hopefully the temps will drop a bit as the AS5 beds in?

Need to replace the 1600 RPM Scythes with something a bit quieter or find somewhere to put the fan controller board I have.

Oh, and it was an absolute pig to put together.