(Yet Another) Watercooled Prodigy Build

Red Alert · 16 Mar 2013 at 10:57

Hello,

This is my second go at watercooling a Bitfenix Prodigy. You can find a link to my first in my sig below.

Though here is a pic of what I am coming from.

I was talking to a friend who said he can't ever take his gaming rig to another house as it takes too long to move everything. He told me I was being stupid to think I could get everything he has in his Corsair 600. This build is to prove him wrong!

Just a quick thank you to everyone who puts build logs on here, from the sublime to the shoddy I am honestly a huge fan of reading them all and am happy to admit that many of the things I will be doing in this rig have been done before and would not have been possible with out the ideas and inspiration of others.

Anyways, to the build. Going for GTX 680, 480mm of radiators, a Blu Ray drive, 2 ssd's and everything else to make this little machine work. Not 100% confident this will work but we shall see.

I have done a few little bits here before taking any pics, so we will jump in to it now.

First things first is to get the front off and get a second 5'25 inch bay cut.

And add a fill port in the top.

More to follow soon....

P.S If anyone wants to ask anything, or wants any particular pictures of anything please just ask away.

Red Alert · 16 Mar 2013 at 12:00

I got myself one of these http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-196-SV&groupid=2362&catid=1770 from OcUk.

Which with the front bezel removed, and my slim line sony BluRay drive looks like this. Take no notice of the scratches on the front of the drive itself as these are from it being quite a tight fit in there.

And with my two Solid State drives in the bottom, with added vibration dampeners.

In the case.

and

Red Alert · 16 Mar 2013 at 12:06

I am going to build a shelf above all of this so none of it will be visible. I am then going to cover it with black carbon wrap and hopefully it should look ok. So off to a hardware shop and back I come with some 2mm metal brackets.

A bit of super glue (bolting it made it too big, and size is really important here)
and we have this.

Which is going to sit here like so.

And with the drives all wired up

I made it stand up on its own so it is not touching the disc drive at all. It is also sitting on its own anti vibration pads as I am trying to get this as quiet as possible and the pump will be sitting on this shelf.

Red Alert · 16 Mar 2013 at 12:28

I was going to leave it at this point for a couple of hours, but because that last picture is so ugly I wanted to show what it is going to look like on the new floor.

and

Reigan · 21 Mar 2013 at 11:32

Prodigy is an awesome case, can never have enough of it.

Diagro · 21 Mar 2013 at 12:27

if i waas you i would use the 120mm place and the 240mm place for rads as they will fit as stock without modding. please note, a thick rad there at the front will block the USB/Switch plate on the side pannel

Red Alert · 22 Mar 2013 at 16:44

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the replys, was hoping to get this finished in the week but two things have stopped that. First off I didn't have the WC fittings I needed, and secondly the bits I did order have not been delivered today due to snow.

Hopefully everything will be in place tomorrow and I can get this finished up in the next couple of days.

Red Alert · 29 Mar 2013 at 16:48

This has taken me far longer than planned, however it is nearly done. Here are a few pics from the days work.

First job was to get the drive bay cut up so it can still support a fan controller, 30 mins with a hacksaw left me with this.

Bit of a scruffy cut, but it wont be seen. With the controller in and the top rad just for size.

With a couple of cable ties this makes a lovely little shelf to get rid of some of those far too long fan cables.

I knew from the test run this was going to be a bit fiddly to get all these small bits of tubing in, thankfully this was always going to be the hardest and its about as good as I could have got it.

Red Alert · 29 Mar 2013 at 16:53

Once that was done it was mainly plain sailing.

Though gutted to have not bought enough black fittings and needing to resort to a silver old fitting.

And her it is all tubed up and ready for a leak testing.

Red Alert · 29 Mar 2013 at 17:02

So just have the front panel to modify so I have access to the slot load drive in the bottom, install the psu, finish getting the wiring sorted and polish it off with the carbon wrap.

Though my pump is making a hell of a noise, might need to look at replacing it, not too sure what I could fit in here tough, any suggestions?

Rooster212 · 30 Mar 2013 at 11:08

Nice build, was there any way to get a fan attached to the back 120mm rad? It looks like you could fit a thin fan in there (possibly it is hard to tell from the picture) and any kind of airflow would make a difference!

Diagro · 30 Mar 2013 at 11:23

for the back 120mm, a fan needs to be mounted on the outside

Red Alert · 30 Mar 2013 at 12:19

Yeah there is no way at all of fitting a fan in that gap, it would need to go outside the case but I dont think I am going to do that, just leave it as a passive rad.

Here is a little pic of the case with its tongue out. ( Well a CD in the bluray drive really.

Red Alert · 30 Mar 2013 at 12:32

Does anybody know of a half height mini pcie raid controller? Might be a bit mental but this board really does not need wifi so an extra couple of ssd's would be very useful.

Red Alert · 31 Mar 2013 at 12:16

Here it is with all the outside parts on, got to say I think I prefer it without the bottom stand part, its too wobbly on that.

tomparker95 · 31 Mar 2013 at 19:23

nice build, I enjoy looking through the logs too!

twera · 2 Apr 2013 at 13:15

Love your build, it's great!

I'm going to be doing a build similar to this, can you tell me what rad you have on the back and top? I want to get a right fit and your's is perfect with the same fan controller I have. Happy to make the mods

What size tube/fittings you using?

Thank you.

Red Alert · 2 Apr 2013 at 20:06

Hi, thanks for looking at my build. Just sitting here getting it all leak tested and the air out of it right now.

As for the radiators, the rad on the back is an Alphacool Nexxxos ST30, and the top rad is an EK Coolstream XT 240. There is literally about 5mm between them in the top. I did have an Alphacool Nexxxos TX45 in the top but it is too long to fit another rad in there.