SketchUp Water Cooling the Corsair 250D - Will it Fit?

Hello everyone! So I decided I am going to go whole hog on water cooling my main system, which is housed in a Corsair 250D.

My plan is to accurately model all of the components in Autodesk INVENTOR (not Autocad) (NOTE: I switched back to AutoCAD when I hit the wall with Inventor) and then build the system and make sure I can lay everything out exacty how I want it. On and for some motivation, I ordered my EK R290 waterblock last night!

Preface: I have never used Inventor before so this is as much an educational venture for me as it is a fun one. At the moment I'm exporting my models into dwg format so I can render in Autocad and I don't have the time at this very second to play around too much with Inventor's renderer. I may import into 3DS in order to have a lot more options when it's all said and done.

One of the things I gotta get better at is setting up my rendering environment. Maybe work on that when I get home later. Anyway this should be a fun adventure so I'll keep working on it and posting updates.

All of my measuring is being done by hand using a metric ruler and a micrometer.

***PARTS LIST***

At this point (I've updated this first post as of 7/22) my parts list is more or less final.

Radiator and Fans:

Conditions - Needs to come in at less than 52mm thickness. The H100i is 27mm thick and the SP120s I have are 25mm thick. That puts the edge of my fans within a hair's width of making contact with the Asus ROG VRM daughterboard. Since I have my fans in pull, they are blowing onto the daughterboard directly which is probably a good thing, helps keep it cool. If you're working in this case and you aren't using an Asus board with a VRM daughterboard, then you have a little bit more freedom BUT keep in mind the front 200mm fan will come into play depending on how you run your tubing. If you have your rad fittings coming out of the front side of the case, that fan might get (definitely will get) in the way.

My Choice:

Hardware Labs Black Ice Nemesis GT Stealth

This radiator comes in at 29.6mm thickness, and as a bonus, will fit with Corsair SP120 fans.

Koolance 140mm Low Profile Radiator This is going up front. With an overclocked 4670k and an R9 290 you can't really get away with just a 240. Why did I randomly buy a Koolance product? Well because they provide 3D models of ALL of their products on their website. I used them a lot in my layouts so I thought hey, let's reward that.

Corsair SP 140 HEY look what Corsair finally made!

Corsair SP 120 Quiet Edition

I bought these a while back to replace the awful fans that came stock with my h100i. I originally thought they wouldn't fit with an aftermarket radiator due to the VRM daughterboard on the Maximus VI, but when my radiator came in I did a test fit and they worked! The 20mm Yate Loons I had on here before are still a good option though.

Pump, Reservoir and Blocks:

Conditions - They need to fit. I have now fully figured this out. A pump/base/tube reservoir setup CAN (probably) work in this case. The primary stumbling point for me was cost. You need an MCP-655, the Bitspower Pump top, the Bitspower upgrade kit, a replacement tube reservoir that's shorter than the one the upgrade kit comes with, a 2/3 port tube topper and a butt ton of fittings and angled adapters. And you need to have a decent income and a VERY compliant SO who will allow you to spend over $300 on knick knacks.



Alternately, for half the price and 1/10th the trouble you can get an...

EK-SBAY DDC. This unit comes in a single or dual pump configuration and even has an optional alternate face plate if you don't like the aesthetics. I've also seen someone "double up" their 5.25 slot and put a fan controller in front of this unit, hiding it completely. A bay res is not an ideal solution but with the requirements for me specifically it's pretty much my only option.



EK FC R9-290X Full Cover Waterblock - You've already seen this in my later posts. It looks great and I've already test-fitted it inside the case so I know it will fit. BONUS EK now offers multi-colored backplates for this block and others like it. RED? Don't mind if I do!

EK Supremacy Full Nickel CPU Waterblock - I really like the looks of EKs blocks and this is no different. If I feel like saving some money I'll go for the Acetal top version instead, which runs ~$30 less than this one. Either way, this is the block I'll be going for.

Fittings, tubing, coolant, misc:

OK so one of the most important parts of a WC build is figuring out your tubing sizes and the runs you will be using. See my posts later on in the thread for about 30 different variants I played with. What I do know is THIS:

Tubing - 1/2" x 3/4" tubing. This is the most common tubing size. You can go bigger or smaller or even use hard acrylic rigid tubing, but if you want the "easy mode" just go with this. I had considered hard tubing for my build, and it would actually be ideal, but again it's a cost/time issue and I don't think I want to mess with this on my very first WC build. Maybe next time around.

Fittings - Bitspower. They are renowned, look great and the variety of angled fittings and colors/styles etc is pretty much unlimited. I think I'll use Black Sparkle compression fittings.

 

Well a few snags here and there (one of my mirrored objects wouldn't let me use the shell command because it was non-manifold... whatever that means, and I couldn't quite get it to look right, OH and I managed to somehow draw the bottom clips on the top of the panel and vise versa. That can be fixed when I do the assembly constraints.

The inventor renderer isn't too shabby so I think I'll stick with that. I had planned on importing it all into Max, but if this works well enough I'm not going to mess with it.



The texture isn't seamless on the front yet and I don't have the logos on there, but it's good progress so far I think

 

Well I got the front housing done. Goofy colors for contrast.

 

Top and side panels done. More pics to come.

 

Progress!



(this was finished in Autocad because the pattern tool in inventor was confounding me and I didn't want to waste time banging my head against the wall).

Got a ways to go but it's getting there.

 

sadly I'm going to have to re-do the front panel. It's not quite right. I didn't get the angle of the loft going in from the front edge right, so it threw off other dimensions.

 

Little more tweaking.

 

Well here's a quick and dirty render of my current progress on the assembly phase. Next up is modeling the interior stuff. Once that's done I'll be able to do some fine detail then I'll import it all into 3DS Max and do materials and some good renders. Oh and hopefully I'll be able to design a functional water cooling layout that fits!

 

To those of you who are keeping an eye on this thread, I'll be taking a week long honeymoon so no updates until after I get back

 

Interested in this thread as i'm in the planning stages of a custom loop in a 250D.. Enjoy your honeymoon!

 

Thanks! It's been a fun learning experience for me with Inventor. A little slow going but fun nonetheless. Currently layed out in my undies in Cape Cod so no work being done till next week

 

Hi all! Back from my fantastic honeymoon and what better way to relax after a fun-filled week than to do some 3D modeling? I've just started this next part, and yes I know I'm jumping around a little bit here, but I've got my 290 out of the case ATM so now's the best time to get it modeled up.

This is a very early stage of the process but I've got the basic shape of the blower unit and the PCB done. Next step is the I/O bracket and the detailing on the shroud itself.

 

Might just be me.. But if you're watercooling that 290, why model it with the reference cooler?

 

Cuz I wanna!

Gonna do both ;p

 

Eh, good enough for government work. Time to move on to something a little more time effective. It think It's time to start doing the interior of the case, then the motherboard.

 

Well, can't argue with that!

 

couldn't wait

Started my own