Hello everyone, First post from a long time lurker so I thought I'd make it a long one. I've been inspired by all the amazing mods on here to finally sort out this: Into something half way presentable. The main driver being that I've recently upgraded to SLI 970s and despite this notionally being a 'High Airflow' case, it struggles to get enough airflow to the GPUs without taking off. I know the names crap, but I'm crap at names! So, rough list of parts: Sabertooth 990FX FX 6300 (OC @4.75) Palit Jetstream GTX970 4GB * 2 256GB 840 EVO Asus PCE-AC68 Wifi card. Watercooling: EK Supreme CPU Block EK FC670 GPU Blocks * 2 EK D5 XRes 140 EK Coolstream PE 360 Thermochill PA120.3 (Knocking on 10 years old and still going great guns). 6* Akasa Venom Vipers (rad fans) BeQuiet! Shadow Wings 140mm (rear exhaust, probably going to order another couple) BeQuiet! Shadow Wings 120mm *2 Case all stripped out ready for work: Drive Bays & weird little plinth thing removed (I hate drilling rivets!) Front 92mm fan mount removed from the 915 rad box. I genuinely don't know what they were thinking here, there's comfortably room for 120mm, and I'll be fabbing a 140mm mount, test fit: This is when things start to get frustrating. I wanted to Box in the PSU and put a blank to cover the gap at the end of the motherboard tray to hide cabling and provide somewhere to mount the pump/res. I started off with the idea of a wooden frame covered with hardboard, and 2 hours and much farting around later ended up with this: However, as you can see from the picture, that was a stupid idea Attempt number 2 using 6mm MDF I had left over from building SWMBO's sewing table came out much much better: The bottom part is removable, and sits on the ledge used to locate the PSU at the back. I'd love to say I bult it exactly to rest against the captive bolts for the feet, so I will! The second go took about an hour, including drilling the case to mount the upright part, quite why I didn't just do it in the first place I've no idea. I've not yet decided whether to mount the radbox at the bottom of the case or the top, I'm leaning toward the bottom as it should make filling/bleeding much easier, and allow me to stick a second 140mm to keep the VRMs cool although it might make my mouse hand quite drafty. Mounting on the top will make the hose runs much neater and since tidyness is half the point I'll probably end up doing that. Fans and rads test mounted: Packing tape is a makeshift gasket to make up for the random spacing on the older thermochill radiators. I'll think of something neater (probably black duct tape) for the final solution since I can't find any replacement neoprene ones for sale. I've set the fans up as exhausts since having them pulling makes the fans a weird noise and I want to mount the fans on the inside to keep some space between the rads for the hose. Theres ample airflow in through the front and base of the box for it not to have a huge impact on temps. This is how I've left it for tonight: Jobs for tomorrow are to paint the mdf (It'll need a couple of coats of primer at least due to it being so porous). Hopefully my stuff from Aquatuning & WatercoolingUK rock up tomorrow in which case I can start sorting out hose routing, otherwise it'll just be boring stuff like cleaning the rads out and trying to get the UV blue coolant out of everything. Thanks for sticking with it to the end, if anyone has any thoughts on whether the radbox should be on top or not then please let me know or can spot some amazing hose routing options please let me know (I'll be using the solid black EK 10/16 tubing because I love the look of it).
Late night at work and a distinct lack of packages means a pretty modest update for tonight. 4 coats of primer on the 'table': 140mm mounted in the front of the 915. The actual fan will be getting changed to a 140mm akasa viper which I'll be running (as well as the fans on the thermochill rad) from one of the GPU headers, mostly as this will let me set the duty cycle right down to zero depending on the GPU temp. The single EK rad should be able to cope with CPU on its own quite comfortably.
Very minimal update for tonight. I was driving past scan earlier and nipped in for some goodies so I can now finally do this shot: Thats obviously not the whole WC stuff, but I was excited by the new board & CPU (4790K). You can also see in that picture the completed table mount and the pump installed. Bit more of a detailed one below:
So, the postie gods were kind to me today and the rest of my stuff arrived, 2 EK FC670s and an assortment of fittings. So, on to the work, dissasembled the Palit Jetstream 970s to find nvidia's usual near mirro finish die, just a shame palit decided to use about 4 cards worth of TIM on it: The VRM block is not unreasonable. If using a universal block I don't think you'd need to bother replacing it. Heat plate looking like its been polished on a concrete slab - it really can't be that hard for manufacturers to get things right. Block mounted, its so tiny now! Forgot to actually take photos during the assembly process, but I figure everyones seen that before anyway. Exactly 1 litre of EK Clear Coolant in for leak testing (no the motherboard isn't plugged in, just the extension. Loop order is Pump> GPU2 > GPU 1 > CPU > Rad 1 (PA 120.3) > Rad 2 (EK LC 360) > Res The fill pipe is on a revolvable fitting so when the valve is off its getting rotated down out of the way and plugged up. I'm not sure I like the look of the Clear coolant, I think I'll likely end up replacing it with either pastel yellow to match the motherboard or pastel black to match the tubes.
So, after a brief interruption due to holidays I'm pleased to report this is now up and running. Bit of a drama when I thought I'd cocked it up cos it wouldn't boot (pro-tip: connect the 8pin extensions to the PSU). Quick bit of fettling with wires left me with this: Its not quite finished yet, I'm not happy with the akasa 6pin extensions I'm using, and will be getting some silverstone ones (much more matte finish) and also need a few more (you can make out I'm using PSU ones for one of the EPS connectors and the auxiliary PCIe connector. I'm also waiting on some cable combs to tidy it up a bit further.
