Modding Modding an Antec Kuhler 620 - Updated 7th May

7th May Update - Emergency Surgery and Rehab.

I've had my ASUS Striker II NSE for almost 2 months now. After a few teething problems with RAM refusing to play ball at non native speeds and a near catastrophy with a bios update, I'd finally got her running my Q6600 at a nice stable 3.4. I had got it stable at 3.5, but only had air cooling and it got too hot for my liking and the Northbridge was getting extremely toasty.

I bought a QX6850 off the market place for an extremely reasonable price (thanks Teezlebub!), but before I started on overclocking it I wanted to get both the CPU and Northbridge under water. This motherboard comes with a 'Fusion Block' on the northbridge, which has an intergrated water block in the heatsink.


I remebered seeing a mod where someone had put a small res in the loop of a Corsair H60, so i thought why not do that and include the NB in the loop too? I mean, you can pick up an Antec 620 new for £40 and you get a rad, pump and cpu block! Fortunately for me Parge had one up on the marketplace for £30 and i snapped it up in a jiffy, then went to Aquatuning for the parts needed for modding it.



1m Alphacool tubing AlphaTube HF 13/10 (3/8"ID) - Schwarz
Alphacool Cape Corp AGB2 black Rev. 2
EK Water Blocks EK-Ekoolant CLEAR premix 1000ml
3 x 10mm (3/8") barbed fitting G1/4 with O-Ring (High-Flow)
6 x hose clamp 12 - 20mm steel zinc coated (these turned out to be mahoooosive and i used the smaller ones in the pic that came with the board)

So, using wire cutters i chopped the 620's pipe open and drained the fluid out. in doing so, I thought the pipe was rather thick and once i taken them all off my fears prooved right.

The barbs on the block and rad were tiny!

I sat and thought. And swore and thought some more. Then threw in some words which not even i know where i learned them! I'd cut the pipes off just after the barbs on the rad and sitting there staring at it, it hit me put the pipe i'd bought OVER the original pipe....

It was a light fit but all the better!

So a few snips later the rad and block were ready to go!


Next up was the reservoir, which i'd wanted to mount on the underside of the roof before i'd even looked at what was available. And not because it was the only place i had where one would go

I turned my case upside down, swore a bit more as my dvd drive came crashing down, then drew round where i wanted the res to go.


Then using the highly scientific method of 'that looks about right' drilled the hole for the M3 bolt required for securing it.


Now unfortunately this is where my camera decided to eat the brand new batteries i'd put in it, so i don't have any more pictures but i'll try and use words as me good can.

Now the M3 bolt, M3 bolt, M...3....... hmmmm. where is it? Not in the box the res came in, or in the protective bag or the zip bag with the hole cover. A quick check online revealed it didn't come with one so to my screw tin i went and the best thing i had was a motherboard standoff with a rather long thread.

The roof of my antec P182 has a good 3mm of plastic on top of the metal for sound proofing, which prevented the thread of the standoff from coming through very far. To get past this I used a countersink drill bit to remove alot of the plastic around the whole, which came off quite easily just rolling the bit between my finger and thumb.

I put the motherboard with block on, rad and res in the case so i could easily measure and cut the pipe. Once I had lengths for all the connections, I took them out again and build the loop outside the case.

Getting the pipe over the barb+original pipe section on the rad and block was a bit of a struggle, but after stretching the ends a little (using needle nose pliers on the inside and opening them) they were on! With the motherboard suspended across a couple of piles of books, facing down to prevent damage from any leaks, i dangeled the ends to be connected to the res in a small bowel with some of the coolant in and turned it on.

It worked! No leaks after 10 minutes of running. With that i drained the loop, installed it into my case and hooked up the res.

By that time it was 2am and i needed sleep, so filling it up again would have to wait.

When it came to filling it, it didn't seem to be as eager to draw the coolant into the loop as when i had the ends just dangling in the bowl. Why wouldn't the dam thing suck! Suck god dam you!!! But just which end was sucking and which one blows? (quiet in the back there, stop that laughing!) In my rush to get it done i hadn't checked! I'd posted a thread enquiring if anyone new of the flow direction and someone said they'd modded a few Corsair coolers and considering they're all made by Asetek, I presumed they'd be the same.

So i took the res out of the loop, dangled what i thought was the inlet in some coolant and the other end over a bowl. And nothing. Then after switching them round it chugged the coolant like an alcoholic chugs spcial brew.

A minor adjustment was needed in the pipe routing, but only one snip of the cutters was required to get it orientated correctly.


To fill it i used a spare section of hose and the spare barb in the thread thats on the opposite side to the 2 i'm using, shoving a funnel in the pipe and pouring little by little till mi could hear it was backing up. Turn it on for a sec then off again. Pour a bit more, turn on, turn off etc, till there was no longer a gargling coming from it and i was sure it was flowing round nicely.

And there you have it! If you want to get your nv or vrm on water and have a closed loop cooler like this, give it a go, you won't regret it.

 

And here's the results of my hard labour, low low temps

Stock Clocks @IDLE


Stock Clocks after 10 mins of Prime95


QX6850@3.3 (333x10) after 10 mins of Prime95

 

Just realised that you can't really see f' all on those screen shots. lol Full load temps went down from 74 on air to 58 on this. I don't know what the temps of the NB was as didn't have everest then, but the heatsink was quite hot to the touch. now it only goes 3c above the idle temp of 43

 

Just ran a blend test to push the memory and nb a bit more and still the nb only got to 47c!

 

so many obsessions, so little time....

 

Well I'm getting a second 620 which is going to go on my 480. No idea yet how I'm going to mount it, but I't gonna be fun finding out!
Not sure if I should include it with the rest of my loop. My initial thoughts are to take the outlet pipe from the rear rad to the inlet of the 480, then up to the second rad which I'll mount on the roof, then from the roof rad to the res. Then it'll have a bigger volume of coolant to dissipate the heat across than if I left it stock.

Also currently I have a be quiet shadow wings (2200rpm version) on the front as intake and top as exhaust, with the stock antec 620 on the rear rad. I'm going to move the front intake fan to the front of the rear rad and the stock fan behind far push-pull, then use the shadow wings on the roof to blow through the second rad on the roof and the stock antec fan as intake on the front. Or, might have both in push-pull with the stock antec fan mounted outside of the roof, if the cover will fit over it and stick my old akasa fan back in the front, or get another shadow wings.

Setting up and controlling all those fans will be interesting!

 

Just had a thought that using different fans across the rads may not be the best idea. Could it cause any problems with differing fan speeds, static pressure etc. Don't really want to be forking out a load for a new set of fans, but I will need to get 6 for when I get my proper loop sorted, so could get them now. Was going to get these:
http://www.xigmatek.com/product.php?productid=53&type=specification
If you know of any 120mm fans which are clear and have red LEDs? They seem to have good flow and pressure without being loud.

And no bloggin, I'm not using deltas

 

After a good browse i can't find any that are better and that fit the criteria (including being as quiet as possible! SO, i'm gonna get 4 of the 120mm ones and 3 of the 140mm ones (http://www.xigmatek.com/product.php?productid=58&type=specification). The 120's will be on 2 240 rads and the 140's wil be used for intake and exhaust as they're quieter and don't require as much static pressure as they won't be on rads.
They're also somewhat of a bargain at £5.50 for the 120's and £6.75 for the 140's, a total fan cost of £42.25 inc delivery

 

Thanks Kuhler says hi!

 

Looks nice man! I love it when you can see the heatpipes on the gfx card

No i've not had that problem at all. Just make sure you screw them in nice and tight, although not too tight as the plastic inserts can brake apparently. you could also try a small blog of super glue to stop them unscrewing.

 

Had a heart attack moment last night. My PC froze and when I restarted her, coretemp popped up to tell me my cpu was at 107C so I yanked the plug out the psu. There was a gargling noise coming from the heatsink/pump, but didn't think anything of it till the shock themp readings, as happens every time I start it up due to the res outlet being ever so slightly below the pump inlet. But some trapped air must have come lose and lodged itself in the pump.

After giving it a while to let it cool, I lay the case on it's back, unscrewed the res and held it so it was directly over the pump when I turned it on. I turned it off after 30 seconds, topped the res up a bit and repeated a couple of times checking the coolant level between each blip till i was happy I'd got the air out. Then putting the case back the right way up I hooked everything back up and turned it on and got nothing but a blank screen, no power through the USB either. I thought I'd absolutely chebbed it!

I took the battery out the mobo for a good hour without the power connected to ensure the bios had reset (the clear cmos switch doesn't seem to work ). Then started it back up with just 1 stick of ram and my old 460 in and she came back to life. Switched back to my 480 again and still ok and I've got power back in the usb. Really really shat it big time though!

 

The Sun have been doing it for years so why not! lol Thanks man. I'm so proud of her I almost don't want to take her apart to start a full project. But need to finish my rocking desk first, which I haven't touched in a good couple of months. lol