I apologise if this is the wrong forum, new to bit-tech. I didn't see any builds posted in the watercooling section and noticed that logs are for works in progress. I did use a dremel on my case but I have noticed that my "modding" doesn't really meet bit-tech standards, hopefully it's not too out of place here. The specifications for my system (also detailed in signature): Corsair Obsidian 550D AMD FX-8350 with Alphacool NexXxos XP3 Lite Waterblock Asus Crosshair V Formula-Z with EK Waterblock 4GB Asus GTX670 DirectCU II with EK Waterblock 16GB Kingston HyperX Beast 2400MHz 11-13-13-30 256Gb Crucial m4 SSD + 500Gb Toshiba HDD + 250GB Seagte HDD Enermax Platimax 750W PSU Swiftech Maelstrom Dual Bay Reservoir + 2x MCP35X PWM Pumps Alphacool NexXxos Radiators, UT60 240mm + ST30 140mm and 240mm Alphacool compression fittings Primochill PrimoFlex Advanced LRT 10-13mm (ID-OD) Tubing (Red) Mayhems Silver Kill Coil Reverse Osmosis (RO) water from local fish shop Noctua NF-F12 (x4) + AF-14 + AF-15 + Phobya G-Silent 12 Slim Edition (x2) fans The stuff detailed above all laid out before the build: My Corsair 550D with mods completed: I had to cut out the bottom of the 5.25" drive bays to allow the UT60 240mm radiator to stick through into the bottom bay and also cut a hole in the base of the case to allow the radiator to stick through there. After doing those mods I got some old sound absorption mats I used for another case to add sound sound dampening to the bottom, top and because I had extra I put some below the motherboard mounting pins. My first build in this case was not ideal because the tiny slot left open near the CPU fan header wasn't big enough to fit fan cables through so I decided to make that a bit bigger now that my ROG Crosshair motherboard has a 4 pin power plug there as well. The case is good for a mid tower but it could really do with some extra room behind the motherboard tray for cable routing, despite carefully routing the 24pin power cable it still provides resistance to the side panel being put on. I've always had smaller less featured cases than this so it was a nice step up from previous builds but not that I've done a little modding I realise the value of some of the more expensive cases that provide that extra space. The first bits go in: The ST30 240mm radiator at the top is probably the most difficult to fit because it uses Phobya G-Silent Slim edition fans which are 15mm in height and require screws that go all the way through to the radiator. The included screws from Alphacool tak into account the normal 25mm height of fans and as such would puncture the radiator before it made contact with the fans. I made a trip down to B&Q to get some screws of the required height and some small washers to enable the screws to grip the large holes Corsair made to use their special rubber grommets and fan screws. The build continues with the rest of the radiators: The other two radiators were simple to fit, if you ignore the changes made to the case to fit the UT60 in. Now for some electronic bits: The motherboard goes in but only after removing the 140mm radiator because the corner screw can't be tightened with it in I would of left it out but the added weight of the waterblock on the motherboard made me spend an extra minute taking the radiator out. Some pipe layout experiments: At this point I started getting lazy with taking pictures so only have the one pipe layout option shown that is different from the final layout chosen. I was short on piping because I was throwing out all my old tubing and only had just enough left for one demo loop with enough left over to change to a different layout. I spent the majority of my build time using old piping to see what configurations were possible. The configuration above was the 4th or 5th one I tried which seemed reasonable. I had saved some space by having the CPU and motherboard waterblocks connect together at the top but I was not really sure how to integrate the 140mm radiator into the system. I didn't choose the layout above because it was more busy than I wanted. In my previous loop I had a lot of quick disconnects to allow me to easily remove parts of the system without draining the loop but that ended in disaster when the quick disconnects failed after 4 months despite using Mayhems Ultra Pure H2O exclusively. Resigning myself to the fact that I need to drain the loop every time I change a component I thought I may as well make the loop as tidy as I could. Final loop layout: A few more tweaks to the layout revealed the above option to me which I settled on for my system. It only has 2 tubes from the front of the case to the system components and they are almost parallel which was aesthetically pleasing. The case in its finished state: So that is my first modded machine. I didn't intend to mod the case to fit the components in but considering I did it successfully I am now considering replacing the UT60 240mm radiator with the Alphacool monster when I do a GFX upgrade. That should be the equivalent of adding another 240mm ST30 radiator to the system in terms of radiator surface area. The MC35X PWM pumps have not turned out to be as useful as I expected. The RPM range starts with the lowest at 0% and the highest at 50% but my motherboard only goes as low as 20% PWM on FanXpert I might change my Swiftech Maelstrom reservoir and pump combo for the Alphacool repack reservoir for D5 pumps so I can simply set the pump to the speed I want and go from there. I would like to have my computer completely silent at idle and unfortunately my PWM control doesn't get the MC35X pumps to inaudible levels so that is slightly frustrating. Performance is unquestionably good but I had hoped PWM control would be more sensible.
